The truck coughed, sputtered, and died on the outskirts of what used to be Tongzhou Town. The sun had just begun to bleed through the cloud-covered sky, and the air smelled like rust and regret.
Rui climbed out of the passenger seat and tapped the dashboard. "I told you it was overheating," she said with folded arms.
Chen Yu rolled his eyes. "Oh, now she's a mechanic."
"You said keep an eye on the engine light," she retorted. "I did. It blinked red. You said that meant it was happy."
"That's not—" Chen Yu started, but Li Wei raised a hand.
"Enough."
They stood in the middle of an old highway now covered in weeds and cracked like dry skin. A battered billboard nearby still showed a smiling woman selling bottled tea. Her face had been half eaten by time and bullet holes.
They'd put twenty kilometers between themselves and the burning silo. Not enough. Not with that kind of fire.
"We need shelter," Li Wei said. "And fuel."
"And maybe," Chen Yu added with a grin, "some new meat shields. I'm getting tired of doing all the killing."
Rui ignored him. She knelt beside one of the children — Ming, a boy with bandaged stumps for legs — and handed him a boiled egg she'd saved. He took it with wide, silent eyes.
They moved into town.
The survivors of Tongzhou weren't friendly.
They'd taken over a temple-turned-barracks, ringed with barbed wire and hanging skulls. The town itself had been picked clean: no food, no medicine, just traps and whispers.
A scout met them halfway — rifle aimed, finger steady.
"State your purpose," she said. Young, maybe twenty. Missing an ear. Hair braided tight.
"We're passing through," Li Wei said.
"You're armed."
"Everyone's armed."
"You killed that fire tower last night?"
Li Wei didn't answer.
The girl's eye narrowed. "You're either a problem or an opportunity."
Chen Yu stepped forward with a wide, charming grin. "Darling, we're both. But mostly the fun kind."
That earned them five rifles pointed at their chests.
They were led into the courtyard of the temple compound. Inside, they met Brother Fang, a man who dressed like a monk but moved like a warlord. His robes were bloodstained, his teeth golden, and he greeted them with a smile so wide it seemed peeled off someone else's face.
"You bring fire behind you," he said. "What do you seek?"
"Shelter," Li Wei said. "For the kids."
Brother Fang looked at Rui, then at Ming, then at the other children.
"Strange," he murmured. "You kill like demons but carry lambs in your pockets."
"No lambs," Rui said softly. "Wolves in training."
That earned a chuckle from Fang. "Very well. You may stay. But everyone works. No one eats for free."
The days in Tongzhou were tense.
Rui worked in the kitchens. At first, she peeled potatoes and boiled rice. Then she was seen sharpening knives. Then she stopped asking questions.
Chen Yu trained some of the compound's guards — taught them how to use broken blades and garden tools as weapons. They laughed at first. Then one of them lost an eye during a demo. No one laughed after that.
Li Wei spent most of his time mapping the temple, watching routines, counting supply runs. His eyes never rested.
They weren't staying.
One night, by the dead fountain near the pagoda ruins, Rui sat with Ming and the others.
She was telling a story.
"…and then, the knight didn't save the princess. He burned the tower down, because she didn't want saving. She wanted revenge."
The children blinked.
Rui smiled sweetly. "Sleep tight."
Li Wei stood nearby, listening in the dark.
She caught him watching.
"I didn't scare them," she said.
"No."
"You taught me that stories matter."
"I taught you survival."
Rui looked at her own hands. "Isn't that the same?"
The day wore on with a kind of weary, dust-choked silence — the kind that settles over survivors who've seen too much, who've buried too many names in shallow ground. They moved like ghosts themselves, sunburnt and silent, the road stretching out ahead like an endless scar.
It was on the third night that trouble came — not from outside, but within.
Brother Fang had secret games.
He invited certain people into his quarters. Not everyone came back. Some came back broken. Some didn't speak again.
Rui wasn't invited.
But one of the children was — a girl named Yaya.
Rui followed her. Quiet as breath. Knife in her pocket. Rage in her chest.
She saw the guards smile as Yaya walked past. She saw the monk close the door behind her.
Then silence.
Then a whimper.
Then a scream.
Rui moved.
She didn't knock.
She stabbed the first guard in the thigh, then in the throat. He gurgled against the wall. The second guard raised his rifle — she kicked it away and bit his neck, then drove her knife into his eye.
Yaya was on the floor, clothes torn, crying.
Brother Fang reached for his belt.
Li Wei arrived in the same moment.
Fang froze.
Then, just before dusk, the hum of engines broke the quiet.
Li Wei heard it first.
Three trucks — rough builds, matte-black panels, no insignias. Moving slow. Confident.
Chen Yu squinted at the approaching convoy. "We've got company. No flags. Raiders?"
"Too clean," Li Wei said.
"Too cocky," Rui muttered, adjusting the straps on her backpack. She never went anywhere without it now. It rattled faintly — knives, marbles, sharpened toothbrushes, God knows what else.
