When Lin Feng and the others rolled back into camp loaded down with supplies, Rick was driving wooden stakes into the ground alongside Jim and Andrew, looked like they were rigging up a clothesline.

The vehicles had barely pulled in when Rick paused mid-swing, turned, and took in the people climbing out. The first thing Rick noticed wasn't the dirt on them. It was the smeared blood and the bullet holes punched through the truck doors.

Rick walked over briskly, looked everyone over, and only once satisfied that nobody was hurt did Rick ask, "Run into trouble?"

Shane nodded. "Pack of roaming goons. We handled it."

"Nobody hurt?"

Shane shook his head, expression easy. "No."

Rick's clear blue eyes stayed on Shane for a moment. Something was different about this old partner after the trip, hard to pin down exactly, but yes: some of that sullen, volatile edge seemed to have gone quiet.

"Good." Rick patted Shane's shoulder with a smile.

Shane smiled back. But Shane's gaze drifted, almost without thinking, toward Lori and Carl in the distance.

Lin Feng pushed his door open and stepped down. Something crossed his mind.

"Andrew — find a way to rig up a few noisemakers. Ones that can run on a timer, ideally. Loud enough to draw walkers."

Andrew frowned slightly, then nodded. "Easy. I'll strip a few high-and-low car horns. That'll do it."

"When can you have them ready?"

"Tomorrow morning."

Lin Feng nodded. "Appreciate the overtime."

Andrew waved it off, an easy grin on Andrew's face. "It's nothing."

"You planning to go back tomorrow and finish hauling everything?" Shane asked.

"Meat only belongs to you once it's in your mouth," Lin Feng said. "Not while it's still in the bowl."

Rick paused at that, then nodded slowly. "You're right, man."

Merle and Daryl headed off together toward the tents to change, especially Merle, who still had blood all over. As for Marcus, there was some on Marcus, just not much; mostly splatter, not soaking.

"All right, stop standing around. Everyone grab something and unload."

Lin Feng stood by the truck, thumb jerking back toward the loaded pickup behind him.

Rick raised an eyebrow. "Where are you storing it? Putting all that in tents would need five, maybe seven tents packed full."

Lin Feng smiled and pointed toward Hershel's barn. "Maybe our friendly neighbor can help us out."

Rick looked at the barn, eyes lighting up. "All right. You go talk our friendly neighbor into it — I'll round people up to sweep the place out?"

"OK." Lin Feng smiled and turned, heading for Hershel's house.

How Rick would arrange things, Lin Feng wasn't worried about at all. Same way he trusted Daryl to move freely through the woods, he trusted Rick to handle personnel and task assignments without being told twice.

After a short exchange, the old man turned it over in mind and agreed.

"Lin, one more thing," Hershel said, eyebrows raised, a mild smile on that weathered face. "The wheat will be ready in two months at most."

"I know. That's been in my plans for a while."

Seeing Lin Feng already had it sorted, Hershel let the matter go. Then Lin Feng raised something else.

"What do you think about an icebreaker tonight? A gathering — over at our camp."

Hershel studied Lin Feng's eyes. A flicker of surprise passed through that weathered gaze, then Hershel nodded. "No problem. We'll be there on time."

"Then could you spare me two people? I need Otis and Jimmy. We should put together some fresh meat."

"I'll pass the word along," Hershel said, not quite agreeing, not quite refusing.

Lin Feng wasn't surprised. A smile and a nod, then Lin Feng said farewell and headed back to camp.

A few more words with Rick, then Lin Feng found Daryl. Short exchange, stay safe, and Daryl headed into the woods with Otis and Jimmy.

Lin Feng stood at the center of camp with hands on hips, sun on his back, a light breeze moving across his shoulders. Everything felt like it was slowly, steadily getting better.

He knew it wasn't enough, though. Not even close.

