Alloy. Alloy. Alloy.

Great Vajra’s Talent was now 3.012H, with Activity Value holding around 2.45H. The Golden Jiao Totem was back in rotation — field-force storm running, ambient Activity pouring in at full speed.

Shen Cong himself had reached nineteen-bull strength. But his body seemed to have hit a wall. After nineteen-bull, strength, agility, and endurance were barely moving. The finer senses — sight, hearing, perception — were still climbing. Everything else had plateaued.

“My body has reached a critical threshold. As a flesh-and-blood organism, under Activity stimulation, it’s been optimized as far as organic composition allows.”

He made a fist, flexed his forearm, watched the muscle rise. Then he picked up an unalloyed knife and drove it into his arm.

The tip pressed against his skin. A light sting. No puncture.

He pushed harder. Nearly a ton of force behind it this time. The tip broke the surface — a small wound, a trace of blood — and stopped. The muscle had closed around it. Activity reinforcement held it there. The blade had bent.

“There’s still more room.”

He put the knife down and picked up the handgun. He loaded several low-grade bone-gold rounds, aimed at the outermost edge of his forearm — a graze at worst, nothing that would affect his health, healed quickly.

“Hah. Hah.”

He blew out two slow breaths. First time he’d ever deliberately shot himself. Even now, even at this level, there was a flicker of tension.

He’d always been careful. He didn’t hurt himself. But his confidence had grown with his strength, and there was a practical reason too — he needed to know exactly how much punishment his body could take before attempting what he was planning next.

“I’m at 2.302H Activity Value. Nineteen-bull strength. With a Beyond Three-Star Talent, relying on Activity fruit alone for further advancement is going to take forever. If I can establish my current physical limits — maybe I can take a more extreme approach to leveling up.”

Crossing 3H Talent had knocked both him and Great Vajra back down in terms of level ratio. More Activity Value was needed to reach Lv1 now. Talent and combat effectiveness weren’t directly linked — but Talent was the absolute ceiling on future evolution, which made it the most important number. At 3H, he suspected he wasn’t far behind the Iron-Eater.

He’d used every known method to stimulate Talent growth: primary metal absorption, meteorite fragment exposure. 3.012H was essentially the maximum he could reach.

To get stronger now meant leveling up. Reaching Lv1. As soon as possible.

He’d lost count of how many times he’d prepared himself to cross that threshold, pushed down the fear of unknown mutation, built up to the moment — and then pulled back. The pattern was bad for him psychologically. Keep doing it and he’d lose the edge that had kept him alive.

“I want to evolve into something beyond human. Even if mutation isn’t some grand new path for life — even if it’s just a disease — I accept that. Either keep getting stronger and take control of my own fate, or let the disease consume me and become dust.”

“I’m Shen Cong.”

“I refuse to be ordinary.”

“I’d rather die evolving than die in someone else’s scheme.”

He pulled the trigger.

The bone-gold round left the barrel. Simultaneously, his forearm registered a sharp sting — his Activity-saturated muscle contracted instinctively, no conscious direction needed. His vision, fully focused, tracked the round’s trajectory in real time. He watched it strike his skin. Saw the small spray of blood.

Watched the round deflect at a steep angle and fall away. It had not passed through.

His muscle had stopped a bone-gold bullet.

In other words: a low-grade bone-gold round — carrying both physical kinetic energy and Activity sharpening — could not meaningfully injure him, as long as it didn’t hit a vital area. He could take bone-gold rounds with his body.

“Small wound. Just a surface graze.” He felt the injury beginning to close already. Something electric moved through him. “Stopping bullets with your body — who would have imagined that before the apocalypse? Even in a bulletproof vest you could still get broken ribs, cardiac compression, death from the impact force.”

“And here I am.”

He set the gun down. His eyes steadied.

“Then starting now — the Siphon upgrade method.”

The Siphon. The phenomenon that had once nearly killed him and left him treating it like a venomous snake for months afterward.

Back when his physical condition was still limited, being caught in a Siphon had pushed him to the edge of death. He’d heard about the iron person at the Research Institute who had died from one — and that story had stayed with him, making him doubly cautious. He’d lived in quiet fear of following that man’s fate.

But that was then.

Nineteen-bull strength. A physical body that deflected bone-gold rounds. A man who had killed a mated pair of creatures performing at Heavyweight level in open combat.

He could face the Siphon now.

Shen Cong had always considered himself cautious. Caution kept you alive for ten thousand years. But caution wasn’t the same as never taking risks. When the scales tipped far enough — when the reward vastly outweighed the danger — he would override his own hesitation and move.

Seven months ago, at the start of the apocalypse, he’d been afraid to step outside the vehicle. Losing sight of Great Vajra for a moment would start him sweating. Now he regularly operated ten kilometers away on mountain hillsides without a second thought. He had adapted, steadily, to his own growing power.

Now he needed to adapt to the Siphon.

“When I had three-bull strength, a Siphon couldn’t kill me. At nineteen-bull, what can it actually do? With Beyond Three-Star Talent, I’m the highest-tier evolved person known. If I can adapt to it, the Siphon will let me keep pace with Great Vajra’s leveling speed. Lv1 won’t be a distant dream — it’ll be close.”

“Starting today, the Golden Jiao Totem stays running.”

With the meteorite fragment removed from the area, the concentrated ambient Activity of the Huanglishu reservoir cluster was already beginning to dissipate. Given enough time, the local ecology would probably decline to something comparable to the barren zone.

It was time to leave.

Before departure, he made one last sweep of the remaining barrier lake banks for Activity fruit.

He found two varieties.

The first: green beans growing on a small rise beside one of the lakes. Shelled, they revealed bright green seeds — similar to mung beans, but each one marble-sized. He named them Zhouggang Mung Beans, after Zhouggang Township, which was where the map placed the site. Enhancement effect was moderate, nothing exceptional.

The second: apples from the foot of a peak that appeared to be called Xifengtou on the map. Deep red, some of the riper ones shading toward purple. Enhancement effect was similarly moderate — roughly on par with the Gentle Jujubes.

Both harvests were straightforward. No evolved beasts guarding either site.

Now that he thought about it — aside from the Spicy Eye caterpillars in the jujube grove, the Huanglishu Mini-Oasis had contained no terrestrial evolved beasts at all. Everything threatening had been aquatic.

The lake water had probably been shielding the land from the meteorite fragment’s full effect.

Harvest complete. He took one last look at the Old Pearl Mussel in its pool.

“Kill it. Turn the shell into a cargo rack.”

(End of Chapter 215)