September 20th. Clear skies, lingering summer heat still holding its grip on the Hefei basin.
As a special-category presence, Shen Cong skipped the morning exercise. He had his own agenda.
The camp’s morning exercise was a unified military-civilian drill, organized along combat sequence lines — everyone fourteen and older, regardless of age or gender, running formation drills, bayonet practice, and archery training. Young teenagers got cultural education afterward, a scheduled class period built into the daily routine.
The curriculum had shifted considerably from pre-apocalypse schooling. A large portion of it now centered on the Evolved Beast Classification Chart.
Word had circulated that the Chart had been substantially expanded due to Shen Cong’s contributions — particularly the rating system, which was now considered significantly more systematic and comprehensive than before. The Research Institute was reportedly preparing to formalize it as a standalone document: The Science of Activity Evolution, intended as the camp’s primary educational text going forward.
In the draft committee list that had already been circulated: the name “Hu Ge.”
If future humans ever wrote a history of this period, that name would apparently be in it.
Shen Cong’s view of names was that they were labels, not identities. He could be Huang Xiaoming. He could be Hu Ge. The name Shen Cong belonged to a different version of himself — one whose associated people and memories were buried deep enough that he preferred not to disturb them.
“Hey, are you the singer Hu Ge?”
“June rain, a storm that traps me here—“
“No, the actor — Li Xiaoyao from Chinese Paladin!“
A cluster of children had gathered outside the perimeter fence, too cautious to come closer but too curious to leave. They called out in the overlapping, competitive way of children who all want to say the same thing first.
Shen Cong treated this as atmospheric background noise and kept working.
He was preparing the Violent Ape King’s four tusks.
The plan: the larger upper jaw pair would become a new resonance totem — the Violent Ape Totem. The smaller lower jaw pair would be processed into arrowheads and javelins.
The totem principle was one of his most significant discoveries, and he had no intention of sharing it with the Research Institute. A working resonance field required a matched pair of Activity cores at sufficient Activity Value, similar enough in size and shape to generate a stable closed resonance field. The previous night’s test had confirmed the Violent Ape Totem worked — worked dramatically, in fact. The field-force storm it generated had been strong enough that he’d had to shut it down quickly to avoid drawing the camp’s sentries.
For now the totem would wait. Vajra didn’t have enough amalgamated material yet to sustain it without disruption, and the camp’s sentries were a variable he didn’t want to trigger unnecessarily. Once the overhaul was complete, the totem would run continuously.
He worked through the lower tusks methodically: cutting, grinding, drilling.
The first arrowhead came out of the process and sat in his hand. Its Activity Value was 1.567H — the highest of any projectile in his arsenal by a significant margin. When he drove Activity through it and triggered the Sharpening reaction, the effect was immediately visible: the surface of the arrowhead seemed to liquefy, the metal taking on a flowing luminosity. He drew it lightly across a steel plate.
The plate separated into two pieces.
A single undefended hit from that arrowhead would punch through Vajra’s exterior armor plating. That was the baseline capability. Understanding this was why he’d refused to hand the tusks over to the provincial garrison — the negotiation with Commander Zhao two days ago had nearly broken down over it. Zhao Weiliang understood bone-gold weapon value even as a non-evolved person; he understood that a near-Heavyweight evolved beast’s Activity cores were in a different category from anything the garrison had previously produced.
The resolution: Shen Cong gave a formal promise that the Ape King bone-gold would never be used against any member of the camp.
As long as no one gives me a reason to, he added in his own mind, without saying it.
He fitted an arrow shaft, balanced and calibrated, and the first completed Ape King arrow went into his quiver. The quiver itself extended from the Half-Activated Armor — that piece of failed activation metal had grown considerably since he’d first assembled it, its Activity Value raised from approximately 0.6H to 0.9H, its thickness and defensive rating improved accordingly. To outside observers it was an unusual suit of metal armor. The possibility that it was a living metal entity with properties similar to a vehicle bond would not occur to most people.
Visible capability was one kind of deterrence. Concealed capability was the other kind. The safest posture combined both: show enough to discourage challenges, keep enough hidden to handle challenges that came anyway.
His hidden assets: the Antgod’s flight capability. The Half-Activated Armor’s nature. The Violent Ape Totem. The primary metal amalgamation method.
The last one wasn’t entirely secret — the Research Institute had worked it out independently. The camp had lost over a dozen iron people to various incidents, most heavily during the failed Oasis expedition, and the recovered dead vehicles had provided enough material for the Institute to reverse-engineer the mutual amalgamation principle. The practical limitation was supply: dead vehicles were scarce, iron beasts were rarer, and the garrison had decided that cannibalizing its living iron people for experimental Talent expansion was counterproductive. Each iron person was effectively a piece of irreplaceable industrial equipment. You didn’t sacrifice equipment to marginally improve other equipment.
This was also why Commander Zhao had been willing to come personally to Feidong County to negotiate. Thirty thousand survivors. No longer the figure he’d been — one of Anhui Province’s seven-member Standing Committee, Provincial Garrison Commander, the weight of institutional authority behind every decision. Now: nominal highest officer of the Mingfa Camp, with the functional authority of a small-town party secretary and a considerably more popular “mayor” in Zhu Li sitting one platform over.
The iron people were one of the few genuine levers remaining to him.
Li Aiping appeared as he was starting on the second arrowhead, morning exercise complete.
“Task list from the People’s Defense Department.” She held it out. “You’re certain you want to go alone? Without me?”
He took the list and scanned it.
The evolved person task categories ran by location risk level, rated from 1 to 20 points per standard unit of collection. Most of the higher-rated tasks had been claimed already, squad designations penciled in beside them.
One entry remained unmarked at the top of the scale.
“Twenty points per standard unit — Crimson Mangoes.” He looked up. “That’s in Lightweight-tier White Bone Beetle territory.”
“White Bone Beetles are venomous. None of the camp’s evolved people will take that contract.”
“I’ll take it.” He circled the entry.
Crimson Mangoes were an Activity fruit with documented physical enhancement effects. He’d been rationing Activity fruit intake carefully and was running lower than he wanted to be. The Half-Activated Armor handled insect-type threats adequately; a venomous beetle colony wasn’t a meaningful obstacle.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Good luck and come back full.” She paused. “Are you certain you don’t want me along? I’m not as capable as you, but I can keep watch.”
“Your task is to not come with me.” He set down the half-finished arrowhead and gave her a direct look. “If you genuinely have nothing else to do — find three people for me. Wang Yunian. Tao Cuilan. And Wang Shun. Should be a family unit. If you find them, ask whether they have a daughter named Wang Yingying.”
He loaded what he needed into Vajra and drove out of the camp perimeter toward the Crimson Mango location without further explanation.
(End of Chapter 148)