Shen Cong did not have a white coat, a clipboard, a research lab with loads of bottles, or a researcher who was patient and meticulous. He only had a glass bottle placed on a box while he himself sat on a resource sack and held a shoe box, from which he occasionally took out a dried ant leg to eat.

 The passageway in Titan’s compartment was very narrow. Research equipment was limited, and Shen Cong’s professionalism was practically zero. Hence, his poison test for the peach was very shabby and crude.

 Crunch, crunch, crunch.

 The fried ant leg was a little tough after Shen Cong dumped it by the side for a long time after frying it, but that meant that it was even more chewy than before. It might not possess a lot of Activity, but he was not treating it as the main dish. It was already good that he could get some increase in Activity from time to time.

 In truth, even though the brachyponera worker and soldier ants had Activity cores, their Activity radiation was not strong. In fact, it could be said to be very weak. Forget about comparing them to the earth-digging insect, which was also a mutated insect, their radiation was even weaker than that of even the useless plastic rabbit.

 This made Shen Cong even more confident in his theory that the mutated ants were a second generation mutated monster created by the brachyponera queen ant.

 The green-headed fly trapped in the glass bottle flew around blindly for half a minute, but it was soon attracted by the possibly poisonous peach that was releasing a thick wave of Activity. The fly landed on top of the fruit and started eating it.

 It only took a few bites for around seven seconds.

 Before Shen Cong’s eyes, it flapped its wings, wanting to fly, but before it could raise, it fell headfirst on the peach, and all six of its legs twitched for a while.

 This lasted for around twenty seconds until the green-headed fly stopped breathing.

 It died.

 Shen Cong was very calm when he saw that there was no longer any movement. He had expected this outcome. The only thing that was against his expectations was that the poison took effect in the green-headed fly within seven seconds.

 But when he thought about it, Shen Cong felt that his question was answered. Flies only needed from seven to eleven seconds to eat, process their food, absorb its nutrients, and poop. It was used to eating while coughing up or excreting whatever it did not need.

 Seven seconds was enough for the green-headed fly to digest the poisoned peach, and if it were poisonous, the fly should indeed be poisoned by then.

 Shen Cong picked up his laptop and started keying in the data from his investigation. [First poisoned peach test report: The green-headed fly was poisoned seven seconds after it ingested the peach. Twenty-three seconds later, it died.]

 2There were originally five green-headed flies. Two had died naturally, and one had died from a test. There were two left, and they were happily eating their Activity-infused meat in the mesh food cover.

 Shen Cong casually placed the glass bottle by the side and ignored it. His attention moved to the twig from the mutated peach tree.

 The mutated peach tree was, naturally, a mutated plant. This was the only plant Shen Cong had seen over the past two and a half months, and he was incredibly curious about the changes within it after it mutated.

 ‘Its bark shows signs of turning into metal, but its insides remain as wood. The veins on its leaves also show slight signs of turning into metal. I’ll try to infuse Activity into it to see how it reacts.’

 While thinking about it, Shen Cong gathered up the Activity in his body and tried inserting it into the twig.

 It worked.

 But it was very difficult, and he faced all sorts of obstacles. He needed to spend a lot of energy on it, and the amount he could insert was not much.

 At the same time, Shen Cong noticed that the tree bark did not become much harder when he inserted a small amount of Activity into the twig. He could barely sense that it had changed. The originally hard bark became slightly softer, but it was more resilient than before.

 ‘It seems to possess some traits of an Activity core, but it’s not the same Activity core. This is very different from the mutation of an animal.’

 Aside from having a lot of mutated characteristics given to them by Activity in terms of their appearance, the greatest change in mutated animals was the existence of Activity cores. This part gradually turned from bone to metal.

 But other than Activity cores, their other body parts remained as components made from flesh and bone. No sign of those parts gradually turning into metal could be detected.

 Yet the bark of the twig from the mutated peach tree was showing signs of transforming into metal, and it was not just one or two parts of it turning into metal. The entire bark was changing into metal.

 Shen Cong could not quite understand this sort of mutation. Of course, neither did he understand the mutation in animals, and he could not offer an explanation as to what Activity exactly was either.

 However, this did not stop him from being interested in it. ‘I’ll go out later and dig out that mutated peach tree. I’ll search section by section whether I can find an Activity core.’

 He put down the twig, since he could not figure out anything about it, and picked up the thread-like root.