The farm's defenses might hold against a small horde, but throw three hundred walkers at the perimeter and it would fold like paper. The camp's firepower was thin. And real fighters, people who could carry the weight when things went sideways, that was a short list. His three heavy hitters and Shane. That was it.

Time to start thinking about accelerating everyone else's development.

Glenn was the obvious first pick. Glenn had already been tested; the temperament was there, just needed some sharpening before taking the field.

T-Dog and Jim were worth trying too. Nothing extreme, just enough to pick up a gun and use it.

His gaze drifted, almost on its own, to Carol Peletier.

That woman. Looked fragile, seemed to do nothing but cry. But the combat instincts underneath were frightening.

Put it plainly: if Carol's individual fighting ability was rank A, then Carol's battlefield awareness and tactical execution were rank S+.

As for when that would surface, with Sophia still here and safe, Lin Feng honestly couldn't say.

He was still turning it over when laughter pulled his attention.

Carl, Sophia, and Cathy. The three of them were huddled on the grass, heads together, whispering about something, bright bursts of laughter breaking out every few seconds.

Lin Feng watched. The corner of his mouth slowly rose.

He'd almost forgotten. There was also a young crown prince here, S-rank growth potential, not yet seen blood. Maybe the development program had room for one more.

"Bro, I gotta say, that smile of yours is pretty creepy. Real creepy. Looks exactly like some weirdo about to snatch a kid."

Merle had drifted up beside him at some point, voice dripping with amusement.

Three black lines crawled up Lin Feng's forehead. He took a slow breath.

Forget it. There was no point trying to explain long-term strategy to an airhead.

As for who should run the training, well. Was there anyone more suited for that than Shane?

➤ Next: Live or Die, a Choice Between Two

Chapter 50 - Live or Die, a Choice Between Two

At dusk, the camp bonfire blazed high. Lin Feng had dug a small fire pit off to the side to use as the barbecue station.

Daryl had taken Otis and Jimmy out hunting and come back with two deer, plus a pile of small game, hares, squirrels, pheasants.

Now the three of them were dressing the kills in the last of the daylight. Otis and Jimmy worked support, handling the hides under Daryl's direction.

That was Lin Feng's specific instruction. The hides could be worked into leather armor, something that would offer at least some protection against walkers.

They'd agreed it made sense and were taking it seriously.

Carol was with Nancy, Andrea, and Lori, putting together the food for tonight's gathering.

Emma and Amy had appointed themselves ringleaders of the little ones, the three kids clustered around them beside a tent, running some kind of secret meeting. Whatever it was, it was loud, laughter spilling out every few minutes.

Lin Feng sat back on the grass, both hands propped behind him, eyes soft and half-closed as he watched it all. Two empty bottles sat beside him. One more, half-full.

Glenn glanced over at Lin Feng, beer bottle pausing halfway to the mouth.

The smile on that face was quiet. Gentle, like still water. Not a trace of the violence Glenn knew was there.

Something shifted in Glenn's chest, a kind of dissonance, a jarring gap that made the motion stop.

Unbidden, the memory surfaced: Lin Feng walking into camp that first day, carrying that particular brand of fearlessness. That edge of arrogance.

Layer after layer of fog, all wrapped around the same person.

Impossible to read. Truly impossible to read.

Lin Feng caught the stare and turned. "What? Still thinking about what happened today?"

The moment he said it, the others who'd been drinking went quiet almost as one. Hands lowered.

Glenn hesitated, then nodded. "Lin, I..."

"Curious why I had to find out whether they had a camp?"

Glenn glanced at Lin Feng, checking for anger, found none, and nodded properly.

Rick's voice cut in. "Hold on. Glenn, are you saying, during the operation today, you left survivors and interrogated them? Under duress? Just to find out if they had a base somewhere?"

Lin Feng didn't bother hedging. "Yes."

Rick's grip tightened around the bottle. The shock in those eyes gave way to something harder: appraisal. Calculation.

