Chapter 273: Chapter 273: Brigades and Direction
"We have planes now?" Yezi asked the question in everyone's mind.
"Yes, but it's not some advanced plane like you think of. It still needs a lot of time to test. Since they ar't really plane designers or anything. They are just building this blind with not much help..."
After Xiaoyun explained what he saw during yesterday's afternoon visit to the factory, all of them were a little disappointed.
Except Han Bang, who looked a little intrigued wh Xiaoyun got to the hot air balloon.
"Commander Xiaoyun, I think the hot air balloon has a very high pottial for military use."
"Why do you think that?"
Xiaoyun curiously asked as he had only se people using hot air balloons on those influces' bucket lists.
"Since the zombies can't shoot down something that is flying at a high altitude, we could use the hot air balloon as a scouting tool...
And if we can upscale it, we can ev use it to carry a bomb and drop it on the zombies, or just a floating platform to shoot at zombies."
Almost everyone at the table nodded in agreemt as they realized the pottial use of the balloon.
"But isn't the hot air balloon too depdt on the wind? What if it goes the wrong way? Not to mtion, it's not as simple as just upscaling it.
I'm pretty sure hot air balloons have a weight limit that doesn't allow whatever you are imagining it to be used as."
Wuli raised her concern as she felt Han Bang was overestimating its capability.
"You ar't wrong. They did tell me that the hot air balloon can't scale up bigger without something going wrong.
Still, I think the scouting usage has a large pottial." Xiaoyun backed up Han Bang as he felt the pottial usage he mtioned was still bigger than the drawback.
Wuli backed down as she didn't disagree with the usage of scouting, and she had fulfilled her goal of calming everyone down on the hot air balloon.
"Ahem, besides the new technology. I want to announce a new military reform that Yezi and I have be working on for the last few weeks."
Tianci and Kate began passing out a piece of paper to each of the twty Majors at the table.
"As you know, we had expanded from thirty thousand soldiers to forty thousand, which is almost half of the town's population in the military."
Xiaoyun paused for a second to see their reaction. But of them were surprised by the number.
"But we only have twty official Majors and t temporary ones at the table. So we decided to create a new rank of lieutant colonel commanding a brigades containing five regimts."
Although the room remained silt, Xiaoyun could see the excitemt on their face as he began to announce who was becoming the new lieutant colonel.
"Lingang, Han Bang, Wuli, Li Miao, and Zh R will be promoted to lieutant colonel. They will total lead twty-five thousand soldiers, with the remaining fifte thousand soldiers remaining as separate regimts."
After a of celebratory clapping, Xiaoyun moved on to the last part of the meeting.
"Since Lingang isn't here currtly, I had already st a messger to deliver the news... Besides that, Han Bang's brigade will be heading toward Qingyuan to switch shifts with Lingang's brigade."
Han Bang nodded in agreemt as he knew Xiaoyun was a little worried that Lingang was staying in Qingyuan for too long.
"And for everyone else, we'll continue looting Guangzhou until further notice."
"You're now dismissed."
All of the Majors left the room with a smile as they preferred looting the city with barely any resistance over fighting zombies any time of the day.
"Yezi, how's the ammo situation?"
"The stockpile is still recovering, but we have be producing more than we can use..."
After their business talk was finished, Xiaoyun decided to ask a personal question.
"Yezi, you look so much more active now. What changed?"
Yezi frozed for a second but th quickly snapped back.
"Everyone in the town is working so hard... I just don't want to be left behind doing nothing." Yezi explained.
"Well, keep it up. At this rate, we might be able to save humanity." Xiaoyun jokingly replied.
"Yeah, sure. We have barely cleared Guangzhou completely yet... Anyway, what are you planning to do with it?"
"To be honest... I don't know. Our biggest threat was the zombie hordes in Guangzhou, and they were mostly killed off now.
Right now, we are just looting resources off the city... Do you think we should expand to differt places?"
