Old-world science had found that an octopus's arms held secondary brains. But exactly where in the arm they sat, Shen Cong didn't know. He had never dissected an octopus.

The common octopus beast's severed arm lying on the ground now was about two-thirds the length of a whole arm.

Brother Dao wanted to see where the secondary brain was.

So did Shen Cong, so he simply started dissecting it on the spot. The Qilin Arms, their systems refined again and again, worked like his own hands now, nimble and very steady.

However thick the arm's skin-gold, it was no match for a Locust-Plus Mushroom-Bug Sword.

One light stroke of the sword peeled off the outer layer of skin-gold, then the muscle. Once the muscle was opened up, the blood vessels, the spirit-fire and the other structures lay bare.

"See a brain yet?" Brother Dao circled the arm, unable to make any sense of what it was looking at.

Shen Cong analyzed it on his own. "The spirit-fire system is fully kindled and spread all through the arm, especially around the suckers, where the spirit-fire is very rich. Overall, the density of spirit-fire in the common octopus beast's arm is far higher than in an ordinary evolved beast's body tissue. As for the secondary brain..."

He couldn't tell right away whether there was a secondary brain.

All he could see was a long, strip-shaped piece of special spirit-fire system, starting at the cut and running four or five meters in: brain-fire.

This long strip was brain-fire, split off from the spirit-fire, with a Superbrain's properties but not a Superbrain.

Brain-fire supported the intelligence of some lower animals. In Blackhead, two nerve clusters had evolved into brain-fire.

"So it looks like a mutant octopus can't evolve nine brains at once. Only one main brain evolves into a Superbrain, and the other secondary brains all evolve into brain-fire."

The Qilin Arms didn't stop while he thought.

They cut the brain-fire straight out of the arm. It was semitransparent, like an animal's sinew. Once it was out, Shen Cong took it back to the…