Three tasks complete, Shen Cong decided to leave Xuzhou City hauling the Great Iron Bear's corpse.

The corpse of a Beyond-Four-Star Talent — he couldn't wait to study it.

The Great Iron Bear's carrier vehicle especially, that truck wreck kneaded into a mask, stirred a powerful urge to devour in Shen Cong. And he kept feeling that he might just be able to make use of this carrier vehicle to change his own Talent.

He made it back to Tashan Town right around nightfall.

Great Tashan was the Vajra Ants' nest now, and the surroundings were extremely safe. Shen Cong parked at once and began studying the Great Iron Bear's corpse. Setting the carrier vehicle aside for the moment, he dissected the body.

Not that a dissection was really needed — the ruptured belly let him sample it directly.

"Skeleton fully metallized. Muscle fully metallized. The proper connective tissue between the muscles, likewise fully metallized. And the outer skin has metallized too."

Shen Cong could tell easily enough which parts of the Great Iron Bear had been thoroughly invaded by metal.

"Bone-gold, hair-gold, flesh-gold, connective-gold, smooth-gold, skin-gold… By the contamination model theory, this has completed the Lv1 — Pure Gold Era. The whole framework of structural tissue is fully metallized. Which means the Great Iron Bear is an iron beast of the Lv2 — Pitch-Black Era!"

His eyes blazed. The Great Iron Bear's level was high, very high — head and shoulders above the other iron people and iron beasts. And he himself was currently in the connective-gold stage of the Lv1 — Pure Gold Era. Which meant the Great Iron Bear's evolution had lit the road ahead for him.

At the very least it proved that, before reaching the Lv2 — Pitch-Black Era, he needn't worry about evolution killing him.

Watching the Great Iron Bear fight — awe-inspiring, majestic — was proof enough that even in the Lv2 — Pitch-Black Era, evolution brought no drawbacks.

Only greater power.

"Hard to say, though, which metal-changing stage of Lv2 the Great Iron Bear reached. Lv2 has six stages — sense-gold, heart-gold,…