On the summit of Mount Tai, the trees grew thick and green.

The four-legged dragon lay off to one side in poor spirits, because the bugs it liked best had lost their taste. Normally restless, it was keeping quietly to the shade to stay cool.

Now and then it lifted its head to watch Shen Cong training on the cliff above.

Shen Cong was not wearing the Hell Plant Armor. It stood beside his training platform, upright as a man, ready to be put on at any moment. His body had recovered sensation two days ago, though not completely; every sense was still weak, and his limbs still stiff. He had started training to get himself back in order as fast as possible.

There was another reason as well. Kindling the spirit-fire in his nervous system had given him an entirely new way of controlling his body — perceiving and working it through the radiation waves of the Firestarter grains.

He had to get used to that method as quickly as he could.

"With the spirit-fire kindled, the only human parts of me left are the spinal cord and the brain. None of the rest belongs to the old world any more." A round of sanda left Shen Cong neither flushed nor short of breath. In fact a face that had already gone to gold could hardly change color at all.

Even sweat came out of him rarely.

And what did come out was not sweat but a kind of metallic impurity carrying a faint trace of Activity. In the air it went inert almost at once, and Firestarter energy broke it down.

Shen Cong even suspected that once the nerves and the spinal cord had kindled their spirit-fire, he might have no need to excrete at all.

Unless he could pass Jin Ke La.

"Come on. Back we go." Shen Cong put the Hell Plant Armor on, jogged over with a slightly odd gait, and sprang up onto the four-legged dragon's head — very nearly failing to keep his footing. His balance was still not right.

At this stage…