"A woman at the head, addressed by the others as 'Captain' and 'Xiuni'… then she should be Chen Jiuxian's daughter, Chen Xiuni. From their talk, they've mentioned the 'Pest-Killer Squad,' the 'Mengyin Five Sisters,' the 'Master.' Piecing the clues together — they really are steering the pagoda tree to attack the Aishan Street settlement in Gangcheng District."

Having worked out the identity of the group hounding the pagoda tree, along with their objective, Shen Cong betrayed not a flicker of his own presence.

To him, whether Bug Warrior or Pest-Killer Squad, the identity was the same: strangers. Strangers he could trade with, and beyond that, of no value.

Though — cold analysis — Shen Cong would rather trade with the Pest-Killer Squad, being all evolved people, because they were the familiar quantity.

The Bug Warriors fell into the unfamiliar category. Especially given what he'd heard: that their bug cores had to be cultivated on human blood, the blood of evolved people above all — which marked the Bug Warriors as extremely dangerous.

Shen Cong was an evolved person. Plainly, he met the specification for cultivating a bug core.

Still, he wouldn't take one side's word for it. All of this came from the old woman, unverified by any proof. Shen Cong trusted only what his own eyes saw, his own ears heard, his own Activity wave perceived.

"Keep observing. Little Four — gentler still. We close to three hundred meters of them." Shen Cong patted the Four-Legged Dragon's great head and communed through the Mind-Imprint.

The Four-Legged Dragon stuck out her tongue, licked her own eye, and answered through the Mind-Imprint: "Bopo… obey… lurk… kill them…"

"No killing for now." Shen Cong headed off the Four-Legged Dragon's warped little impulse.

This mild-tempered lizard had, from long association with Shen Cong, developed something of a twisted streak — kill, kill at the drop of a hat. Shen Cong felt it was on him to reshape her worldview. Killing wasn't off the table, but before the kill, one had to learn to rein in one's killing intent.

Don't scare off the prey.…