“Beetles.”

Shen Cong’s expression went flat. He’d spent five minutes reconstructing what a beetle swarm had done to a garrison convoy, and now he was sitting in the middle of one. The universe apparently felt this was appropriate.

Should have kept moving. Should never have stopped.

“While there aren’t many yet — go, now.”

Vajra’s engine turned over, accelerator to the floor, the convoy lurching forward. The garrison’s failure to simply drive through made no sense to him from here — on open highway, with reasonable surface conditions, a fast vehicle should be able to outrun insects. The Burrower encounter had been different: those were underground, in terrain that limited speed and manoeuvring. Open road was another matter.

He got approximately three seconds of acceleration before he hit the brakes again.

The highway ahead was cratered. Another bombed section — the garrison had worked both sides of the ambush zone, apparently. The dozer blade could fill it, but that would take time he no longer had.

“Battle Standard is useless. Can’t go forward.”

The rear cameras showed the swarm closing in — several dozen large black beetles, completely unmoved by the nine-metre skeletal crocodile suspended over the truck, bearing down with single-minded purpose. He ran through options quickly. Nothing good emerged. The beetles were between him and retreat; the bombed road was blocking advance; the swarm was accelerating.

Kill them then.

“I’m not an ordinary evolved person. You want to eat me? Come and die.”

He pulled the QJY-88 from its mounting, loaded the first belt of Type 87 rounds, and went up — over the cab roof, across to the top of the fire truck, standing in the open in the Half-Activated Armor with the machine gun braced.

He fired when the leading beetles entered effective range.

Da-da-da-da-da-da.

The gun was manageable — his stability at eight-bull was enough to hold the muzzle on target through the recoil. Accuracy was adequate. The rounds hit.

The beetles crouched flat under the impacts.

Sparks from the strikes. The shells ricocheting.

The carapaces had held.

He processed this quickly, didn’t waste time on the feeling, and dropped back into the cab. Machine gun wasn’t the tool. He grabbed the crossbow.

Then he saw the problem. The fire truck was hitched to Vajra’s rear, and the fire truck’s bulk was sitting directly across his rearward firing line. The attachment that was supposed to be carrying his supplies was now blocking his primary weapons angle.

This is what greed costs.

Vajra had been a mobile fortress. Hauling the fire truck had turned it into a supply convoy — mobility traded for carrying capacity. The lesson was immediate and expensive.

When I get to Hefei. Larger. Wider. Taller. No trailers. Never again.

He couldn’t fix it now. He did the next best thing — floored the engine and yanked the wheel hard, sliding Vajra sideways across the highway surface in a controlled broadside. The screech of tyres on pavement, and then Vajra was perpendicular to the road, giving him a clear forward angle on the approaching swarm.

“Die.”

Fang arrow. One of the beetles at the front of the charge — the round that had sparked off the carapace now replaced by Activity-charged bone. The chitinous shell that had stopped a machine gun burst parted like paper.

One shot, one kill.

“Weak.”

He reassessed immediately and switched down to Soldier-Ant Mandible arrows. The fang arrows were the highest-tier bone-gold ammunition he carried, and whatever these beetles were, they clearly didn’t warrant it. If a Soldier-Ant mandible arrow could kill them, he wasn’t burning fang arrow durability.

The next arrow flew.

Same result. Clean penetration. Instant kill.

“Still weak.”

He exhaled. The beetles that had stopped machine gun fire had just folded against mid-tier Activity ammunition. Paper tigers — intimidating on the surface, no substance underneath. He dropped another tier to Worker-Ant Mandible arrows.

Kill. Kill. Kill.

The swarm hit the fire truck’s hull while he was still working through the arrows. He could feel it through the Activity bond — the fire truck’s amalgamated exterior under assault, Activity value bleeding as the beetles’ mandibles worked against the metal surface. Even with the Bull Demon King Totem running, the drain was visible on his readouts.

He didn’t particularly mind the Activity loss. The bottleneck in his development right now was actually Vajra accumulating too much Activity — the truck absorbed ambient Activity faster than Shen Cong could match through the exchange, creating constant siphon risk. Burning some of that Activity defending against an attack effectively served his upgrade loop. As long as the beetles chewed through the fire truck’s exterior before they chewed through the fire truck’s actual cargo, the situation was manageable.

“Less than two hundred, looks like. Slingshot viable.”

He switched to the slingshot and began working through his stock of Soldier-Ant and Worker-Ant antenna pellets — the lowest-tier bone-gold projectiles in his arsenal, ground from the same short-sting colony. Single soldier pellets: lethal per hit. Single worker pellets: needed two for a kill unless he got a headshot.

He burned through the full bag of both.

Then finished the remaining bone-gold arrows.

Between everything, the swarm was down to roughly twenty survivors — the stragglers still gnawing at the fire truck’s hull, apparently unwilling or unable to update their approach. The cargo hold contained Activity-rich meat and Thieving Crow cores; the smell was probably driving them past whatever limited threat assessment they could manage.

He pushed the cab door open and stepped out with the warhammer.

He knew what they were worth now. They didn’t warrant caution.

“You’re not even two hundred. And you came after me?”

He walked to the fire truck at a normal pace.

Crack.

A beetle flattened under the drumstick head.

Crack.

Another with a crushed skull.

One tried to lunge at him. He sidestepped, caught it under his boot, and pressed down. At eight-bull force, the carapace — the same shell that had deflected machine gun rounds — detonated. Viscera across the pavement.

Three minutes.

Every beetle dead.

He put the warhammer away and got out the fang knife.

The Activity cores turned out to be the entire head capsule — the dense frontal carapace including the paired tubercles at the crown, the bifurcated horns. That was what had stopped the machine gun fire: an Activity core covering the most exposed surface of the animal, essentially a built-in shield. The dorsal wing cases were also significantly hardened — not Activity cores, but dense enough that standard ammunition hadn’t reached the body underneath.

Both were worth harvesting.

He pulled Blackhead out and put it to work: any cores that had been shattered during the fight went straight to Blackhead as feed. Shen Cong took the intact cores and intact dorsal plates. He also picked out several complete carcasses for specimen collection.

Ten minutes of processing. Done.

He stood and looked west along the highway.

You came to me. Fair exchange means I come to you.

He started Vajra, put it in reverse, and turned around.

He was going to find the nest and take everything worth taking.

(End of Chapter 117)