Chapter 11: The Chief of the General Staff
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Because his field of vision was limited, Li Ye could only estimate in his mind how many people had made their way to the vicinity of the military district.
Based on experience, he guessed there were probably forty or fifty thousand people gathered outside the military district.
For a city as densely populated as Jiangning, only forty or fifty thousand civilians had managed to reach this place.
The danger posed by the Fallen God Xiangliu entrenched in the urban district, together with the hordes of corpses, was self-evident.
Just as Li Ye was about to make his way through the crowd, he saw a military vehicle slowly approaching.
The vehicle was open-topped, and several sharp-looking soldiers in uniform stood aboard it, holding a loudhailer and repeating the same announcement over and over.
“Everyone, pay attention! Everyone, pay attention!”
“There are too many people here, so do not shove or push! This red mist is global in scope. We have no idea how long it will last or whether inhaling it is harmful!”
“If someone is injured, the consequences may be extremely serious. If anyone near you dies, move away immediately!”
“Time is short, so I will only address the two questions everyone cares about most.”
“The first concerns whether you should stay or leave.”
Seeing that the military personnel had stopped wasting words, the noisy crowd finally fell silent.
Everyone pricked up their ears and listened intently to the announcement.
“Our military district will divide into two groups. One will remain stationed in Jiangning, where we will construct temporary defensive fortifications and resist those aberrants, doing everything in our power to provide everyone with a relatively safe environment.”
“Since all our communications equipment has been damaged, the second group will travel north to Youdu in search of further assistance. Along the way, we will do our best to avoid the aberrants. Please decide for yourselves whether you wish to stay or leave.”
“Those who wish to remain in Jiangning should move forward a few steps to the entrance of the military district. Those who wish to leave should simply stay where they are.”
“Please form an orderly line and submit to inspection one by one. Only those without injuries will be permitted to enter the military camp!”
At those words, the expressions of a small number of people suddenly changed.
“As for the second question, that of food: at present, even our military district cannot distribute provisions to everyone. We ask you to remain as self-sufficient as possible!”
The military vehicle moved slowly on, and the loudhailer’s voice gradually faded away.
The crowd remained silent for a moment before immediately erupting into an uproar.
Many people even shook their fists furiously.
“Why aren’t you distributing food? The military district must have food reserves!”
“Exactly! How many days can we survive without anything to eat? Are you trying to starve us to death?”
“If even the army is acting like this, we might as well go into the city and fight those zombies for the supermarkets!”
Looking at the enraged people surrounding him, Li Ye smiled knowingly.
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People wear a thousand faces, changing with the times.
Ordinary citizens, usually mild-tempered, would naturally become agitated when confronted with circumstances so far beyond their understanding.
But in truth, they were merely venting their dissatisfaction with their mouths.
If they really started a fight beside the military district, would that not be tantamount to courting death?
After witnessing those grotesque aberrants and the惨 deaths of people around them, many had come to understand one thing:
This world no longer had any rules.
The light around Li Ye twisted and warped. His figure began to dissolve until it became invisible to human eyes.
Yet at that moment, fifty meters away—outside Li Ye’s field of vision—a tall, slender man wearing black-rimmed glasses was staring strangely at the place where Li Ye had vanished.
A trace of astonishment flashed through his eyes, followed by a feverish excitement. He forced his way frantically toward the direction in which Li Ye had disappeared.
……
With the red mist masking sound, Li Ye easily entered the military district.
He smoothed the wrinkles from his clothes, revealed his figure, and swaggered down the road.
There were tens of thousands of people outside the military district. The soldiers had no time to patrol the interior; merely maintaining order at the scene was already more than enough to overwhelm them.
After searching for over an hour, Li Ye finally located the office of the military district commander.
Seeing the two soldiers standing guard outside with loaded weapons, Li Ye concealed himself beyond their field of vision. He raised his right arm and directly used sunlight to seal their ears.
Then he gently pushed the door open and walked inside.
In this extraordinary period, nearly every important figure with any say in the matter would have gathered here to discuss a course of action.
Sure enough, the moment Li Ye entered, he saw more than a dozen uniformed officers seated around a table, engaged in heated discussion.
“Should we reconsider, Chief of Staff? We cannot even determine the whereabouts of that terrifying monster in the city. Sending our soldiers north to Youdu is simply too dangerous.”
“A considerable amount of the wheat and rice stored in the warehouse has already gone moldy. At present, only compressed biscuits and the like can be safely eaten.”
“The aberrants around the military district have essentially been eliminated, but some soldiers have discovered that newly emerged variants are even more powerful.”
……
As one discussion after another continued, the pressure, heavy as a mountain, eventually settled upon the old man seated at the head of the table.
He was the only one wearing a coarse cloth jacket and holding a cup of hot tea.
Shen Zhihong, Chief of Staff of the Eastern Abyss Theater Command of the Daxia Huaxia Asian Front Army.
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The old man lowered his head, his gaze calm.
He took a small sip of warm tea before speaking.
“Warnings did reach us from Youdu before, but we never expected it to arrive so quickly.”
“Can you blame us for that? The people in Youdu themselves were uncertain. How could we possibly believe them completely?”
The old man set down his teacup and rose to his feet.
“Yesterday, I went out with the soldiers. These aberrants are very likely still in their initial stage of development.”
“If we can gather an organized armed force now, reaching Youdu safely is by no means impossible.”
“But if we wait another ten days or half a month, the outcome will truly be impossible to predict.”
“The red mist has appeared only one day ago. That monster at the university town should not be capable of making any major moves during this period.”
“Looking at the situation now, is traveling north to Youdu still dangerous?”
The people seated around the table sank into thought.
In the silence, a strange round of applause came from the red mist near the doorway.
“Who’s there?”
The officers instantly tensed, more than a dozen pairs of eyes fixed rigidly on the direction from which the sound had come.
Humanity’s fear of the red mist was awakened by that sudden, unfamiliar voice.
“As expected of Chief of Staff Shen—the only brain in the Eastern Abyss Theater Command. The rest are nothing but muscle-bound firepower junkies who know only how to kill, kill, and kill.”
Li Ye stepped out of the red mist, revealing a resolute face that looked as though it had been carved by knives.
Chief Shen stopped several people who were about to summon the guards outside and regarded Li Ye with interest.
“And who might you be, young friend?”
“Although the red mist provides concealment, you are the first person ever to slip into the military district and enter this room without anyone noticing.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Chief Shen’s gaze turned vicious.
If Li Ye’s answer failed to satisfy him, Shen Zhihong would not mind having him shot full of holes.
A chief of staff entrusted with command of an entire regiment could never be a man of indecision.