“That’s the iron person — Hu Ge.”

“The one who killed the big ape, right?”

“Yeah, him. Supposedly very strong. Cold though, keeps to himself.”

“If you can kill that thing, you’d better be strong.”

“How does some drifter iron person from out of town end up that powerful? Our own evolved people can’t even take on the weakest of those apes one-on-one.”

“Maybe he’s just gifted. You heard they’re turning The Chart into a proper textbook? Apparently a lot of the content came from Hu Ge.”

“No wonder Commander Zhao went out personally to recruit him.”

“But is he actually the actor Hu Ge? Has anyone seen his face?”

“Nobody has. Nobody’s ever seen him take the helmet off. He lives in his truck — that truck is something else, by the way. People at the Research Institute say he definitely modified it before the catastrophe. The power and armor on that thing are nothing like a normal heavy truck.”

“He knew the apocalypse was coming?”

“Modifying vehicles isn’t that strange — plenty of people do it. Hu Ge probably came from money. Regular people can’t afford it; even basic custom parts cost a fortune.”

“What a shame I wasn’t driving when it hit. Could’ve been an iron person myself.”

“Please. Half the camp drove for a living and none of them became iron people. It takes more than being behind the wheel — you need the luck, and most of us don’t have it.”

“Who are you backing?”

“Song Qi. I’ve talked to him — good guy.”

“I’m backing Hu Ge. That armor is incredible. All those weapons hanging off the back — that’s style.”

“Hu Ge’s probably stronger.”

“Could be all decoration. Pretty on the outside, hollow on the inside.”

The whispers carried easily to Shen Cong. Within fifty meters, nothing escaped him if he chose to listen. The problem was the volume — filtering useful information out of the noise took effort.

The referee called the match to order.

The fight started. It also ended — before the crowd had fully settled down to watch.

Shen Cong crossed the distance, drove a knee into Song Qi’s stomach, and that was that. Song Qi folded to the ground, arms wrapped around his midsection, retching.

“Hu Ge wins. Advances to the round of sixteen.” The referee blinked, then announced it.

Shen Cong confirmed the outcome and turned to leave, disappearing into the stunned crowd before most of them had processed what had happened.

The noise erupted after he was already gone.

“What — I looked away for two seconds and it’s over?”

“Song Qi made the top thirty-two and he got dropped that fast? What just happened?”

“That iron person is terrifying.”

“Think he can actually solo one of those apes?”

“Has to be staged, right? No way that was real.”

An older man shook his head slowly. “The gap in ability was too large. That iron person moved faster than I could follow. Song Qi never had a chance to react.”

If the first match had been a surprise, the afternoon’s second match removed all doubt.

One move. A fully armored iron person, flat on the ground, match over. Shen Cong advanced to the quarterfinals without a moment of real opposition. By the time the dust settled, everyone in camp knew: when Hu Ge fights, he needs exactly one strike.

The next day brought two more matches.

Morning: another single-move knockout. Shen Cong advanced to the final four.

His semifinal opponent was Wang Yu.

Shen Cong was already weighing whether a “training accident” might solve his Wang Yu problem then and there — but Wang Yu forfeited before the match began.

Forfeit. Shen Cong watched him go without expression. That’s fine. There are plenty of other opportunities.

October 2nd.

The ordinary division had concluded. One match remained: the evolved person final.

Vajra Militia Squad Leader Hu Ge versus Independent Motor Battalion Commander Fu Ran.

Before the bracket had even started, the camp had buzzed with debate about who its strongest evolved person truly was. Now, as the final approached, the arena was oddly subdued. No one genuinely believed Fu Ran would last through a single exchange.

Fu Ran himself didn’t look particularly confident. His expression as he took the field was grim — the face of a man walking toward something unpleasant that he couldn’t avoid.

Fu Ran’s capabilities were roughly equivalent to Wang Yu’s.

Shen Cong had already taken Wang Yu’s measure precisely: Lv0.629, Activity Value 0.764H, Talent 1.215H. A One-Star talent rating. Against Shen Cong’s Two-and-a-Half Star, the gap wasn’t a step — it was a cliff.

If Shen Cong sat somewhere in the near-Heavyweight bracket, Wang Yu fell somewhere between Featherweight and Lightweight.

Fu Ran was in the same territory.

The distance between them was the kind that couldn’t be closed through effort or tactics.

It struck Shen Cong sometimes, in a detached way, that he and Vajra seemed to outclass every other iron person in every measurable dimension — absorption rate, Exchange enhancement depth, baseline Talent. The gap was consistent across all of it.

Maybe that gap was what Talent actually meant.

“Begin!”

Fu Ran moved immediately into a defensive stance. He was the Motor Battalion’s commander, the camp’s previously strongest iron person. He had no illusions about winning — but he wasn’t going to go down in one move without at least making Shen Cong work for it.

It didn’t help.

Against someone whose only intention was to end things immediately, Fu Ran’s defense wasn’t enough.

Shen Cong closed the distance before Fu Ran had finished setting himself, grabbed his shoulder, and threw him. Fu Ran hit the stone-reinforced platform with a concussive impact that cracked the surface and knocked him unconscious on the spot.

“Hu Ge wins!”

Scattered applause — then more, then more, until it became genuine. The crowd had accepted what they’d seen. Commander Zhao Weiliang rose from the reviewing stand to present Shen Cong with the Edge of Evolution award.

And then — one person turned to look at the eastern sky. Then two. Then three. Then most of the crowd.

Zhao Weiliang looked. Zhu Li looked. Shen Cong’s brow creased as he followed their gaze.

Another mushroom cloud was rising in the east.

Nanjing had fired a second nuclear weapon.

“All senior camp leadership — emergency meeting.” Zhao Weiliang’s expression darkened instantly. He turned to go, then looked back at Shen Cong. “Hu Ge. You attend as well.”

“I’ll pass.” The refusal came before he’d even thought about it.

“You’re the Edge of Evolution. You hold the rank of Colonel. You are senior camp leadership now. Your attendance is required.”

Shen Cong’s eyes shifted slightly.

He turned the situation over. Every senior leader in one room — all of them within reach. If someone wanted to spring a trap, they’d be trapped inside it with him. Thinking about it that way, the tightly coiled tension in his chest released a fraction. From a pure risk assessment, being in a room full of people he could physically dominate was actually the safest possible position.

No scheme could unfold when all its participants were within arm’s reach.

And the nuclear detonation was a genuine emergency — even if there was a trap buried somewhere, he had more than enough to ensure his own survival.

“Fine.”

He fell in with Zhao Weiliang and the rest of the leadership.

The meeting room was packed and hazy with cigarette smoke.

“A second nuclear detonation in the direction of Nanjing. I want to hear everyone’s assessment.” Zhao Weiliang waved ineffectually at the smoke drifting toward him — he didn’t smoke, but nearly everyone else in the room did.

The meeting immediately dissolved into a dozen overlapping voices as people speculated and theorized and advanced their own readings of the broader situation.

Shen Cong said nothing. He sat in a corner, still as a statue, and listened. His mind was running at full speed — collecting every detail that surfaced, cross-referencing, calculating.

A second nuclear weapon.

What exactly was happening in Nanjing?

(End of Chapter 155)