The drone survey had shown no significant threats in the area. Shen Cong confirmed it with his own binoculars, found nothing of concern, and started toward Xinghuo Forest Farm ahead of Fuxing Township.

North of the farm is Huanglishu Reservoir. The thought drifted through his mind as he approached the tree line. Worth checking out afterward.

Huanglishu was one of Anhui Province's ten largest reservoirs.

Then the fruit grove was in front of him, and he stopped thinking about water.

Up close, he could identify the trees: jujube. Unripe fruits were still green; the yellow and red ones had matured.

No evolved beasts settled here, apparently.

The thought had barely formed when the jujube grove moved. Leaves rustling. But there was no wind.

His scalp prickled.

From the undersides of leaves, they emerged. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Plump caterpillars in every color imaginable — red, yellow, green, black, purple, mottled. Each one covered in dense protrusions, bristling with needle-like spines.

Stinging caterpillars?

He stopped walking. The surge of revulsion was immediate and visceral. These fist-sized mutated creatures were unmistakably descended from the larval form of limacodid moths — the bane of every child who'd ever crawled through undergrowth. In ordinary form, contact with their spines produced instant burning pain, raised welts, hours of misery.

He'd suffered that exact experience more than once as a reckless child.

The grove had become a sea of them in seconds. What made it worse was that every caterpillar had a pair of black false eyespots — wide, round, all of them seemingly fixed directly on him.

Thousands of false eyes staring simultaneously.

Even Shen Cong found this deeply unsettling.

But the Activity fruit was still on those trees. He controlled the revulsion and kept moving, edging carefully toward the nearest jujube.

One caterpillar arched its body into an Omega shape.

He brought his dagger up.

Snap.

It launched — fast. He was faster. The dagger bisected it mid-flight. The caterpillar split apart, and its fluids spattered onto his Half-Activated Armor.

Where they landed, the armor surface immediately began smoking. A small section of Activity…