"Why? They had already surrendered. They were prisoners. You can't just end a person's life like that. That crosses a line, humanity's baseline, basic morality. Lin, I think you owe us an explanation for this."

Around the fire, faces shifted. Disgust. Anger. Hard scrutiny. And in a few eyes, something that looked like regret.

Quietly, without announcement, a wall began to rise between them.

Lin Feng wasn't angry at Rick's outrage. He understood it. At this point in things, Rick's moral threshold was still high. Rick was still the one who handled problems with gentleness, with mercy.

Lin Feng smiled and tilted the bottle back, took a slow pull, then looked up at the moon.

"It's simple," he said quietly. "There's a saying where I come from: cut the weeds, dig up the roots."

Dale didn't know the Chinese idiom. But from the words themselves and the context, something came through. A scent of blood underneath it.

"Lin." Dale's voice was firm. "We are human beings. Not animals. We have a moral baseline. We have a conscience. We have the capacity to think, to distinguish right from wrong. We cannot lay hands on innocent people."

Lin Feng pulled his gaze from the moon and looked at Dale.

He smiled. Not mockery, there was no mockery in it. The old man was genuinely naive. Genuinely endearing. And Lin Feng smiled because, even now, in all of this, Dale was still holding the line.

Dale was different from Hershel. Hershel was a Christian, a believer in God, and that gave his thinking a certain philosophical weight, a framework running deeper than simple feeling.

Dale's goodness was something else. It had grown out of ordinary life, family, community, decades of normal human decency, and it had survived everything that had tried to break it. Intact. Unchanged.

That was rare. Genuinely rare.

But it wasn't going to move Lin Feng. Not today. Not on this.

Because this wasn't a simple argument anymore. This was about setting the terms. Establishing the standard for how this group would handle enemies going forward.

"I'm not a narrow person," Lin Feng said. "I'll extend a hand to a stranger. I have. But only if that stranger doesn't threaten my life or the lives of the people with me. The moment that changes, I will remove the threat. Whatever it takes."

Repay every injury. Blood for blood. That was his creed, simple and absolute.

"But... they were prisoners. And the people at their camp — they're innocent..."

"Innocent?" Lin Feng's voice stayed level. "The moment gunfire breaks out, no one is innocent."

"The moment you choose a side, this becomes a war. Kill or be killed."

"If I don't do this, I'm gambling with your lives. I'm betting they won't come back at us with everything they have to avenge their dead."

"When that happens — and it will happen — who goes down? You? Me? Rick? Carl?"

"When that day comes, who's going to stand up and declare that Rick, Carl, or anyone else who wasn't there had nothing to do with it? That they're innocent?"

Lin Feng stripped the question down bare. No moral framing. No comfortable abstraction. Just the raw fact of what survival looked like, and the part of each of them that already knew it and didn't want to.

The words carried. Carol and the others preparing food at the far end of camp had stopped. They were watching now.

Silence settled over the fire.

Rick sat on the ground, turning it over. When finally speaking, the voice was careful, measured.

"Maybe you're right, Lin. We can't gamble with lives. But... maybe there's another way. Something we haven't thought of yet. Give them a chance to change."

Lin Feng recognized it. Rick was still that leader, the one with the spirit to hold something together, the one willing to press mercy against anger and mean it.

Lin Feng wasn't that.

And beyond everything else, could anything ever be safer than a dead man?

"I hear you, Rick. And I'm not angry at anyone here." A glance toward Dale. "Sorry if my voice got too loud. I meant it as a discussion, not an attack. But I stand by what I said."

"This isn't an orderly society anymore. It's a dark forest. Every one of us has a choice: do nothing, or eliminate the threat. Live or die. Sooner or later, we all have to pick one."

When the easy surface of things was stripped away, when the blood underneath was finally exposed, this stopped being a question about morality.

It was a question about survival.

Live or die. Pick one.

➤ Next: The Winner Is