"The camp emptied out — they must have seen Little Four and thought something was attacking." Shen Cong was alert but not surprised. He'd anticipated this reaction when he decided to bring the Four-Legged Dragon. A Heavyweight-class jin beast would alarm anyone.

Not the important question right now.

He pulled on the Half-Activated Armor and lowered the visor over the complicated expression underneath. Something is still off about this.

"Little Four — stay close."

He sent the command through the perceptual link, turned Great Vajra east, and circled wide around the camp perimeter, keeping to the camp's outer edge until he reached a road leading to the Xinyang Expressway. Better approach angle. If anything was wrong, he'd have a clean exit.

The Xuyi County camp had no perimeter wall, but a deep moat — water channeled in from Longwang Mountain Reservoir, wide and deep enough that vehicle entry was limited to a handful of access routes.

Whatever they have planned, I'll deal with it.

In the defensive fortifications, Sun Kai was watching Great Vajra execute a wide arc away from the south entrance, the long-legged snake-creature following behind it.

He turned to the nearest soldier. "What do you make of that?"

The soldier had been tracking them through binoculars. "There's something unusual about this, Administrator. That long-legged snake doesn't appear to be chasing Colonel Chen's vehicle. It looks more like... they're traveling together?"

Sun Kai's deputy added: "When Colonel Chen's vehicle stopped, the snake stopped. No attack posture. And Colonel Chen didn't respond to it at all — he didn't deploy any weapons."

"You're saying—"

The deputy was confident. "My interpretation: that jin beast is Colonel Chen's pet."

"A pet. A Heavyweight jin beast as a pet."

"Think about it — he killed a Six-Horned Dragon solo. Keeping a Heavyweight jin beast as a companion isn't unreasonable if you can do that. How else do you explain what we just watched?"

Sun Kai didn't confirm or deny. He turned to the guards. "Get back up to the towers. Track where Colonel Chen goes. And that snake."

Report came down quickly.