Dam

Living alone... or rather, living with his own two hands, had one major advantage: he could go wherever he wanted, without needing to be home at any particular time.

So Qin Luming decided to take a look at that dam... Maybe the dam was already gone too. Deep in the loess mountains, the roads had long since fallen out of maintenance, and crumbling walls and ruins could be seen everywhere. During seasons of torrential rain, mudslides could even come pouring down from the mountains on both sides.

The villagers who had originally lived there had relocated when the dam was first built. Now, the place was truly deserted. Other than foolish mules who always believed they could conquer nature, no normal person would go there.

Qin Luming was not going to conquer nature, and he was not an ordinary person either. He would assess the risks and act within his means; if something happened, he would not need to consume public resources to be rescued. After thinking it over for barely a minute, he sprinted toward the dam.

Naturally, no rideshare driver would be willing to go to a place like that. After Qin Luming had run for more than an hour, the highway came to an end. Only a few houses with white ceramic tiles embedded in their outer walls stood scattered across several miles.

Qin Luming stood before a roadblock made of wooden planks, looked up at the mountains ahead, then went around it and continued onward.

The road beyond the barrier had been neglected for years. Forget vehicles—even walking required care. If someone stepped into one of those potholes and holes without noticing, they might sprain an ankle. If an ordinary person ran into that trouble here, they truly would be unable to call on heaven or earth for help.

Qin Luming even saw foul-smelling black droppings by the roadside, seemingly left by some large beast... Anywhere humans withdrew from, it might take less than three or five years for animals to reclaim it. Much less this place, which had seen almost no human activity for two or three decades.

Once Qin Luming climbed the mountain, traces of wild animals became even more numerous. Fortunately, this area was mostly loess ridges. The places where trees grew thickly were farther away at the foot of the mountains and around the river behind the dam, where wild animals were more densely concentrated.

Qin Luming crossed two connected low hills, then climbed the highest nearby peak. His view suddenly opened up. Beneath the dim light of the sky, the mountain ranges wound across the land like a gigantic serpent, coiled and still. The dam, whose outer walls had turned earthen yellow, was like a cleaver embedded in the serpent's vital spot.

Qin Luming somewhat understood why the river had gradually stopped flowing, or even dried up, after the dam was built.

The terrain of mountains and water depended on one another. Mountains were yang, while water was yin. The mountains took the shape of a serpent, and the waterway accompanying them naturally did as well.

The dam had cut through the serpent-shaped mountains at their vital spot with the force of a horizontal blade, killing them. Bereft of the mountain terrain it relied on, the serpent-shaped waterway naturally lost its momentum as well. It was merely lingering on, no longer possessing the surging force it had once shared with the mountains.

There was no basis for it. Qin Luming was just guessing.

From afar, the dam truly looked magnificent. Qin Luming seemed to still sense the spirit of laborers from that era—people who had had nothing, yet whose vigor still radiated the determination to "make the sun and moon shine anew."

Wait... Qin Luming suddenly realized that the abandoned Zinc Factory and bridge Zhou Nan had chosen were both places with glorious histories, places that had gathered momentum and human presence. This dam was the same... Yet she had shown absolutely no interest in the unfinished buildings and abandoned sites along the road, which were only ten or twenty years old at most.

Did that mean these remnants of history truly could gather some sort of magnetic field or energy invisible to ordinary people because of their past glory, having absorbed the soaring spirit of countless laborers?

Those magnetic fields were what Zhou Nan wanted. They could strengthen her power, resist the suppression the laws of the world imposed on overly powerful beings, and so on... Otherwise, Qin Luming truly could not think of any reason she would take these abandoned structures. In the human world, countless things were far more valuable than them.

Standing atop the mountain and considering these unreliable notions, Qin Luming had no intention of getting too close to the dam. From this position, with his eyesight, he could see clearly even at night.

He recalled that he had found Gu Qing'an's phone by the Zinc Factory's perimeter wall. Could Gu Qing'an have disappeared because he had gotten too close to the range of Zhou Nan's spell?

In any case, Qin Luming suspected that Zhou Nan would take this dam. Then he had to remember the principle that a gentleman did not stand beneath a dangerous wall. He would observe from far away; even if the dam disappeared, it would not affect him.

The dam had not disappeared yet, and Qin Luming could not be completely certain that Zhou Nan would come back. Still, he decided to stay and watch.

Today was Friday. There were no classes on Saturday or Sunday, so if he found nothing over the next three days, it would be no problem to return on Monday.

He simply wanted to see Zhou Nan's divine art—a divine art capable of making an object and everything within the scope of its "concept" disappear.

For example, under the concept of the "old Zinc Factory," anything that constituted part of the "old Zinc Factory," regardless of what it was, would be stripped from its original location by that divine art.

The "steel bridge" was probably the same. The "dam" before him might also be stripped from its original location in this manner.

Just imagining a dam spanning a mountain valley, with a drop of more than three hundred meters, being uprooted and lifted into the sky made it impossible not to want to witness it.

Qin Luming did not want to provoke Zhou Nan either, so he would only observe and not approach.

Qin Luming took out his phone. He gave thanks for the great efforts of the national system to ensure that every citizen had electricity, water, roads, and communication coverage even in remote wildernesses. His phone could receive a signal here too.

The signal was weak, but usable.

Qin Luming sent a message: Uncle Tian, do me a favor. I'm on a mountain near the Huangtuliang Dam. I'll send you the coordinates. Bring me some camping gear.

Uncle Tian: You went camping in that godforsaken place? Did you bring some beauty with you?

Qin Luming hurriedly replied: No, it's just me. I need a tent and blankets, a laptop, enough food and drinks for three people for three days, a powered night-enhancement surveillance setup that can keep monitoring for a week, plus an entrenching shovel and some other camping supplies.

Uncle Tian: Fine. Send me the location, and I'll have Secretary Sun arrange it.

Uncle Tian's name was Qin Xiaotian. The name did not sound like one belonging to an uncle, but he had been called that since childhood. There was no reason to change it just because he had grown up, right?

Men in their thirties often had more money than they had as green youths. If they had built a career, could arrange their own time, and possessed sufficient connections and resources, they were often the ones who knew best how to have fun... High-end polar travel, hunting in primeval forests and tropical grasslands, climbing the highest peaks on all six continents, photographing auroras beneath the polar night, crossing the Pacific alone under sail, homemade aircraft competitions—people like them were the main force behind such activities... Overseas, the average age of such enthusiasts was slightly higher.

What Qin Luming needed was not anything rare or difficult to obtain. For enthusiasts who regularly took part in outdoor activities, they were merely items on a standard equipment list.

After sending the message, Qin Luming wandered around the mountaintop, looking for a place where he could conceal the equipment while still monitoring the dam. He could not go without sleep for the next few days... Besides, after he left on Monday, the surveillance equipment could keep running for another week. He could come back next week to retrieve it, check on the dam, and watch the footage it had recorded.

After a while, he heard the distant roar of a helicopter. Qin Luming turned on his phone's flashlight and waved it to guide the helicopter bringing him supplies... As Qin Xiaotian put it: "What's the point of buying a helicopter if not for making short unauthorized flights?"