 It was the channel the mutated peach tree used to absorb the nutrients from carrion. Once Shen Cong investigated it, what he discovered from it was about the same as with the twig. The bark showed signs of transforming into metal, but the inner structure remained as wood. He tried infusing Activity into it to see whether the root still possessed the ability to absorb nutrients.

 But the results were disappointing. After they left their main structure, the twig and root both died, or rather, their Activity was judged to have “died”.

 [Poisoned peach tree: A mutated plant resembling a peach tree. The bark shows signs of a gradual change into metal. It is hard and resilient. The fruit is an Activity-laced poisonous peach. The tree’s roots can spread out thread-like from the primary root to absorb nutrients from carrion.]

 1Once Shen Cong finished recording the results from his investigation and uploading the pictures, it was time to eat.

 He continued focusing on frying and roasting to cook his food. The ant legs and meat from the queen ant, the unspayed poodle’s hindlegs, and pork chops from the tumor pig were his sole menu over the few days.

 1While frying the queen ant’s leg, Shen Cong’s mind kept thinking about the “life” and “death” of Activity, along with how it strengthened living bodies and non-living bodies.

 Activity managed to give the property of “living” to Titan and the motorcycle, which were machines. It could also turn cockroaches into earth-digging insects, turn poodles into unspayed poodles, turn queen ants into giants who could produce mutated ants, and by the looks of it, it could also turn a peach tree into a poisonous carrion-eating tree.

 1The veil of mystery around Activity was being unveiled bit by bit to show its true colors, but the more Shen Cong unraveled its mysteries, the more questions he got.

 Sometimes, he thought that Activity was a form of radiation, and the radioactive radiation was the reason behind all the changes.

 1Activity could transform the properties of metal and turn non-metals into metals.

 It could even strengthen the properties of a living object.

 But sometimes, Activity acted more like a nutrient. This quality was especially prominent on Shen Cong himself. His Activity was retrieved from Titan through some form of magnetic field, and every time he received it, his body got stronger.

 It managed to turn Shen Cong from a strong but normal person into someone who had the strength of two bulls.

 2This was similar to a mutation created due to the stimulation from radiation, but Shen Cong ate meat full of Activity every day to ingest Activity from them. Ingesting Activity this way had also managed to improve his body constitution.

 But there were many times when the Activity he received from Titan and the Activity he obtained from the meat would just accumulate in his body so that he could spend it.

 This manner of Activity accumulating in him was what Shen Cong perceived as Activity being “alive”.

 But when this sort Activity was unable to hold itself together and started flowing away, it would “die”.

 When Titan “nearly died”, its Activity started flowing out slowly. When the mutated animals and insects were killed, the Activity in their bodies would also flow out slowly. Now, it was clear that the twig and thread-like roots were also losing their Activity.

 The “living” and “dying” Shen Cong used were strictly for the state of living and dying of Activity, and it was not to be used based on the traditional concepts of living and dying. If the vital signs of a living being were gone, Activity would “die” as well. If the vital signs of a living were present, Activity could still “die” and cause the living being to die.

 The hunted down mutated monsters’ vital signs stopped, so their Activity “died”.

 As for the plastic rabbit, it died because its Activity “died”, which led to him no longer having vital signs.

 Hence, Activity was an unsolved mystery which possessed three important characteristics—radiation, nutrients, and life. With the meager knowledge Shen Cong gained from observing and researching it, he could not give it an accurate definition.

 Crack.

 Shen Cong turned off the induction cooker, and the fragrant smell from the queen ant’s leg stimulated his nose.

 It made him stop thinking about the “life and death of Activity”, which was a profound question that was part biology, but also part philosophy. He picked his plate of fried meat and walked into the driver cab, turned on his radio, and ate his lunch while he searched for a channel used to transfer messages.

 1He longed to be able to hear human language he was familiar with once more.

 1Even if they were just repeated, vague phrases, they could still provide him with a lot of useful information.

 However, the radio just kept on producing the same white noise.

 Instead, the 15A radar started giving off warning signs. Something alive was moving.

 Shen Cong cast aside his plate and immediately brought out his binoculars to cautiously observe the land in the direction the radar pointed out. Soon, he saw the moving object discovered by the 15A radar. It stood at the hilltop where Shen Cong previously was.

 It was a very horrifying mutated creature.

 Or rather, it was a very ugly mutated creature. In fact, it was a cat who had bone spikes growing all over its body!

 2