“Who? Who killed Brother Liu? Tell me — I’ll chop him into pieces and feed him to the dogs!”

Ran Tai had barely finished the sentence.

An arrow buried itself in the back of his skull.

A flat voice carried out from Vajra’s cab: “Anyone who threatens to kill me dies.”

Li Weijun and the others threw themselves behind cover, handguns out and trained on Vajra before the echo had faded. The speed of it — the utter absence of warning — had left them cold with shock.

Zhu Haifeng was sweating just as hard. The plan he and Shen Cong had discussed was to find a pretext to deal with Ran Tai. But this was a pretext? Ran Tai hadn’t even learned who Boss Huang was yet. He’d said six words and taken an arrow to the head. The sheer mechanical coldness of it made Zhu Haifeng’s blood run cool.

He’d known Shen Cong wasn’t normal. Known he didn’t operate the way other people did.

But this still caught him off guard. This was cold-bloodedness at the bone level.

It forced him to reconsider everything. When Shen Cong had left the southern district, Zhu Haifeng had settled on a read of him — hard on the surface, principled underneath, a man with lines he wouldn’t cross. Why else would he have shared the secret about the Activity peaches potentially triggering evolution in ordinary people? That kind of information wasn’t something you handed over carelessly.

That arrow had just shattered the read entirely. Whatever lines Shen Cong operated by, they weren’t the lines Zhu Haifeng had imagined. A man who would kill someone on the spot for a verbal threat — even an empty, reflexive threat from someone who didn’t know who he was — was a genuinely dangerous person to be standing next to.

Zhu Haifeng closed his eyes for a moment.

If he’d had any real choice, he would have stayed out of this entirely.

But he was already in. All the way in. He opened his eyes, pushed everything down, and got to work.

From inside Vajra, Shen Cong watched with a fang arrow already nocked.

Ran Tai had been on the elimination list. If he’d shown no sign of wanting to avenge Liu Zheng, Shen Cong might have let him live. But “chop him into pieces and feed him to the dogs” — with the specific intent to track down and kill him — crossed a line Shen Cong didn’t negotiate about.

He didn’t carry grudges overnight.

There was a secondary calculation too: killing Ran Tai in front of the others was a message. A vivid one. Shock and awe to smooth the road for Zhu Haifeng. The image of Zhu Haifeng getting choked out at his own meeting had been embarrassing to witness — that kind of scene would make the others underestimate him permanently. It needed to be corrected fast, and corrected hard.

The effect seemed adequate.

Now it was Zhu Haifeng’s turn.

Nobody is born knowing how to command a room. Zhu Haifeng certainly hadn’t been.

But pressure teaches what comfort never can.

The man who’d been stumbling over his words an hour ago walked out to the centre of the road and stood there in the full glare of the morning sun.

“I know what you’re thinking right now,” he said, loudly and clearly. “You’re furious. I was shocked too — I didn’t expect Boss Huang to react that way.”

“Son of a bitch,” Zhao Yalan snarled from behind her rock. “Don’t stand there performing at us.”

“Sister Zhao. Please let me finish.” No anger in Zhu Haifeng’s voice. Just something that sounded almost painfully sincere. “You know who I am. We’ve worked together. So I’ll say this plainly: if I came here today to hurt any of you, I don’t deserve to live. I’m standing right here in the open. If you don’t believe me, shoot me. I won’t move.”

Silence.

Shen Cong watched through the window, crossbow ready.

“You’re not shooting,” Zhu Haifeng said. “Which means some part of you still trusts me. That matters.” He kept going. “A few months ago I was a fresh graduate with an office job. Then I put together a little group — the Shadows — and you all laughed at me for it. Called it adolescent. Meanwhile Zhang Tianshen was out there killing people, burning things, robbing survivors, committing assaults. Liu Zheng did nothing. It was Brother Li, Sister Zhao, Brother Xu, and me pushing him before he finally moved Zhang Tianshen out.”

“And when he did, I chased after Zhang Tianshen myself. Said I was going to kill him, do what was right. Couldn’t do it. Three evolved people in his group — which I suppose does make me look ridiculous.” He didn’t flinch from it. “After that, I ran into Boss Huang. He’s a lone operator — his whole philosophy is leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. Zhang Tianshen decided to go after him anyway. We took him down together.”

