The information exchange had been carefully managed from both sides.

Shen Cong had given Wang Gen enough to establish credibility as a fellow iron person while revealing nothing operational: anecdotes about evolved beasts encountered on the road, general observations about Activity behavior, the basic vocabulary he’d already shared with Zhu Haifeng. Nothing about the Level quantification system. Nothing about the resonance field or the Bull Demon King Totem. Nothing about the liquid-solid phase theory in any actionable form.

What Wang Gen gave back, in addition to the Oasis intelligence, was one detail Shen Cong hadn’t expected.

“My Hummer hit full saturation once — everything absorbed at once, and then it pushed the excess into me. Nearly killed me. You’ve experienced something like that?”

Shen Cong kept his expression neutral.

Wang Gen’s Level reads as pseudo-0.541. That’s nowhere near the threshold where the overflow should trigger. But he’s describing the siphon phenomenon exactly.

Another crack in the quantification framework. Another variable unaccounted for.

He filed it and said: “My vehicle is still developing. How did you resolve it?”

“I let the Hummer absorb more metal. Then I make the excess into armor pieces for my people — use the Amalgamation to extend Vajra’s definition, drain the overflow into new material.”

The same solution I arrived at. Independently. From the same structural problem.

He noted the convergence without expressing it.

The sky was going dark when Wang Gen began pressing him to stay for dinner.

Shen Cong declined.

Eating in the compound of an iron person who’d just discovered that Shen Cong’s Level was nearly double his own, who had been watching Vajra with the particular focused attention of someone calculating the siphon impulse’s implications — that was not a meal he was going to sit through.

He was moving toward the vehicle when Tao Daqian — Wang Gen’s four-fanged mutant — found a moment when Wang Gen’s attention was elsewhere and pressed a folded piece of paper into his hand.

He kept walking. Read it in the vehicle.

Don’t leave the vehicle. Leave quickly. Wang Gen is not a good person. If anyone tries to stop you, go straight through the bridge.

He sat with it.

The paranoia that had kept him alive for twenty-two years, that had been diagnosed as a disorder and had turned out to be calibration, ran the scenario.

Wang Gen had pressed him to stay for dinner. Wang Gen’s man had gone to the Mudan Road Bridge ahead of his departure. Now Wang Gen’s subordinate was giving him a warning note.

The warning told him not to leave the vehicle, to go fast, and specifically referenced the bridge.

If the warning is genuine: there’s an ambush near the bridge. Leave quickly and drive through it.

If the warning is manufactured: Tao Daqian is telling him exactly what Wang Gen wants him to do — panic, rush, drive onto a bridge that has been prepared.

He ran the keyword extraction.

Don’t leave vehicle. Leave quickly. Straight through. Bridge.

He thought about the radar signatures that had gone toward the bridge while they were talking inside Vajra.

He thought about what Wang Gen had told him about the siphon phenomenon. About wanting Vajra. About the pull between iron people and each other’s vehicles. About being afraid to go to Hefei because there were stronger evolved people there.

He thought about what someone with 0.541 Level, a fortified position, and a known exit route would do to acquire a vehicle running at pseudo-1.021 without a direct confrontation.

Prepare the bridge.

Spook the target into rushing across it.

Collect the vehicle from the collapsed structure.

Zhang Tianshen had tried to use road debris and pits. Same principle, larger scale, better execution. Wang Gen had seen Vajra operate, had had two months to watch iron people and understand their capabilities, and had concluded that the only way to take down a Level 1 vehicle was to remove it from the situation rather than fight it.

Tao Daqian’s note wasn’t warning him. It was the mechanism that would deliver him to the bridge at speed, in low light, in a hurry.

He sat in the driver’s seat for three seconds.

Then he started the engine.

The roar was audible throughout the compound.

Wang Gen appeared at the vehicle’s path. Dahaizi moved to block the front.

“Stay for dinner! We have more to discuss!”

Shen Cong engaged the drive.

Thirty tons of vehicle at operating speed had a specific relationship with things that stood in its way. Dahaizi moved. Wang Gen stepped back.

Vajra accelerated out of the compound onto Mudan Road, the dozer blade dropping to operating position, the speed climbing toward what the road surface allowed.

Not toward the bridge.

Away from it.

Wang Gen watched the vehicle’s taillights until they disappeared.

Tao Daqian came to stand beside him.

“The Huang fellow took the bait.”

“Good.” Wang Gen dropped the cigarette stub and ground it out. “Tell the crew at the bridge to get ready. As soon as it goes down, we move through and clean up. Tell them not to damage the fuel tanks — everything in that vehicle is ours.” He considered. “And watch the crossbow. He killed Zhang Tianshen’s people with it. I don’t want anyone hit by a bolt at close range when we move in.”

Dahaizi: “Only regret is he took out Zhang Tianshen’s people. We were planning to keep them around.”

“We still have Zhu Haifeng’s group. And the fire brigade’s mutants. We’ll hunt.” Wang Gen moved toward the Hummer. “Calculate the time — he should be hitting the bridge now.”

He was starting the engine when the sound reached them.

Not an explosion from the bridge direction.

A heavy engine, moving fast, getting louder.

From the wrong direction.

The dozer blade was down. Sunset light painted Vajra in red-gold as it came back through the dying day at 80 kilometers per hour, the mass and velocity of a vehicle built to move through things rather than around them.

“How is he—”

“He figured it out.” Wang Gen’s hands went to the steering wheel. “He didn’t take the bait. He’s coming back through us.”

Three tons of dozer blade. Thirty tons of vehicle. Eighty kilometers per hour.

Wang Gen yanked the Hummer’s wheel and floored it.

(End of Chapter 75)