Shen Cong drove on along the Qinglan Expressway. This stretch climbed ridge after ridge, and in many places the roadbed had collapsed outright.

Fortunately, the Core-Totem Great Vajra had power to burn — anything short of a truly steep grade, it simply climbed over. And when he did hit a slope sheer enough to spin the tires, Shen Cong had a solution for that too: a well-fed, well-watered Four-Legged Dragon made an excellent draft ox.

At two in the afternoon, he reached the Peijiazhuang Bridge. The span ahead had snapped through, forcing a crossing down through the valley.

Shen Cong sent up the drone to survey the nearby terrain and find the best driving line.

The drone had barely risen when it spotted, beyond a ridge up ahead, a gigantic snail — its body mottled black and yellow in patches — crawling slowly along the base of a slope, grazing on jin trees.

The Snail Traveler.

"That big snail?" Shen Cong studied the rather sorry-looking figure on the feed, puzzled. "How did it end up in that state? Looks like it's been burned — there are scars on it too."

"Don't tell me it ran into the Twin Cities Republic's Bug Warriors?"

The possibility clicked into place. Laiwu City lay barely a dozen-plus kilometers ahead; at the Snail Traveler's pace, it should have arrived long ago. Instead, here it was in these hills eating jin trees, carrying burn wounds all over its body. It had clearly been in a fight — and the only thing that left marks like those was humanity.

"Looks like the Snail Traveler is merely a bit shabbier for wear — no serious wounds. The Bug Warriors must not have been able to break its defense." Shen Cong observed a while longer, and when the drone's battery ran down, he beckoned to the Four-Legged Dragon. "Come on. Let's go say hello to the Snail Traveler — with my newest research result. The Cicada Song."

The Cicada Song: the cry of the Golden Cicada.

The Golden Cicada was a cicada mutant, and like any cicada, it produced…