"Rough texture, but excellent with salt."

Shen Cong gnawed on a boiled Water Tyrant egg and found himself genuinely impressed. An egg was an egg, whether it came from a chicken or a giant water bug. He'd always liked eggs.

Breakfast done.

He stepped outside. The snowpack had dropped by roughly a meter and a half — still two and a half meters remaining. Still impassable.

Twenty meters out, the military jeep had surfaced from the snow level. The area Zhao Zilong's group had cleared previously was now a wide shallow pool of meltwater. Old Wei had been building a snowman in the upper snowpack and immediately jogged over when he saw Shen Cong emerge.

He stopped before he got close.

His expression shifted — confused, uneasy. He stood at a distance and stared at Shen Cong and the vehicle behind him. "Colonel Chen — something's different. Being near you and your vehicle feels... wrong. Uncomfortable. Like something is dangerous."

Shen Cong kept his expression neutral. "What did it feel like before?"

"Just the normal iron person thing. That mutual wanting-to-absorb sensation, you know — I want to eat your vehicle, you want to eat mine."

Great Vajra's pressure aura. The solid-state Activity threshold.

Liquid-state Activity produced no pressure aura effect. Solid-state Activity did — and now Great Vajra had crossed into solid-state entirely. The pressure aura had activated. Old Wei wasn't experiencing the familiar iron person resonance attraction anymore; he was experiencing something fundamentally different. Not the pull of two vehicles generating mutual absorption desire, but the pressure of an Activity Value so far above his own that his instincts were registering it as threat.

Shen Cong didn't explain this. "We leave tomorrow morning — the snowpack should drop another meter today. Be ready early."

"Right." Old Wei nodded, then lingered. "But Colonel Chen — what is this feeling?"

Shen Cong considered not answering. Then reconsidered — these people needed a clear message, enough to discourage any ideas that might otherwise develop. "Because I am much stronger than you. Much, much stronger."

Old Wei returned to the jeep with…