Crimson Mangoes were an Activity fruit with documented physical enhancement properties, found growing in a mango grove along the Forest Avenue area near Zaoshuying Industrial Park in Feixi County. The trees themselves were ornamental varieties — planted originally as decorative specimens inside the industrial compound. Hefei’s climate had always been too far north for commercial mango cultivation; under normal conditions these particular trees would never have fruited.

The apocalypse had changed that. The grove had mutated, and the trees that couldn’t fruit before now produced deep crimson fruit in abundance.

Around the grove’s perimeter: White Bone Beetles in force. A Lightweight-tier colony-class evolved beast, confirmed venomous. Previous garrison collection attempts had each ended with substantial casualties — the beetles swarmed any approach, the venom was debilitating without being immediately lethal, and the combination of sustained attack volume and toxic exposure made the zone unworkable without extraordinary protective equipment. Eventually the camp had stopped sending teams.

Shen Cong was not particularly worried about beetles.

His Activity Value was 1.281H. Individual beetles were individually fragile — a single stomp sufficed, and the Dog-Croc Warhammer cleared clusters without effort. His movement speed made retreat trivially available if needed. The armor’s Activity reserves could absorb the beetles’ venom output for an estimated four to five hours before meaningful degradation, which was far more time than he required.

The actual risk factor was Zifeng Mountain, a few kilometers further up Forest Avenue. A Heavyweight-tier evolved beast called the Swiftclaw Leopard had established its range there — the name was accurate, its movement speed reportedly exceeding what the unaided eye could track, individual body mass at around elephant scale. It occasionally ranged into Hefei’s urban districts. He would need to watch for it.

One hour of driving brought Vajra to Zaoshuying Industrial Park. He ran a drone sweep of the surrounding area, confirmed no significant threats in the immediate vicinity, and moved toward the grove.

Crimson Mangoes hung in clusters from every branch — a solid mass of red visible even from the approach. The yield was substantial.

He reversed Vajra into the narrow access path between the ruins, backed toward the grove, and stopped well short of twenty meters from the tree line.

The grove was still. Then it wasn’t.

A tremor moved through the canopy as though a wind had hit all the trees simultaneously — except there was no wind. Shapes emerged from the rubble, from the branches, from the gaps in the industrial ruins: White Bone Beetles, each one the size of a pot lid, pushing out into the open by the dozens. Every tree had at least one. The aggregate count was significant.

The beetles resembled longhorn beetles in body plan — the Research Institute’s working hypothesis was mutation from Asian longhorn beetles, body form widened and scaled up considerably. The white dot pattern distributed across their carapaces, when the eye assembled the image, suggested exposed bone. Hence the name.

Shen Cong opened the roof hatch, climbed out, closed it behind him, and leaned back down to give Blackhead a quick instruction: “Anything that gets inside — kill it. Bite or sting, your choice.”

Then the beetles hit the vehicle in a wave, and he jumped.

He landed on the leading edge of the swarm, using the beetles themselves as stepping stones — each one that took his weight compressed and burst, the individual carapaces structurally inadequate for the force his legs delivered. He moved fast, running across the mass of them toward the tree line, the ground under his feet producing a continuous wet crunching that he stopped registering after the first few meters.

The venom couldn’t get through the Half-Activated Armor at any meaningful rate. The activity cost of sustained exposure was finite and manageable. There was effectively nothing the beetles could do to stop him.

He hit the first tree at speed and started harvesting.

One minute per basket. He’d fill the container, sprint back across the beetle mass, climb to Vajra’s roof, open the hatch, dump the fruit inside, sweep the clustering beetles back with the Warhammer, close the hatch, reattach the basket, and go again.

Sprint out. Fill. Sprint back. Dump. Clear. Repeat.

He ran the circuit more than a dozen times before Vajra’s emptied cargo space was packed full, with half the grove still unharvested.

The armor’s Activity reserves and Vajra’s had both taken meaningful hits from the sustained contact exposure. He made the call: enough for today. Return to camp, replenish, come back tomorrow for the rest.