“This situation is the same pattern. Boss Huang was scavenging at Mingshi Jiayuan in the northeast. Liu Zheng decided to demand a search of his vehicle — this vehicle, Vajra, which is the man’s entire livelihood and home. If someone you’d never met tried to force their way into your vehicle, would you have agreed? Conflict happened. Boss Huang won. Liu Zheng, Wei Falü, and Zhu Ran are dead.”

“After that, he reached out to me. I was in the southern district — I’d built a mutual aid group there, something I believed was a better model than the fire brigade. Not because I’m better than Liu Zheng at surviving, but because I actually care about the people I’m responsible for. Evolved or ordinary — every one of them.”

“Boss Huang told me he wanted to restructure the fire brigade. I asked why. He said it was badly managed, that it had failed the people it was supposed to serve. And I want all of you to answer honestly —” Zhu Haifeng’s voice rose slightly. “Brother Li. Sister Zhao. Brother Xu. Brother Chen. Brother Fu. Under Liu Zheng’s leadership, how did the fire brigade actually treat ordinary survivors?”

No one answered.

“I’ll answer for you then. If Wei Falü or Zhu Ran had beaten an ordinary person to death — and let’s be honest, that kind of thing wasn’t impossible — what would Liu Zheng have done? And could any of you have gotten justice for that person?” He let the pause sit. “No. You couldn’t. Because none of you were willing to cross Liu Zheng. And that’s the truth.”

“Zhu Haifeng.” Zhao Yalan broke in despite herself. “What exactly is your point?”

“My point,” he said immediately, “is that the fire brigade needs to change. We need to build something that actually works for everyone.” He paused. “I’ll leave it there. If you’re willing to sit down and talk, come back to the table. Boss Huang won’t take any further action.”

The restructuring plan had been rough to begin with. Shen Cong’s unilateral decision to execute Ran Tai mid-meeting had made the whole thing considerably more awkward.

But Zhu Haifeng’s rambling, earnest, slightly clumsy attempt at an I Have a Dream speech had done what it needed to do. The temperature came down. Li Weijun and the others made their way back to the table.

Shen Cong walked out too — without his visible presence, the terrified evolved people wouldn’t have dared show their faces at all.

He came out in full Super Baogai Armor, Dog-Croc Warhammer resting on the table within easy reach, various weapons hanging from every available point on his frame. The sight of him was enough to make a person’s stomach tighten.

He bent down and picked up the handgun from Ran Tai’s belt. Then, with one hand, he crumpled it into a lump of scrap metal and set it down.

No one said anything. No one needed to.

The six-bull-strength threshold had given Shen Cong something beyond raw capability — a different kind of confidence. His long-standing principle of never leaving Vajra had already started to bend under the weight of practical reality. There were situations where being present mattered more than being protected. He was working on overcoming the psychological resistance.

Before stepping out, he’d given Blackhead its orders: anyone who approached Vajra without authorisation was to be intercepted via the hidden access route under the chassis and eliminated. Blackhead’s mandibles were already weapons of serious consequence; its tail stinger could deliver what Shen Cong had started calling Super Second-Generation Ant Acid — Super-2 Acid for short — a significant upgrade from the already-potent standard formula. A low-level evolved person hit by that stinger wouldn’t die immediately, but they’d be half-destroyed. An ordinary person wouldn’t survive it at all.

The one who needed to worry about danger wasn’t Shen Cong.

He took his seat.

“Hiding behind armour,” Zhao Yalan muttered under her breath.

Li Weijun’s hand found her arm under the table. Don’t.

Shen Cong heard it. He said nothing.

His eyes swept the table from behind the helmet visor: Zhu Haifeng, Li Weijun, Zhao Yalan, Chen Song, Xu Wanxian, Fu Jianguo. Six of them plus himself made seven. Around them stood a wider crowd — Chaohu University students, fire brigade members, mutual aid group fighters, survivors from Li Weijun’s various detachments.

The Vineyard Meeting had properly begun.

Shen Cong spoke first, without preamble. “Given the current state of survivor organisation in Juchao district, the fire brigade has failed to fulfil its intended function. It has systemic flaws. It no longer meets the needs of the situation. I’m proposing a full restructure — dissolving the existing framework and replacing it with a Juchao District Provisional Government, with broader administrative capacity and a more coherent governing structure.”

He hadn’t finished the sentence before Zhao Yalan cut in. “You’re not part of the fire brigade. What gives you any right to restructure anything?”

“This does,” Shen Cong said.

He picked up the Dog-Croc Warhammer and tapped the ground once, lightly.

The road surface — solid asphalt — cratered several dozen centimetres straight down, as though it were wet clay.

(End of Chapter 103)