Eight days. Gone in an instant.
At the base of Zifeng Mountain, on Tangyuan Road, Great Vajra sat at the roadside. In the nearby woodland, Shen Cong was making a final check of the trap’s concealment.
Half an hour later, everything was in order.
He walked to a section of ground nearby, lifted a cover panel, and dropped inside — into a second Great Vajra, buried beneath the earth.
He’d prepared two positions. He settled into the buried vehicle, drank a vial of Bee Treasure, and let himself center. He could feel the power present in his body, consolidated and ready.
He was satisfied with where he was physically.
The sustained effort of these past weeks had produced results. Continuous Activity fruit consumption, constant drainage of Great Vajra’s Activity through combat and Exchange, steady absorption of ambient Activity in return — his personal Activity Value had broken through 2H, reaching 2.097H.
Crossing 2H had no particular mechanical significance. H units were calibrated against Great Vajra’s original Talent ceiling, which had been an approximation from the beginning.
What did have significance was 1.946H. When he’d crossed that threshold two days into the trap construction, something had changed — the kind of change you felt before you could name it. His strength had settled into a new register: sixteen-bull. Speed, agility, endurance, explosive output, all five senses, all upgraded.
And something else.
Small Wolf Spiders — a Grassweight evolved insect that had been interrupting the excavation work daily, requiring him to clear them off by the handful — had simply stopped approaching. Not reduced in frequency. Stopped completely. When he walked toward them, they fled.
He’d thought immediately of the Golden Jiao’s horn cores after its death — Blackhead retreating in fear, the Treasure Bees fleeing from the processed snakeskin. Was he generating the same kind of pressure aura? Or was crossing 1.946H in solid-state Activity a qualitative threshold, not just a quantitative one?
He couldn’t find a concrete answer in his own Activity signature — nothing felt different from the inside. But the behavioral evidence was clear. And the comparison with Great Vajra was instructive: the vehicle had crossed 1.946H earlier, currently sitting at 2.267H, and produced no equivalent effect. Liquid-state Activity apparently didn’t generate the same phenomenon as solid-state.
Solid-state Activity crossing 1.946H produces pressure aura onset. He noted it in his apocalypse journal for later investigation.
Current status: 2.097H personal Activity Value, Talent 2.518H, Level approximately Lv0.833 — Metamorphosis Stage.
His physical progress was slightly trailing Great Vajra’s advancement. One reason he needed to leave.
Great Vajra’s Exchange contribution to his personal Activity growth was valuable but limited. Activity fruit delivered faster gains — and the Activity sweet potato, Life-Saving Yellow Soybeans, Sweet Orange Fruit, and Giant Kiwifruit had all reached saturation. He needed new sources.
And new sources were becoming more contested. Wherever Activity fruit trees had established themselves, evolved beasts were establishing territory around them. The pattern was self-reinforcing: more Activity fruit attracted stronger evolved beasts, stronger evolved beasts crowded out weaker competition, and access became progressively harder over time.
Take what’s available now, while evolved beasts are still manageable. Reach Lv1 before the window closes.
Ten minutes of stillness. Body and mind both at peak.
He suited up in the Half-Activated Armor, verified his bone-gold weapon loadout, and launched the drone.
The Swiftclaw Leopard was on a bare rock outcrop at Zifeng Mountain’s summit, stretched in the sunlight. November 12th — lunar calendar, thirteenth of the tenth month. The trees hadn’t turned yet, but the air had cooled.
He retracted the drone, picked up the JS sniper rifle, and moved.
One kilometer from target, he set the rifle and aimed at the Swiftclaw Leopard. He’d fired this weapon a handful of times in practice. His formal training was nonexistent — he’d read marksmanship accounts and applied the principles. Good enough for this.
JS effective range: 1,500 meters. I’m at 1,000. Target is elephant-sized. The bone-gold rounds should be precise enough to hit.
He felt the wind. Pressed the trigger.
Crack.
The cartridge ejected. The bone-gold round left the barrel at 850 meters per second — more than twice the speed of sound. The report hadn’t reached the Swiftclaw Leopard yet when the round arrived.
Thud.
Hit.
Not where he’d aimed. He’d aimed for the head. He’d hit the hindquarters. At 1,000 meters, from a barely-practiced shooter, a near-miss was still a hit.
“RAAUGH!”
The Swiftclaw Leopard launched off the rock, blood streaming from its hindquarters. Functionality unimpaired — a Heavyweight beast’s resilience meant a single non-critical hit wasn’t going to stop it. It located Shen Cong almost immediately.
Four legs hammering stone, it came down the mountain.
Shen Cong dropped the rifle and ran.
At full sprint, the Swiftclaw Leopard needed eight seconds to cover a kilometer. Shen Cong needed fifteen. Running simultaneously, the physics of pursuit: a problem he’d already solved on paper.
One chasing. One running. The trap ahead.
He felt the gap close as he approached the trigger zone. Two body-lengths behind him — close enough to feel the displacement of air. He planted a foot at the exact position he’d marked and jumped.
Landed. Stopped his body instantly. Drew the Ape King Long Blade in the same motion and hurled it behind him, releasing at the precise angle he’d calculated.
The Swiftclaw Leopard’s forepaws came down on the marked ground.
The ground gave way.
Trap triggered. The Swiftclaw Leopard’s body torqued — instinct seeking the fractional purchase it would need to redirect the falling momentum into a leap. But the thrown blade was already in the air on its intercept path. Dodge the blade and fall. Don’t dodge and take the hit. A choice, forced in a fraction of a second.
The Swiftclaw Leopard was not unintelligent. It chose to take the blade and jump clear.
Which was exactly what Shen Cong had predicted.
His foot was already pressing a specific point at the trap’s edge when that choice was made.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Three pre-loaded spring crossbows — positioned behind, left, and right — discharged simultaneously, sending a dozen bone-gold arrows crossing the space above the pit in a woven pattern.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Two arrows found the Swiftclaw Leopard. The Ape King Long Blade found it too. None of the wounds were severe — a Heavyweight’s layered defense could absorb worse — but they killed the jump’s momentum. The leopard was driven back into the pit.
At the critical instant, the Swiftclaw Leopard twisted and caught the pit’s edge with its forepaws.
Shen Cong was already above it with everything he had left — javelins, blades, daggers, bayonets, all of it hammering at those forepaws in sequence until the grip failed.
The Swiftclaw Leopard dropped.
Water at the bottom — he’d filled the pit’s lower half deliberately. The water-air interface created a medium transition that confused the kinetic calculation of any jump attempt. Finding the right force angle to burst upward through it was harder than it looked.
He gave it no time to figure it out.
He was at the pit’s edge immediately, throwing bone-gold weapons down in a sustained barrage. The Swiftclaw Leopard churned through the water, dodging, absorbing what it couldn’t dodge, being driven progressively into one corner of the pit wall.
When its back touched the stone —
Shen Cong hit the remote on his belt.
BOOM.
The pit wall exploded outward. From inside the stone, the Tail Cannon fired — the integrated drill assembly that should have been mounted on Great Vajra’s undercarriage had instead been pre-positioned inside this wall, concealed and wired to his remote. The high-speed rotating drill head launched under full hydraulic pressure and drove into the Swiftclaw Leopard’s chest and abdomen.
Rotating drill head. Full hydraulic impact force. Combined at point-blank range into a living target.
The drill cut through the Heavyweight’s hide and deep into the body cavity.
“RAAUGH!”
The Swiftclaw Leopard’s cry shook the trees.
(End of Chapter 191)