The crane truck roared toward the battlefield, black smoke rolling across everything.

The Golden Jiao was covered in wounds. Its blood ran out black. The devastation had slowed the great body, made it less fluid than it had been — but the head was still up, fangs bared, saliva dripping from the jaw in thick strands. The two horn-like protrusions above its skull caught the light, silver-bright even through the smoke.

Even half-dead, the Golden Jiao carried the absolute authority of a Heavyweight evolved beast.

Shen Cong floored the accelerator and jammed it down — wedged it so it wouldn't pull back. Then, when the distance to the Golden Jiao was right, he pulled a detonator from his kit, lit it, and left it in the cab.

He timed the roll perfectly. Door open, body out, letting the crane truck continue forward on its own.

The truck's appearance pulled the Golden Jiao's attention immediately. The great head swiveled. The forked tongue moved in and out — tasting danger, broadcasting it. While the serpent tracked the vehicle, Shen Cong rose slowly from where he'd landed, in a way that drew no notice, and drew the Ape King Javelin from his back.

He raised his arm.

In the command post, the closed-circuit monitors showed nothing but Shen Cong and the Golden Jiao. Zhao Weiliang, Zhu Li, and the rest of the leadership watched in silence.

This was Plan A.

If Shen Cong failed, Plan B activated immediately — the Independent Evolved Detachment, over a hundred mutants, throwing themselves at it in numbers. Or Plan C: full dispersal and retreat.

The Detachment was massed on a platform at the camp's edge, watching. For them, closing to that range against a beast of that tier was functionally suicide. The decisive factor was speed — without Shen Cong's bullet-dodging reflexes, none of them could reliably survive even one sweep from the Golden Jiao's tail.

Along the interior platforms, the camp's ordinary survivors pressed against the railings and stared into the distance. Their eyes weren't sharp enough to make out much — Shen Cong was a…