"Is this... a level of combat power that a human being can actually reach?"

Li Kun's murmur expressed what every soldier in the two vehicles was feeling. Minutes earlier, they'd privately assessed Shen Cong's decision to go out alone as reckless overconfidence — the ape would tear him apart before anyone could intervene.

They hadn't witnessed the Six-Horned Dragon kill. They hadn't even seen the carcass. There had been no visceral reference point for what Shen Cong actually was.

Underestimating him had been natural.

But watching it happen — it hadn't looked like a man fighting an animal. It had looked like a larger, faster, more dangerous predator taking prey. And when Shen Cong landed on the ape's skull and turned his gaze toward the armored vehicles, what they saw in that single look stopped conversation across both vehicles simultaneously.

Something that wasn't quite human lived behind those eyes. Combined with the pressure aura rolling off him at full power, even through armored vehicle walls and at significant distance, the effect was physiological. Several of the soldiers felt it in their chests before they understood what they were reacting to.

The timid ones — genuinely.

That look could kill.

Shen Cong's first act after landing was checking the armored vehicles for any sudden movement.

He couldn't not. Trust was a resource he didn't extend freely, and a man with that kind of combat capability demonstrated in front of troops was a natural target for exactly the kind of preemptive thinking that military training encouraged. He scanned both vehicles, found nothing concerning, and moved efficiently to secure the carcass — dragging the ape behind Great Vajra, looping the winch cable around its neck.

Into the cab. External speaker.

"Move out."

Great Vajra's engine opened up. They left by the way they'd come.

The column ran quietly for a while. Then Li Kun's voice came over the radio, and the phrasing had shifted: "Hu Colonel — your assessment of how we eliminate the Dragon Hornets?"

Before the ape fight, Li Kun had been running the tactical discussions himself, consulting Shen Cong only…