"Bobo… Bobo's come…" The four-legged dragon, carrying no few wounds by now, took heart enormously, roared out gulu gulu and jili gulu several times over, shook its scales out, drove headlong into the enormous rat-beast, and then swung its tail and sent the Rat King — which had been going for its blind side — flying.

For a moment it was magnificent.

Frost came over Ma Jintu's face. Meeting this sudden turn, she at once imitated a ratman's long cry. "Jiji…"

The Rat King picked itself up off the ground and looked at her, and there was tenderness in its eyes.

Then it threw its head back and roared.

"Jiji! Jiji! Jiji!"

The enormous rat-beast heard that roar and went berserk itself, and away across the field the other ratmen and rat-beasts went mad with it, and crashed into the Eastern Theater Command's units — who had found their hope again — for the second time.

The battle went up into another register altogether.

Shen Cong was standing on the roof of the Vajra Fortress, on the very tip of the Mushroom-Bug Sword. At a meter and a half across, the Mushroom-Bug Sword was more than enough to stand on steadily, without any need for the extension ability or mechanical vines to hold him there. The sunlight came down on him and the Hell Plant Armor's shape was savage, like some Great Demon King out of legend, and the sheer presence of him spilled off in every direction.

The one pity was the absence of a cape streaming in the wind.

Two meters twenty-seven in his bare feet. Close to three in the Hell Plant Armor.

Across his back, the cannon-bow and a quiver, jin-core arrows and reinforced mushroom arrows racked in order inside it. Two jin-core short blades at the small of his back, a jin-core dagger on his thigh, a row of throwing knives and throwing needles across his chest. On his left forearm a shield built out of Hell-Chicken skeleton; on his right, a small hand-crossbow.

In his hand, a jin-core broadsword some four and a half…