Platform Three. The Independent Motor Battalion’s home base.
A small farewell dinner was underway.
Fu Ran and his wife Mao Xiaoying. Li Jun and his wife Du Yafang. Wei Siran, Luo Jintao, Song Pingning, Yu Daxian and his girlfriend Lu Xiuli. Aside from the partners staying behind, everyone at the table was part of the scouting team heading for Chuzhou. A few other iron people and mutants had come to see them off.
“Commander, I’ll be honest — I really don’t want you going on this one.” One of the iron people shook his head. “You and your wife have only been married two months. I’m worried your knees will give out on the road.”
Fu Ran laughed. “After me, I’m the second strongest in camp — only Hu Ge has me beat. If I don’t go, who does? The two previous teams that went to Chuzhou never came back. The road isn’t safe. My vehicle has good off-road capability — if we can’t fight our way through, at least we can run.” He glanced across the table. “I want to see Chuzhou for myself anyway. See if there’s something better out there. Xiao Ying and I are thinking about having a child, and we can’t bring a kid into the world here — not when everything could collapse tomorrow. Li Jun, same for you, right?”
Li Jun nodded, his expression heavier than Fu Ran’s easy grin. “Yeah. Want to find somewhere better for the birth.”
Du Yafang — visibly at least nine months along — cut in quietly: “If he wasn’t already on his way, we wouldn’t have tried. Look at what we’re living in. Every time Old Li leaves for a mission, I can’t help thinking it would have been easier if I’d just — if it had ended earlier. For both of us.”
Li Jun shot her a look. “Stop that. I’m a mutant, I can handle myself. Don’t spend all day in your head like that.”
“Sister Du, come on.” Luo Jintao leaned over with a grin. “You’re carrying the first baby born in this camp — maybe the first baby born in the whole apocalypse. Half the camp is fighting over who gets to be the godparent. Commander Zhao and Commander Zhu both come to check on you personally. That kid is going to be very well looked after.”
After the meteor storm, the Mingfa Camp had seen its share of new relationships form among survivors who’d arrived alone. A married couple who’d stayed together through all of it — and were expecting — was genuinely uncommon. An ordinary pregnant woman had almost no chance of surviving a month of unbroken disaster. Du Yafang had, and the camp had noticed. People were invested in the child she was carrying.
Du Yafang herself didn’t feel the investment. No ammunition left. Evolved beasts at the gates. A handful of evolved people with bone-gold weapons standing between thirty thousand survivors and whatever came next. This was why the migration vote had passed — not because Chuzhou was a guaranteed answer, but because staying here had stopped feeling survivable.
Two previous scouting teams had gone out and never reported back. Two nuclear detonations had come from the direction of Nanjing. Nobody knew what was actually out there. A significant portion of the camp’s population had voted with their feet on the relocation question — not at the leadership meeting, but in their own minds, preferring the misery they knew.
Du Yafang was one of those people. She’d considered ending things more than once.
Li Jun had signed up for the scouting team to give her something to hold onto. If he came back with good news, a better life was possible. If he came back with nothing — then nothing it was. If he didn’t come back at all, the answer was clear enough.
He couldn’t wait for someone else to make the future happen anymore.
Fu Ran raised his cup. “Whatever our reasons for being here — we all chose to go. So let’s drink to it. Tea standing in for liquor. To a clean run and good news when we get back.”
“To a clean run.”
The scouting team left before most of the camp was awake the next morning.
Before departing, Zhu Li came to Shen Cong and borrowed two Ape King Javelins, an Ape King Long Blade, and an Ape King War Hammer for the team to carry.
Shen Cong, who operated almost exclusively on the transaction principle, agreed without negotiation.
He wanted to know, too. Whether Chuzhou still had forces stationed there. Whether there was a larger survivor organization operating near Nanjing. If there was, then once Vajra 2.0 was finished, Nanjing was the next destination.
More answers about Activity. More evolutionary opportunity.
The welding started.
Sparks and the acrid smell of hot metal, the sound of torch work carrying across the platform in irregular bursts. Vajra was being taken apart and rebuilt.
The overhaul was divided between two work streams. Shen Cong handled the primary structural work himself — the extension and reshaping of Vajra’s core frame. The Automotive Lab team handled component fabrication and welding assembly.
As Vajra came apart piece by piece, something in Shen Cong’s chest came apart with it.
The sense of exposure was enormous. Vajra was his life-partner in the most literal sense — bonded to him at the Activity level, the physical expression of his security, the thing that had kept him alive since before the world ended. Watching it disassembled was physically distressing in a way he couldn’t fully reason away. He pressed through it with deliberate effort, keeping his mind on the plan, refusing to follow the anxiety wherever it wanted to lead.
He’d already given Li Aiping instructions: no evolved person was to come within a hundred meters of Vajra while the work was ongoing. He couldn’t guarantee his own self-control if that line was crossed.
“That’s persecution complex, active and acute. Don’t provoke him.”
A former psychologist in the camp had identified it plainly.
So no one provoked him. Zhao Weiliang issued a standing order: all evolved people were to keep clear of the platform where Vajra was being overhauled. Ordinary Research Institute personnel could approach — with Shen Cong’s permission — and took the opportunity to record measurements. The Research Institute badly wanted data on iron person vehicle modification. Every iron person in camp eventually needed an overhaul, and a blueprint for how to do it correctly was valuable.
Because iron people didn’t evolve by eating meat and growing strong. That was part of it. But without the right vehicle — the right structural upgrades — the Activity physics didn’t work in their favor.
The alternative was simply amalgamating as much raw metal as possible and pushing toward Lv1 fast. The problem was the Siphon Phenomenon. And the deeper problem: if Activity solidified at Lv1 and the iron person lost their amalgamation and extension abilities in the process, any vehicle structure locked in at that point became permanent. Amalgamate a rough pile of steel and reach Lv1 with that — and you might be stuck with a rough pile of steel forever. Several garrison iron people had died in siphon events pursuing exactly that shortcut. Shen Cong had nearly died in one himself.
The only real path was to keep body and vehicle in synchronized progression, upgrading the structure as capability expanded.
The camp’s ordinary evolved people improved their bodies extraordinarily slowly compared to Shen Cong. He absorbed a single Activity fruit and felt the enhancement clearly. Others might consume dozens for a marginal effect. The Research Institute had no explanation for the gap. Shen Cong had no explanation either.
“How can one person’s rate be that much faster than everyone else’s?”
“There has to be something we’re not seeing.”
Several researchers quietly hoped the overhaul would reveal something. It didn’t. Whatever Shen Cong’s advantage was, it wasn’t visible in the structural components.
The overhaul proceeded by section rather than full disassembly — taking Vajra entirely apart would effectively kill it, causing catastrophic Activity loss. Instead each portion was modified in sequence, keeping the vehicle intact as a whole at every stage.
The chassis and front end went first.
The original 3.5-meter chassis width, with the tires removed, was extended to 5.5 meters. Including the body panels extending beyond the frame, the vehicle’s maximum width reached 6.5 meters — equivalent to two highway lanes side by side.
Slightly narrower, just barely, than the notorious “Transit Elevated Bus” that had briefly captured international attention in the years before the apocalypse.
(End of Chapter 162)