The boy shuffled over slowly.

He was a scrawny little thing — malnourishment written clearly in every line of him. But a child surviving in the post-apocalypse at all was no small miracle. Out of the fourteen hundred-odd people in camp, children like him were rare.

Shen Cong had known a woman in the southern district — Liu Fang, she was called — who’d had a son around ten years old. Zhang Youhai had told him what happened: during the evacuation to higher ground, the boy had slipped on the muddy slope and been swept away by floodwater. Liu Fang had jumped in after him. Neither of them had come back up.

After the Provisional Government was established, Shen Cong had asked Zhang Youhai one question: “The general manager of Kaixin Real Estate. Is he in the camp?”

Zhang Youhai had come back the next day with an answer: “Asked around. No one by that description.”

Shen Cong looked at the small figure standing in front of him and found himself asking: “What’s your name, kid?”

“Liu…” Very quiet.

“What?”

“Liu Yangyang.”

“How old?”

“Six.”

“Where’s your mother?” Shen Cong asked, and immediately recognised it as a stupid question.

Liu Yangyang answered without hesitation, bright and matter-of-fact: “Mum’s on a work trip.”

“Ah.”

Shen Cong ran out of words. The fang knife in his hand forgot it was supposed to be cutting steel. He turned, reached into Vajra, pulled out a Gentle Sand Pear, and held it out. “Here. Take it.”

Liu Yangyang put both hands behind his back. Wouldn’t touch it.

“Take it,” Shen Cong said.

“Dad says don’t take things from people.”

Shen Cong turned and called across to Liu Changming, who was bent over his laptop running signal data. “Liu Changming. I’m giving your son a pear. Tell him he can have it.”

Liu Changming looked up, visibly uncomfortable. “You really don’t have to—”

“Tell him.” Flat.

“Right, yes. Yangyang, it’s fine — Uncle Huang is giving it to you. Go ahead.”

Liu Yangyang accepted the pear with both hands.

Liu Changming added: “What do you say to Uncle Huang?”

“Thank you, Uncle Huang.”

“You’re welcome. Eat it. It’ll help you grow.” The Gentle Sand Pear’s Activity was gentle enough by nature that even a child’s constitution could handle it without issue. Shen Cong had compared the pears against the Evolution Grapes — the grapes were more potent, but ordinary adults handled them fine; the pears were mild enough that a child eating one wasn’t a concern. Whether either fruit could genuinely enhance an ordinary person’s body was harder to say. The quantities available to ordinary people were too small to produce measurable results even if the enhancement was real. But as food, the effect was immediate — a single Evolution Grape could keep an ordinary person energised and without hunger for days.

He waved Liu Yangyang off toward somewhere less in the way and turned back to his work.

Zhao Yalan was walking toward him.

“Didn’t expect you to be not completely cold-blooded,” she said, coming up without any particular ceremony.

“Something you need?” Shen Cong said, not looking up. His laptop was open beside him — he’d had eyes on the surrounding area for a while now, which meant he’d known she was coming.

“Zhu Haifeng says you’re powerful. I wasn’t entirely convinced, so I thought I’d come find out for myself while there was a lull—”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

Shen Cong moved. Two steps off the ground in a single push, and he was directly in front of her — one hand at her throat before she’d processed that he’d moved at all. He held her there.

“Satisfied?” he said, his voice carrying the same temperature as before. “Then get out of my sight.”

He dropped her. Not gently.

Zhao Yalan hit the ground, coughing hard. She looked up at him with both eyes blazing. “I take it back. You are completely cold-blooded, you absolute—”

She got to her feet, and limped away without finishing the sentence.

Liu Yangyang had retreated to his father’s side the moment Shen Cong had moved, both hands gripping Liu Changming’s arm, eyes fixed on anything but Shen Cong. Liu Changming himself was doing his best to look deeply absorbed in his signal data.

The air had gone stiff.

Shen Cong didn’t notice, or didn’t care. He picked up the fang knife and went back to work.

That night, in a stone outbuilding at the edge of the camp perimeter.

Zhao Yalan sat on a stool, still touching her neck occasionally. Li Weijun was at the table, bent over some papers, writing by the thin light of a diesel generator lamp.

“You went to test him,” Li Weijun said, without looking up.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“Fast. I couldn’t track the movement at all. Dodging bullets would be easy for him. If he’d wanted to kill me…” She paused. “It would have been the same as me killing an ordinary person.”

