Just as expected.

When Hu Wei drove out of the gravity rig, his Talent had risen by 0.064H—not even 0.1H.

Shen Cong watched for three days running before he decided to go in himself. His Talent had just reached 6.402H when he went in.

He stayed in the gravity rig only three hours before coming out.

In those three hours he tested five methods: iron core fusion, Firestarter fragment irradiation, absorbing fire-spirit medium, the Primal Energy Fluctuation Method and frequency-hopping breathing. The last two did nothing at all. Between them the first three brought him 0.027H, raising his Talent to 6.429H.

Beyond that, he took out part of the monster truck's iron core and tried the Banner Body-Strengthening Method again.

It failed. Not the slightest bonus.

"It looks as though the Banner Body-Strengthening Method really can only be used in the early stages of evolution, and the golden window for it has passed... Maybe second-generation mutants could use it at some stage of growing up. Though there probably isn't one second-generation mutant in the new government who could get an ultimate-grade iron core to eat."

The earliest second-generation mutants were still organic in form.

The ones being born now were converging in many respects on their parents' stage of evolution. Which was to say that in the womb a second-generation mutant had already completed the metal-change of certain body parts, entering the Lv1 — Pure Gold Era early, or even the Lv2 — Pitch-Black Era.

Give it a while longer and a second-generation mutant would likely be born straight into the Lv3 — Burning Era.

Or even the Lv4 — Nebula Era.

Once the parents had completed the metal-life form, the child born would likely be metal life outright. Then again it was hard to say. Shen Cong had read the reports: the further the parents' evolution went, the smaller the chance of conception. Iron people who chose Colossus as their species gave up the possibility of children altogether.

In short, second-generation mutants were an enormous question at the macro level, and one Shen Cong did not much care about.