Temperature up five degrees, and the sea-beasts fled.

The great sea surged and churned, ripples breaking across the water, and amid the hazy fog the massive warship threw up sky-high waves, dragging its battered but unbowed body onto the road home.

Yet to the boundless, endless ocean, this was no more than the difference between one splash of a wave and two.

Communications severed, sea and sky cut apart, no one knew there was a band of soldiers keeping their vigil.

On the Eastern Theater Command's defensive line, all the soldiers stood their watch over their sectors according to routine, learning the surrounding news through the radio and the video vehicles — humanity's strongest warrior, Hu Ge, had gone hunting jin beasts again.

...

Splat!

The sea-roach died.

A super-grade jin beast, not even a chance to struggle, its head blown off in one burst by Shen Cong.

Having hunted the sea-roach, Shen Cong didn't push his luck. He hauled the corpse back inside the defensive line, chopped off the jin-core tail-spikes, and tossed the body to the Command's defensive-line troops.

Watching the sea-roach corpse flung their way, the troops were profoundly stirred.

They saw the Great Vajra and the Four-Legged Dragon off as they left, unhurried and unrushed.

"So huge." One soldier — a Huai'an City militiaman, probably, at the front for the first time — was seeing such a colossal living thing, and seeing it slain so easily, for the first time.

That impact, on the eyes and on the gut, struck straight to the core.

"A sea-roach? That's nothing. Major General Hu — no, General Hu — can kill dozens a day. No different from us hunting kittens and puppies." A soldier who'd been through some things put on a calm face off to the side.

Someone else said with feeling, "General Hu, ah — for him, getting promoted is just like hunting jin beasts, the time it takes to drink a mouthful of water. When he first came over from New Hefei, he was still Colonel Hu; then Major General Hu; now he's become General Hu,…