Chapter 44

The feeling of obtaining something you wanted when you wanted it felt extremely good.

The mutated water buffalo weighed at least two tons, and it was rather difficult for Shen Cong to drag it around, but he was still very excited. He had been worried about the possibility of Titan running out of fuel when he needed to go out and hunt evolved beasts because he finished eating all his Activity-laced meat.

Then, a mutated water buffalo which could last for more than a week had arrived. And if Shen Cong could keep the meat fresh, forget about one week, he could make the water buffalo’s meat last for a month.

Now, he did not need to go out and hunt for a week. That was enough time for him to repair Titan until it was in a better condition.

At that time, he could contact the evolved humans in Chengnan and exchange for the diesel and other resources he needed.

The water buffalo proved that Shen Cong’s luck was pretty good.

Good things kept coming one after another.

After he dragged the water buffalo back, Shen Cong picked up the remaining half of the fugly cat’s carcass and went to the river bend to retrieve the fishing rods. At their ends, he found five ugly evolved fish. Three of them were still alive and kept struggling. The other two were only fish bones hanging on the metal hook.

Just as Shen Cong expected, there were evolved fish in the river bend.

Based on Zhang Youhai’s words, there was a period of time when the scavengers relied on catching evolved fish to pay protection taxes to Wang Gen. Later on, the three evolved human factions occupied the rivers with evolved fish in them, and the scavengers had to either move further down the river to catch fish or just give up on it.

If the place was too far away, it was incredibly dangerous to the survivors who did not evolve.

[Ugly tumorous fish: A deformed, mutated fish. It is an evolved fish, and it is the size of a washbasin. Many of the bones at its head have protruded, but there is no Activity core. The scales show faint signs of turning into metal. They’re very similar to the bone spikes on the fugly cat.]

Shen Cong continued recording his observations. He deduced that the ugly tumorous fish were creatures who failed in their evolution process, because they did not have any Activity cores.

Still, regardless of whether they failed or succeeded, as long as their flesh contained Activity, they were good fish.

It had been a long time since Shen Cong had eaten fish.

Besides, fish meat could be cut into sashimi, which was very easy to store. Based on Shen Cong’s observations, the loss of Activity from an object was actually very slow. Even if he kept rotten meat around for a month, it would still retain some of its original Activity.

Of course, fresh meat contained the most Activity, and it was much more valuable compared to sashimi. Unfortunately, Shen Cong now had meat from the mutated water buffalo.

Snap, snap.

Shen Cong took a few pictures of the mutated water buffalo before he started cutting up its flesh. He made some records while he observed the creature.

[Demonic bull king: A mutated animal resembling a water buffalo. It is an evolved beast. The creature is much larger than a wild bull; its size can compare to that of an elephant. It is strong, can run fast, and is very tenacious. It has already switched its diet from plants to meat.

[Its 1 m long horns are its Activity cores. The Activity radiation contained in them is the strongest among the evolved beasts I have ever seen. Perhaps only the dog crocodile’s Activity core can surpass it.]

Shen Cong’s naming abilities were really, really bad.

But the water buffalo definitely lived up to its name of a demonic bull king, considering the fact that even Shen Cong had trouble picking up its horns.

Previously Shen Cong had planned to grade the evolved beasts, but it was very difficult for him to evaluate their combat strength, and he could not effectively assess each evolved beast’s strength. That was why he had always wanted to figure out an effective grading system by using the Activity cores as his foundation.

He held the horns that contained shocking Activity radiation, and the same thought appeared in his mind again.

‘But how should I grade them?’

*****

In the afternoon, Shen Cong set about repairing his display system.

Titan was not a crude truck with only steel boards. It was an apocalyptic war truck Shen Cong had spent six years modifying, and it could compare to a moving fortress. The automatic driving system was the core technology of the apocalyptic war truck, even if it was rendered useless once GPS and BDS became ineffective.

Still, he could scan an area with the infrared thermal scanner to judge whether there were obstacles in the area and have the truck move on its own based on the directions he set for it.

When it was linked with the display system, Shen Cong would be able to see the information regarding the situation around the truck, which would allow him to know about all movements in the outside world at all times.

