“The four-legged snake is larger than the Golden Jiao, so its Talent is naturally higher than the Jiao’s 2.874H. Among individual jin beasts, the standard holds: bigger body, stronger Talent. Humans are the exception.”

The disconnect between human body size and Talent was something Shen Cong had never quite resolved. He’d seen humans who grew to enormous size — Ran Tai from that grape grove camp, the one he’d made an example of early on, had been a massive specimen. But Ran Tai had been more disease-changed than anything else, no Activity core, no bonded vehicle.

Every jin person and iron person he’d encountered had stayed physically normal. The body didn’t change much.

He set the question aside and, noticing the four-legged snake had lowered its guard, conducted a careful scan. What he found was strange. The snake had twenty Activity cores — the claws on its four feet.

“Those claws are razor-sharp and high in Activity Value. If I could cut them off and work them, I’d have enough material for quite a few quality bone-gold weapons.”

He was still mulling this over when the four-legged snake finished the last of the banyan yogurt in front of it, turned its head, and began nudging him again. Shen Cong understood immediately. He walked deeper into the banyan grove, dug up a sphere, and rolled it over.

This time, however, the snake didn’t crack it open. Its tongue whipped out and it swallowed the sphere whole — shell and all — then immediately pushed at Shen Cong for more.

Storing food? Like those animal carcasses it was carrying before?

The thought amused him. He wasn’t stingy about it; he went back into the grove and dug up an armful more, tossing them one by one to the snake.

The four-legged snake swallowed thirty spheres in a row before finally stopping. Then it nudged several back toward Shen Cong.

It had run out of room.

Shen Cong took his turn. He cracked the outer casings and extracted only the basketball-sized milk-white spheres inside — the actual yogurt, the part that mattered. The grove was vast and the supply seemingly inexhaustible; he couldn’t take even a fraction of what was cached here.

He’d brought three large Jiao-hide carry packs, enough for a hundred-odd spheres. Even loaded to capacity, he’d barely touched the dung beetles’ stockpile.

He decided to leave the rest. Too much to carry, and Great Vajra didn’t have unlimited storage. Besides, leaving the cache here might be the smarter play. If the grove held, the dung beetles might eventually return and resume production. The place could become a permanent supply source.

While he packed, the four-legged snake cocked its head and watched from outside with evident curiosity. Its intelligence was undeniable — but it hadn’t figured out that stripping the shells would let him carry far more. Then again, maybe it needed those shells. The outer casing might protect the contents from its own digestive acid.

Once the yogurt spheres were packed, Shen Cong hacked off a section of banyan aerial root to use as a shoulder pole, slung the three carry packs from it, and added a sample of root for later study.

On his way out, he paused at the scatter of carcass-balls across the grove entrance.

Those are useful too.

The metallic debris packed inside the carcass-balls had a ferociously corrosive effect on Activity — even the four-legged snake wouldn’t take a direct hit from them. That alone said enough.

Drop the yogurt off first. Come back for a load of the metal debris. Turn it into a toxin weapon.

Plan set. He hoisted the shoulder pole, pointed toward the direction he’d come from, and gestured to the four-legged snake to stay put.

He mimed it several times, with no confidence whatsoever that it understood, then set off toward Great Vajra.

It hadn’t understood. The snake fell into step behind him.

Shen Cong stopped. He turned and pointed back at the grove.

Go back.

No effect. Every time he moved, the snake moved with him.

He gave up and stopped trying. Activating his bouncing stilts, he broke into a sprint toward Great Vajra. Four minutes later he was there — and the four figures waiting outside the military jeep promptly dove back inside it, startled half out of their skins by the Heavyweight beast materializing behind him. The snake’s sheer presence was overwhelming at close range.

Shen Cong checked the ground. Zhao Zilong’s group hadn’t approached Great Vajra. He breathed out, pulled open the rear cabin door, and shoved the carry packs inside.

The four-legged snake craned its neck over to look. Apparently it wanted to know what Great Vajra was.

Thunk.

He shut the door. He had the yogurt spheres tumbled out directly in the corridor and told Blackhead to lead the Vajra Ant Squad in moving them to storage, then grabbed a few rubber bags and headed back out.

The four-legged snake was still nosing around Great Vajra, periodically attempting to lick it. Saliva smeared across the solar panels and the bumper system.

Disgusting.

But Shen Cong had a fairly complete picture of the snake’s personality by now. He kept his guard up, but he knew the creature looked ferocious and behaved gently. And animals didn’t smile at you while mentally calculating where to stick the knife.

His wariness retreated another notch. No sudden moves.

He walked to the military jeep and addressed the four tense faces behind the glass. “Drive ahead a ways. I’ll send our large friend home and catch up.”

He didn’t wait for their response. He called to the four-legged snake and turned back toward the grove — one man and one enormous lizard, retracing their steps together.

The four left behind exchanged looks.

“Did… did Colonel Chen just tame a four-legged snake? As a pet?” Old Wei looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Zhao Zilong exhaled slowly. The snake’s presence at close range had pressed down on her like a physical weight. “Hard to say. But whatever they worked out, it went smoothly. The snake never showed any intent to attack.”

“He’s incredible!” Xiao Bei burst out, practically vibrating. “Colonel Chen is my absolute idol. An evolved beast that size, and he’s got it following him around — that’s a pet if I’ve ever seen one.”

In Xiao Bei’s understanding, anything that came when called and left when dismissed was a pet.

Back at the grove, the four-legged snake wanted nothing to do with the carcass-balls. It watched Shen Cong prying metal debris from the shells with visible disdain, retreated to the lake’s edge, and entertained itself by slapping the water with its tail, sending fans of spray into the air.

Shen Cong broke open a carcass-ball and studied the structure carefully.

It was layered.

Outermost layer: animal remains. Second layer: metallic debris. Third layer: what appeared to be compacted soil. Fourth layer: more animal remains. Fifth and innermost layer: eggs. Dung beetle eggs.

So the carcass-balls are for reproduction. The yogurt spheres are their food supply.

Eggs were valuable. Even dung beetle eggs.

The name had a bad reputation, but at a basic nutritional level, an egg was an egg — composition not dramatically different from a chicken’s. And these particular dung beetles had long since abandoned dung. They’d gone carnivore.

Shen Cong found this reasoning perfectly persuasive. He collected over thirty eggs the size of teacups, packed them alongside the rubber bags of metallic debris, and decided he was done here.

“Four-legged snake.” He turned and beckoned. The snake lowered its head toward him. Its tongue flicked out and left a streak of saliva across his armor.

He endured it. He reached up and scratched the underside of its jaw.

“You stay here, Little Four. I have to go. I’ll come back sometime and take you digging for more yogurt.”

He pulled out his phone and selfie stick, and aimed the wide-angle lens.

Click.

The frame captured Shen Cong with his visor raised, and Little Four in the act of licking its own eye — both of them looking, in their respective ways, perfectly at ease.

(End of Chapter 251)