North Ring Road.

Heading northeast from the base of Fenghuang Mountain, the route quickly brought a second peak into view — Juzhang Mountain, one of the ridges that had always ringed the old Chaohu city basin, holding it in a loose embrace of hills.

At the foot of Juzhang Mountain, Shen Cong sent the DJI up to two hundred metres.

The Vineyard Camp at Fenghuang Mountain was still visible from up here. He wasn’t looking at it. He was checking the Hefei-Chaohu-Wuhu Expressway — specifically the route from the intersection of Jinshan Road and North Ring Road, which ran north through open farmland before connecting to the highway. If the terrain was passable, he could cut directly across rather than doubling back.

The drone feed showed otherwise. The farmland was scattered with large rock debris — manageable for Vajra’s dozer blade and high-clearance chassis, but not for the fire truck’s low undercarriage.

He’d have to backtrack to Bantang Town and take the on-ramp properly.

The fire truck was hauling a full load: scavenged metal components and 2,500 litres of diesel from the camp’s stores. Neither was something he was prepared to abandon. The road to Hefei was unknown territory, and going in light on supplies wasn’t an option his risk tolerance allowed.

Before retracting the drone, he paused on the image of Vajra from above.

The Dog-Croc Battle Standard was extended over the roof, the skeleton in its posed lunge — nine metres of assembled bone hovering over a matte black truck. From two hundred metres up, it looked like a roaring skeletal crocodile riding a shadow.

Effective, he judged. Also, admittedly, a bit much.

He brought the drone down and got moving.

Three o’clock in the afternoon. Back at Bantang Town, onto the expressway.

The highway surface was largely clear — the provincial garrison had probably run a clearance pass the first time they’d come through. What remained was scattered grit and wind-blown debris, nothing Vajra couldn’t handle. He brought the convoy up to forty kilometres per hour, constrained by the fire truck rather than Vajra’s own capability. Push faster on uneven pavement and the fire truck’s chassis would take damage he didn’t want to deal with.

The speed held for less than ten minutes. Seven kilometres of highway, and then he was braking.

The road ahead had been torn apart.

Not by weather. Not by progressive decay. The surface was cratered and heaved in a pattern that read immediately as ordnance — a section of highway that had been bombed, the asphalt and substrate churned into a rough field of gouges and displaced material. The kind of damage that required military fire support to produce.

He studied the camera feeds without getting out. No movement. No heat signatures in the infrared. The danger, whatever it had been, wasn’t currently present.

He suited up in the Half-Activated Armor and went to look.

The ground told a partial story. He couldn’t date it precisely — no geology training — but the rain had clearly washed over this multiple times. The blast craters were softened, the debris redistributed by water flow. It predated the second major rainstorm, which meant it was old news by apocalypse standards.

The garrison had to use bombs here. In the same barren zone longitude as Juchao district. At the same Activity density. He let that sit for a moment.

Something here required air support. Something they couldn’t handle any other way.

His alert level went up a notch.

The fastest path through was to use the dozer blade to rough-fill the worst craters and push the convoy across. The fire truck’s lower clearance made it inevitable: when Shen Cong ran it over the filled section, Vajra cleared fine, the fire truck bottomed out completely.

“Fine. I’m towing it.”

He stopped caring about the fire truck’s undercarriage and floored Vajra’s accelerator. The coupling took the strain and held. Metal complaining against pavement, the fire truck dragged across the cratered section and back onto the undamaged highway surface.

He was settling back into the cab, adjusting gears, preparing to accelerate — and stopped.

On the roadside ahead, three military truck carcasses were half-buried in the earth at the highway’s shoulder. The green paint was still visible in patches under the rust. And in the cargo bay of the nearest one, visible through the deteriorated side panels: a row of human bones.

The cold moved up his back before he’d fully processed what he was looking at.

Military trucks. Government vehicles. The only time the garrison had brought vehicles like this through Juchao was the first run before the major floods — the convoy that had taken evolved people and their families back toward Hefei. The one that survivors who’d been left behind had spent weeks being envious of.

Three of those trucks had made it seven kilometres from Bantang Town.

He got out and looked more carefully.

The bones in the first truck had been numerous — forty or more bodies per load, by rough count. The remains showed consistent damage: missing limbs, fractured long bones, gnaw marks covering the exposed surfaces. He pulled out the vibration scanner and ran the tool over several of the clearest marks, building a surface model on the display.

Not teeth. The profile was wrong for any vertebrate jaw — the pressure distribution, the geometry of the damage. This was something with mouthparts. Mandibles, or something structurally similar.

“Looks like insect. Comparable to Burrower mouth structure, but distinct. Larger. A mutated beetle of some kind, probably — the marks are too deep and too extensive for anything small.”

He checked the other two trucks. Same pattern across all three, with occasional intrusions of cat or dog molar impressions layered over the primary damage — scavengers arriving after the primary feeding event.

Working hypothesis: the garrison convoy had run into a colony of mutated beetles. Lost three trucks — roughly thirty percent of their ten-vehicle contingent if the accounts were accurate. Used demolition support to break contact and withdraw. The bodies in the trucks were consumed in place. Domestic carnivores, drawn by residual scent, had picked over the remains afterward.

All three truck carcasses were in advanced oxidation — the Activity-accelerated rusting that bare metal undergone post-apocalypse. Nothing salvageable. He wasn’t going to find useful scrap here.

He was heading back to Vajra when he heard it.

Behind him. Soft at first — a dry scrabbling, the sound of weight moving over loose material.

He didn’t look. He stepped into the cab, sealed the armour plating, and checked the monitor.

A section of rubble fifteen metres off Vajra’s left flank was moving. The debris was being pushed aside from beneath — chunks of broken concrete and twisted rebar lifting and falling as something forced its way through the gaps. Then the first one emerged. Then another. Then another after that.

Black. Armoured. Large.

Beetle-shaped, and moving directly toward Vajra.

(End of Chapter 116)