Shen Cong's speed was frightening. Ma Jintu had left it far too late to run — but at that moment the Rat King abruptly abandoned the four-legged dragon and came straight at him.

Even the enormous rat-beast made to break off and turn on Shen Cong.

Shen Cong only called out — "Little Four, I'm taking the Rat King, you kill the rat-beast, and be quick about it" — and the four-legged dragon put its tail out at once and wrapped the enormous rat-beast up, and the two of them went back to tearing at each other. Every scrap of ferocity it had been storing up over the long fight broke out today, and the rat-beast had no choice but to turn and take it on.

With no ultimate-grade jin beast blocking his way, the Rat King alone could not begin to slow Shen Cong down.

The Green Dragon Crescent Blade knocked the jin-core broadsword out of the Rat King's hand in an instant, and then the Hell Plant Armor ran out any number of vines and bound the Rat King fast so it could not flee.

Two more strokes, and the Rat King's four limbs came off. It went down on the ground and lay there screaming.

"3.715H of Talent. A super-grade jin beast, and looking to die!"

This Rat King was a super-grade jin beast right enough, and one close to ultimate standard at that. Unfortunately for it, the Shen Cong of before the fire-spirit medium might genuinely have been held up by it — but Shen Cong was a 5.515H nuclear-grade iron person now, and the gap was far too wide. It was over in an instant.

He did not kill it. He wanted it alive, to be studied.

A thought moved in him, and away across the field, inside the Vajra Fortress grinding through the ratmen, the radio microphone began to shudder — and out of the radios in every armored car came a voice like metal grating on metal. "I've cut the Rat King's limbs off. Send men to take it, quickly."

The voice was…