The black steel war machine that had appeared out of nowhere sent a surge of relief through the fleeing evolved person.

“Help! Help me!”

Shen Cong didn’t move. He held the crossbow steady, tracking the nearest of the three mutated lizards, and waited. He needed a cleaner angle — and he needed a moment to read the situation.

The crossbow was underpowered for his current strength level at anything beyond close range. Its effective window was narrow. Better to let them close the distance than waste the shot. In pure reach, he could already outdistance it with a slingshot — which was exactly why he’d been thinking about the ten-shi war bow.

Female evolved person — injured. Running form suggests three to four bull strength. Recurve bow on her back, no visible firearms. Threat level: manageable.

Three mutated lizards. No observed toxin deployment. Capability estimate: roughly comparable to the woman, but three of them.

All three: clearable.

By the time he’d finished the assessment, they were inside 150 meters. Crossbow range.

He pulled the trigger.

Twang.

The Canine Tooth Arrow crossed the gap and punched into the nearest lizard’s eye socket. The creature screamed and rolled, thrashing — not dead, but the penetrating wound through the orbital cavity had grazed the brain. It wasn’t getting back up cleanly.

He reloaded in one practiced motion and fired again.

Second arrow. Second lizard. Throat, not eye — a heavy strike that punched through the neck and drove deep. The animal went down hard.

One left.

The evolved woman saw her opening. She spun and faced the last lizard directly, left fist coming up — the bone-palm mutation had been wrapped in metal strips in a crude but functional approximation of a knuckleduster-blade hybrid. Her fighting form was controlled. She knew what she was doing.

Shen Cong used the window to finish the first two lizards — clean kills, no wasted movement — then reholstered the crossbow and brought the QBZ-95A up, watching. He wasn’t going to intervene yet. He wanted to see how she moved, read her actual capability level, make a complete assessment.

He’d already decided he was taking her in for questioning.

She was wearing a uniform. The recurve bow was professional equipment, not scavenged hardware. This wasn’t a Li Junfu — a village kid who’d happened to mutate. This was someone with organizational backing. Almost certainly provincial garrison.

The fight wasn’t spectacular, but it was competent. Injured and outnumbered until thirty seconds ago, she’d kept the lizard contained with intelligent positioning, not raw power. Two minutes was enough.

Shen Cong opened the cab door and stepped out.

The Half-Activated Armor caught the light — dark silver, fitted, unmistakably not standard-issue anything. Before the last lizard could register the new arrival, he covered the distance in a single stride and drew the fang knife across its throat.

The evolved woman bent double, both hands on her knees, breathing hard.

“Thank you—”

“Disarm,” Shen Cong said. “Now.”

She looked up. “…What?”

“The recurve bow. The knuckleduster. Everything you’re carrying.”

Something shifted in her expression — confusion giving way to the beginning of indignation. “Which unit are you with? I’m with the White Cat Squad, Third Combat Sequence — my name is Li Aiping—”

He already had her by the throat.

Not violently — precisely. His fingers closed around her neck with the measured pressure of someone who knew exactly how much force was necessary and how much more was available. She went absolutely still. The math was obvious to both of them: a slight twist, and she had a problem she couldn’t recover from.

He stripped the recurve bow off her back one-handed and slung it over his own shoulder. The knuckleduster came off next. Then a methodical pat-down — efficient and impersonal — which turned up two palm-sized metal containers and a handful of unusual ammunition rounds.

Satisfied, he released her and stepped back.

“I need your cooperation,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you. But you will answer every question I ask, without conditions, and you will not attempt to run or signal anyone. Your combat capability is not significantly greater than one of my ants. Do you understand?”

As if on cue, Blackhead crawled around the side of Vajra and settled at Shen Cong’s feet.

Li Aiping stared at the 62-centimeter metallic ant. Then at the armor. Then she nodded, carefully.

He released her throat entirely.

She doubled over coughing.

By the time he’d retrieved both Canine Tooth Arrows from the lizard corpses and checked their condition, she’d recovered enough to look around — taking in Shen Cong, taking in Blackhead, still not having spotted the Antgod spread across Vajra’s roof above her.

“You’re not Hefei Garrison,” she said. “You came from outside?”

“I’m going to bind you and move us somewhere more defensible.”

“What? Comrade, I’m not the enemy — I’m an evolved person with the Hefei Garrison’s Third Combat Sequence, which means I’m military personnel. You saved my life. I’ll cooperate. There’s no need to—”

He produced the iron chain.

It was Vajra’s own amalgamated metal — she wasn’t breaking it, and if she tried, he’d know before she got anywhere. He secured her to the rearmost partition of the cargo compartment without further discussion, ignoring her continued explanation, and drove toward the shadowed valley he’d spotted near Fucha Mountain on the aerial survey. Good concealment, accessible, naturally sheltered. A workable position.

He’d planned to gather garrison intelligence by finding survivors in Feidong County. The garrison had been thoughtful enough to send one directly to him.

This was more efficient.

Engine off. Concealment position established.

Antgod and Blackhead deployed outside on perimeter watch. Shen Cong pulled up a seat across from Li Aiping and began.

“Name.”

“Can you untie me first?”

“Bound is safer.”

“…I told you already. Li Aiping. Anhui Provincial Garrison, Hefei Garrison, Third Combat Sequence, White Cat Squad.”

“What’s the Third Combat Sequence?”

She settled into it — answering with the flat efficiency of someone who’d given briefings before. “The provincial garrison divided all survivors into four sequences based on combat priority.

“First Sequence: First and Second Infantry Battalions, Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion, Independent Evolved Detachment, Independent Motor Battalion. Primary mission: defense against evolved beast incursions from the Huoshan Oasis direction.

“Second Sequence: Reserve Infantry Division’s First, Second, and Third Battalions, People’s Armed Police General Corps. Primary mission: defense of the Hefei perimeter against evolved beast incursions.

“Third Sequence: Police personnel, medical personnel, People’s Defense Militia organizations. Primary mission: garrison-assigned tasks — maintaining order in the garrison zone, medical operations, and external resource collection. That’s us.

“Fourth Sequence: Civilian population. Responsible for camp construction and infrastructure.”

Shen Cong processed the structure. Clean hierarchy, sensible functional division. He filed it and moved on.

“How does the garrison handle evolved people?”

“Depends on the type.” She shifted slightly against the chain. “Standard body-type evolved people — what the garrison calls mutants informally — are assigned to militia squads under the People’s Defense Department’s command. The White Cat Squad is one of those. Mutants who pass combat screening get assigned to the Independent Evolved Detachment, which answers directly to the garrison command. And then there are the special-category evolved people—” she looked at him with obvious implication, “—which is what you clearly are. Special-category evolved people are assigned to the Independent Motor Battalion.”

She paused. “The garrison takes evolved people seriously as a strategic resource. Relative to ordinary civilians, evolved people have significantly more operational freedom.”

(End of Chapter 134)