Li Junfu had Heidou. Shen Cong had Blackhead and the Antgod. When he thought about it that way, he felt fine.

He’d saved Li Junfu’s life, and he intended to run a quick field assessment on the mutated boar’s carcass before leaving the meat with Xiao Li’gang Village’s survivors as food — the trade, in exchange, being exclusive rights to the persimmon tree.

The Wild Boar King, as he decided to call it, looked the part: enormous frame, dense and aggressive. The numbers, though, were a step down from the Bull Demon King. Lv0.556, Activity Value 0.315H, Talent 0.567H. He harvested the two massive tusks. They were longer and straighter than the Tumour-Pig’s — the wild boar versus domestic pig difference, probably. Good material for javelins and arrowheads.

“Big bro, this is your truck? That’s incredible—” Li Junfu had clapped eyes on Vajra and immediately moved to touch it.

Shen Cong swung the QBZ-95A up and put the barrel on him. “You want to keep your hands, keep them off my truck.”

“Ha, okay, okay, no need to be like that—”

Tat-tat-tat.

Shen Cong pulled the trigger. Three rounds cut past Li Junfu’s forehead close enough to feel the air move, punching into a rock behind him. Li Junfu went white, nearly lost control of his bladder on the spot, and arrived very quickly at the understanding that the helmeted figure in front of him was not someone you got familiar with.

Heidou lunged toward Shen Cong, barking hard, putting itself between them.

“Control your dog,” Shen Cong said. “One more sound out of it and it’s hotpot.”

Li Junfu grabbed Heidou’s scruff and pulled him back, not saying another word.

Good. Quiet.

Shen Cong loaded the bird eggs and the boar tusks into Vajra, picked up a carry bag, and let Li Junfu lead him to the persimmon tree.

It was a decent walk from Miaogang Township, the tree tucked in among several ordinary specimens in a way that made it easy to miss. Worth finding, though — the branches were heavy with fruit. Thirty-odd persimmons in total, spread across three stages: green, yellow, and red. Mostly green and yellow. Only two had gone fully red.

“Green ones aren’t ripe yet, yellow ones are close, red ones are ready,” Li Junfu explained. “I’d just picked ten red ones when the boar came back. That bundle over there — that’s what I dropped.”

“You’ve eaten one?”

“Not yet.”

“Get them all down. Green, yellow, red, everything.”

Li Junfu picked the tree clean without argument and handed the bag to Shen Cong. The persimmons were definitely Activity fruit — the resonance coming off them was strong and clear. He ran a quick assessment on the tree itself: Lv0.78, Activity Value 0.333H, Talent 0.427H. Worth noting. A solid source.

“Is this the only persimmon tree nearby?”

“Yes, big bro.”

Shen Cong nodded and turned back toward the highway.

Li Junfu hurried to catch up, hesitating for a moment before speaking. “Big bro — you came from outside. We’ve been stuck here for over four months now. Can you tell me what it’s like out there? And is there any chance we could get a ride somewhere with actual people?”

“My truck doesn’t carry passengers.” Shen Cong thought for a moment. “There’s a survivor camp in the Fenghuang Mountain area in Juchao District. Hefei — I don’t have reliable information on that yet.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Hefei.”

“We don’t need a ride. Could we just follow behind?”

“No.”

“Then… big bro, do you have a cigarette? I haven’t had one in months, I’m going out of my mind here — just one, come on—”

Shen Cong gave him a flat look. “No.”

There were cigarettes in Vajra. Cigarettes kept for years, same as alcohol — better than currency for trading in Hefei when he got there. But Li Junfu and the few dozen village survivors behind him had nothing worth trading for, and handing out supplies to everyone who asked would end exactly one way. Giving him the Wild Boar King’s carcass was already generous by any measure.

He checked his watch and made a decision.

“It’s getting late and I need to move. If your group wants to leave Miaogang, now is the best time — I’ve cleared the evolved beasts along the highway heading east. Follow the expressway east until you reach the Fenghuang Mountain vineyard camp in Juchao District. There are evolved people there, and a large population of ordinary survivors.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He climbed into Vajra, pulled out of Miaogang, returned to the highway, and drove west into Feidong County.

Bright sun. The matte black machine cut through the silence of the road.

The landscape had changed. Jian Mountain and Fucha Mountain were visible ahead. Trees and grass grew in scattered patches along the verges — thin, but real. Birds crossed the sky above without diving. A mutated cat-type creature scrambled off the roadway as Vajra approached.

Off to one side, a large snake had coiled around something that looked like a Fang Wolf variant and was working on swallowing it.

None of them came at him. Vajra had plenty of Bull Demon King meat in stores, and Shen Cong had no reason to engage anything that wasn’t engaging him. He was adapting to the abundant zone quickly — the ecology here was richer and more active than the barren zone in every direction, exactly as he’d expected. Which made him wonder, in passing, what the Oasis must look like.

Five minutes later the abundant zone’s scenery hit a wall.

Another bombed section of highway.

He stopped, ran threat assessment, then began the work of leveling the roadbed. While the DJI was up at 150 meters, sweeping the forward terrain, he caught his first sight of Feidong County’s ruined skyline on the horizon — a smudged outline through the haze. Green spread across the image in every direction. Evolved beasts were visible in the footage: moving between cover, hunting, fleeing.

Predation. Survival. Playing out continuously, everywhere.

No signs of human habitation.

Shen Cong looked at the footage for a long time. He didn’t know whether the absence meant the provincial garrison had abandoned Feidong entirely, or just that survivors had learned to stay hidden. Either way — he was at Hefei’s doorstep now.

He needed to enter the garrison’s sphere of influence carefully. Before any contact, he needed enough information on how they operated — how they treated ordinary survivors, how they treated evolved people, and specifically how they treated iron people. That last point wasn’t academic. An iron person could be amalgamated. That made Vajra — and by extension, him — an extraordinary prize for anyone with the knowledge and the means to take it.

He was arriving with the most valuable thing in this part of the world, and he needed to act accordingly.

The plan was already forming. Before he had any guarantees of safety, he’d find somewhere to cache Vajra — somewhere hidden, somewhere defensible — and proceed on foot until he understood enough to bring the truck in safely. In this world, he trusted no one. Vajra was the one constant: bonded to him at the level of shared life, always his anchor.

He was still working through the details when a pulse came through the bond — subtle, unmistakable.

Shen Cong’s eyebrows went up sharply.

The old-mature larva. The one that had been sealed inside its cocoon in Compartment 11, silent for weeks, its Activity radiation flickering and unstable.

It had just sent him a signal through the bond.

It was waking up.

The Antgod was emerging.

(End of Chapter 130)