“The Oasis information came from a military source — my nephew serves in the provincial forces.” Wang Gen settled back against the compartment wall. “Let me ask you something first. During the meteor shower — did you see any meteor actually impact the ground? Leave a crater?”

Shen Cong thought about it. “No.”

“Neither did I. Neither did anyone I’ve spoken with.” Wang Gen spread his hands. “The meteors didn’t land. They dispersed. Whatever they carried, they released it into the atmosphere and the soil without leaving impact sites. Which means the distribution isn’t uniform — it depends on where the meteor shower was densest, where the winds carried the dispersal, how the energy settled into the terrain.”

“The military has mapped this.”

“Roughly. My nephew passed along what he could.” Wang Gen’s tone shifted to something more careful — the tone of someone sharing information they’d been told not to share. “Three categories. Barren zones: sparse Activity, minimal evolution, the kind of dead terrain you’ve been traveling through. Abundant zones: higher Activity concentration, more evolved organisms, better development conditions. Juchao District is barren. Hefei city proper is abundant.”

Shen Cong was listening with his full attention. This was the most significant intelligence briefing he’d received since the apocalypse began.

“And the third category?”

“The Oasis. Locations where actual meteorite fragments landed and remained. Where the Activity is saturating the ground rather than dispersed through the air. Where the evolution isn’t slow and gradual — it’s intense and accelerating.” Wang Gen paused. “The military located one in the Huoshan area of Liu’an City, northwest of Hefei. They decided to secure it.”

“What happened?”

“A locust plague. Something from the Oasis — evolved insects, presumably, though my nephew didn’t have details — met the military advance and destroyed half their operational force before they retreated. Tanks, artillery, infantry with full equipment against evolved locusts. They withdrew to Hefei and started pulling evolved people from surrounding cities to rebuild defensive capability.”

Shen Cong thought about the Short-sting ant colony. That had been a single colony in a single building complex, and it had taken him three days of careful maneuvering and a specific Activity camouflage technique to survive it. A locust plague from an Oasis location — where the evolution was intense and accelerating rather than the marginal mutations he’d been cataloguing — would be something else entirely.

Half their force.

“That’s why they came to Juchao before the flood.”

“Juchao is the nearest city to Hefei with significant survivor and evolved-person populations. They needed capability, quickly.” Wang Gen shrugged. “I didn’t go. I was afraid.”

“You controlled most of city south’s resources. You had a fortified position. Your people were dependent on you.”

“Yes. All of that.” Wang Gen’s voice was flat. “And in Hefei, there are evolved people stronger than me, and an ongoing threat from the Oasis direction, and no guarantee that a mechanic from Juchao would be treated as anything other than additional inventory.” He paused. “Here, I’m relevant. There, I might not be.”

“And now you’re not relevant here either.”

“As of last night, correct.” He didn’t seem particularly bothered by this. “The calculus changes.”

The picture assembled itself.

Activity distribution: barren zone (Juchao/Wuwei area), abundant zone (Hefei and surroundings), Oasis (Huoshan area, Liu’an City, northwest of Hefei). The map in his head — the terrain he’d crossed from Wuwei, the relative lifelessness of everything he’d traveled through, the isolated pockets of evolution he’d encountered — matched the barren zone description precisely.

Military structure: Anhui Provincial Military District, with jurisdiction over Hefei Garrison and the district-level reserve forces. The provincial commander was General Zhao Weiliang — not an evolved person. The Hefei Garrison commander was Zhu Li — confirmed evolved person.

Peacetime hierarchy: provincial commander outranks garrison commander. Post-apocalypse, with transport networks destroyed and the provincial commander’s jurisdiction reduced to whatever he could physically reach — which was primarily the Hefei Garrison — the formal rank advantage compressed against the practical reality that Zhu Li controlled the only coherent military force in the region.

Add the evolved-person question: a world where the defining advantage was not rank or institutional authority but biological capability that only some people had developed. A garrison commander who was an evolved person, with evolved-person subordinates whose loyalty might run along different lines than normal military hierarchy.

That situation is unstable.

Wang Gen’s X-Men reference he set aside — the theory that evolved people and unevolveD people would inevitably conflict was the kind of thing someone said when they wanted to justify the decisions they’d already made. But the structural observation underneath it was real: two commanders, one of them with capabilities the other didn’t have, competing over the same operational space.

“You think Zhu Li has moved against Zhao Weiliang.”

“I think it’s possible. I think by the time you get there, you’ll know for certain.” Wang Gen looked at him. “You’re going regardless.”

“Yes.”

“Then the Oasis is your real destination, not Hefei.”

Shen Cong said nothing. Wang Gen read the silence correctly.

“If the Active concentration at an Oasis location is what my nephew described — the ground itself saturated with meteorite material — your development rate would be…” He searched for the right word. “Different.”

Everything in the barren zone has been fighting over thin ambient Activity. At an Oasis, the ground is the source.

He thought about the Bull Demon King Totem and the field-force storm drawing in ambient Activity at four times normal rate. He thought about what that same mechanism would produce in an environment where the ambient concentration was not depleted post-storm barren zone air but active meteorite-fragment saturation.

The numbers didn’t compute into anything he could be confident about.

He filed it as investigate and moved on.

They exchanged development information for approximately forty minutes.

Wang Gen’s account: the bond had formed during a repair session, the engine running, the physical contact sustained long enough for the initial Active exchange. He’d recognized it as something significant immediately and had been developing systematically since. His Hummer’s saturation was at a level he estimated as roughly halfway to whatever maximum meant — without a quantification framework, his estimates were impressionistic.

Shen Cong gave him the Activity terminology and the general Level framework without the specific calibration values. He confirmed the liquid-phase theory and explained the siphon phenomenon in general terms without describing the Bull Demon King Totem.

While they talked, he kept one hand on the laptop keyboard.

The radar display was showing something.

Three movement signatures, leaving Wang Gen’s compound in the direction of Mudan Road Bridge. Moving with purpose, not the casual patrol patterns he’d been seeing.

He switched camera feeds without breaking conversational rhythm. The bridge approach cameras were too far for useful resolution. The radar showed the signatures continuing northeast.

“What are you doing?” Wang Gen asked.

“Taking notes. I don’t want to miss anything you’ve said.”

Someone just went toward the bridge. Without Wang Gen’s knowledge — his body language doesn’t suggest he ordered it — or with his knowledge and well-concealed.

Either way: something is moving toward my exit route.

He continued the conversation, learned what he could, and began planning.

(End of Chapter 74)