“Dedicating the entire Automotive Lab’s resources exclusively to you puts me in a difficult position.” Zhao Weiliang turned the matter over slowly. “The iron people in the Motor Battalion work like an assembly line every day, and not one of them has received a full-resource overhaul. You’ve just arrived, and already you’re asking for preferential treatment. That’s hard to justify.”

“What do I need to do to offset the blowback?” Shen Cong went straight to it. He understood how people worked — he simply didn’t bother most of the time. But at its core, this was just an exchange of interests.

Commander Zhao knew his temperament well enough not to dress it up. “First: all materials, including the Automotive Lab’s overtime costs, come out of your own pocket. Second: in exchange for priority modification access, you guarantee that if an evolved beast threatens the camp, you’ll assist in the response. Third: next week the camp is holding an open tournament — all evolved people, mandatory participation. I need you to win it. Cleanly.”

“I don’t want to waste time on a sparring match.”

“Xiao Hu.” Zhao Weiliang leaned forward. “I want you in that tournament because I’m trying to build you into something — a symbol for this camp. I’ve thought about it carefully. Morale is slipping. Ordinary people are losing faith; they don’t feel safe anymore. We need a hero. Someone who can stand up to evolved beasts face to face and win. Someone who gives the civilians reason to believe again. You’re the right person for that.”

He clenched his fist, as if he could already see it — Shen Cong, the camp’s icon, humanity’s champion.

Shen Cong, meanwhile, shifted almost imperceptibly toward the door. His expression was hidden beneath his visor. This was the elevated platform closest to Vajra — he could see the truck through the window from here.

He never entered the camp in daylight. He didn’t trust it — this wasn’t his territory. Every meeting with Zhao Weiliang happened at night. Darkness that blinded everyone else was simply the best operational condition for him.

And listening to Zhao Weiliang now, his alertness spiked.

He’s asking me to enter a tournament with other evolved people. What’s the angle? Is this a setup?… And face an evolved beast head-on? Absolutely not. That’s not happening.

His suspicion was running at maximum. His mouth said something else entirely: “I’ll think about it.”

“Good. Take your time. Have you eaten? — Already eaten, alright, head back and get some rest.”

Back at Vajra, Shen Cong sat alone and methodically turned the situation over.

What was Zhao Weiliang actually planning? From a pure interest calculation, moving against Shen Cong would cost far more than it could gain. The math didn’t justify it.

But who could guarantee the man was doing the math correctly?

Interests… schemes… The tournament itself probably isn’t the trap. As long as I stay alert, no one should be able to hurt me in a sparring match. But showing up to fight an evolved beast as the garrison’s designated hero? First priority is always my own survival. If I can’t win, I run. “Hero” has always been the role that dies fastest in every movie ever made.

The camp isn’t facing imminent large-scale attack right now — but it’s only a matter of time. To protect against whatever scheme might be coming, the Vajra overhaul needs to move fast. Tomorrow: Chen Wei. Pay whatever it takes to get her to agree to spend a few days with Liu Yanbing. Can’t let that drag on and slow down my evolution…

First thing the next morning, Chen Wei arrived before her squad deployed.

Shen Cong didn’t ease into it. “Ten points. You agree to spend a few days with Liu Yanbing from the Automotive Lab.”

“You called me out here to set me up with Liu Yanbing?” She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Who do you think you are?”

She was striking — fierce and sharp-edged, the kind of presence that filled a room. Four mutant tusks should have ruined her face. Somehow they only made her look wilder.

“Twenty points.” Shen Cong’s brow furrowed. He was already at his ceiling — twenty points was equivalent to a difficult field assignment. “Just a few days. Nothing forced.”

In his estimation, spending a few days with someone was a trivial thing. Barely worth a handful of points. He was offering twenty out of a sense of fair dealing, not because the job warranted it.

Chen Wei made a short, dismissive sound. “If that’s all you had to say, I’ll be going. And one more thing — maybe wait until you’re a little older before you try playing matchmaker on the front lines.”

She stood up to leave.

Being spoken to like that produced no particular feeling in Shen Cong. He rarely cared what people thought of him. Words that didn’t constitute a threat could drift past him like wind.

But this time he couldn’t let it go. This was connected to his evolution. Nothing connected to his evolution could be allowed to fail.

“I don’t like forcing people into deals.” He was almost talking to himself, as though talking himself into it. “Twenty-five points. Beyond that, there’s nothing to negotiate.”

He hadn’t even called out to stop her yet when Li Aiping — who had been watching the negotiation fall apart from the side — rushed over and grabbed Chen Wei’s arm. “Chen Wei, hold on a second.” Then, turning to Shen Cong: “Squad Leader Hu, let me handle this, alright?”

Three minutes later, Li Aiping had delivered.

Chen Wei agreed. Twenty points.

Setting aside the question of face, it was actually a reasonable deal — no one was forcing anything beyond a few days of ordinary company. That was all.

With the Chen Wei problem resolved, Li Aiping came back looking rather pleased with herself. “Well? Different person, completely different result.”

Shen Cong didn’t acknowledge it. He pulled a stack of Activity fruits and evolved meat from the truck and handed it to her. “Distribute this to the Automotive Lab staff. Remind them I need those blueprints fast.”

It was a social gesture. He’d originally planned to deliver the goods himself, but after watching himself fail to get anywhere with Chen Wei, he decided Li Aiping was better suited for the errand.

He understood how to read people. Executing on it was another matter. Smiling pleasantly at strangers was harder for him than picking a fight.

Two uneventful days passed.

In that time, Shen Cong completed three resource collection runs and earned 180 points, bringing his total to 996. Still not enough. The Vajra overhaul would require him to source materials through the garrison’s exchange system — all of it costing points — and even without the final blueprints in hand, a rough estimate put the total somewhere north of two thousand.

For Shen Cong, that meant roughly two weeks of work.

Two more days. Total: 1,184 points. Closing in.

And then the Automotive Lab’s nightly overtime sessions produced results. The first draft blueprints for Vajra 2.0 were ready.

The design was unrecognizable. What they’d drawn up looked like an armored engineering vehicle.

With tracks.

“Tracks won’t work.” Shen Cong rejected the design immediately. “Tracked vehicles have strong off-road performance, but they sacrifice agility. That’s not what I need.”

Tracked steering relied on speed differentials between the two treads. Fine for gentle turns at speed — but any sharp maneuver required a near-complete loss of momentum. High-speed tracked operation also essentially disabled the suspension system, and the fuel consumption was enormous.

A fuel hog, plain and simple. With energy sources growing scarcer by the month, he couldn’t afford the operating costs of a tracked vehicle. He wasn’t going to fight with a tanker trailer attached to his rear bumper.

Wheeled vehicles had their off-road limits, but they used far less fuel. Better for sustained operations.

“Vajra’s off-road limitations mostly come from having too many wheels and too long a wheelbase. What I want is something like the Armadillo Expeditionary — the overlander. But bigger than an Armadillo. Larger tires, higher ground clearance, wider body, better stability.”

(End of Chapter 152)