Li Weijun’s pen stopped for a moment. “Since you’ve got your answer, rein it in. Focus on the work you’ve been given. Boss Huang has kept his word — he’s not interfering in the Provisional Government’s operations. Stop pushing against it for the sake of pushing. Whatever kind of person he is, the Provisional Government existing is a net positive. Don’t oppose things just to oppose them.”

“You call that not interfering? Wang Yingying, Zhang Youhai, Zhu Haifeng, every one of those fire brigade members who came back with Zhu Haifeng — all of them are his placements.” Zhao Yalan’s voice was tight. “Brother Li, I’m seriously suspicious that this man’s motives are not what they appear.”

“On that point, my position is: judge actions, not intentions. So long as what he’s doing isn’t actively harming the camp’s interests, don’t let your feelings drive decisions.”

“I couldn’t care less about Liu Zheng — frankly I’d been waiting for him to die. But Liu Zheng’s fire truck, the jeep, the van, all those weapons — they’re in Boss Huang’s hands now, and he clearly has no intention of returning any of it. What do we do about that?”

“I’ll talk to Zhu Haifeng tomorrow, have him raise it with Boss Huang. At minimum the jeep and the van should come back — without transport, the camp can’t function.” He set down his pen. “Go get some sleep, Xiao Zhao. It’s late.”

“One more thing before I go.” Zhao Yalan stopped at the door. “Liu Zheng, Wei Falü, Zhu Ran, ten fire brigade members, and today, Ran Tai — killed without a second thought. You really believe he’s a good person?”

Li Weijun rubbed his forehead. “Whether he’s a good person or not — does it matter? Could you call Liu Zheng a good person? We still spent months working under him.” He shook his head. “For every day we can’t reach the government or the provincial garrison, we live by the rules of whoever has the biggest fist. That’s the world now. Don’t fight what you can’t change, Xiao Zhao. Think it over. Go rest.”

The next morning, Zhu Haifeng came by as expected, and raised the question of the jeep and the van. He left the fire truck out of it — he understood, without needing to be told, that the fire truck was off the table. Iron person business. You didn’t ask for that back.

“I’ll return them,” Shen Cong said. “They’re my spoils, so you’ll need to trade for them.”

“Fair enough,” Zhu Haifeng said, without hesitation. “What do you want?”

“Evolution Grapes.”

“The grapes — I’d need to talk to Li Weijun and the others first. I haven’t even seen the vineyard yet, and I don’t know enough about what they have.” He paused. “How much are we talking?”

“The grapes are evolved fruit tree produce — Activity fruit, same principle as the Activity peaches. They have a significant enhancement effect on evolved people, but like all Activity sources, once your body saturates, the returns diminish. What I need is enough to reach saturation point for my current level.”

“And that’s…?”

“Roughly forty to fifty jin.”

Zhu Haifeng winced slightly. “I’ll push for it. Can’t promise that number, but I’ll try.”

Forty to fifty jin turned out to be nearly half the vineyard’s current inventory, and it landed with a thud at the management table. Every evolved person present objected.

The vineyard had about thirty-odd grape vines. Each vine was producing five to six jin per harvest cycle, and with the camp consuming its share, the remaining stock on the vine had dropped to under a hundred jin. The reason Liu Zheng had chosen this particular location for the camp in the first place was partly that the Evolution Grape vines had begun producing continuously — after each harvest, a new cluster of flowers and small bunches had already appeared. Another crop was on the way. The vineyard could sustain long-term use.

None of which made surrendering half the current stock any easier to swallow.

When word came back that the management was reluctant, Shen Cong’s response was brief: “Thirty jin. That’s the floor I’ll trade at. Any less and there’s no deal. I’ll find my own way to get what I need.”

The unspoken implication sat in the room alongside the spoken words.

Under that pressure, and with the camp’s genuine need for transport, the negotiation concluded. Thirty jin of Evolution Grapes for the two vehicles.

The remaining bone-gold weapons and firearms were bundled separately, traded at an assessed value of twenty additional jin. Shen Cong had been reluctant on this part — even weapons he had no immediate use for were dangerous in other hands, and he’d accumulated over a dozen handguns from various confrontations. But the vineyard camp genuinely needed arms for defence against evolved beasts, and for hunting. And realistically, small arms posed limited threat to him personally.

After thinking it through, he agreed.

He also walked away with the QJY-88 general-purpose machine gun — no ammunition included, but that was a problem for later.

(End of Chapter 105)