Like an oversized brick, Vajra rolled out onto Sili River Road.

The road had been wrecked during the battle with the Golden Jiao — craters and ruts everywhere, barely recognizable as pavement. The two-meter tires and 1.5-meter ground clearance handled it without complaint. Even pits a meter deep were crossed without slowing. It looked like one of those monster truck competitions Shen Cong had watched as a child — Vajra tilting and swaying across the broken surface, entirely unbothered.

Activity meant mechanical wear was hardly a concern.

What did concern him was the fuel readout on the center console. Less than five kilometers, and 4.5 liters already gone. Ninety liters per hundred kilometers. The engine was every bit the fuel hog Liu Yanbing had warned him about.

Part of that was the diesel itself. Pre-apocalypse reserves, properly stored, could last years — some discoloration, some incomplete combustion, but serviceable. The camp's fuel supply was a patchwork of whatever could be scavenged from ruins, stored in varying conditions, mixed in quality. Poor combustion efficiency was the expected result.

Solar panels aren't strong enough to offset this, and the diesel is finite. Shen Cong frowned. Energy is going to be a problem down the line.

Aside from the fuel consumption, he was satisfied. The test run confirmed what he wanted: large, stable, solid. A mobile fortress.

He drove back and resumed work with the Automotive Lab team on the interior.

Vajra 2.0's internal layout was simpler than the original, not more complex.

The cab occupied 2.5 meters of the vehicle's length — almost as wide as the body itself — and would be configured as an integrated combat operations, surveillance, and information management platform. The closed-circuit system would display everything happening around the vehicle, with control access to every electrical system in the rear. High-powered radio transmitter, multiple radar units, camera arrays, infrared thermal imaging. At minimum a one-kilometer monitoring radius in all directions.

The cargo body used a corridor-wrapping layout: an inner ring of walkway running the full perimeter inside the armor layer, with the actual living compartments inboard of that.…