Shen Cong pocketed his phone, gave Little Four a wave, picked up his rubber bags, and walked out of the banyan grove in long strides.
Predictably, exactly as before, the four-legged snake followed him all the way back to Great Vajra. Shen Cong tossed his haul into the cabin, turned, and called out: “Stop following me.”
Then he climbed in, started the engine, and pulled away along the tracks the military jeep had left.
Little Four followed anyway.
He didn’t push it. There was no practical way to bring a creature that size with him, and communication only went so far. For all he knew, the moment it got hungry enough, it might decide he looked like a reasonable meal. The possibility wasn’t zero.
So that was what this had been — a strange, one-off transaction. If he came back through this area someday to dig up more yogurt, maybe he’d see it again.
For now, the deal was done.
The four-legged snake kept pace, trailing him for about two kilometers, calling out periodically and getting no response from Great Vajra. At the next bend in the road, it finally stopped. It stood in the muddy water, head raised, and watched the truck move forward — growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the warm afternoon light.
Then it let out a low, rolling sound, swung its body around, and loped back toward the hills at Ershi-li Chang Shan, vanishing around the slope’s curve.
The standing water stilled. Quiet returned, the same as always.
Shen Cong watched the blip disappear from the radar display, settled something quietly inside himself, and pressed down on the accelerator.
He caught up with the military jeep at a ruined township called Zhuzhen. The moment he switched on the radio, Zhao Zilong’s voice came through: “Colonel Chen — we stopped here for a rest. Join us for lunch?”
“Fine.”
Zhuzhen sat just three kilometers from the Changshen Expressway. Looking at the map, it was almost absurd — they’d looped nearly in a full circle, ending up back in Nanjing’s Liuhe District, just on the far side of the stretch of road he’d torn up on the way through.
The snowmelt had turned everything to standing water. Puddles everywhere.
First thing after parking: Shen Cong grabbed a bucket, went to a nearby pond, and sluiced down every surface Little Four had licked. The saliva came off in long, glistening streaks.
“Colonel Chen — lunch together?” Old Wei wandered over.
Shen Cong’s manner shifted back to its default register the moment another human was within range. “No.”
Old Wei had long since made his peace with this. He was constitutionally incapable of being deterred. “Colonel Chen, did you send the four-legged snake home? Is it your pet?”
“None of your business.”
Old Wei pressed on, undaunted: “I’ve seen plenty of big ones — Xuanwu, the Great Earth Dragon — but I’ve never once seen a creature that size warm up to a human. That snake’s a first. Only someone like you, Colonel, could win over a jin beast that powerful. Any chance you could walk us through how you actually communicate with them?”
Shen Cong upended the bucket over Great Vajra’s flank, then turned and said, with complete seriousness: “First, you have to become strong enough that the jin beast acknowledges your strength.”
Old Wei opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Shen Cong moved on without waiting. “After lunch, we leave immediately. We should reach Hongze Lake by early evening. At that point you can proceed directly into Huai’an City.”
“You’re not going into Huai’an?” That was Zhao Zilong. She’d come over while they were talking.
“When the timing is right.”
Old Wei, genuinely puzzled: “What does ‘right timing’ mean, exactly?”
Shen Cong didn’t answer the question. “Once we reach Huai’an, we’re square. You handle your business. Don’t ask about mine.”
After lunch, they pushed on.
The Changshen Expressway had clearly been swept during the Eastern Theater Command’s migration north. The road surface was clean by post-apocalyptic standards, and Great Vajra made steady progress — sixty kilometers an hour, unobstructed.
As they moved further north, the world started filling in. Trees lined the road in increasing numbers, many still shedding their last leaves. Jin beasts appeared more frequently too. Several made the mistake of challenging Great Vajra and were pulverized under its wheels without the truck so much as slowing.
Past Tianchang City, just inside the Jinhu County boundary, something large crossed the sky.
An eagle. Enormous. Diving.
Its talons came down at the military jeep with precision. Old Wei wrenched the wheel hard and barely got clear — if he’d been a half-second slower, the jeep would have been airborne. An ordinary eagle could carry prey three times its own weight; this mutated specimen had a wingspan of twenty to thirty meters. A military jeep would have been nothing to it.
“Colonel Chen — requesting assistance! Requesting assistance!” Zhao Zilong’s voice crackled through the radio.
Shen Cong had already seen it.
He hit the brakes and retracted the Wings of Light. Flying opponents demanded respect — the air wasn’t his ground. He climbed onto the roof, loaded the roof-mounted bed crossbow, and put several bolts into the eagle in rapid succession. Then, not stopping to check hits, he dropped straight back through the roof hatch.
He wasn’t going to let himself get snatched off the top of his own vehicle.
The bolts did their job, at least in terms of redirecting attention. The eagle abandoned the jeep and turned toward Great Vajra.
Facing a hundred and fifty tons of moving metal, there wasn’t much it could do — a grab here, a peck there, and then a broadsword appeared from nowhere and opened a gash along its side.
“Liiii!“
The eagle screamed, kicked off the hull, and beat its wings hard for altitude, the wound still open.
Shen Cong was back on the roof before it had finished climbing. He loaded a fresh set of heavy bolts and waited. The eagle wheeled around for a third pass — and he fired the moment it committed to the dive.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Bed crossbow accuracy was terrible, but that wasn’t the point. The volley was enough. The eagle broke off its dive, pulled up short, and began circling overhead — reluctant to leave, unwilling to come down.
Shen Cong set the crossbow aside and took up a Spike King javelin instead.
He watched the eagle.
It was several times larger than the Giant Condor he’d taken down before. Heavyweight class, at minimum. Its beak caught the light — silver, shifting, unmistakably the gleam of sharpening. This one had learned to use its Activity.
The circling continued. Then, deciding the crossbow had gone quiet long enough, the eagle made its move — a full, committed power dive.
Shen Cong stood on the roof and let it come. Every muscle locked. He could feel the pressure of the thing bearing down on him, the air churning ahead of it.
At two hundred meters, he threw.
Hip and core driving the motion, forearm coming all the way through, javelin leaving his hand with everything behind it. The release carried him half a step forward — straight into the roof hatch. He dropped through.
A fraction of a second later, the eagle and the javelin met. The javelin punched into its chest and buried deep.
It didn’t stop. An animal that size didn’t stop for a javelin. The eagle slammed into Great Vajra’s roof, crumpling the bed crossbow mounting, then screamed, kicked off, beat its wings, and climbed away — chest wound, javelin and all, growing smaller until it was gone.
From the eagle’s perspective, the calculus was simple: this prey could hurt it, and it couldn’t get through the prey’s defenses. Poor hunting. Better to go.
One Spike King javelin lost. One Heavyweight eagle driven off.
Shen Cong climbed back up, assessed the damage to the crossbow mount without expression, clicked the radio: “Move.”
Great Vajra’s engine turned over. They continued north.
The sun was going down by the time they crossed out of Jinhu County into Hongze District. Huai’an proper wasn’t far. The drone confirmed it — through the haze of early dusk, Hongze Lake was visible: a vast, pale expanse of water, and around it, still unmistakably green, the living fringe of what could only be an Oasis.
It was then that the vehicle radio, which had been nothing but static for weeks, resolved into a clear signal. A woman’s voice, warm and practiced:
“Welcome to the Eastern Theater Command Military Defense Zone. Thirty-seven kilometers ahead along the Changshen Expressway is the Huai’an City Human Survivor Settlement. We look forward to your arrival.”
“United against the Great Calamity — together we build a new home. Announcement by the Eastern Theater Command Reconstruction Committee of the People’s Republic of China.”
(End of Chapter 252)