Besides teaching them the Super-Thunder Wave, Shen Cong handed the King of the Half-Beasts over to the Eastern Theater Command as well. He had no patience whatsoever for the brainless thing.

Feeding it, watering it and cleaning up after it had all fallen to him, and the last of those was the worst: it simply went where it stood, on board, fouling the Vajra Fortress's air.

"A 3.995H half-beast?" Liu Yiwu and the rest were astonished as one. They ringed the King of the Half-Beasts and looked it over from every side, any number of eyes glittering — rather as though they were looking at a beautiful woman with no clothes on.

The naked stares set the King of the Half-Beasts roaring without pause.

Nan Guohua, director of the theater laboratory, took it hardest of anyone once he heard this was an ultimate-grade half-beast. He knew the Eastern Theater Command's jin people inside out.

And knowing them inside out was precisely why he found it impossible. "How could the Talent be that high?"

Shen Cong had filled in the King of the Half-Beasts' story for himself well enough by now, and said, evenly, "His intelligence is too low. There's no point taming him. He's yours. Finding the secret of how his Talent rose is what matters."

"I'll study him properly, and I'll find that secret." Nan Guohua nodded, excited. "Once we have it, it will turn everything upside down for jin people — and it'll be an enormous gain for humanity besides. We're nearly finished with the C2 research. When that lands, every one of us becomes an evolved person!"

It was Shen Cong's turn to be surprised. "C2 has been cracked?"

"Nearly. We already have a successful subject. We injected an unmutated house cat and got a mutated cat out of it. We've kept it better than a week now — no Activity decline at all, growing healthily, Activity Value climbing by the day, and its canine teeth are turning into a jin core."

"Take me to see this cat."

"Of course."

Shen Cong followed Nan Guohua straight into…