The entrance to the Shattered Jaw cave was a jagged tear in the mountain, exhaling a draft of air that smelled of wet fur and decaying meat.
Jiang Chen stood on a limestone ridge about fifty meters from the cave mouth, looking down. In his hands rested the newly fabricated M32 Multi-Shot Grenade Launcher. It was a heavy, ugly cylinder of matte-black steel with a revolving drum magazine.
"This is madness," Old Wu whispered, crouching beside him. "Your Highness, that is a Spirit Beast. Smoke? Spears? You might as well throw pebbles at a landslide."
"Smoke is universal, Old Wu," Jiang Chen replied, flipping up the leaf sight on the launcher. "Carbon monoxide doesn't care about your cultivation rank."
He looked down at the canyon floor. The seventeen bandits, now stripped of their arrogance, were piling green pine branches and wet moss in front of the cave entrance. They looked terrified, glancing back at the Prince on the ridge, then at the dark cave.
"Light it!" Jiang Chen ordered, his voice amplified by his suit.
A bandit threw a torch onto the pile. The dry kindling at the bottom caught instantly, igniting the wet pine on top. Thick, white, acrid smoke began to billow upwards.
"Fans!" Jiang Chen commanded.
The bandits picked up large sheets of bark and leather they had scavenged, fanning the smoke frantically into the cave mouth. The wind was on their side. The mountain drafted the smoke inward, choking the throat of the cavern.
For a minute, there was only the crackle of fire.
Then, the mountain shook.
ROAAAAAR!
A sound like grinding tectonic plates erupted from the deep. The bandits dropped their fans and scrambled back, screaming.
"Hold your ground!" Jiang Chen shouted. "Formation!"
They didn't hold. As the smoke ballooned outward, a massive shape tore through the fire.
The Iron-Hide Bear was a nightmare of muscle and stone. It stood twelve feet tall on its hind legs. Its fur wasn't just hair; it was matted with rock and hardened clay, forming a natural plate armor that shimmered with a dull, yellow light—Earth Qi.
It roared again, and the ground rippled. Spikes of stone shot up from the earth, impaling two bandits instantly.
"Monster! Run!"
The line broke. The bandits scattered like rats.
The bear dropped to all fours, charging the fleeing men. It moved with terrifying speed for something so heavy, a boulder gaining momentum.
"Target Lock," Jiang Chen whispered.
[Target Acquired: Iron-Hide Bear.][Distance: 42 meters.][Wind: 3 m/s North.][Armor Analysis: Earth Qi Barrier detected. Thickness: 40mm.]
Jiang Chen didn't panic. The bandits were bait. Their job was to make the bear move in a straight line.
He squeezed the trigger.
THUMP.
The launcher bucked against his shoulder. A 40mm grenade arched through the air, a dark blur against the grey sky.
The bear didn't even look up. It was focused on crushing a bandit who had tripped in the snow.
BOOM.
The High-Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) round struck the bear's right shoulder.
The explosion wasn't a fireball; it was a sharp, concussive crack. The shaped charge, designed to punch through tank armor, slammed a jet of superheated copper into the beast's rocky hide.
The bear shrieked—a sound of genuine pain. The explosion shattered the Earth Qi armor on its shoulder, blasting away the rock-fur and exposing the red, wet meat underneath. The force knocked the two-ton beast sideways, stumbling it into the snow.
"It... It bleeds!" Old Wu gasped.
The bear scrambled up, eyes burning with red fury. It looked around, trying to find the source of the pain. It spotted Jiang Chen on the ridge.
ROAR!
The bear slammed its paws into the ground. A wave of earth magic surged up the cliffside, causing the limestone ledge to crack.
"Correction," Jiang Chen noted calmly. "It is angry."
He adjusted his aim.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Three rounds in rapid succession.
The first hit the ground in front of the bear, exploding and spraying shrapnel into its underbelly. The second hit its chest, cracking the heavy bone plate protecting its heart. The third missed slightly, hitting the rock wall behind it, raining boulders down on its back.
The bear was slowing down. The "Iron Hide" was pitted and cratered. Blood, thick and dark, poured from the shoulder wound. It tried to summon more Earth Qi, the yellow light flickering around its paws, but the trauma was too severe. Its concentration was broken.
"Finish it," Jiang Chen muttered.
He aimed for the head.
THUMP.
The grenade spiraled perfectly. It struck the bear directly on the snout.
CRACK-BOOM.
The head of the beast snapped back. The explosion didn't take the head off, but the shockwave liquefied the brain matter inside the skull. The Earth Qi faded instantly.
The Iron-Hide Bear swayed. It took one step, then another. And then, like a collapsing tower, it fell forward.
THUD.
The ground shook one last time.
Silence returned to the canyon, broken only by the crackling of the smoke fire and the whimpers of the surviving bandits.
Jiang Chen stood up and ejected the spent casings from the drum. Clink, clink, clink.
[Combat Encounter Resolved.][Target Eliminated: Rank 2 Spirit Beast.][Experience Gained: Minimal (Host killed via superior technology).][Loot Available: Rank 2 Earth Core, Iron-Hide Pelt, Gallbladder.]
He walked down the slope, the smoking grenade launcher resting on his shoulder. The bandits who were still alive looked at him with a terror that far exceeded what they felt for the bear.
They looked at him not as a Prince, but as a God of Thunder.
Jiang Chen ignored them. He walked past the bear's massive corpse and stepped into the clearing smoke of the cave.
He raised his hand, activating the scanner.
[Spirit Vein Detected.][Purity: Medium-High.][Estimated Output: Infinite (with proper infrastructure).]
Jiang Chen smiled.
"Old Wu," he called out without looking back.
"Y-Yes, Lord?" Old Wu scrambled down the rocks.
"Butcher the bear. Meat for the workers. Keep the pelt and the core for me."
Jiang Chen looked into the dark depths of the cave, where a faint blue light pulsed in the walls.
"And tell the men to start digging. We are building a reactor."