Victory played as Shen Cong drove east into an unknown world.

What he left behind for the camp was a reputation — Edge of Evolution — and a USB drive inside an oversized shoebox.

The drive held very little data. A few hundred kilobytes. A single document recording what he'd worked out on his own: resonance field totems, perceptual link establishment through animal eggs, the pressure aura phenomenon at 1.946H.

While he'd been at the camp, he'd guarded these discoveries carefully — high-level knowledge in others' hands could become a threat vector. But he was leaving now, probably for a long time, possibly for good. Hoarding it served no further purpose.

And perhaps it was also a small record. Evidence that he'd been here.

Shen Cong wanted transformation. Wanted life that kept going. But death was always one of the possible outcomes — from evolved beasts, from disaster, from human scheming. He couldn't guarantee it wouldn't find him. This journey ahead was full of unknowns; danger might come in the next second.

He didn't fear it. But leaving a trace seemed worthwhile.

Dust rising behind the vehicle. Dawn light spreading east. The engines' roar cutting through the stillness of the empty road like a greeting no one had asked for. A few evolved beasts that had been preparing to forage scattered at Great Vajra's approach, then, once it had passed, turned to shout at its exhaust trail.

A farewell, of sorts.

Shen Cong pressed the accelerator and looked forward.

He didn't know someone was standing at the empty platform feeling the absence.

Li Aiping held the shoebox with the military dress uniform balanced on top of it, something stinging faintly at the back of her nose. I'll never get to see you wearing this now. The thought was unexpectedly sad.

A single USB drive. One line of direction in uneven handwriting. On the day New Hefei was born.

It said everything that needed to be said.

He'd left. Quietly, before the crowd assembled to cheer.

He hadn't arrived quietly. But he'd chosen to leave that way.

"Director Zhang — Colonel…