“Dragon Hornets. In Hefei.”

The camp’s leadership had already been carrying the weight of too much bad news. This darkened their faces further. The Violent Ape swarm. The Golden Jiao. And now Dragon Hornets ranging a hundred kilometers from the Oasis to hunt in Hefei’s urban district. The threat signals were compounding.

“We accelerate the Shushan excavation and underground shelter construction. That’s the only answer.”

How the camp handled it was their problem. Shen Cong moved on.

The day’s haul converted to 541 points. Added to his previous 759, his total reached 1,300. He remained the camp’s leading point-holder at Silver tier.

“Where did you go yesterday? You didn’t come back to camp.” Li Aiping returned with the transaction paperwork and asked in the same breath.

Shen Cong didn’t answer. He was already busy.

He’d called in Research Institute staff to help establish the onboard laboratory. This space would be his field analysis station for future solo operations — specimen examination, bone-gold research, material testing. From the camp’s salvage pile, he’d had a full set of laboratory equipment restored to working condition.

Glass instruments, measurement and calibration tools, environmental sensors, optical equipment, magnification systems, material testing devices, chromatography instruments, reaction vessels, gas detectors — enough to fill several shelves, some of it advanced enough that he didn’t recognize all the names. The Research Institute staff had written a comprehensive reference manual for the complete collection.

Whether he’d use all of it immediately was beside the point. Having it was the point. Science was the primary productive force. Eventually, the evolution of both Great Vajra and Shen Cong would need scientific frameworks to guide it — and in this new world, the old frameworks only partially applied. Mapping the new ones required tools.

While the Research Institute team handled the laboratory, Shen Cong built out the supply room.

The butchery area already housed a large cold storage unit, powered by a dedicated solar panel array on one side of Great Vajra — enough capacity to keep meat fresh. The kitchen had its own refrigeration. The supply room, therefore, held no food. Only equipment and weapons.

Precision electronic components, individually sealed and catalogued on shelves. Machined mechanical parts, secured in organized batches. Diesel, gasoline, lubricants, engine oil, nitrogen cylinders, oxygen cylinders — all neatly stacked. Several battery arrays connected to the solar panel system.

When sunlight was abundant, excess power went into storage. A full charge sustained Great Vajra’s normal operations for fifteen days.

He’d thought hard about the energy problem. This was the best answer he had for now.

Run missions. Earn points. Return. Work on Great Vajra.

That was the rhythm of the days that followed.

During that stretch, a large creature attacked a camp work crew digging fortification trenches — something enormous, resembling a vulture, wingspan stretching twenty meters. It killed several workers before the garrison’s evolved people acknowledged they couldn’t handle it and called for Shen Cong.

He drove Great Vajra over.

He tried the roof-mounted twenty-dan crossbow first. Three shots.

All three missed.

He put the crossbow away and went in with the Ape King War Hammer. Several exchanges — Shen Cong took a few hits from the creature’s talons through the Half-Activated Armor while looking for the opening he needed. When the creature lunged with its beak, he met the attack head-on and drove the war hammer into its skull from the front.

The skull caved. The fight ended.

The creature’s data: Lv0.692, Activity Value 1.334H, Talent 1.928H. Designated the Giant Condor. Weaker in Talent and raw power than the Violent Ape King, but flight capability elevated its combat difficulty significantly. The Huoxue classified it as near-Heavyweight.

Reward: 200 points.

The Activity core — the creature’s massive beak — went to Shen Cong.

Along with the material reward came something he had considerably less use for: reputation.

The previous kills — the Violent Ape King and the Golden Jiao — had both come against critically wounded opponents. This was different. A near-Heavyweight evolved beast at full health, engaged directly. A clean win.

The survivors who’d watched it found something in the image that they needed — something about human strength, about the possibility of mastery over a world that had been trying to kill them. The “Edge of Evolution” title stopped being ceremonial and became something people believed. To most of the camp, Hu Ge had become the strongest human evolved person alive. Their guardian.

The strongest. A guardian.

He was at 1.602H Activity Value now. Twelve-bull strength. Far beyond the eight-bull capability he’d brought to the wounded Ape King fight. A healthy Violent Ape King, facing him today, would lose. A flying Giant Condor was not a meaningful obstacle.

Shen Cong shook his head. The reputation sat badly with him.

The tallest tree catches the wind. I don’t want to be the face of anything — that invites schemes I can’t see coming. And maybe some people are deliberately building me up — raising expectations, making me feel invincible, so that when something truly dangerous arrives, they can manipulate me into fighting it. I have to stay clear-eyed. Know exactly where I’m strong and where I’m not. That’s how you avoid traps that are invisible until you’re already in them.

As soon as Great Vajra’s first-phase overhaul was declared complete, Shen Cong extended the exclusion zone: twenty meters. No one within twenty meters of the vehicle. That included Li Aiping.

The Vajra Militia Squad still existed in name. Two members: Squad Leader Shen Cong handled all operations, Squad Member Li Aiping handled all logistics. During handoffs she came as close as the goods required. In ordinary conversation, she stayed at twenty meters — the moment she drifted closer, his tone went cold.

“We met on September 17th. Today is October 17th. One month, Squad Leader Hu.” Li Aiping was sitting on a stone bench at the required distance, calling across to where Shen Cong was methodically working on a rough section of Great Vajra’s armor plating. “I can’t come within twenty meters of you, and we’re supposedly squad mates. I can’t get over it. Truly. One month and this is where we are.”

He didn’t particularly like this woman.

Too much talking. More specifically, too much saying nothing.

But he rarely chose his attitude based on personal preference. He assessed people on one axis: dangerous or not, threat or not. Li Aiping didn’t register as dangerous. So despite finding her exhausting, he’d maintained the squad arrangement for a month and intended to continue unless something changed.

“Squad Leader — the Dadon Moat finishes construction tomorrow. The Nanfei Moat completes next week. The Sili Moat the week after. By the end of this month, the Mingfa Camp will have a complete moat system. And word is the camp will undergo a formal reorganization — official establishment of a new city.”

He didn’t respond to her.

But he knew about it. He’d heard it in the meetings.

The Mingfa Camp’s geography was genuinely favorable. It sat between Dongpu Reservoir and Dafangyong Reservoir — the two closest points only a kilometer apart, which became an excellent defensive channel with minimal excavation. The Nanfei River ran south of the camp, the Sili River to the east. Deepen and widen them, and the camp’s perimeter became a complete moat system: Dongpu Reservoir, the Dadon Moat, Dafangyong Reservoir, the Sili Moat, the Nanfei Moat — a closed ring of water barriers that would stop most ground-based evolved beasts.

Ten square kilometers enclosed.

Flying threats: underground shelters were the answer. Flooding: Shushan’s hollowed-out interior provided high ground.

When the construction finished, a new city would rise from the ruins.

The first step toward rebuilding something permanent had already begun.

Is this the opening of a new era?

Shen Cong looked up at the sky. The sunlight was striking — cleaner and brighter than he remembered. He thought of Xiao Li Du, a few weeks old now.

Will that child be what humanity is hoping for?

(End of Chapter 170)