Antgod took the remaining Vajra-Ants off to pick a site and build, and Blackhead went with her.

Shen Cong felt the loss for a moment.

Then he cut the thread of unhappy feeling clean off. He had no time to tangle himself in small things. Agreeing to let Antgod build her nest had meant giving up the idea of cultivating the Vajra-Ants at all. Antgod and Blackhead still held a Mind-Imprint with him, but they were no longer his battle pets.

He had once held a Honeytreasure Queen Bee by Mind-Imprint too. When his sense of taste went, Honeytreasure and Royal Treasure Jelly stopped being any use to him, and he threw that swarm of Honeytreasure Bees out, and the queen with them.

Let them live or die on their own.

The Vajra-Ants were only walking the same road now.

"I'm going to be a predator at the top of the food chain, and there's nothing that can tie me down and stop me getting there." Shen Cong watched the Vajra-Ant larvae still crawling in the nest, his face showing nothing.

No change of any kind could knock him off course.

It was not that his heart was harder than steel. He simply knew what he was living for. A man who knows what he is living for can endure any kind of life, and Shen Cong had long since gotten used to the life he had — people came and people went, and in the end there was only himself.

Getting into his world was very, very hard, whether you were a person or a thing.

Getting out was simple.

"Once the Vajra-Ants finish building and move the larvae and pupae and eggs out, I can convert the ant nest. Make it into a big laboratory."

Then he shook his head. "No good. There's already a laboratory in the second-deck compartment and it's enough for me. No sense building a bigger one… A modification workshop, then. The Primal Energy Fluctuation Method may get me to Beyond-Six-Star Talent before much longer, and the Vajra Fortress will grow again. There'll be…