Small-town construction rarely included basements.

What it did include was a lot of compressed rubble that three bulls of strength could shift without particular difficulty.

Thud.

A section of collapsed reinforced concrete flooring came up and revealed a compressed room beneath — what had been a tea shop, judging by the rows of sealed canisters still on their shelves. He looked at them for a moment, decided he had no practical use for tea, and lowered the slab back into position. Someone else might want it. He’d leave it covered.

He moved through the ruins methodically, filling his bag as he went. The pickings were thin — a small township in this condition, after the storm and the flood, had been stripped of most things worth finding. The best haul came from a demolished internet café: several computer monitor assemblies and tower cases, their components water-damaged from the flood but potentially salvageable. He needed replacement parts for Vajra’s display systems. He stripped what looked usable and kept moving.

He maintained a constant awareness of the distance between himself and Vajra. Within visual range. Always.

The telescope sweep revealed them at roughly five hundred meters.

Seven people. Moving along the far end of the main street, heading into a section of partially-standing storefronts. All adults. Five men, two women. The oldest was probably in his sixties, hair going gray at the temples. All of them lean in a way that spoke of sustained shortage rather than recent hardship. Dirty clothing, matted hair, snake-skin bags over their shoulders, iron rods in their hands.

Not mutated. They’re talking to each other. Coordinating.

He pressed himself back into the shadow of a broken wall and kept the telescope steady.

The two women were positioned slightly apart from the main group — watching the approaches. Lookouts. The five men were picking through debris, filling their bags. One of them, older than the rest, was directing the others with brief gestures.

A scavenging team. Organized. Division of labor. Someone thought to bring lookouts.

He assessed them further. The iron rods were weapons, functional but primitive. No armor, no real protection, the clothing serving only to cover rather than defend. Scars visible on exposed skin on at least three of them — the particular patterns that came from encounters with things that had claws or mandibles.

Their movement was steady but careful rather than confident. Not Activity-enhanced.

These people were surviving on effort and cooperation rather than capability. And they were doing it in what appeared to be reasonable organizational health — the lookout positioning, the tax reference he’d catch later, the way the older man coordinated without apparent friction.

Normal people. Doing what normal people do.

He exhaled slowly and stayed where he was.

He wasn’t going to walk over and introduce himself. Not yet. Not without knowing more about the social structure of whatever existed in Juchao District — who these people reported to, what obligations they operated under, what a stranger in advanced combat armor who arrived alone in an armored truck would mean to the various parties in that structure.

But one of them, specifically, was about to become briefly available for a private conversation.

The man the older leader spoke to had nodded, waved a slightly impatient hand, and was now heading toward a section of partially-standing wall away from the group.

Going to relieve himself.

Shen Cong was already moving before he’d consciously framed the decision.

He covered the distance using the rubble for cover, the Baogai Armor’s rubber-soled boots doing their job at slow pace — the metal construction was essentially silent at walking speed, the ankle joints articulating freely enough that he could place each foot deliberately.

He positioned himself on the return path, behind a chest-high section of remaining wall, and waited.

The man finished, sorted himself out, and started back toward the group.

He came level with the wall.

Shen Cong stepped out, covered his mouth with one hand, got a forearm across his throat with the other, and took him off his feet before the man had processed that anything was happening.

At three bulls, this took approximately no effort.

His foot caught a loose stone on the follow-through.

Crunch.

The two lookouts called out immediately: “Old Zhang? That you?”

He put his mouth next to the man’s ear and kept his voice flat. “Tell them you’re fine. Or don’t.”

The man nodded emphatically.

Shen Cong eased the hand from his mouth a fraction.

“It’s me — I’ve got the runs, give me a minute.” The voice was convincingly strained.

“Lazy people always need the bathroom most.” One of the lookouts, dismissive.

The other: “What was that noise just now?”

“Nothing. Kicked a stone.”

“Stop messing around. Hurry up. You’ll attract the half-beasts.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The voices settled back into background distance. Shen Cong tore a strip from the man’s outer clothing, bound his eyes with it, then picked him up and moved.

He wasn’t going back to Vajra directly — he didn’t want the group’s relative position mapped to the vehicle’s location. He took a longer route, threading through buildings, checking behind him twice.

