The survivor community’s relationship with the evolved people of city south had followed a predictable arc.

Wang Gen had been genuine leadership in the early days — someone who stepped forward when it mattered, who used his capability to protect rather than exploit, who earned the trust that came with people willingly calling him by name. That had shifted as resources depleted and the flood hit and the pressure of maintaining order with insufficient means had ground something down in him. The tribute system, the forced fishing in dangerous waters, the people who’d died in the river. The Wang Gen-ge that survivors called him now was the same words as before, different in every way that mattered.

The Dragon Slayers had never had a grace period. They’d arrived as predators and operated as predators consistently. The women taken to Sanhe Village. The man beaten in the tax collection that afternoon. The others who’d been killed when the early resistance formed and was crushed. The scavengers paid a toll in silence and called it the cost of not being dead.

Zhu Haifeng’s people occupied a middle position in the survivor assessment — harsher than nothing, less brutal than the Dragon Slayers, and occasionally useful in the fights they kept picking with Zhang Tianshen’s people. The Captain title drew predictable commentary about the aesthetic sensibility of whoever was responsible for it.

Shen Cong filed all of this as background.

What he was actually thinking about was whether Zhu Haifeng was offering a genuine alliance, a manipulation, or something that would turn into a manipulation once it had served its initial purpose.

“I appreciate the framing,” he said. “But I’m not interested in taking lives right now.”

“It’s not about taking lives. It’s about restoring order in the absence of any structure to do it. I handle the actual act — I only need your support. When it’s done, the diesel is yours.”

“No.”

He moved toward the window closure. Zhu Haifeng spoke quickly.

“You’re not curious about their plan?”

Shen Cong stopped.

“I know what they’re planning for you tonight. Work with me, and I tell you everything.”

If he actually knows — and if the information is accurate — the value of the intelligence outweighs the cost of the conversation.

“How would you know their plans?”

“I’ve had someone inside the Dragon Slayers’ operation since they came through the main district. It’s not a sophisticated infiltration — these people aren’t sophisticated enough to maintain operational security. Every camp in city south leaks. The scavengers you see hauling broken equipment? Zhang Tianshen recruited informants among them the day he arrived. I recruited mine before that.”

The information felt credible in the specific way that details feel credible — not polished, not designed to persuade, just the kind of thing that was either true or an unusually good fake.

Zhu Haifeng laid out the Dragon Slayers’ plan.

Tonight: teams would scatter broken glass and large roofing nails across two road sections — the Sansheng Village section of Provincial Road 208, and the stretch of Mudan Road between the Industrial and Commercial Bank and Kangyuan Pharmacy. If that failed to disable Vajra’s tires, a secondary obstacle — stone blockades with pits dug behind them — had been prepared at multiple positions along the same routes.

The goal: immobilize Vajra, trap Shen Cong inside, and then manage the situation from outside with multiple people and firearms.

Both routes are access to the Yuxi River bridges. Both routes need to be passable for him to reach Wang Gen’s territory or the main district.

He sat with the plan for a moment and evaluated it honestly.

Glass and nails wouldn’t penetrate his tires — the Activity hardening that applied to every Amalgamated component included the tire material, and the tire compound had been rated for heavy industrial use before the modification. Stone blockades and pits were a different category of problem: the dozer blade cleared stone, and the raised chassis clearance handled most ground-level obstacles.

Zhang Tianshen didn’t know any of that. The plan was sound against any conventional vehicle and essentially useless against Vajra.

But essentially useless wasn’t completely harmless. A prepared position with firearms, on a road Shen Cong needed to use, with the specific knowledge that he’d be driving through that section — even a poor plan required a response.

Having people try to kill you and doing nothing about it is how you train people to try to kill you.

Zhu Haifeng and his associate left with a non-answer that was functionally a yes.

Shen Cong thought through the variables for twenty minutes after they went.

Wang Gen: the parallel fuel negotiation. Wang Gen’s refusal to do a simple commercial transaction without a personal meeting was transparently not about establishing trust. The man had built his city south position through a combination of genuine early leadership and increasingly coercive tribute collection. An unknown evolved person arriving with a powerful vehicle and no obvious allegiance was a threat to his position regardless of intentions.

The meeting Wang Gen wanted was reconnaissance, not relationship-building.

The Dragon Slayers’ plan: real, probably. The information aligned with what he’d predicted about Zhang Tianshen’s post-negotiation behavior, and the specific tactical details — glass and nails on particular road sections, secondary stone obstacles — were specific enough that manufacturing them as a manipulation would have required knowing which routes Shen Cong would use and why, which Zhu Haifeng wouldn’t have had.

His own position: he had fuel as a need, two hostile parties planning moves against him, one potentially useful ally with his own agenda, and several ordinary people who’d attached themselves to his operations in ways that made them his problems without being his assets.

What do I actually need to accomplish in city south?

Diesel. Passage through to the main district. Possibly intelligence from Wang Gen about Activity development and the provincial military’s research.

What can I spend to get those things?

Leverage he had: Vajra’s capability, which neither faction had accurately assessed. His own combat capability at five bulls plus. The biological weapons system he’d developed — the evolved-core weapons, the ant larvae approaching their final developmental stage, the chemical stores including the Strong and Super Ant Acid that could dissolve Activity-based defenses. Information about the Activity system that other evolved people in the area demonstrably didn’t have.

He was not going to get everything he wanted by being passive.

He brought up the city south map on the laptop and called Li Laotou back.

“Task,” he said. “You can refuse. Tonight, in the second half of the night, I need someone to check these two road sections for obstacles. Tell me what you find.”

Li Laotou’s hands were trembling slightly when he looked at the sections Shen Cong indicated.

Ma Laosan was at his elbow. The bruising on his face was still visible.

“Are you going to move against the Dragon Slayers?” Li Laotou asked.

“Treat it as a transaction. Don’t ask more than that.”

The two men looked at each other.

“Yes,” they said together.

After they left, Shen Cong stood at the window and looked at a specific shadow at the edge of the large ruined building across the complex.

Zhu Haifeng’s associate. Left behind as a signal, or as a watch, or as both.

He acknowledged the presence and went back to work on the antenna design.

(End of Chapter 65)