Light rain, a faint breeze.

The heavy fog that had blanketed Bayiji Town for days finally dispersed in the rain, restoring a clear sky overhead — in fact, most of the outer reaches of Xuzhou City had cleared of fog entirely.

Only around Yunlong Lake did thick mist still churn and roll.

The light rain had gone on for a full week now, and that was no good news for the Yunlong Lake settlement, because rain had a devastating effect on the growth and development of fog fungi. It was the fog fungi that let Xuzhou's survivors move freely aboveground at all, sparing them the torment of ultraviolet exposure.

The Command's laboratory had been experimenting with treatments for light-fearing sickness this whole time, but progress was slim — any condition tangled up with Activity was proving stubbornly hard to cure.

Zhang Xiaohu was one such light-fearing sickness sufferer, and also a jin person of 0.578H Talent. Before being folded into the Eastern Theater Command, he'd been a Rainbow at Yun House.

His daily work was leading a crew to gather Black-Bug White Fog.

Even now, that was still his job — only now, with the Command's backing, the gear was better and more advanced, and the danger of going out had dropped considerably.

Ever since the rain started three days ago, he hadn't been able to range far, and could only pick through the still-lightly-fogged stretch around Taishan Forest Farm, scavenging for any Black-Bug White Fog that had been missed.

And it was on this very day.

At the summit of Taishan Forest Farm, on the spot that should have belonged to the old Taishan Temple, he spotted a man, a vehicle, and an enormous long-legged serpent.

This unfamiliar yet somehow familiar combination — Zhang Xiaohu guessed at once who'd come to Taishan Temple: the Eastern Theater Command's Honorary Commander, Military Committee Standing Committee member, guardian deity, full general of the army, Father of the Totem, the strongest evolved person, humanity's strongest warrior, the great hero of humanity's resistance against evolved beasts, the iron person who'd slain the Great Iron…