An hour later, Shen Cong tried the same approach again and flagged down a motorcycle. One rider.

The rider was a capable jin person who clearly had somewhere to be. He answered Shen Cong's questions with minimal engagement, accepted payment with the bare acknowledgment that money required, and rode off without any apparent interest in future dealings.

Shen Cong had no opinion on this. Unwillingness to trade was anyone's right.

After the motorcycle disappeared, he left Maba Town and let the road give him space to process what he'd gathered from both encounters.

No movement on the death-eater front. Zhao Zilong's name hasn't circulated. Two possible explanations: either she and her group haven't reached Command leadership yet, or Command leadership knows and isn't interested — no plans to push south, so no reason to publicize it.

Or they're moving quietly.

He needed this information for one specific reason: to know whether Zhao Zilong's group had passed on anything about him, and what the military might be planning to do about it. Human organizations ran on scheming. He knew he was strong now, but not nuclear-warhead-strong. A sufficiently committed institutional effort could still kill him — explosives, coordinated ambush, the right trap at the right moment. The Command had demonstrated that kind of capability. Caution remained non-negotiable.

Back at Guiwu Town, he returned to the Xuyi County Forest Farm.

This time he brought a small live jin beast, caught en route. He tied it to a rope, staked it at the crevice edge as bait, then constructed a wide-angle camera from three phones stacked together and mounted it on a rock overlooking the full crevice opening.

Then he waited.

The bound jin beast could only thrash and call out. The noise carried.

It was enough. The Six-Horned Dragon emerged without a sound — its enormous body sliding up from the crevice lip with an absence of noise that was unsettling given its size. This time Shen Cong got a proper look.

It wasn't eyeless. The eyes had simply degenerated, fading to the same deep pink as the rest of its skin,…