The camp erupted.

The Motor Battalion mobilized to transport the Golden Jiao’s carcass. Shen Cong had already cut free the two horn-like Activity cores and slung them across his back. Each one stood about as tall as a person, but weighed surprisingly little.

Good material like this, Shen Cong kept for himself. He didn’t share.

He felt entirely at peace with this. For one thing, his contribution was decisive — without him, a wounded Golden Jiao would still have torn half the camp apart. For another, he was leaving the entire carcass to the garrison. Fair division of labor: whoever killed it took the Activity cores, whoever crippled it took the body.

Zhu Li, climbing down from a vehicle, watched Shen Cong efficiently bundle up the cores and hoist them onto his back. His mouth twitched.

He’d stood by and watched Shen Cong walk away with all four of the Violent Ape King’s tusks too. Asking for them back had never been a real option.

Neither Zhao Weiliang nor Zhu Li raised the subject. The distribution principle was tacitly accepted.

Zhao Weiliang stood before the Golden Jiao’s barely-breathing body and looked at Shen Cong with genuine warmth. “Comrade Hu Ge has distinguished himself today. The award ceremony for the tournament didn’t happen, but make no mistake — you have earned the title of Edge of Evolution.”

Shen Cong didn’t react to the praise. He swept a cold glance across the iron people and their vehicles assembling to process the carcass, and suppressed the urge that rose in him — the pull toward consuming what was there. It ran stronger in him than in any other iron person he’d encountered.

“I broke the Golden Jiao’s three-inch point. It’s not dead yet — be careful. Nothing else for me here. I’m heading back.”

Zhao Weiliang, familiar with his temperament, responded immediately. “No rush, Xiao Hu — ride with me, I’ll take you back. Commander Zhu, handle the harvesting.”

Shen Cong didn’t object. He got into the three-wheeled vehicle.

Every truck in the camp, aside from iron people’s bonded vehicles, had been used as a bomb vehicle. What remained was a collection of motorcycles, three-wheelers, and improvised bicycles.

The vehicle had barely started moving when Shen Cong spoke, his voice entirely level: “Wang Yu refused to advance. I killed him.”

Zhao Weiliang received this without visible surprise. A measured nod. “Under wartime regulations, that qualifies as desertion — grounds for execution. Technically correct. But we’re in the middle of a morale moment right now, and deserter isn’t a useful story. We’ll process him as a martyr. Any objection?”

“None.”

The man was dead. Whether he got a hero’s burial or not made no difference.

“I’ll arrange it.”

“One more thing, Commander. The crane truck’s primary metal — I want a share of it.”

“You’re the camp’s hero today. I’ll make it happen.” Zhao Weiliang nodded easily. Whatever authority he’d once commanded as a provincial standing committee member, in this world he was a pragmatic man who understood power clearly. Shen Cong had strength and sharp edges — handled correctly, he was the camp’s greatest asset; handled badly, he was a disaster. Zhao Weiliang had his own methods for holding that balance.

The three-wheeler rattled back into camp.

Survivors had come out from their platforms to line the path. The camp was intact. A Heavyweight evolved beast was dead. Whatever had been lost today, this was genuinely good news — proof that humanity could kill things at that tier. That with each step forward in evolution, the food chain’s summit wasn’t entirely out of reach.

“Edge of Evolution! Edge of Evolution!”

“Hu Ge!”

“Hu Ge, well done!”

“He killed the Golden Jiao — incredible!”

“Hero’s return!”

“Welcome back, hero!”

The cheering rolled in waves.

Zhao Weiliang waved to the crowd on both sides and turned to Shen Cong. “Enjoy it, young man.”

What he got back was a furrowed brow.

“I don’t like this.” Shen Cong was already moving. “Send my things to me later.” He stepped off the moving vehicle, wove through a few bounds between the crowd and the elevated platforms while the camp’s residents craned their necks and shouted, and disappeared behind a platform wall.

Gone.

I just need to get stronger.

Zhao Weiliang stared at the empty spot for a moment. Then he arranged his expression into something warm and faced the crowd. “Comrade Hu Ge fought a tremendous battle today — he needs rest. As do all of you. We’ve won, but we’ve also lost good people. The best way to honor them is to keep living well.”

Vajra rolled back to its position.

Shen Cong isolated himself from the camp again, settling into the quiet and the solid, familiar feeling of his own space.

But something was different. Normally Blackhead would be skittering up to meet him, emotional signal cheerful and clear. This time she hung back at a distance, transmitting one thing steadily through the perceptual link: fear.

She was afraid of the two horn-like cores on his back.

“You never reacted like this to the Violent Ape King’s tusks. The Golden Jiao’s horns have you running?” Shen Cong found this genuinely puzzling. He’d always assumed the Activity pressure aura between evolved beasts was essentially meaningless — he’d raised the Dog-Croc Battle Standard expecting it to deter predators, and reality had corrected that assumption immediately.

Yet Blackhead was clearly terrified of the Golden Jiao’s cores.

Curious, he picked up one of the horns and moved toward her. Blackhead’s emotional signal spiked into frantic fear. She backed away, retreating again and again, until she’d evacuated the truck’s cargo compartment entirely.

“That much pressure?”

Shen Cong opened a jar of Bee Treasure and drank it while he considered this. Then he set the experiment aside and turned his full attention to the horns themselves.

The shape was unusual — branching extensively like antlers, with rounded nodular protrusions along their length. Strictly speaking, they weren’t bone. The material felt more like hardened muscle tissue. He could tell by touch: not rigid throughout, with sections that yielded slightly under pressure, soft like living tissue.

And yet — the dense Activity radiating from them, the sharpening response when he pushed Activity into them — these confirmed they were Activity cores.

Non-bone material can form an Activity core? Or is this like velvet antler — not yet fully ossified?

He thought of deer antlers in their early growth stage, still in velvet — a distinctive tissue structure, vascularized, dense with amino acids, considered a valuable medicinal ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine.

Which raised a question.

Can you eat the Golden Jiao’s horns?

He pulled himself back from that line of thinking. Material this valuable wasn’t for eating. He examined them a moment longer, then reached out with his senses and read the data.

The numbers stopped him.

Lv0.691. Activity Value 1.987H. Talent 2.874H. Two-and-a-Half Star rating.

At Lv0.691, the Golden Jiao had been in its Mature Stage — Heavyweight tier in combat capability. At Peak Breakthrough, crossing into Lv1, it would very likely have pushed into Super-Heavyweight territory. Its Talent ceiling exceeded Vajra’s 2.511H.

So Super-Heavyweight evolved beasts start at 3H Talent minimum. Shen Cong thought of the Iron-Eater — the thing he’d never encountered directly, the creature larger than the Seismosaurus. The apex of the Oasis.

He logged the data.

Then he looked at the strange branching horns again, and another thought took shape.

The texture is too soft for weapons fabrication. But — the shape, the Activity density — maybe there’s another use. Find an opportunity and see if these can be made into a Golden Jiao Totem.

(End of Chapter 159)