There were people fretting and worrying over Shen Cong.

Shen Cong himself never fretted or worried over anyone else.

The tactical arrangements complete, at seven o'clock sharp, the pest-killing force set out on schedule.

Shen Cong then drove the Great Vajra out from the mercury lake, shook himself alert, and followed at the tail of the convoy.

The paintwork had faded somewhat.

Beneath the matte-black coating, the vehicle body had originally been silver-white—the color of metal-iron. Now that metal-iron had evolved into metal-steel, the color was no longer silver-white, but a grayish-brown.

After nearly a week of full-speed absorption, the Core-Totem Great Vajra had already completed the metal-steel conversion of 28.7% of its volume; the entire outer armor layer had all evolved into metal-steel.

Its defensive strength was greatly raised—at least two or three times what it had been before.

To the touch, it could be hard or soft.

Once it hardened, it fell short of a jin core by just one sharpening reaction.

The Great Vajra was growing stronger, and Shen Cong hadn't stopped either. As the Great Vajra ceaselessly exchanged Vajra's blood over to him, his sense-gold/heart-gold stage was completed in just thirteen days.

He'd entered the second stage of the Lv2 Pitch-Black Era: the marrow-gold stage.

The bone marrow began its metallic gradation.

After marrow-gold came blood-gold—but because Shen Cong had completed blood-gold ahead of time, all he needed was to finish marrow-gold to enter the fourth stage: lymph-gold.

The bone marrow's metallic gradation carried no symptoms at all.

He felt no pain, no numbness or itch, no cold sensation—everything normal. The only thing that could prove the bone marrow was undergoing metallic gradation was that Shen Cong often felt his blood somewhat engorged.

For this he had no choice but to cut himself a few times, let a little blood, and ease the pressure.

"Perhaps the pollution model is wrong again. Bone marrow produces blood; the blood-gold change wasn't actually necessary." Shen Cong drove on, his mind still turning over the problem.

The blood engorgement was better described as the bone marrow, after metallic gradation, beginning…