2.518H had been the hard ceiling — for both Shen Cong and Great Vajra. After absorbing the fire truck's primary metal, the Hummer's primary metal, and a portion of the crane truck's primary metal, the ceiling had simply stopped moving. No further progress, no matter what was tried.

Talent wasn't something that responded to ordinary effort. Shen Cong had quietly investigated the iron people at camp over time — their Talent clustered between One-Star and One-and-a-Half-Star, and even after absorbing primary metal, almost none of them reached Two-Star. The camp's mutants hit their own wall below 1H; the camp's iron people hit theirs below 2H. Only Great Vajra and Shen Cong had climbed past 2.5H, and he had never been able to explain why.

He'd attributed it to the meteor shower itself — specifically, to the meteorite that had struck his warehouse. That particular fragment, whatever its nature, must have carried exceptional power.

After hitting 2.518H, he had begun preparing psychologically for the Lv1 era, assuming the ceiling was permanent.

And then he had woken up this morning to find his Talent at 2.521H.

The ceiling was gone.

"The meteorite fragment. It has to be the meteorite fragment."

"The closer evolved beasts live to an Oasis, the stronger they are, the higher their Talent — because they've been exposed to the fragment's stimulation. The Iron-Eater at Huoshan Oasis, enormous as a small mountain. The Water Tyrant pair here at Huanglishu — an extraordinary mutation, Talent values that shouldn't exist. And now it's my turn."

A pause.

"Though — it seems the lead bucket and radiation suit aren't fully blocking the fragment's Activity radiation."

He didn't stop to wash his face or brush his teeth. He went straight to the laboratory.

The room temperature was slightly elevated — the shielding was doing something, the radiation wasn't at full intensity, the heat output was modest.

"Activity radiation probably behaves differently from conventional ionizing radiation." The best explanation he had for now.

He suited up, opened the lead bucket. The meteorite fragment was unchanged. The wire-drawing die he'd placed beside it was not…