The command post was rudimentary but still ran on information — closed-circuit monitors, centralized coordination.
Shen Cong walked in without being stopped. His “Edge of Evolution” title hadn’t been formally conferred yet, but the rank of Colonel was already a fact. There were almost no one in the camp who outranked him — Zhao Weiliang held Major General, Zhu Li Senior Colonel, and then there was Shen Cong.
“What’s the situation?”
Zhao Weiliang and Zhu Li were both standing in front of the monitors. Zhu Li gestured at the screens. “Critical. The good news is it’s a solitary individual — not a colony. We can hold it down for now by throwing everything we have at it, casualties be damned. But that’s not a solution.”
“Do you have enough ammunition to kill it?”
“We’re out. Burned through everything dealing with the Violent Ape swarm. What’s being used right now is the last of it. Once it’s gone, we’re down to evolved people going in by hand.” Zhu Li looked directly at Shen Cong. “You’re the Edge of Evolution. The strongest evolved person in this camp. We need you in this fight.”
Shen Cong’s mouth tightened. “If throwing bodies at it won’t work, it’s better to evacuate early.”
“Evacuation presents its own problem — we’d be completely exposed. We need a group of evolved people to draw the Golden Jiao away first, give everyone else time to move. And even then, it doesn’t fix anything. The camp has far more people than vehicles. Any evacuation happens on foot. It would be painfully slow.”
“You’re seriously considering using people as bait?”
Commander Zhu Li was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want to spend human lives like ammunition. We’re not insects — we can’t replace our losses overnight. Since the camp was established, we haven’t gained a single person who wasn’t brought in from outside. Every life here is worth protecting.”
Shen Cong’s patience frayed. These leaders always circled the point. State the plan. If there’s a chance of success, act. If there isn’t, run. Wanting to fight but not daring to, wanting to run but not willing to let go — that’s just paralysis.
Zhao Weiliang, who had been silent, spoke. “The bomb vehicles.”
Shen Cong didn’t know the term. Zhao Weiliang didn’t explain it — he looked at Shen Cong directly. “I had hoped to give you more time. I believed you could grow into a true Edge of Evolution. But there’s no time left for that now. The short version: we’re going to send bomb vehicles on a suicide run against the Golden Jiao. What I’m asking is that at the critical moment — after they’ve done their damage — you go in and finish it. If we can’t even recover the body, this camp doesn’t survive what comes after.”
The Activity meat from a Heavyweight evolved beast was among the most potent enhancement material available. The entire carcass would be invaluable.
A staff officer filled in what Zhao Weiliang hadn’t: bomb vehicles meant exactly what it sounded like. With most conventional weapons corroded beyond use, the garrison had stripped out whatever usable explosive material remained and packed it into vehicles — crude, direct, final. Seventeen trucks available, not counting iron people’s bonded vehicles. Seventeen bomb vehicles.
Shen Cong ran the numbers quickly.
A full truck of explosives — if mixed with bone-gold fragments — would hit with enormous force. Real potential to inflict serious damage on the Golden Jiao.
And if the camp held, Vajra’s overhaul proceeded. Losing this opportunity meant not knowing when — or whether — he’d find another set of resources like this.
Thirty seconds of calculation. Then a decision.
“If the bomb vehicles can hurt it, I’ll go in. If they can’t, I won’t. There’s no point.”
“We’ve used bomb vehicles against Heavyweight-tier beasts before — they work. And if they don’t produce results, there’s nothing you could do anyway. We’d disperse and evacuate.”
Shen Cong nodded. “I’ll need an iron person to work with me — someone to get me close to the wounded Golden Jiao and draw its attention. Vajra’s mobility is too limited for this.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ll pick my own partner. Wang Yu. His crane boom gives me a height advantage — I can climb it and drop down for the kill.”
“Done. Someone notify Wang Yu and get him ready.”
Three minutes later, the forward defense line had taken heavy casualties. A number of evolved people among the troops were dead.
Seventeen bomb vehicles sat in a row, engines running, with seventeen volunteers behind the wheels. Shen Cong was already inside Wang Yu’s crane truck.
Wang Yu, for his part, looked at Shen Cong with an expression that could have stripped paint. He was an iron person who had grown accustomed to comfort and status — and he’d been assigned to the most dangerous task available, alongside the man who had choked him half to death two days ago and dropped him in the dirt like a dead dog. The humiliation hadn’t faded. The hatred hadn’t either.
Shen Cong gave no indication he noticed any of it. “Once the bomb vehicles hit the Golden Jiao and wound it, drive straight at it. Draw its attention as long as you can. I’ll jump down and go for the kill.”
“Understood.” Wang Yu’s voice carried exactly as much cooperation as the word required and nothing more.
Shen Cong didn’t respond to the tone. He had no interest in Wang Yu’s feelings.
In truth, he didn’t need anyone to distract the Golden Jiao. A wounded Heavyweight was a different calculation than a healthy one. But he did need a reason — a clean reason — to be alone in a vehicle with Wang Yu somewhere in the chaos.
He couldn’t afford to leave Wang Yu as a loose end. If the fight with the Golden Jiao left him injured, Wang Yu would come for him. The man’s hatred was not the kind that faded or found other outlets. It was the patient, accumulating kind.
The decision was already made. Shen Cong would do what he could to hold the camp together — but he would do it without leaving vulnerabilities behind him.
The crane truck waited at the outermost elevated platform. From there, the Golden Jiao was clearly visible — enormous, radiant, methodically destroying everything in its path.
The cab fell silent.
Both of them watched the seventeen bomb vehicles roll out in a line and drive toward the serpent. Seventeen living people, choosing to spend their lives. It was a grim and genuine thing to witness. People had given Shen Cong plenty of evidence for their worst qualities. But there were moments — like this one — that pointed somewhere else entirely.
If no one were trying to kill me, I would never kill anyone.
He said it to himself, quietly.
Everyone I’ve killed deserved it.
The seventeen vehicles closed on the Golden Jiao.
The defense forces expended their last ammunition in one concentrated volley — suppressing the serpent just enough, just long enough — then fell back in sequence, leaving only the bomb vehicles advancing across the ruined ground toward the Golden Jiao, its scales torn and bleeding from the sustained assault.
They detonated one by one.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Each truck became a red-black mushroom cloud. The concussive force tore outward in all directions, driving a storm of bone-gold core fragments deep into the Golden Jiao’s body.
The serpent writhed inside the smoke, a sound coming from it that wasn’t quite a hiss and wasn’t quite a scream. Even the Golden Jiao, for all its power, had been reduced to something barely clinging to life.
Shen Cong spoke. “Go.”
Wang Yu hesitated, sweat running down his face. “We don’t know how badly it’s hurt — maybe wait a little—”
Shen Cong didn’t say anything else.
He threw a single punch at Wang Yu’s head.
Wang Yu’s skull split. Blood hit the steering wheel. He was dead before he finished the sentence.
Shen Cong pulled the body aside, took the wheel, and floored it. The crane truck thundered forward toward the Golden Jiao.
Through the dissipating smoke, he could see them — Activity cores, dozens of them, driven deep into the serpent’s body by the force of the blasts. Wounds like that didn’t leave a Heavyweight standing. The Golden Jiao was either dead or so close to it that the difference didn’t matter.
Time to finish it.
(End of Chapter 157)