"Xiaoyun, you okay?"

Yuqi waved her hand in front of Xiaoyun as he kept ignoring her question.

"Oh, sorry, I was just thinking about something... What are we talking about?"

"I was saying you aren''t marrying Tianci this week. So when are you going to marry her?" Yuqi asked again.

"When she makes a full recovery... Ahem, Yuqi, what do you think think of expanding the army?"

Xiaoyun quickly changed the topic as he didn''t want to talk about Tianci anymore.

"Again? Didn''t we just expand it like a month ago?"

"Yeah, but our population has grown to over eighty thousand people. We currently only have thirty thousand.

If we are to continue the fifty-fifty ratio, then it should be forty thousand." Xiaoyun pointed out.

"As much as I wanted to let you continue, we can''t sustain a fifty-fifty ratio. It''s just not happening."

"Why not? We got enough food stamps in the bank." Xiaoyun argued.

"Yeah, and those food stamps in the bank need to exist to liquidate when people borrow them out. We have already borrowed a lot from the bank.

And don''t even suggest printing more. We already have enough money circulating. I''m not going to deal with another inflation."

Seeing Yuqi can''t be convinced, Xiaoyun backed down.

"Fine... I''ll just make do with thirty regiments."

"You know... If you want, I have an idea for your military expansion."

"What is it?" Xiaoyun curiously asked.

"Why don''t you make your troops more elite instead of trying to have a bigger number of advantages?"

Xiaoyun thought about it for a second but quickly shook his head.

"Having elite troops barely makes any difference compared to just having average soldiers."

"Why?"

"Because an elite soldier and an average soldier perform the same thing when they are facing zombies who only have a number advantage.

Elite forces only work if we are fighting another human group." Xiaoyun pointed out.

"I guess... But you are not drawing more people from the manpower pool unless you don''t want your ammos or houses."

As the two''s conversation continued, Shuli walked into the office with a stack of paper.

"Special report on Qinpan''s telecom network." Shuli pointed out as she put the paper in front of the two.

"Why are there so many pages?" Xiaoyun asked as he began reading the first page on top.

"Because two-thirds of them are technical details. She said she doesn''t have anywhere to put them since she doesn''t have her own office yet." Shuli replied.

"Oh, right. I still need to find a place for her department..." Yuqi facepalmed.

"Okay, the rest of these are just technical details. Just these first five pages are good enough."

Yezi looked much happier upon hearing Xiaoyun giving an actual date, as well as the nearby soldiers who overheard the two talking.

"Okay, I''m going back to the office now."

---

The next day...

Xiaoyun sent out Lingang''s regiment to check the surrounding area that was picked for the plan.

When Lingang came back, it was reported to be all cleared, so Xiaoyun moved on to the next part of the plan and called up three regiments to start moving building materials toward the location.

By the time the operation was finally starting, all of the material had been delivered to the designated location.

Now, all Xiaoyun had to do was one last step before all the soldiers began moving.

---

"Good morning everyone! I hope you all had a good sleep last night..."

After a bit of casual talk, Xiaoyun shifted back to his serious tone.

"I hope everyone knows that this plan isn''t going to be quick or be instantly done. It''s going to take days or even weeks to prepare and build everything from the ground up..."

With a short speech to mentally prepare the soldiers, Xiaoyun moved onto the last part of the speech.

"I made a special change from the original plan that some of you may not recognize... I would be happy to announce that there will be another military change.

There will now be a new military group with brigades. They will contain 5 regiments each... The 1st brigade would be led by Lingang, with the 1st regiment to the 5th regiment."

None of the soldiers looked surprised except the Majors and Yezi, who hadn''t gotten a head from Xiaoyun before this.

"The 2nd Brigade, Han Bang, would lead the 6th to 10th regiment... The first two brigades would be heading first to spearhead the defense, with the 11th to 20th regiments arriving after them."

The hearts of the soldiers from the 21st to 30th regiment started beating faster and faster as they waited for Xiaoyun''s announcement of their roles.

"21st to 26th regiment would be handling logistics, and 27th to 30th would remain in the town as a defense...

Yezi would remain in the town as acting as temporary command of chief while I''m gone."

The first group of regiments let out a sigh of relief as they still had a chance for combat, but the last four regiments looked disappointed as they were assigned base defense.

"Everyone, you are dismissed."

Soldiers immediately began getting into their assigned vehicles as Xiaoyun got inside his car.

The 1st brigade headed out of the town first with their modified cars and APCs, with the 2nd brigade quickly following behind them in their buses and modified trucks.

After waiting for an hour for the vehicle to come back and transport the other half of the soldiers, Xiaoyun went along with the logistic group at the tail end.

---

Inside the car, Kate was in the driver''s seat driving, with Tianci and Xiaoyun in the back.

"How long do we have before we get there?" Xiaoyun asked as he had been tracking the time on his phone.

"Two more minutes," Kate replied.

Calculating in his head, Xiaoyun was able to compute it took him almost twenty minutes to drive from the Luoping to the location he had picked for the defense.