Shen Cong didn't enjoy killing people. Every time he killed someone, there was a clear reason for it.

He'd never met Big-Fly Brother before today. The reasons for killing him were sufficient: he was a genuinely dangerous person, and he was about to relocate to the Mingfa Camp, which placed him in Shen Cong's immediate environment. That was enough.

He could tolerate Li Aiping, who annoyed him daily, and Zhao Yalan, who he'd occasionally considered dealing with but never acted on — because somewhere beneath the irritation, he recognized that neither of them would actually harm him. Difficult people, both of them. Not dangerous ones.

Big-Fly Brother was different. He'd crossed a line that, once crossed, didn't uncross. Like the purge at the Fenghuang Mountain Vineyard Camp — where he'd had Zhu Haifeng clear out the worst offenders and have them executed. A line only has meaning if crossing it has consequences. People who break fundamental human decency and face no consequences learn that the line doesn't exist, and they keep pushing. That kind of person left unchecked was a threat to everything around them.

So from the moment Shen Cong had the full picture, Big-Fly Brother was already dead. The timing of the execution was just logistics — choosing the moment that made the message clearest and simplified the political situation.

Liu Qihang's assessment — he hates evil and wants to do right — had gotten the first part correct. The second part was charity that Shen Cong would not have claimed for himself. He acted according to his own interests. When those interests and basic human decency aligned, the outcome looked virtuous from the outside.

Life-Saving Yellow Soybeans. High-vitality Activity like the sweet potatoes, most likely. Whatever Coal City decides about relocating, those are mine.

He ran water over the Half-Activated Armor, washing away the blood.

At some point — he couldn't identify exactly when — killing a person had stopped producing any different emotional response than killing an evolved beast. The internal accounting registered the event, evaluated the justification, and moved on. He noticed the absence of…