Xiaoyun kicked the can over to Yezi as he really didn't know what direction the town should go next.
"Of course, we're expanding to other places... Our goal is to d the apocalypse, right?"
Xiaoyun nodded in agreemt.
"But the question is, where do we expand?"
Both of them sat still at the table as they looked toward the map laid before them.
In the north was Qingyuan, and ev further north was the remnant of the Southern theater.
On the left of them was Zhaoqing City and the route towards Guangxi province, which is still mostly unknown territory.
Meanwhile, on the right was the heavily populated Pearl River Delta, with the industrial hub Dongguan being the first city, and Shzh, which is ev more dsely populated, right below it.
The last direction, the south, was Foshan.
Many of the people who had tered Xiaoyun's town were refugees from Foshan due to its proximity. And going ev south allowed them to access more seaports that contained valuable resources.
But all of them were dsely populated cities that blocked them from ev going outside the Guangdong province at all, with all directions being sured by zombies.
"We should clear Foshan first. It's just too close to Guangdong." Yezi pointed out.
Xiaoyun nodded in agreemt as the two cities were practically one city being split in the middle.
"Th, after clearing Foshan, we can seriously consider which city to expand to."
"Let's go with that."
---
As November arrived, Lingang's brigade returned to the town once again.
And to Xiaoyun's surprise, Lingang returned with more people than he wt with.
It wasn't just a small few hundred people. Rather, it was almost buses on buses of people in betwe the brigade suring them in the middle.
"Who are these people?" Xiaoyun asked curiously as Lingang got out of his car.
"They are people who were willing to leave Qingyuan with us. Zh Ti requested us to take them as refugees since there has be a sudd influx of people fleeing from the north of Qingyuan."
"North of Qingyuan? Like in Shaoguan? Isn't that where the military control?" Kate pointed out.
"Ev more north. They all said they came from Hunan or Jiangxi." Lingang explained.
"Did you ask them why they fled?" Xiaoyun asked.
"They said a war is going on, with ev more and more brutal zombie attacks at their settlemts.
And appartly, the local power there has completely lost control of their suring area of influce."
"Really... Only if we can capitalize on that situation..."
Xiaoyun thought back to the military being in the way as they were located right on the path toward the north.
"We could go a them. But we'll go through Liannan." Lingang suggested.
"Is there any drawback?" Xiaoyun immediately raised his concern as he felt it wasn't just that simple.
"Um, yes. It's controlled by the Yao people... They appartly are extremely anti-outsiders and have a connection to the tribes in Guangxi."
"That's off the table th. We're not trying to make a completely new emy in a differt province.
Anyway, it's not that important... How many people are in the buses?" Xiaoyun asked curiously as everyone was starting to get out of their vehicles.
"A twty thousand," Lingang replied.
"Just two thousand? Okay, that's good... Wait, you said two thousand or twty thousand?"
Xiaoyun immediately started having a bad feeling as Lingang looked down at the g with hesitation on his face.
"Twty thousand..."
"What? Lingang, wh did I ask you to bring this many people back? Have you thought of giving me a heads-up or something?"
Xiaoyun asked in anger, as there was barely any preparation for this many people moving in at once.
"Zh Ti shoved them in and forced them to follow me... I didn't have a choice besides bringing them back."
Hearing Lingang's explanation, Xiaoyun calmed down a little.
"It's fine. You didn't do anything wrong... I'm going to need to talk with Zh Ti again about this."
Xiaoyun took out his phone and proceeded to make a call.
"Babe, what's wrong?"
Yuqi's voice came out of the phone as she asked Xiaoyun the question.
"Twty thousand people are moving into our town right now. Can you come over and handle it?"
Xiaoyun quietly asked as Lingang wt back to directing everyone off their vehicles.
"Not again! How did you get so many people?"
Yuqi's voice sounded extremely irritated as she directed her question back at him.