Crab General’s strike hit like a thunderclap — the force of it absolute, unstoppable.
Shrimp Soldier had no time to react. Caught completely off guard, both claws bore down simultaneously on the junction between its thorax and abdomen. A sharp crack — the armored shell shattered on the spot. The soft tissue beneath offered no resistance; the claws sank in deep, nearly bisecting it at the waist.
One decisive strike, and Crab General had all the leverage it needed. It hoisted Shrimp Soldier clean off the ground.
Shrimp Soldier thrashed all ten legs in agony — but suspended in mid-air, with nothing to push against, there was nothing it could do. It bled and it struggled and it couldn’t land a single effective counter.
Between experts, every exchange ends in death or serious injury. Among evolved beasts it was no different — hunter and hunted, decided in moments. Shen Cong knew this well. The instant Crab General made its winning move, he threw — the Spike King Javelin he’d been holding in reserve, launched at the precise moment Shrimp Soldier’s body blocked Crab General’s line of sight.
The target: Crab General’s exposed underbelly, revealed only because it had lifted Shrimp Soldier overhead.
If it hadn’t hoisted its prey, that soft spot would never have shown.
Thud.
The javelin hit true and buried itself deep. Crab General convulsed — but its claws didn’t open. They clenched tighter, a violent, spasming contraction that finished the job entirely: Shrimp Soldier’s midsection gave way, severed almost clean through, held together by the thinnest strip of flesh.
The snipe hunts the mussel; the fisherman takes both. The mantis catches the cicada; the sparrow waits behind.
The cunning hunter was Shen Cong, as it always had been. A small nudge in the right direction, and two evolved beasts that had been content to glare at each other for days had destroyed each other in minutes.
Ten minutes later, both were dead — finished off by the Ape King War Hammer.
Shrimp Soldier: Talent 1.207H / Activity Value 1.009H / Lv0.836.
Crab General: Talent 1.113H / Activity Value 0.984H / Lv0.884.
Both had crossed the One-Star threshold. Both were carrying substantial Activity Values and approaching Lv1. Their combat effectiveness in water was unknown, but on land they’d fallen short of the Dog-Croc.
“Four claws, all at the 1H standard. That’s several more high-end bone-gold weapons.”
He dragged both carcasses down the hill, hauling the harvested Activity cores on his back.
At the base of the hill, beside Great Vajra, the Old Pearl Mussel had extended its muscular foot and seemed to be probing for solid ground. River mussels move by means of this axe-shaped muscle — extending it, anchoring, and pulling themselves forward. But the Old Pearl Mussel was alert. The moment it heard someone approaching, it retracted the foot and clamped shut.
Shen Cong ignored it. He simply dumped a pile of low-grade Activity cores into the pool.
The overnight surveillance footage had shown him what the Old Pearl Mussel ate: Activity cores and fish and shrimp carcasses. If he wanted to push it into the Lv1 era sooner, feeding it the lower-grade cores he had no use for was the obvious move.
Too much of a good harvest had its own pleasant problems.
“If New Hefei had found the Huanglishu Mini-Oasis early enough, without too many threats — the survivors might have relocated here instead.” He considered it. “Though Huoshan’s long-term development potential is probably still greater. Either way — humanity’s down to one in ten. Resources are going to waste everywhere. Better to take it all than leave it for the evolved beasts.”
He felt no particular guilt about demolishing the barrier lakes’ ecosystem.
He’d just climbed back into the cab when he noticed something had changed inside.
One of the Vajra Ant eggs the Antgod had laid was already hatching. A fat, pale larva was working its way through the layered partitions of the ant burrow, eating the Activity cores Blackhead had placed there for it.
The burrow had been built to maximize space — multiple shelf-like partitions installed in layers, giving larvae room to move and feed.
This larva was noticeably larger than either Blackhead or the Antgod had been at the same stage. Shen Cong checked its Talent.
0.481H.
Significantly above Blackhead’s 0.350H.
“Blackhead,” he said, nudging the ant with his foot, “the third generation has already surpassed you.”
Blackhead didn’t understand the words. It simply pressed its antennae against his trouser leg in greeting, the way it always did.
Watching it, Shen Cong found himself thinking: Blackhead had been alive for nearly three months. Ordinary ants lived about one month. By that measure, Blackhead should have been dead long ago.
It wasn’t dead. Mutation had extended its lifespan.
That was good news — it implied his own lifespan had probably increased as well. Perhaps he would live to a hundred and fifty. Two hundred.
Then, from the Antgod, came something unexpected.
She had been focused entirely on consuming Activity cores. But now, cutting through the ambient noise of the burrow, came a clear and deliberate emotional transmission:
Evolution.
The signal was strong. And the concept it carried — evolution — was fully formed. Complete.
Shen Cong turned to look at her. Her intelligence had grown again — he could feel it. Ordinarily she was sharper than Blackhead, but still operating in the realm of low animal cognition. She couldn’t have understood what “evolution” meant.
Now she had expressed a desire for it. Clearly.
“You want to evolve?”
“Evolution… stronger… eat… offspring… evolution… stronger…”
Fragmented, halting — but the meaning was whole. The logic was there. The Antgod was telling him: by eating these Activity cores, she could make her offspring stronger.
That was evolution, as she understood it.
Shen Cong left the burrow. His mood had shifted into something quietly serious.
His understanding of mutation, of evolution, of Activity itself — had just deepened.
He had assumed, until now, that Activity’s changes were primarily two things: the activation of metal, and the amplification of biological strength. It was more than that. Far more.
Blackhead’s lifespan had already exceeded any ordinary ant by multiples. The Antgod’s intelligence had risen beyond any ordinary animal — and was passing that advantage to her offspring. The third-generation larva’s Talent already surpassed Blackhead’s, and Blackhead was second-generation. Fourth generation, fifth, sixth — would there come a generation whose lifespan and intelligence fully surpassed humanity’s?
He didn’t let himself follow that thought to its end.
But the evidence was accumulating. He could see the same pattern in Xiao Li Du — more developed than any ordinary infant, higher Talent at birth, alert eyes within a month, cognitive development running ahead of schedule.
If mutation is genuinely increasing biological intelligence across generations — what does the world look like in fifty years? A hundred? Five hundred?
He had no answer.
But a memory surfaced unbidden: the first time he’d seen Xiao Li Du, Zhang Kan had said something that had stayed with him:
“All of us alive today belong to the old era. Even evolved people are nothing more than a transition between old and new. Xiao Li Du — they’re the ones who belong to the new era.”
A survivor of the old era.
It was a heavy thought. He didn’t want to accept it.
A flicker of uncertainty crossed his eyes — and then it was gone, replaced by something harder.
“Am I just a transition? A bridge between eras, to be left behind?”
“No. I won’t be discarded by history. I won’t stop evolving. Whatever this new era turns out to be —”
“I’ll be the one leading it.”
(End of Chapter 204)