Bagong Mountain was one of Huainan's landmark peaks, and Huainan itself carried deep history. During the Han dynasty, Liu An — the Prince of Huainan — had gathered scholars on Bagong Mountain to compile the Huainanzi, a work of such encyclopedic scope that later generations called it the ancient world's greatest compendium of knowledge. Tofu, according to tradition, had been accidentally discovered on the same mountain by Taoist alchemists whose experiments had produced something more useful than immortality elixir.

But what most people remembered about Huainan wasn't philosophy or food. It was coal. Huainan's coal had powered the Yangtze River Delta's development for decades, supplying electricity to the most economically active region in China right up until the world ended.

Now, Huainan's survivors had built their camp on Bagong Mountain itself — the Coal City.

Huainan coal was accessible: much of it lay exposed at the surface, and pre-apocalypse stockpiles from coal merchants who'd been sitting on inventory for resale had left large quantities simply piled in the open. The survivors had put it to use. A ring of fires burned continuously around Bagong Mountain's perimeter — sustained torches that kept evolved beasts from approaching.

The fire perimeter worked. The mountain was effectively safe.

Before entering Coal City's scouting radius, Shen Cong had already flown the drone high and mapped the settlement thoroughly. He'd also intercepted a resource-gathering team outside the perimeter and questioned them directly, cross-referencing their answers against what the Sweet Orange Camp interrogation had produced.

Result: no evolved person of significant capability anywhere in the settlement. The three iron people — Ding Yucai, Zhou Ningning, and Big-Fly Brother — plus eleven mutants split between their factions, plus just over 3,300 ordinary survivors.

The Coal City was comparatively safe from external threats. Nearby evolved beasts were weak — which also meant Activity resources were thin. Without a plantable Activity crop called "Life-Saving Yellow Soybeans" that someone had discovered and cultivated, the settlement would have been starving. As it was, they were getting by, barely.

Barren zone geography. Depleted soil. No evolved people left — the previous Provincial Garrison…