The fire-spirit heart's secret had Shen Cong itching. But it couldn't be rushed.

He needed to keep waiting for the fire-spirit heart to weaken.

Alloy the whole of it in a single pass, and he'd establish a connection between minds that went far beyond a Mind-Imprint. He had a hunch: if the Firestarter Spirit was the future of evolution, then the fire-spirit heart might well be that future's brain — and perhaps, a long way down the road, once his own brain had completed its brain-gold gradation, it would become another fire-spirit heart.

"The fire-spirit heart replaces the brain, the body metallizes completely — by that point I'd have no essential connection to humanity left at all. A whole new species, in the fullest sense."

"Then again — I've evolved, and sooner or later every evolved person will evolve the same way. Most species on the planet will go down that same road... but what about the evolved beasts that can't break the Activity Lock? How do they change? Ordinary humans — the next generation will all be jin people; ordinary people are bound to disappear with time. Evolved beasts, though, can go on breeding, generation after generation."

The Activity Lock was a peculiar phenomenon. Enormous numbers of insects, small animals, flowers and grasses had by now been found to exhibit it: an obstruction that left these evolved individuals unable to advance cleanly toward metallization, stalling them generation after generation in the Lv0 Activity Era.

The Vajra-Ants had the Activity Lock too. But Shen Cong had banyan yogurt, and banyan yogurt could break it.

Once the Vajra-Ant major worker had eaten fire-spirit medium without ill effect, Shen Cong had started feeding fire-spirit mediums to Antgod as well. He wanted Antgod, currently at 0.774H Talent, to blow clean past the 0.973H mid-grade jin beast standard in one go and reach Beyond-One-Star Talent — or better. Only then could Antgod produce larger offspring.

Only once god-grade major workers were being born could the Vajra-Ant colony be said, and only just, to have any combat power at all.

"If the Activity Lock holds,…