Fully equipped, he went back to the lake’s edge.

The Condor Spade went to work on the rock blocking the valley throat. Against stone, the spade cut like the material barely qualified as an obstacle — Activity-sharpened bone-gold at sixteen-bull strength behind it, a combination that made Shen Cong something close to a human excavator in terms of raw digging output.

While he worked, the giant fish reappeared. A square meter of forehead breaking the surface, moving toward shore.

It kept coming. When it reached the shallows, Shen Cong could see it clearly through the clean water.

Dopey fish.

The local name for the Chinese sleeper goby — what scientists called Odontobutis potamophila — varied by region. Shen Cong had grown up calling them dopey fish, and he’d caught them with his hands as a child in village ponds. The name fit: a fish that looked perpetually confused, with bulging eyes on top of a disproportionately large head, a thick neck, and wide pectoral fins on either side.

This one was seven or eight meters long and had grown a colony of fleshy tumors across its flanks and belly. The pectoral fins glinted silver — Activity cores, clearly.

It crawled into the shallows on those fins, still trying to close the distance, jaw working at empty water twenty meters away. Then it ran out of water to crawl through and stopped, stranded, mouthing in his direction.

Shen Cong looked at it. Considered killing it now. Decided against it — the lake wasn’t drained yet, and water was not his preferred combat environment. Wait until the ground was dry.

He went back to digging.

Fifteen minutes. The rock was cleared. Water was already seeping through the cracks. He packed explosives into the base of the breach, threaded the detonator, lit it, and ran.

Five seconds.

BOOM.

The remaining rock layer disintegrated. The entire near lakeshore began to collapse inward. The giant dopey fish hadn’t made it back to deeper water in time — it went down with the collapsing bank, tumbling into the drainage channel below.

An enormous volume of water roared through the valley toward the jujube grove, spray climbing fifteen meters.

Shen Cong watched the dopey fish go. It hit a large boulder — blood spray, brief tumble — then scraped across a sharp rock edge and opened a long gash in its side. He made a sympathetic sound despite himself.

That looked genuinely painful.

Other creatures came with the water: old softshell turtles, shrimp and crabs, fish of various sizes, all caught in the surge and carried along.

The water reached the jujube grove exactly as intended. The flood submerged it completely. Stinging caterpillars washed off by the thousands, carried away downstream. Some jujube fruits knocked loose and followed them.

The flow ran for ten full minutes.

When the water volume finally dropped, Shen Cong looked at what remained of the lake. The shallows had drained entirely — sand and gravel exposed, mutated shrimp and crabs picking their way through the newly uncovered bottom. He caught one shrimp that measured thirty to forty centimeters and checked its data: weak Talent, Flyweight or Grassweight level. The crabs were similar.

The lake’s center still held water, teeming with small fish at the surface. The dopey fish had been the apex predator here — the lake’s carrying capacity hadn’t supported anything comparable in size.

Come back for the Activity cores. Pick up good specimens of shrimp, crab, fish, and turtle for cooking.

He dropped the shrimp and walked into the jujube grove.

Ten minutes of flooding plus everything carried down the slope with the drainage had cleared it completely. A few trees had snapped under the force of the water. Not a stinging caterpillar remained in sight.

He pulled out the Jiao-hide carry pack and started harvesting.

Three hundred-plus jin of jujubes still on the trees — each fruit finger-length, green and yellow varieties both, dense with Activity scent. He packed the carry pack full. On the way down the slope, the flat ground below was covered in a layer of retreating water.

Stinging caterpillars floating. Jujubes scattered across the surface. Fish still moving among them.

He picked up the fallen jujubes — fully ripe ones, knocked from the trees by the impact — another two hundred-plus jin. Combined: approaching six hundred jin of Activity fruit.

He set the packed carry pack on a dry rock and waded out onto the mudflat toward the giant dopey fish.

It was belly-up, surrounded by a spreading red stain. The ride down the valley had done serious damage. He couldn’t be sure it was dead.

On the principle of never assuming, he raised the hand crossbow and put an arrow in it.

The dopey fish that had been lying motionless launched itself three meters straight into the air.

It came down hard, splashing water in a wide radius, and immediately began crawling toward him on those silver pectoral fins — fast, aggressive, trailing blood from multiple wounds.

Absolutely feral despite the injuries.

He kept his footing, drew two Spike King Javelins, and drove both home.

The dopey fish settled. Breathing ragged but fading.

He finished it efficiently.

Talent 1.003H. Activity Value 0.871H. Lv0.868. One-Star Talent, solid Activity Value, two large Activity-core fins. A worthwhile catch.

He didn’t harvest the fins immediately — he had something else to collect first.

Stinging caterpillars. Floating across the water’s surface by the hundreds.

Their corrosive fluid and spines were genuinely dangerous materials — he’d seen what a single spine did to Golden Jiao hide. For evolved beasts that didn’t have Activity to protect themselves, this stuff would be devastating. His Activity-Killer venom was in short supply. Super-2 Ant Acid production was limited and the potency only moderate. A high-volume corrosive weapon with real stopping power was something he’d been missing.

The challenge is containment. I need plastic containers — go back to Great Vajra and check what I have. If plastic can hold it without dissolving, collect the fluid directly. Otherwise, cut some jujube timber, build rough wooden boxes on-site, then extract fluid and strip spines back at the vehicle.

Decision made, he threaded several caterpillars onto a jujube branch to carry back as samples, shouldered the carry pack, grabbed the dopey fish by the tail, and started back toward Great Vajra.

A good day’s work, by any measure.

(End of Chapter 198)