Chapter 70: Establishing Contact with the Base (9)

General Liu sighed as well. “Now I understand Chairman Chiang’s frustration. He always says the extermination happens too quickly—just a few tens of thousands of pigs, how could the Communist troops capture them so fast?”

Everyone burst out laughing. Even if there were millions of pigs, if they charged unarmed in a frenzy, the ammo-starved Liberation Army would be hard pressed to hold them back. There was truly no comparing them to zombies.

“Comparing man to man is fatal; comparing man to zombies, well, one might as well commit suicide,” someone joked.

On both sides, the code clerks and decoders busied themselves with their radios, stealing amused glances.

“Let’s designate a zone and start mobilizing the zombies,” Li Qiang declared with heroic resolve. “There’s no need to rush—if we concentrate them elsewhere, things will be much easier.”

“We must hurry to rescue the soldiers who have fallen behind in the encirclement,” Li Fengyi reminded. “Most of them should be unharmed, but they’re deep behind enemy lines, without food or water. They can’t hold out for long.”

“The chainmail armor holds up extraordinarily well,” said General Liu. “No need for everyone to wield guandaos—just steel pipe spears will do. The zombies can’t bite through the armor, so our men won’t be under psychological pressure. And when we attack, it’s a sure kill with every thrust. That’ll speed things up immensely.”

The order to re-equip left Sun Xiaoshan somewhat disheartened. After all, those guandaos had been painstakingly developed. The sight of bright blades arrayed in formation was enough to stir the blood.

“We’re all men here—what’s the point in waving around steel pipes?” he grumbled privately to Li Fengyi.

“Blame yourself for making the chainmail too well,” Li Fengyi replied with a hearty laugh. “Stronger than chastity belts from the Middle Ages!”

The new two-meter and one-and-a-half-meter steel pipes were once again distributed to the troops. The guandaos were not recalled for the time being; there simply weren’t enough resources to manage it all at once. Many soldiers couldn’t bear to part with their guandaos anyway—no matter the swing, whether horizontal or vertical, nothing could withstand them. Slicing cleanly through, never failing. Some soldiers continued to use their own guandaos, and the army did not insist otherwise.

A new legion of chainmail-clad, steel-pipe-wielding warriors was born. Fully equipped, each soldier was dressed head to toe in black chainmail, their calm eyes glinting coldly behind steel rings, steel pipes poised to drive clean holes through zombie skulls at a moment’s notice.

“Excellent—truly formidable!” Li Fengyi was deeply satisfied, circling the armored formation, his admiration undisguised. “Absolutely brutal.”

“By the way,” he said to Sun Xiaoshan, discussing battlefield experience, “some soldiers got stuck in the mud along the riverside. Any ideas for that? Maybe some auxiliary gear?” He couldn’t help but chuckle, recalling the unlucky men being hauled out of the muck like carrots as their squad shouted encouragement.

“Yeah,” Sun Xiaoshan agreed. “The gear is simply too heavy—if their physical strength hadn’t increased, it’d be impossible to move in full armor. I’ll make something like mine-clearing boots—boards to strap to their shoes to reduce ground pressure on soft earth.”

The final version of the chainmail warriors wore full-body chainmail, carried a two-meter and a one-and-a-half-meter steel pipe each, and brought different auxiliary gear depending on the mission area, such as shoe boards.

“We’re using modern industry to manufacture ancient warriors,” Sun Xiaoshan said with a wry smile to Li Fengyi. “Such good steel, such fine equipment, and all we make are steel pipe spears and chainmail…”

The new combat zone had to be chosen carefully—no large factories, no residential areas—otherwise, fire or artillery could cause severe losses in both resources and survivors. The terrain needed to be favorable; nobody had confidence in holding off zombie hordes on open, flat land. The area needed to be big enough—not another situation where they’d have to form ranks nose-to-nose with the zombies.

The staff pored over maps day and night; someone even suggested the Mariana Trench.

When General Liu learned of their troubles, he asked, “What do you plan to do with the zombie hordes you’ve already encircled?”

Of course, the answer was to eliminate them. The staff glanced at each other—what, keep them around for meat?

Suddenly, Chief of Staff Shi Yongcheng had a revelation. “That’s it! Isn’t that the perfect ready-made zombie assembly point?”

Indeed, each time the zombie numbers became too great, they couldn’t handle them all at once—no more than 800,000 at a time, or they’d be overwhelmed. But if they wiped out the horde, cleared the land, and made proper arrangements, wouldn’t that become the ideal zombie eradication base?

The field army continued with the plan to build a defensive ring around Beijing, reinforcing their ranks with newly trained and rescued troops. The encirclement forces received additional support and began upgrading their equipment and preparing tactical maps. Once the zombies within the encirclement were destroyed, they would begin construction—clearing out the area, setting up an inescapable net, and wiping out the zombies batch by batch.

The Ministry of Industry received orders for several heavy assault vehicles, to be produced as quickly as possible—first, to rescue stranded soldiers, and second, to test their performance, since these vehicles would be invaluable in the future.

Time was of the essence. The goal was to finish the first vehicle within a single day, as some soldiers had already been trapped inside the encirclement for a day and a half. Those nearer the edge had been rescued, but those farther in were beyond the reach of manpower—the zombies were simply too numerous. Every time they saw someone bringing them food, they’d surge in excitement, and without breaking through the siege, there would be no saving the deeper groups.

The reclaimed Dongba district was filled with medium-sized trucks, as it was an industrial hub beyond the Fifth Ring Road. There were no vehicle restrictions, and the factory owners all thought the heavier the better—overloading wasn’t a crime unless the traffic police caught you.

Sun Xiaoshan thought of Li Qiang’s tank. With a heavy tank, these assaults would be trivial—but then he remembered even tanks had been wrecked by zombies, their iron shells gnawed through overnight, and realized the predicament.

The final plan called for a vehicle with strong horsepower, capable of adapting to various terrains, and not prone to bogging down in mud. The armor needn’t be too strong—chainmail was robust enough—but there had to be basic crew protection. If zombies could drag you off the truck, that hardly counted as “protection.”

The organization department brought in several top-ranked auto shop workers, assembling a team from engineers to skilled technicians, and had them recommend vehicles based on the requirements.

The first vehicle selected was a red Unimog U4000 double-cab truck—hailed as the king of off-roaders. It belonged to a wealthy young adventurer who’d bought it for luxury modifications, wanting even his road trips to reflect his opulent lifestyle. But when the apocalypse hit, the rich kid was trapped in the dealership. When Base Two carried out rescue operations and requisitioned all supplies, the young man, after a brief discussion with the Ministry of Public Security’s steel pipes, sensibly agreed to cooperate and happily joined the basic labor corps.