Armed Train in the Apocalypse

Qin Tong suggested again, ”How about we go to Dog City together tomorrow morning? We can watch each other’s backs.”

Su Huan glanced at the deepening night, puzzled. ”What are you going there for?”

”Dog City isn’t just about slave trading, it’s also the biggest logistics hub for supplies in the whole area. We got a lot of materials this time, all of it has to move through Dog City, and we can pick up some extra manpower while we’re at it.”

Made sense. The scattered Scavengers around here had probably all been snatched up by that Mane Dog Gang or whatever they were called.

Su Huan vaguely grasped the local ecosystem. It was similar to the Storm Zone: top-tier factions did regular sweeps, suppressing high-risk creatures in the region, looting resources, and letting the small factions grow on their own. Maybe because of Dog City, trade out here was a bit more open.

”And the roads are nasty at night.”

Qin Tong added another line.

Every point was reasonable—anyone else might’ve listened. But there was still a pile of issues waiting for him back at the train. He wasn’t about to waste time here.

”Yeah? Sounds really dangerous.”

Su Huan looked out toward the setting sun, his tone flat, impossible to read.

Seeing he couldn’t talk him around, Qin Tong fell silent. The apocalypse was like this; everyone had their own fate. Until you were strong enough, no one interfered in anyone else’s destiny.

Watching Su Huan and Liang Kuan’s backs fade into the wild night, Qin Tong’s gaze grew heavy. He had a feeling something was about to happen.

A lean, short man with razor-sharp eyes slipped out of the shadows, a semi-auto rifle dangling from his hand. His name was Monkey; he was the one who’d stirred up the corpse tide at dusk and barely made it back to camp alive.

”Our Copper Wall camp can wipe out more than a dozen Tier One blood hounds, we’re not some pushover. No need to be that polite, right?”

Qin Tong turned, walked toward the mountain of blood hound corpses, and began skinning them with his dagger.

”Monkey, what do you think is the scariest thing out on the wasteland?”

”Mutant Beast? Corpse tide?”

The man scraped his fingertip with his dagger, sounding unsure.

”It’s people.”

Qin Tong peeled off a whole piece of hide, voice low. ”Those two can cross the wasteland alone without so much as a speck of extra dust on them. That’s not luck. That Liang Kuan, his steps are heavy enough to sink the ground, but you don’t hear a sound—that’s total mastery over every muscle in his body. As for Su Huan...”

He paused, remembering Su Huan’s seemingly casual yet terrifyingly precise strike on the wall that afternoon. ”I can’t read him. With people like that, either stay far away or don’t piss them off.”

Monkey curled his lip and said nothing more.

At four in the morning, the convoy rolled out of Copper Wall camp: six modified vehicles, twenty-three people, all capable fighters, with Qin Tong and Monkey, two Tier One Evolvers, holding the line. More than enough to keep themselves alive.

Autumn dawn brought thick fog and ground-frost. Headlights only cut through ten-odd meters. After more than an hour, a field of ruined buildings appeared ahead.

”Detour,” Qin Tong ordered. ”There’s a wild dog nest in there.”

That was intel paid for with two lives.

Just as the convoy was about to turn off, the spotter shouted, ”Boss, something’s off! There are bodies up ahead.”

”Hm?”

Half suspicious, half intrigued, Qin Tong led a group into the ruins. The expected attack never came.

In the center of the ruins, they saw a circular crater over a hundred meters across. Its walls were smooth as a mirror, as if they’d been flash-melted by extreme heat and then solidified into glass-like material. The bottom of the pit was bare—no remains, no blood, as if everything there had been completely vaporized.

”The hell, was this hit by a missile?” Monkey’s eyes went blank.

Qin Tong squatted down, touched the icy pit wall, his expression grave. ”No way that’s explosives. And Donghuang Heavy Industry hasn’t shown up in this region for half a year.”

He had a vague feeling this was connected to Su Huan, but reason told him it couldn’t be. Just a few hours? Over thirty kilometers of dangerous road, and he’d cleared out a Tier One Evolution Beast nest on the side?

The convoy pushed on, and what they found next made everyone’s scalp crawl.

On this familiar road to Dog City, every known danger spot was wiped clean. Roaming corpse clusters were gone, venom vines shriveled, and the quarry once occupied by stone-skin macaques was now just another smooth, shallow pit... The way ahead was disturbingly clear, as if some invisible hand was opening the road for them, erasing every obstacle.

As dawn greyed the sky and the fog thinned, other vehicles headed for Dog City began to appear—beat-up pickups, buses welded over with steel plates, modified trikes—keeping a wary distance from each other.

The closer they got to Dog City, the thicker the traffic.

A burst of arrogant laughter rolled over. Five military trucks thundered past, hulls painted with red dog-head emblems. The iron cages welded to the beds were crammed with numb-faced men and women, and the last truck had several swaying corpses hanging off the outside.

The two convoys met on the narrow road, and Copper Wall camp’s vehicles yielded.

A scar-faced man stuck his head out of the lead truck, grinning. ”Yo, Boss Qin, bringing more people to give us money again?” With that, their convoy roared off, leaving a cloud of dust.

”Son of a bitch...” Monkey muttered under his breath.

Qin Tong’s gaze stayed calm. Being mocked wasn’t fatal.

Dog City’s outline rose on the horizon. Compared to Copper Wall camp’s low fence line, Dog City’s walls were much higher, built up around high-rises, stacked into a fortress dozens of meters tall.

After lining up and paying several hundred rounds of ammo as an entry fee, the convoy rolled into the city.

Though the city had plenty of intact buildings, both sides of the streets were still crowded with rough shanties.

Qin Tong followed routine: they split up. Monkey led a team to sell blood hound materials for ammo and meds, while he took two people to the slave market to recruit manpower.