He got inside, cleared the three beetles that had made it in past Blackhead, started the engine, and drove hard toward Forest Avenue.

The beetles pursued for two or three kilometers before abandoning the chase and turning back toward the grove.

Total elapsed time: three hours, most of it driving.

He arrived back at the Mingfa Camp perimeter without Li Aiping in sight and didn’t bother unloading. He got out the next Ape King tusk and kept working.

The lower jaw tusks were yielding a complete bone-gold weapons set:

Ape King javelins. Ape King war hammer. Ape King long blade. Ape King dagger. Ape King pellets.

A single complete lower tusk had enough material for the full set with offcuts remaining. The offcuts he was planning to have worked into throwing darts, knuckleduster fittings, and — if the Research Institute had the machining capability — bone-gold firearm rounds. Standard ammunition had stopped being effective against Lightweight-tier and above; replacing the bullet heads with bone-gold material was the logical next step, and the precision work required for that was beyond what he could do alone.

He’d approach the Institute about it when the timing was right.

With the Ape King’s Activity cores, everything I was using before is obsolete. The tier gap is too wide to make it worth carrying the old equipment.

The Dog-Croc Warhammer had killed the Violent Ape King. An Ape King war hammer in his hands would be another step beyond that. Bone-gold weapons were the primary mechanism by which relatively less physically capable humans maintained parity against significantly stronger evolved beasts — the leverage of quality materials compensating for the gap in raw biological development.

The same logic applied in reverse: evolved beasts that learned to weaponize their Activity cores would become dramatically more dangerous. Both sides were running the same race, with different advantages.

Evolution was a competition. Humans against evolved beasts, evolved beasts against each other. The human side had intelligence, accumulated civilization, and technology compensating for physical disadvantage. So far that compensation was holding. Whether it would continue to hold was an open question.

Li Aiping arrived at a trot, slightly out of breath.

“You’re back already — did the White Bone Beetles stop you? Do you need me to swap the task assignment for something else?”

Shen Cong climbed down from the cab and walked to the rear cargo door.

He opened it.

A cascade of crimson fruit poured out — rolling across the ground, spreading across the cleared space in a wide scatter, dozens and then more dozens of them piling up against the rubble perimeter.

Li Aiping stared.

The two sentries at the camp’s nearest guard post stared.

The taller of the two spoke first, keeping his voice low. “That’s — those are Crimson Mangoes. He’s got a whole cargo hold of Crimson Mangoes. Did he strip the entire grove? Did the White Bone Beetles just not show up today or something?”

The stockier one shook his head. “Can’t be. The Motor Battalion sent a squad to that grove last week. They got nothing, came back with multiple injuries — three of them are still in the field hospital. The venom isn’t lethal but you’re not walking it off in under two weeks.”

“And this new iron person goes out and comes back in under three hours. Including drive time. He basically went on a cargo run.”

“He’s supposed to be very strong. Commander Zhao came out personally to bring him in.”

“How strong?”

“Don’t know exactly. Stronger than anyone else in the camp, supposedly. He’s the one who killed the Violent Ape King.”

“Didn’t we injure it first? He just finished it off.”

“Sure. But a wounded Violent Ape King — could you take that solo?”

The taller sentry thought about a three-story-tall baboon-adjacent creature with silver tusks and a history of eating survivors. He shuddered with visible commitment. “I… not quite.”

“Right. So. Strong person is strong. Keep your head down around him and don’t start anything. Word is he has his own way of operating, won’t even come into the camp proper, doesn’t particularly care about people’s feelings.”

“I’m not even Bronze tier yet, I’m completely unranked. Why would I pick a fight with a Silver-tier iron person…” The sentry’s eyes tracked the continuing flow of fruit rolling across the ground. “That’s got to be at least ten standard units. Twenty points each. He just picked up two hundred points in a morning — is he going for Gold tier?”

“Not our problem. More relevantly — some of that will get distributed. You know what I haven’t eaten in two months?”

The stockier sentry’s expression went somewhere private and nostalgic. “Crimson Mangoes.”

“Exactly. Be nice to Comrade Hu Ge.”

(End of Chapter 149)