Zhu Haifeng’s actual purpose for the visit was straightforward enough to read before he stated it: the rescue team needed supplies, Vajra had supplies, and the social capital from the previous night’s operation represented the most favorable moment to ask.

“What are you offering in exchange?”

The list Zhu Haifeng produced was honest and comprehensive and contained nothing Shen Cong needed. Salvaged clothing, miscellaneous hardware, some food stores recovered from the Sanhe Village compound — useful to people without other options, not useful to someone with a full cargo section and specific equipment requirements.

“There’s nothing here I want.”

Zhu Haifeng accepted this with the expression of someone who’d expected it. “The gap between what I planned and what exists is significant,” he said. “Running a team of two hundred people is different from running twelve.”

“What’s your next step?”

“Longer-range scavenging. Hunt evolved beasts when we can. Clear and rebuild this area.” He looked at Shen Cong. “You?”

“Undecided.”

Which wasn’t entirely true, but the specifics of provincial military district, Activity research data, Hefei weren’t information he was offering.

“Before I go — tell me about your evolution. Everything you can describe. I’ll exchange information in return.”

Zhu Haifeng’s account was the first firsthand evolved-person development history Shen Cong had collected from someone other than himself.

The mutation site: the coccyx. He’d felt it from the first day — a warmth at the base of the spine, like something preparing to extend. Two months later, it was a visible protrusion, palpable as a rounded hardening beneath the skin. No external bone spike. Not yet, possibly never. He couldn’t tell what it was becoming.

“If I eventually grow a metal tail, I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

The Activity absorption: passive, through the coccyx core, gradual enhancement of general physical capability. He’d tried to accelerate it consciously and failed. The process ran without his direction and faster than he could control.

“There’s something in the air that the bone-gold absorbs. I’ve tried to do it deliberately but I can’t figure out how.”

The food requirement: dramatically elevated. Three to four times pre-apocalypse intake, the enhanced metabolism burning through whatever he consumed.

Shen Cong gave him the basic framework in return: the term Activity, the relationship between Activity and metal, the bone-gold as Activity cores rather than simple mutation artifacts. He kept the level quantification system to himself. He kept the Bull Demon King Totem to himself. He kept the resonance field research, the liquid-solid phase theory, the frequency camouflage — all of it held back.

What he offered was the vocabulary and the general principle. Enough to give Zhu Haifeng a framework for thinking about what was happening to him without giving him the tools to do anything more sophisticated with it.

It wasn’t generosity, exactly. But it wasn’t nothing, either.

He thought, watching Zhu Haifeng absorb the information with the focused attention of someone who’d been trying to understand the same thing without any framework for months, that the man had come to the apocalypse with the right instincts and the wrong resources. The conviction that people should help each other, the willingness to act on that conviction, the two months of dangerous operational work that had produced tonight — all of that was real. The naivety about what social order required to sustain itself was also real.

If I were a normal person in city south, I’d rather encounter him than me.

He sat with that observation for a moment. It was accurate. He declined to find it flattering.

1 PM. Li Laotou, Zhang Youhai, and two others arrived.

Shen Cong distributed the flour bags he’d set aside as payment for the errand work. He didn’t explain the gesture and didn’t acknowledge any particular debt — the payment was what had been agreed, implicitly, when he’d assigned the tasks.

Zhu Haifeng came to see him off. Li Laotou and Zhang Youhai were mounting up on the motorcycles they’d acquired from the Dragon Slayers’ equipment — the vehicles hadn’t been promised to anyone and the scavengers had claimed them, which was reasonable.

Before he started the engine, he opened the window.

“I’ve been observing the local ecology since I arrived,” he said to Zhu Haifeng. “The food chain here is significantly incomplete. No herbivores. Almost no plant life. Minimal microbial activity. The complete chain should cycle from decomposers through plants through herbivores through carnivores and back. Three of those four stages are currently absent.”

He watched Zhu Haifeng work through the implication.

“The evolved beasts are all carnivores now. There’s nothing for them to eat except each other and the survivors. Without the lower trophic levels recovering, this area exhausts its resources and collapses. It might take years. It might take a decade. But it’s moving in that direction.”

A pause. He hadn’t planned to say this. He wasn’t sure why he was saying it now.

“If you’re going to build something here, that’s the problem to think about. Also: the Yuxi River has at least one Dog-Croc. Possibly the Dagu Reservoir as well. Don’t send people fishing alone.”

He let that sit.

Then, because he’d already said more than he’d intended: “There’s a Man-eater Peach Tree on the rural road near Yinping. It produces fruit with Activity content. I fed the fruit to ordinary flies and they developed Activity mutations. The fruit might be useful to you — for development, or for feeding evolved organisms, or as a trade commodity.”

He engaged the clutch. Vajra’s engine came up to operating temperature.

Zhu Haifeng took several seconds to respond. “That’s — actually very useful. Thank you.”

The vehicle began to move.

“Hey — Huang Laobei!” Zhu Haifeng called after him. “I’m claiming you as a friend whether you like it or not.”

No response.

“Can we reach you? If communication ever comes back—”

The window was already most of the way down. Shen Cong paused at the last centimeter.

“FM 90.8, if the broadcasts resume.”

The window closed.

The convoy moved south along Mudan Road — Vajra in front, three motorcycles trailing, the dust rising in the late-afternoon heat. The rescue team’s assembled members watched from the roadside. A few called out things he didn’t catch through the armor.

Two women had asked earlier, separately, if they could ride with him to the main district. He’d looked at them once and said nothing, which they’d correctly interpreted.

Nobody rode in Vajra.

Behind him, Zhu Haifeng turned to Chu Jian.

“FM 90.8. Why does that sound familiar?”

Chu Jian thought about it. “Anhui Traffic Radio, I think. If it’s still broadcasting.”

Zhu Haifeng looked at the settling dust cloud where Vajra had been.

“If,” he agreed.

(End of Chapter 72)