Lv0.01. Activity Value 0.011H. Talent 1.027H.
Xiao Li Du’s data resolved clearly in Shen Cong’s perception, and it stopped him.
One-Star Talent. 1.027H.
One-Star wasn’t extraordinary on its face — the Golden Jiao and Shen Cong himself were both Two-and-a-Half Star, and the camp’s iron people generally achieved One-Star or better. But those were special cases.
Xiao Li Du was a mutant. Among the camp’s first-generation mutants, no one had been found with Talent above One-Star — the average sat around Half-Star, and some fell below even that. Xiao Li Du was the first mutant to reach One-Star Talent. He was also the first second-generation human evolved person to exist.
He was a single data point. But a data point like that generated a great deal of inference.
Iron people were a rare mutation, increasingly so — bonded to machinery that was steadily corroding and failing, with no way to replace what was lost. One by one, they would diminish. Iron people were never going to be the mainstream of human evolution.
Mutants were.
And mutants’ Talent had consistently looked weak — pitiful against evolved beasts that routinely displayed multiple Star ratings. The garrison had researched the “blood food” concept, attempting to boost mutant Talent by having them consume the Activity cores of condemned criminals. When Shen Cong had first heard of blood food, he’d immediately thought of Wang Gen’s group back in Juchao District — hunting mutants and iron people alike. Wang Gen had probably picked up the concept from garrison soldiers passing through, and run with it in the worst possible direction.
The blood food research had ultimately failed. Mutants couldn’t boost their Talent that way.
But Xiao Li Du’s birth changed the premise. Mutants weren’t inherently weak. The second generation could carry strong Talent from birth.
“Do you feel it?” Zhang Kan’s hands were visibly trembling. “One-Star Talent — on a newborn mutant! This is a sign of things to come. Humans will keep getting stronger, as long as we can keep reproducing. Every one of us alive today belongs to the old era. Even evolved people — we’re just the transition, the bridge between what was and what’s coming. Xiao Li Du and his generation are the new era.”
“Maybe so.” A thousand thoughts collided in Shen Cong’s mind over a single second. He nodded.
He’d watched Blackhead and the Antgod’s Talent change — but that had happened during the larval stage, before metamorphosis. Once Blackhead reached adulthood, no amount of high-quality feeding had moved her Talent even fractionally. Only her acid production had increased.
Larvae. Embryos. Stem cells. The concepts moved through his mind without resolving into a clear conclusion. He turned to Zhang Kan. “Director Zhang — send me a copy when you have new findings.”
“Of course. And — are you ever going to consider joining the Research Institute? We desperately need evolved people on the research staff.”
“No.”
“What a loss.”
Xiao Li Du’s birth swept through the camp like a change in weather.
The failed scouting mission had left a particular kind of bleakness in the air — the kind that settles when hope that was concrete becomes abstract again. Xiao Li Du dissolved it. The logic was simple and it hit hard: if Du Yafang’s baby had been born a mutant — born already stronger than most first-generation evolved people — then any survivor who had a child might be giving the world something extraordinary. The next generation might be what turned the tide.
Chinese people had always carried the instinct to place hope in children.
Couples who had given up on the idea of building anything personal began to reconsider. Life was brutally hard — but people needed something to move toward.
The leadership convened another meeting, as expected.
The agenda formalized what everyone already knew: Hefei was home, and that was final. No more relocation discussions. The construction of defensive fortifications would continue, and a new project was added: a tunnel system extending from the Mingfa Camp to Shushan Forest Park. If the camp ever faced a threat it couldn’t hold against, the tunnel provided evacuation. Shushan also offered higher ground — better protection against flooding if the rains came heavy.
A secondary discussion item: population policy. The camp was approaching thirty thousand people after several significant losses, with combat-age adults disproportionately depleted. Supplementing those numbers had become urgent. Xiao Li Du’s existence gave the leadership a reason to think about population growth in a new frame — not just raw numbers, but the possibility that second-generation children would arrive already evolved. Ten or fifteen years, and that generation could change the balance entirely.
For now, no formal policy. The situation needed to stabilize first, and several other expectant mothers needed to deliver safely before any decisions were made. The groundwork was being laid.
Trouble and fortune lean against each other.
Xiao Li Du had lifted the camp’s spirits. The camp’s food supply was running out.
“All the evolved plant resources in the surrounding area have been harvested. The evolved beast population nearby has been heavily culled. We need to go further out for hunting and gathering.”
Li Aiping’s report created a specific urgency for Shen Cong. He’d been inside for days focused on the Vajra overhaul, relying on the camp’s supply allocation. If the camp’s food situation deteriorated, his own resource access deteriorated with it.
He considered for a moment, then made a decision: pause the overhaul.
“Bring me the People’s Defense Department mission list.”
List in hand, he cross-referenced it against the evolved beast distribution map. The color coding was straightforward: deep red for Super-Heavyweight zones, red for Heavyweight, orange for Lightweight. He circled several orange-zone assignments.
“I’ll complete one or two per day. Handle the exchange accounting — and follow up on my weapon compensation. I need those back.”
The two Ape King Javelins, the Ape King Long Blade, and the Ape King War Hammer had all been lost somewhere near Nanjing with the scouting team. They’d been lent out, not given — the camp owed him replacement value.
He handed the list to Li Aiping, who nodded and left.
He ran a full pre-departure check: fuel tank, coolant, armor layer integrity, drive systems, monitoring systems. Everything nominal.
A short rest after lunch, then he drove out.
He’d renamed Vajra 2.0. The new vehicle was Daijang — Great Vajra.
Great Vajra moved through the city’s broken roads with the presence of something that had decided obstacles were a suggestion rather than a constraint. Anything in its path met the V-blade. Most things gave way.
Half an hour of driving brought him to Zaoshuying Industrial Park — the Crimson Mango grove he’d visited before. The mangoes had saturated him long ago, but the camp needed Activity fruit, and this grove still had a harvest waiting.
The White Bone Beetles came in their black-and-white tide, the same as before. At ten-bull strength, they registered as mild inconvenience. Ten minutes cleared the grove — every ripe fruit taken, nothing left behind except the ones still green.
He spent a while afterward killing White Bone Beetles and filled half the cargo space with carcasses.
Then he drove back.
Total time: just over an hour.
He unloaded the haul and handed everything to Li Aiping. “Calculate the points. And — what’s the status on my compensation?”
“The camp doesn’t have higher-grade bone-gold weapons to replace yours with. They can either convert it to points or give you equivalent value in lower-tier bone-gold weapons. Your choice.”
“Weapons.”
“I’ll contact the People’s Defense Department and Logistics.”
Half an hour later, it was settled. The Crimson Mangoes and White Bone Beetle carcasses yielded 310 points. The weapon compensation came back as a substantial collection of lower-tier bone-gold arrows and javelins — the Logistics Department, aware of Shen Cong’s preferred fighting style, had produced nearly everything they had on hand.
In Li Sansheng’s words: “Bone-gold weapons achieve their maximum effectiveness in Colonel Hu Ge’s hands.”
An accurate assessment.
That afternoon, Shen Cong recalibrated and went out again.
Destination: Yingshan Forest Farm in Feixi County, where a significant population of Lightweight-tier evolved beasts had taken up residence. Carcasses back to camp for points. Activity cores kept for future weapons production.
(End of Chapter 166)