The man who came out to meet Shen Cong was Dou Kai, Mushroom City's current commander. Huang Caishan hadn't stayed on to run the place after he was recalled to the Eastern Theater Command; the rules and regulations were all in place by then, and it didn't take the theater's number three on paper, number two in practice, to keep the city running.

"Commander-in-Chief Hu, the theater's been asking after you this whole month and a half. You left in such a hurry last time that we never got to report on the Super-Thunder Wave project. And a fairly serious problem has come up lately — Commissar Liu has sent people over several times to ask whether you'd come to Mushroom City."

Shen Cong had already shown Dou Kai into the Vajra Fortress's reception room, the small cabin extruded out of the chassis. He still wasn't back to full strength, and it was safer this way. Get a man inside and holding him there was no trouble.

"What problem?"

Dou Kai said, smiling, "It's on the evolution side. The good news first — C2 has officially gone into human trials. The subject has already grown a complete jin core and become a jin person, and follow-up observation hasn't turned up any sign of decline. The theater has decided to start injecting C2 Mutagen in batches a week from now."

C2 Mutagen turned ordinary people into evolved persons, and an ordinary person was exactly what Dou Kai was. No wonder he was beaming.

"That's good news." Shen Cong nodded. He had been braced for it and so didn't much care. "And the bad?"

Dou Kai's smile faded. "The theater's evolved persons are all losing their appetites, and there are other symptoms too. Director Nan Guohua figures the trouble is in the metallic gradation of the body's tissues, and the research hasn't turned up any leads. So Director Nan proposed we ask you."

Nan Guohua could guess that Shen Cong's evolution had reached some advanced stage. Back when nobody else could absorb Vajra's blood at all, Shen Cong was already doing it;…