Shen Cong decided to raise twenty bee pupae on Bee Treasure and one queen cell larva on Royal Treasure Jelly.

The remaining larvae went to the Research Institute, exchanged for a small number of points.

The larvae were technically edible. He just couldn’t bring himself to eat something that looked indistinguishable from maggots. And there was no shortage of food at the moment — Treasure Bee larvae were a problem he could afford not to solve.

That evening, the camp’s leadership convened at the Platform One command post. Shen Cong attended.

The agenda was the Dragon Hornet threat. The convoy had brought back more than survivors — it had brought back Zhang Youhai’s account of Dragon Hornets hunting over Chaohu Lake. The Juchao District survivors had watched it as a curiosity. For the Mingfa Camp, Dragon Hornets were a different kind of news entirely.

“If the Dragon Hornets have established Chaohu Lake as a foraging site, it’s only a matter of time before Hefei falls inside their regular range,” Zhao Weiliang said. “Colonel Hu has already encountered six of them directly. Tonight’s purpose is to discuss what options we have.”

The Dragon Hornets had held back during both engagements — apparently trying to take the Antgod alive during their first encounter, and then caught off-guard and eliminated before they could properly respond when facing Shen Cong. The camp had no illusion that those outcomes reflected genuine Dragon Hornet capability.

The Huoxue recorded Dragon Hornet flight speed at 180 meters per second. For reference, Shen Cong had estimated the Swiftclaw Leopard at 120. At 180 meters per second, a Dragon Hornet closing within ten meters was beyond the visual tracking ability of any evolved person except Shen Cong himself, whose light sensitivity gave him just enough margin to follow it. Pair that speed with mandibles capable of shearing metal, add the Activity-suppressing venom as a reserve threat, and a Dragon Hornet colony at full capability was something the camp currently had no answer for.

Super-Heavyweight wasn’t just a tier label. It described a qualitative difference.

And Dragon Hornets could fly, move faster than almost anything on land, and dive underwater to take fish. Air and sea combined. A category of threat the camp’s defensive infrastructure wasn’t designed to address.

The discussion ran its course without producing anything actionable.

The one point of genuine agreement — including Shen Cong, which was notable — was that underground fortification was the only viable defense against evolved beasts at this tier. If it came to it, he was considering reserving space in the Shushan excavation for a chamber large enough to drive Great Vajra into when serious threats appeared.

The next morning.

The convoy departed for the second survivor search mission.

The Bengbu-Hefei Expressway ran directly toward Huainan City, with Bengbu City beyond it and a branch route to Fuyang City. All three were on the search list. The plan was to establish a base camp in Huainan and cover all three cities over two days before returning to the Mingfa Camp.

Huainan, Bengbu, and Fuyang all sat in the barren zone — sparse Activity, weak evolved beasts, and limited resources, but by the same token manageable to operate in. The Provincial Garrison Command had decided on a voluntary basis: survivors who wanted to come to Mingfa were welcome, those who didn’t could stay. Accepting the camp’s military administration structure was the condition of entry.

Great Vajra’s exhaust stacks belched thick black smoke as the convoy moved out. The current diesel batch was low-grade — incomplete combustion, inefficient burn.

The fuel situation was a slow-building problem. Quality was declining as reserves aged and the easy sources were exhausted. Salvage crews were still finding small quantities in ruins, but supply was falling behind demand. The camp was already designing biogas digesters — transitioning cooking and power generation to biogas, reserving whatever liquid fuel remained for vehicle operations only.

An hour and a half of driving.

Long-feng County’s urban ruins came into view. Long-feng County was an administrative district under Hefei, and the convoy found something here that hadn’t been on any previous map: a road barrier with a hand-carved wooden sign planted in the middle.

“Defeat the Apocalypse — Turn Left 1 km — Changfeng County Happy Home Welcomes You.”

Liu Qihang’s voice came over the radio. “Colonel Hu, please hold position. I’ll take a team to make contact. I don’t recall any survivor presence here from the previous run.”

“Acknowledged.”

Shen Cong launched the drone while he waited, keeping it low and offset — positioned well to the side before gaining altitude, moving quietly rather than climbing straight up. Surveillance was only effective from concealment.

The feed showed a small settlement: stone walls about four meters high, backed by a grove of what appeared to be Activity fruit trees heavily laden with fruit. Inside the walls, a row of buildings. A crowd had gathered at the main gate — forty or fifty people, estimated.

Liu Qihang and several mutants went forward to talk.

The conversation didn’t go smoothly. A small confrontation. Then Liu Qihang and his group were inside the walls somehow.

Then the courtyard floor gave way.

Every person who’d gone in dropped. The ones who hadn’t fallen yet were shoved in by the survivors around them.

Shen Cong watched the feed without any change of expression.

He keyed the radio to the personnel who’d stayed with the convoy. “That settlement is a trap. Liu Qihang’s team fell into a pit in the courtyard. They’re being held. The people there provoked the confrontation deliberately — standard lure-and-capture. They’ll send someone over here next to bring the rest of you in. Expect an invitation, probably with a child involved to establish trust. Stay put.”

He put the drone away, suited up in the Half-Activated Armor, and waited.

Liu Qihang’s team had been careless. Shen Cong found it difficult to be surprised. The trap had involved deliberate verbal provocation — something designed to create an emotional response and override caution — and it had worked. These people had survived months in the apocalypse and still let themselves be walked into an obvious pit. He didn’t understand how they’d managed the survival part.

The world was full of schemes. Never let your guard down for a moment. Forget that and sooner or later you paid for it.

Some people apparently needed to be reminded the hard way.

The settlement sent exactly who he’d predicted: a young man and a child.

The pitch was smooth — Liu Qihang’s team was inside enjoying hospitality, discussing arrangements for the Sweet Orange Fruit grove nearby, would the rest of the convoy like to come sample the fruit?

A child as the trust signal. An Activity fruit as the incentive. The approach wasn’t sophisticated, but against an unprepared target it would work.

The remaining iron people and mutants exchanged glances that communicated a complete shared understanding.

“Sure, let’s go see this Sweet Orange Fruit.”

“What about the driver in the big truck?” The young man gestured toward Great Vajra.

“He’s just an ordinary person — the driver. Leave him to watch the vehicle. You can bring him some fruit later.”

“Of course.” The young man nodded and led the group away.

Once they’d cleared the distance, Shen Cong stepped down from Great Vajra and walked in the opposite direction, looping wide, then doubling back toward the settlement from an angle the posted lookouts wouldn’t be watching.

The settlement’s perimeter defense was minimal. Two people sitting on top of the stone walls — both watching the direction the convoy personnel had been led, neither tracking the side Shen Cong was approaching from.

He moved into the Sweet Orange Fruit grove without alerting them.

The trees were heavy with fruit. The ground between them was dotted with animal traps — spring-loaded capture devices, the kind set to take evolved beasts drawn in by the Activity fruit scent. This settlement hunted with bait.

Trap awareness was something he’d developed before the apocalypse and refined after it. He moved through the grove carefully, reading the ground, avoiding the set points, and reached the wall. One jump carried him over cleanly and silently into the shadow of a building on the interior side.

He drew the Ape King Long Blade.

And waited to see how this would develop.

(End of Chapter 180)