The trucks stopped on the ridge.
One man got out.
He was alone, barefoot, and painted. His face was smeared in a crude skull mask — white ash over grease — and he wore a necklace of flattened dog tags.
He raised both hands, walking casually downhill like a man heading to market.
"Evening!" he called out, voice bright and theatrical. "Didn't mean to startle you fine folks."
Li Wei didn't move. His eyes tracked the man's feet, then the horizon behind him.
The raider continued, arms still raised. "We were just out on patrol, making sure no one was trespassing on reclaimed territory. And here you are — unmarked, unregistered, and very… edible."
Chen Yu stepped forward, grinning. "Edible?"
The man grinned back. "Figure of speech."
"You eat people?" Rui asked.
The man's eyes twitched toward her. "Only the ones who run."
For a second, no one moved.
Then Rui tilted her head. "That's not funny."
"You're right," the raider said, still smiling. "It's hilarious."
He turned toward Li Wei. "Now you — you look familiar."
Li Wei didn't answer. But something shifted in his stance — a subtle drop of his shoulders, the way a hawk dips an inch before a dive.
The raider's smile faltered.
He took a step back, suddenly uncertain. "Wait. You're not… no, that's impossible. You're not him."
Li Wei tilted his head — almost curiously.
The raider paled. "The Ghost. The one who lit fire to Huizhou. The magistrate killer. The one who—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
Turned.
Ran.
"Sound the horn!" he screamed toward the trucks. "It's him! Move! MOVE!"
They didn't have time.
Gunfire erupted from the left flank.
Not from Li Wei. Not from their group.
Another force had waited, watching both parties.
The first bullet dropped a driver in the lead truck. Then all hell broke loose.
Li Wei moved like smoke through the chaos. One moment he was beside Chen Yu, the next — gone, already inside the enemy's blind spot.
Rui shoved Ming into a ditch, then knelt beside a boy named Hao, using her body to shield his from shrapnel. Her eyes were wide, but she didn't scream. Not once.
Chen Yu laughed as bullets zipped past. He danced forward into the confusion like a street performer — slashing one raider across the throat, spinning to kick another into the gas station sign. "I love new friends!"
Flames licked the side of the second truck as its tank burst. One man staggered out, half his face melted, mumbling a name. Li Wei stepped out from behind him and ended it with a single, brutal strike.
The militia — the third party — didn't last long. They'd expected chaos. Not calculation.
And certainly not him.
When the final shot echoed out across the broken road, only Li Wei stood beneath the bleeding sky, blade slick and boots scorched.
They found two survivors among the attackers.
A boy — burned, barely conscious.
And a girl — perhaps seventeen, her leg twisted beneath her like a broken chair.
Rui was the one who approached them first.
"No more weapons," she said gently. "Or we let him decide."
She didn't have to point. They all knew who she meant.
The girl nodded weakly. "I'm Zhao Ting."
The boy said nothing, lips cracked from smoke. Rui handed him water.
"Liu Bin," he whispered finally.
Chen Yu crouched beside them, his smile lazy and unreadable. "Welcome to the end of the world, kids. Your timing sucks."
That night, the fire crackled low. They didn't speak much — not out of fear, but fatigue. Everyone had seen too much.
Rui sat cross-legged by the edge of camp, watching Zhao Ting doze beside the others. Liu Bin lay nearby, still silent, occasionally flinching in his sleep.
She turned to Li Wei. "You didn't kill them."
He didn't answer.
"You had the chance."
"I did."
"Why spare them?"
Li Wei's voice was low. "Because they were scared. And fear is honest."
Chen Yu tossed a rock into the fire. "You're getting soft."
"No," Rui said, eyes still on Li Wei. "He's remembering who he used to be."
Chen Yu made a mock gasp. "Are we witnessing character development?"
Li Wei looked at neither of them.
A few hours later, Rui sat alone beside the road, wrapping a wire around a shard of glass. A makeshift trap.
Zhao Ting limped over. "Why do you carry so many weapons?"
Rui shrugged. "In case people like you come back."
The older girl smiled weakly. "We weren't always like this, you know. Before the collapse… I was in drama school."
"Acting won't help now," Rui said.
"No," Zhao Ting replied, "but pretending can."
She held out a small, cracked mirror. "Want to see what you look like?"
Rui stared at her reflection. A narrow face. Ash-smudged. Eyes too sharp for her age.
"Yeah," Rui said, handing it back. "Looks about right."
Further from the firelight, Chen Yu sat on the hood of a rusted truck, watching the stars. Li Wei stood beside him, arms folded.
"They're scared of you now," Chen Yu said. "Even the new ones."
"They should be."
"But she's not. Rui."
Li Wei's gaze was steady. "She sees clearly."
"You think she'll turn out like us?"
Li Wei said nothing for a while.
Then: "No. She'll be worse."
Chen Yu laughed. "I look forward to it."
By sunrise, they were already on the road again.