He would not need to open his windows to observe the world and expose himself in the process.

Because of it, even if he ran into multiple gunshots fired his way, he would be able to guarantee his own safety.

‘The CMOS battery melted when it was submerged in water. I need to change it. The CMOS battery I removed from the motherboard shares the same specs with this CMOS battery, I should be able to use it…

“I’ve checked this BIOS chip, and it has no power. It must have burnt. It’ll be rather difficult to melt this. I’ll have Titan use Alloying on it and restore it using Extension…’

When Shen Cong was in repair mode, he was very serious. He compared his work to the circuit diagram and occasionally searched for relevant information in his USB drive while changing one component after another.

As long as he fixed one display screen, he would know everything that had gone wrong, and it would then be easy to repair the other display screens.

But the level of skill required to repair the micro components at the motherboard was very high. Some of the components could not be repaired after being destroyed at all and needed to be replaced. For example, if the internal parts of a BIOS chip were burnt, even if Shen Cong was a god, he could not repair it.

The inner parts of the BIOS chip were highly integrated with each other, and it was considered a top-grade electronic component. It was not something a normal person could dream of making.

Shen Cong repeatedly made cross references to the principles of repairing electronic devices or changing each of the electronic components in the display screen. This task did not just involve a lot of detailed work, but was also time consuming. Even after an entire morning was gone, Shen Cong did not manage to make the display screen light up.

Something always went wrong with it, which made Shen Cong unable to activate it. There was even one time when it short circuited and burnt two small capacitors.

“Whew… my eyes are blurry…”

Before the sun set, Shen Cong switched the electrical components he was certain were spoilt once more and turned on the power.

Beep!

A familiar and beautiful note finally rang in the air.

The display screen reacted a little later. It started showing colors after three seconds. And after five and a half hours, the first display screen was finally repaired.

It was not easy, truly.

Without a professional workspace and equipment, the difficulty of repairing electrical equipment requiring high precision was insanely high. Fortunately, Shen Cong had finally done it once, and he now fully understood the printed circuit board in the display screen. If he needed to repair another one, it would be much easier.

*****

Dinner was steak, fried until it was medium raw.

Medium raw steak had the aroma from a well done steak, but it would not destroy the Activity and nutrients in the beef. When Shen Cong ate it, it tasted great.

He fried a little of the fugly cat’s meat as well. Once he tasted it, he resolutely went to feed it to the second generation mutated larvae and Mutated Green-headed Fly 1. It was incredibly sour, and the taste itself was weird.

The amount of Activity and its strength was also much lower than in demonic bull king’s meat.

After dinner, Shen Cong went to replenish Activity for the ant eggs. As he rolled around the ant eggs that had recovered their Activity, the sense of closeness became stronger.

This made Shen Cong incredibly uncomfortable.

This feeling made him feel as if it was mocking him, as if the ant eggs were born from him!

There was no way humans would have any sort of connection with insects.

Shen Cong squashed down the sense of closeness and continuously tried to search for the reason why he formed this sort of connection after their Activity became in sync.

He sensed the radiation frequency from the ant eggs while paying close attention to the details while observing his own radiation frequency. Then, he compared it to the demonic bull king, fugly cat, and Activity-laced nectarine’s radiation frequency.

He could sense that all the radiation frequencies were different, but he could not tell just how they were different.

‘Radiation, frequency, synchronization, disguise, magnetic fields… Is there something that I didn’t think about or didn’t notice?’

Shen Cong thought with a frown.

‘Activity releases its frequency in the form of radiation. Radiation is how electromagnetic fields release heat in the surroundings. Then, how does it spread?’ Shen Cong gradually settled on a train of thought. ‘Could it be… waves?!’

Electromagnetic radiation spread out in the form of waves, and since Activity was similar to radiation, if it had no special conditions, it should also possess the characteristics of a wave.

If Activity was a form of a wave, how could Shen Cong differentiate the waves?

There was an equation in physics that he remembered well: v=fλ, where v was the speed of sound, f was frequency, and λ was wavelength.