The Taiyuan King had traded blows with Shen Cong head-on for dozens of rounds. Now it met the same end as the White Dragon King and the Sword King, and its fall shook the ground like an earthquake. The Little Taiyuan King struggled for a moment, then Shen Cong cut its Superbrain link too, and it crashed to the ground.

All within a few short days.

The Taiyuan area had held four Firestarter Spirits, each fairly advanced in its evolution. Since Shen Cong's arrival, every one of them was dead. The Taiyuan tribe's fanatics still wanted to fight back. But Li Heng led his people in a crackdown, and a savage fight flared up. Then Shen Cong killed the ringleaders himself. Everything went quiet.

The Taiyuan tribe had a hundred and fifty thousand people, and the Mountain King's tribe had a hundred and sixty thousand. The two joined, and everyone moved to the land around Gujiao City.

Together they formed a new Mountain King's tribe.

Night fell.

Gujiao City remained in chaos. The people of the Three-King Tribes were still reeling from what the Mountain King, Shen Cong, had done. The whispering never stopped. But these people were used to serving a king in exchange for protection, and with the fanatics wiped out, they behaved fairly meekly. There was little unrest.

Faced with a Mountain King who could hunt down the Twin Kings of Taiyuan, nobody dared to make trouble either.

Li Heng became the Mountain King's Envoy in all but name. He showed a real knack for organizing and kept the move running fairly smoothly. He did suggest, more than once, throwing Shen Cong a grand coronation to show off the Mountain King's authority. Shen Cong shot the idea down every time.

This Mountain King business was only a stopgap for him.

He had already decided to go help Zhang Changde, Hu Wei, Chen Xiuni and the others hunt a Firestarter Spirit, and to build up the Mechanist species as a force. Once the new government opened the road to Shijiazhuang, it could make contact with the Mountain King's…