1 AM.

Li Laotou came first. He’d waited near Sansheng Village, watched Dragon Slayer members move through the Provincial Road 208 section, saw bags being emptied onto the road surface and stones being repositioned. Couldn’t get close enough in the dark to see specifics.

Wan Quan followed twenty minutes later with the same report from the Mudan Road section.

Shen Cong checked the radar display.

Two clusters of movement signatures, one on the eastern edge of the scan radius, one on the northern edge. Both groups moving slowly — the methodical pace of people placing obstacles rather than traveling.

Zhang Tianshen had gone to Mudan Road himself. Wang Dong had taken Provincial Road 208.

He sent Li Laotou and Wan Quan back to sleep.

He opened the side window, loaded the slingshot with a small stone, and sent it at the ruined building face across the complex.

The impact sound was quiet. Three seconds later, a shape moved in the shadow and approached the vehicle.

“Tell Zhu Haifeng we can discuss the arrangement.”

The man nodded and disappeared back into the dark.

Shen Cong sat with what he was about to do for a moment.

Not with guilt. Not with hesitation, exactly. With the particular clarity that came from a decision being made for specific, defensible reasons rather than impulse.

His line was simple: he didn’t initiate against people who hadn’t moved against him. He responded to direct action with proportionate force applied until the threat was resolved. The Dragon Slayers had planned and begun executing a plan to immobilize and kill him. That was the threshold. He hadn’t set it low; he’d stated it to himself and held it consistently since the beginning.

What he noticed was that his thinking was unusually clear. Not the adrenaline-sharpened clarity of immediate physical threat, but something steadier — every element of the situation present and organized, every variable available for assessment.

Through the connection, Vajra’s Active state had shifted. Not dramatically. But distinctly: a quality of cold in the exchange current, the opposite of the warm urgency he’d felt in the pre-battle states before the Burrower, the Fangwolves, the ants. Something that moved through the connection and settled in his chest like a professional closing his hands around a specific tool.

He reached into that state and guided Vajra’s Active radiation through the frequency camouflage sequence — the technique he’d first used against the ant swarm, now practiced enough to be rapid. The interference pattern locked within three seconds. He tried several variations, held each for a few seconds, released.

That used to take twenty minutes of concentrated effort.

He tried Activity distribution — concentrating and dispersing through different sections of the vehicle’s Active body. Smoother than it had been. The response time between intent and effect had compressed.

We’re closer than we were.

The Exchange current shifted again — a warm thread running through the cold, the kind of strengthening pulse he recognized as development. His Level reading moved.

Pseudo-Level 0.955.

Still 0.045 below my own threshold. But moving.

He closed the connection when the camera feed showed Zhu Haifeng approaching.

The rear hatch opened onto a narrow compartment that had been systematically cleared of its previous occupants — the enclosure that had housed the blowfly research, the ant larvae, the Plastic Rabbit. Scrubbed with water. The smell was gone. He’d converted it to a meeting space by removing everything from it and doing nothing else.

Zhu Haifeng sat on a supply container and looked at the Baogai Armor with the expression of someone recalibrating their estimate.

The armor’s Activity core distribution was visible even to someone without deep knowledge of what they were looking at — the queen ant chest plate, the Fangwolf fang inclusions at the helmet sides, the node-joint covers at every articulation point. The sheer quantity of bone-gold embedded in a single suit of armor said specific things about capability and experience.

Shen Cong didn’t give him time to process it.

“I’ve confirmed the Dragon Slayer operation. They need to be dealt with. Tell me how you want to do it.”

Zhu Haifeng laid it out directly.

He’d fought Zhang Tianshen’s people multiple times — mostly distance engagements, ambush and withdrawal, avoiding the firearm advantage in extended firefights. Wu Wenjun’s abdominal wound from Wang Gen’s attack had removed him from the field. That left Zhang Tianshen and Wang Dong as the two functional mutant threats.

Solo, Zhu Haifeng could handle either of them. Together, the math didn’t work — he’d been close to losing when Wang Dong arrived as backup on a previous engagement.

Tonight: Zhang Tianshen was at Mudan Road, Wang Dong was at Provincial Road 208. Separated by the operation they were running.

“I can take one. I need you to occupy the other long enough for me to finish my target. We don’t even need to coordinate closely — just make sure they can’t reinforce each other.”

Shen Cong asked about Wang Gen.

Zhu Haifeng’s account: Wang Gen appeared to have reached some understanding with the main district’s fire brigade authority, controlling the bridge access and maintaining a kind of perimeter. He’d declined Zhu Haifeng’s approach. His behavior had been more territorial than aggressive — taxing the scavengers, controlling water access, but not expanding or acting against the other factions with full force.

“Guarding the bridges. Waiting for something.”

The provincial military’s return. Possibly.

He asked about the main district.

Zhu Haifeng: chaos immediately after the storm, then organization as the provincial military district sent people in to establish a management structure around the surviving Juchao Area Reserve Regiment. He’d been nominally attached to the fire brigade before the split. Zhang Tianshen had also been nominally attached.

Then the military left, and the fire brigade structure fractured, and Zhang Tianshen killed the wrong person, and Zhu Haifeng had followed him out here.

“Anything else you need to know?”

“That’s enough for now.”

He’d been using the conversation’s pauses to extend his Active perception through the connection — not aggressively, just the fine-grained observation mode he’d developed for reading radiation signatures. Zhu Haifeng’s signature had been present throughout the discussion.

He ran the numbers.

Pseudo-Level 0.281.

Below 0.3. Against his own 0.955, the gap was larger than the numbers suggested — not just a linear difference in quantity, but a qualitative difference in what the Activity was doing in each system and how it was being directed.

And yet Zhu Haifeng had stated, without posturing, that he was capable of handling either Dragon Slayer mutant in a solo fight. Just not both simultaneously.

The city south evolved people are operating at 0.1 to 0.3 range. This is what months of post-apocalypse evolution without systematic development produces.

He thought about what he’d be walking into tonight.

Not even close.

“Let’s move,” he said. “We can talk more when it’s done.”

(End of Chapter 66)