When Shen Cong had originally modified his Volvo FH, he’d referenced the Armadillo — a professional overlanding vehicle. Before the apocalypse, he hadn’t been the only person fixated on end-of-world scenarios. Doomsday prepping was a genuine cultural phenomenon, and the products that grew up around it were numerous.
Plenty of major companies had taken a swing at designing “apocalypse vehicles.” Most of it was marketing.
Shen Cong had worked through dozens of models and concepts before concluding that the most genuinely capable option for post-collapse conditions was the Armadillo series, produced by Germany’s MAN Group. It got hyped as a doomsday war machine, but at its core it was simply a top-tier expedition overlander — with off-road performance rivaling a standard jeep.
His affinity for trucks probably had something to do with his upbringing. His parents had built their livelihood hauling freight. Trucks were in his blood from childhood.
So when he built his war machine, he built it around a truck chassis.
The Armadillo Expeditionary was the reference point.
But at the time, his assessment of it was that it was too short. The design prioritized comfort and off-road performance at the expense of cargo capacity — and cargo capacity was everything to him then. So Vajra had gone in its own direction instead.
Time changes things. That enormous cargo hold — the reason for Vajra’s excessive length — had become a liability. Looking back now, the Armadillo’s proportions were actually better suited to the world as it currently existed than Vajra’s were.
Still, even the Armadillo was too small. Given Vajra’s Talent ceiling, it would take at least five Armadillo Expeditionaries combined to provide enough material mass to fully amalgamate to Lv1 Activity.
Stockpile materials. Accumulate points. Finalize blueprints.
Two more days passed.
To boost camp morale and reinforce the sense of security, the Anhui Provincial Garrison organized an open tournament. Two divisions: evolved people, and ordinary survivors.
The ordinary division tested vocational skills. The evolved division was a combat bracket.
Twenty-eight iron people and four hundred and twelve mutants competed in open qualifying rounds to determine a field of thirty-two. Single-elimination from there, until one fighter remained. The last one standing would be awarded the title “Edge of Evolution” by the Provincial Garrison Command.
As a seed entrant personally designated by Commander Zhao Weiliang, Shen Cong skipped qualifying entirely and entered directly at the round of sixteen.
This should have been unremarkable. He’d killed the Violent Ape King. The seeding was self-evident.
Some people, however, couldn’t resist poking at things.
“So you’re the iron person everyone’s been talking up lately — Hu Ge, right?” The speaker was an iron person named Wang Yu. His bonded vehicle was a crane truck; before the apocalypse he’d worked highway emergency response. A meteor shower had made him an iron person instead. “Word is you swooped in and finished off a half-dead ape that was already on its last legs. That about right?”
Wang Yu was blunt by nature. He didn’t defer to anyone — not even Motor Battalion Commander Fu Ran, who he challenged regularly, trading wins and losses. Now he’d turned that energy toward Shen Cong.
Shen Cong was holding the Ape King War Hammer he’d just finished sharpening. Behind his visor, his face was expressionless. His voice was flat. “You want something?”
“That armor of yours is something else. Fancy looking. Got a strange feel to it.” Wang Yu grinned. “Makes me want to take it. Seems wasted on you — why not hand it over? What do you think?”
“You want.” Shen Cong’s voice went very quiet. Every hair on his body stood up. “My armor.”
The words came out one at a time, like something being measured before being cut.
“You certain you want my armor.”
“Ha — so are you going to—”
Wang Yu never finished the sentence.
His vision blurred. Something cold pressed against his throat. In the span of a single heartbeat, Shen Cong had crossed the distance between them and had him by the neck, one-handed, lifting.
The grip tightened — slowly, steadily — and Shen Cong’s thoughts were a single tangled roar: kill him — he’s coming for what’s mine — he has to die — I won’t be safe until he’s dead—
Wang Yu had found the trigger.
“Squad Leader Hu — don’t! Don’t kill him!” Li Aiping had followed Wang Yu over the moment she’d seen him approaching. Now she was shouting, terrified she’d called out a second too late.
Shen Cong’s hand paused. Something was being considered.
The guards on sentry duty across the way had spotted the situation and came running. “Break it up! Both of you, stand down — you’ve all read the wartime regulations, no internal fighting!”
Li Aiping turned to them quickly. “They’re sparring. Just a friendly exchange.”
“Sparring, right — alright, keep it under control, don’t push it.” The two guards took the exit she’d handed them without hesitation.
Shen Cong looked at the guards. Looked at Wang Yu — who hadn’t managed to pry off even one of his fingers. He considered for a moment.
Then slowly opened his hand.
Thud.
Wang Yu collapsed to the ground like water poured out of a bucket, focused entirely on pulling air back into his lungs.
“Alright, Brother Wang, sparring’s done — let’s get you back.” The two guards took hold of Wang Yu and steered him away, nodding briefly at Shen Cong as they went.
Shen Cong didn’t respond. He watched Wang Yu being helped away.
Wang Yu coughed for a long stretch, putting real distance between himself and Shen Cong before he turned to look back.
There was something cold in his eyes.
Then he faced forward again, as if nothing had happened.
He didn’t know what that glance had cost him.
Shen Cong had seen it with complete clarity. The killing intent that had begun to cool rekindled instantly — and came back hotter.
Wang Yu has to die.
He said it to himself, quietly, a few seconds later.
Then he sat back down and went back to polishing his bone-gold weapons.
From the moment Wang Yu had opened his mouth about the Half-Activated Armor, the death sentence had existed. Shen Cong had only held back out of consideration for camp politics — once the Vajra overhaul was done, he’d revisit. But that look on the way out had settled it. He could feel the hatred in it.
Wang Yu hates me.
He’ll go back and start planning.
He wants to kill me. I don’t want to die. So he has to die first.
Clean logic. The countdown had started. Shen Cong would find an opportunity — something untraceable — and remove Wang Yu from the equation entirely.
He kept grinding the Activity core against the stone, his thoughts running cold.
I knew the camp wasn’t safe. I knew someone would come for me. And now one has. Wherever people gather, there’s politics. Where there’s politics, there are schemes. Even if I’m ahead of every other evolved person here, I can never stop watching my back.
The incident dissolved like a dropped stone — a brief ripple, then silence.
That evening, Liu Yanbing came by after work, with Chen Wei accompanying him in her newly negotiated role. He was there to present the second draft blueprints. Two days of revision had produced a new design concept.
This one drew from the Armadillo’s principles while keeping some of Vajra’s distinctive character.
“Total vehicle length: 15 meters. Width: 6 meters. Height: 5.5 meters. Ground clearance: 1.5 meters — comparable to a serious off-road vehicle. To improve cross-country performance, we’ve reduced the wheel count to six: two in front, four in the rear. The body will be a unified integrated structure…”
Looking at the drawings, Vajra 2.0’s second draft resembled a compressed Armadillo — flat and wide, somewhat like an intercontinental missile transport carrier. But with the raised clearance and enlarged tires, it still read as a rectangular truck profile.
Liu Yanbing continued: “The front end uses the V-shaped dozer blade you specified — foldable, doubles as a bumper when stowed. The roof has front and rear lift platforms for radar mounting. The center section carries a weapons platform, and weapon mounts have been added along both sides — compatible with rotary cannons and similar light weapons systems.”
(End of Chapter 153)