Ten minutes later, in Vajra’s cargo section with the exterior armor sealed:

Shen Cong sat across from the bound and blindfolded man and studied him for three full minutes without speaking. Partly to let his own pulse settle. Partly because the man didn’t know when the questions were coming, and uncertainty was a useful condition for honest answers.

“What’s your name?”

“Zhang Youhai.” Quick response, no hesitation on the name. “I’m from Juchao District, the city-south area. We came out to scavenge — Old Li’s team. He squared the scavenging tax with Zhang Tianshen before we left.”

“Who is Zhang Tianshen?”

Zhang Youhai’s expression shifted toward surprise, then recalibrated. “You don’t know Zhang—”

“I ask. You answer. Don’t editorialize.”

“Right, right. Zhang Tianshen is a mutant — he’s the leader of the Dragon Slayer group. They were operating in Juchao proper but half a month ago the Fire Brigade people pushed them out. Then they tried to muscle in on Wang Gen’s territory in the city south and couldn’t manage it, so they set up here on the approaches. Anyone coming out to scavenge has to pay them a cut.”

“What does ‘mutant’ mean?”

“You mean you haven’t — right, sorry.” Zhang Youhai caught himself and recalibrated again. “Mutants are the evolved people. You’ve seen X-Men? The ones with powers. When the disaster hit, some people got lucky — they evolved, developed abilities. Their appearance changed somewhat, so people started calling them mutants.”

“Half-beasts?”

“Also evolved people, but the evolution went wrong somehow. They’re not right in the head anymore. Act like animals. Dangerous — they eat people. Everyone calls them half-beasts.”

“You mentioned a third type. The iron people.”

Zhang Youhai paused, reassessing who he was talking to. “Iron people like Wang Gen in the city south — they look completely normal from outside, no physical changes, but they can do something with metal. Control it, kind of. We call them iron people behind their backs — like Magneto from X-Men.“

Shen Cong sat with that for a moment.

Mutants. Half-beasts. Iron people.

The survivor woman from two nights ago — half-beast, obviously. The fangs through the lip, the displaced eye, the impaired cognition. Failed mutation. He’d called it that himself.

Himself — iron people. The Activity bond with Vajra, the metal affinity, the enhancement coming through a metal intermediary rather than direct biological transformation.

Mutants were the remaining category. Something else entirely — direct physical transformation, visible changes, functional capabilities.

Zhang Tianshen had pushed out of Juchao District and was running a taxation operation on scavengers approaching from the south. That implied organized force — enough to hold territory and enforce collection.

Wang Gen held the city-south area and had apparently repelled Zhang Tianshen’s incursion. Another power center, different capability profile.

An ecosystem has formed. Weeks into the apocalypse and there’s already a tax collector.

“How many people are in Juchao District overall?”

Zhang Youhai thought about it. “Hard to say exactly. City south where we’re from, maybe two thousand people who survived. The main district has more — the subway system and the big shopping malls, people sheltered in those. Maybe five or six thousand total in the whole area, between the people who managed to hide underground and the ones who’ve come in from outside since the storm ended.”

“Food situation?”

“Bad. There’s a river for water, but food is running out. That’s why we’re out here — anything we find out in the townships gets brought back and traded.”

Shen Cong kept his expression neutral.

Five to six thousand survivors in one urban district alone. A functioning scavenging economy. Power groups with names and territories. A taxation system.

The world rebuilt itself faster than I thought.

“One more question. The Eastern Theater Command signal — has anyone in Juchao picked it up?”

Zhang Youhai’s blindfolded face turned toward him with an expression of genuine surprise. “You’ve got a radio? A real one? The Dragon Slayers have been saying they heard something from the direction of Nanjing, but nobody’s been able to confirm it — their equipment is basic.”

“What’s the general understanding of the military situation?”

“Most people assume the army is gone. The Dragon Slayers claim otherwise but they’re not trusted. If you’ve got a working radio—” Zhang Youhai stopped himself. “Sorry. You said one more question.”

Shen Cong stood up.

“I’m going to walk you back to within shouting distance of your group. Keep the blindfold on until you hear them. You don’t know what direction we came from, what you were inside, or anything you can describe. Understood?”

“Understood, understood completely.”

“Good.”

He found a Tumour-Pig ration pack and a sealed water bottle and set them next to the man.

“For the road.”

(End of Chapter 38)