The battle was over. Three super iron people dead — and the ultimate iron beast, the saltwater croc, killed at last.

You couldn't call the result anything but glorious. But the cost had been just as great. It should have been a clean kill, zero losses; a single slip in the iron people's coordination had turned it into this, three super iron people gone.

In the old days a super iron person had been the theater's strongest fighting force — cultivate one far enough and he might become the next Shen-Cong-style guardian deity. Zhao Yuyang most of all, his Talent above 3.5H, second only to Zhang Changde: the elite of the elite among evolved persons.

A pity. A damned pity.

Shen Cong packed the jin cores, the hide and flesh, the claws into the nearly-full Great Vajra, then turned back to the battlefield. He still had two things to see to.

The first was the croc's stage of evolution.

An ultimate-grade jin beast was an apex power in an ocean crawling with monsters, the shallows especially. Seawater pooled Activity in enormous quantity, and the sea floor was rich with resources — the croc's evolution would have been anything but slow. The Great Iron Bear was already Lv2 Pitch-Black Era; the croc had to be at least that far along.

Shen Cong had no interest in a full dissection. A quick look was enough to show him the croc's blood already carried a metallic sheen.

"Going by human evolution, blood-gold is the fourth of the six stages of the Lv2 Pitch-Black Era — a very high stage. In a human, past lymph-gold and gland-gold you'd be into Lv3. Whether this croc's lymph-gold and gland-gold have started, though, I can't tell."

A rough read. The detailed stage-by-stage breakdown could go to the lab and their professionals.

Instead Shen Cong led Little Four over to the patch of mud where the croc had so often lain out.

Looking at that ground, packed hard and firm, his eyes flickered. He'd suspected this spot for a while now.

By rights, the whole coast was open…