Setting aside the radio intercept, Shen Cong returned to work. On November 26th, he began excavating the central barrier lake.
It was large. The color of the water suggested considerable depth. Draining it completely would take serious effort.
The banks were lined with tall trees, their bark hard and dense as metal. Out in the shallows grew a plant resembling alligator weed — clusters of small white flowers, though most had already finished blooming, and he could find no seeds. No Activity fruit either. The alligator weed ringed the entire lake in a continuous green band.
He walked the perimeter once, chose his breach point, and began calculating. The drainage channel would need to run over a hundred meters. Even for a human excavator of his caliber, that was a full day’s work.
He didn’t complain. He confirmed the surrounding area was clear, hefted the Condor Spade, and started digging.
He worked the entire day and fell just short of finishing.
He rested overnight and went back at it the next morning.
By ten o’clock, the channel had reached the lake bed. Cracks were already seeping water. He widened the breach, gathered every last detonator and explosive remaining in his stores, and set them all at once.
BOOM.
The blast didn’t just breach the bank — it shook the entire hillside. Sections of slope gave way in small landslides across the mountain.
Then the water came.
A massive surge poured through the channel, roaring down toward the fifth barrier lake. The sound of it filled the valley — a rushing, crashing wall of water.
And in that same moment, Shen Cong felt it.
Danger.
The lake surface churned. Something exploded out of the moving water.
A creature. At least twenty meters long, seven or eight meters wide. Flat-bodied, grass-green. Four legs beneath the body. Two enormous compound eyes in the head. And there, flanking the mouthparts — a pair of massive forelimbs shaped like sickles, gleaming with a dark-silver luster.
Activity cores. Unmistakably.
The creature’s initial leap hadn’t been aimed directly at him. But the moment its eyes found Shen Cong, it changed course and came straight for him.
Right behind it, a second creature erupted from the water — same size, same shape, but with its back covered in dense clusters of egg-like objects.
Two absurdly enormous insects, both charging directly at him.
Every hair on Shen Cong’s body stood up.
No time to think. He turned and sprinted downhill. Against two creatures of unknown power, his first instinct was flight.
The insects pursued with single-minded focus, as though they’d decided he was personally responsible for the destruction of their lake.
They weren’t fast — all six of their legs were clustered toward the front half of their bodies, making them front-heavy, rear-heavy bodies throwing off their balance. But they could spread the carapace on their backs and extend two pairs of wings. The wings were partially atrophied, insufficient for true flight, but more than enough to boost their leaping speed.
When they jumped, those wings beat hard — and their pace matched his exactly.
He ran. They chased. The mountain base appeared below, and Great Vajra was visible not far ahead. Then his foot caught a slick stone.
He stumbled — nearly went down. His reflexes caught him fast, balance restored, stride resumed. Only a heartbeat lost.
It was enough.
The egg-laden creature vaulted past him, twisted around, and planted itself in his path. Its sickle-legs swept low and fast, dark-silver edges cutting along the ground toward him.
Front and rear simultaneously. A pincer.
Shen Cong’s focus sharpened to a point. He jumped, trying to break out of the encirclement.
The coordination between the two creatures was precise. They hadn’t just covered front and back — the sweep of their sickle-legs covered the flanks as well. Every direction was within their reach.
No choice. He drew the Ape King Long Blade and met the blocking creature’s sickle with a full-force strike.
CLANG.
Metal on metal, a sharp crack — and through the blade he felt a force slam into him. A force that dwarfed his seventeen-bull strength entirely.
His body was thrown backward, involuntary, several steps.
Wind at the back of his neck. The second creature’s sickle came swinging from behind. He had just enough of the forced momentum left to fall backward, letting the blow pass over him as he hit the ground.
No pause. The first creature drove both sickle-legs straight down at him like a sewing machine, stabbing at the rock over and over. He twisted and rolled across the stone surface, dodging the strikes. Then one caught him.
CLANG.
It hit the Half-Activated Armor. Sparks flew.
The armor didn’t puncture — but the force compressed it inward against his body, and the impact nearly drove the air from his lungs. In that instant he understood exactly how much danger he was in.
This might kill him.
“—HA!“
He roared, both arms shooting out to seize the creature’s sickle-leg at the moment it tried to lever back up. He rode the motion — let the creature lift him — and used that instant to get his feet under him. Ducked immediately as the second creature’s sickle came across, then drove off both legs like a cannonball aimed at the rear creature’s head.
Get in close.
His only advantage was size. Small and fast, he could work inside their reach in ways they couldn’t compensate for. Close range was his best chance — to cripple one of them, or create an opening to run.
Before the apocalypse, Shen Cong had been an ordinary person. He’d trained his body and picked up fragments of martial arts — boxing, sanda, taekwondo — in preparation for the end of the world. But since the apocalypse, his approach to combat had always been remote and methodical: ranged weapons, traps, attacking already-wounded prey. He had never gone toe-to-toe with a powerful evolved beast. Never once fought one head-on.
This was the first time.
Two of them. Simultaneously.
Each creature, judged by size alone, was at minimum Near-Heavyweight — on par with the Ape King. Together, coordinating this well, they were performing at Heavyweight level.
Crisis. A genuine, life-threatening crisis.
If there had been any way to run, he would have taken it without hesitation. But they had sealed every exit. No time to examine how complacency had crept in — how the string of easy days had led him to assume the barrier lakes only held aquatic evolved beasts, unable to leave the water. That analysis was for later.
Right now there was only one option.
Fight for his life.
I cannot die. I will not die.
Something settled inside him. Clarity, absolute, born from pure survival instinct. His mind went cold and still.
He launched himself at the rear creature’s head. His left hand drew the Ape King War Hammer from his back in the same motion and flung it at the creature’s mouthparts — not to damage, but to create a fraction of deflection, to buy the half-second he needed to slip past the bite. He scraped through, barely, the creature’s jaw grazing past him, and drove in toward its abdomen.
Bone-gold weapons were running low. The two Ape King Daggers were his most powerful remaining option.
He couldn’t fully control his body’s movement — too much momentum, too little footing. He pulled one dagger free and drove it into the creature’s underside with everything he had.
Thud.
The Ape King Dagger, flooded with Activity, opened the creature’s abdomen like cloth. A long, ragged gash. Dark brown fluid sprayed out and drenched the front of his Half-Activated Armor.
(End of Chapter 206)