Chapter 305: Chapter 305: Friction Within the Army
And the moment you get close, they instantly jump you in the blink of an eye. It almost always requires one person to be attacked by it on purpose and have the other person shoot it in the head."
Hearing the description, Xiaoyun felt it was a little familiar as if he faced it before at the start of the apocalypse.
"Oh, right, I almost forgot my mission. General Yiming wants to see you."
"Me? What does he want to see me in person for?" Xiaoyun curiously asked.
"I don\'t know. All I know is that I was told to send you the invite. It looks like I need to go now. I hope to see you there."
"Tell him I\'ll be there."
As Jianguo began climbing the ladder on the helicopter, he suddenly turned around for a second.
"Oh yeah, one last thing. I think some people are stuck inside the building near the mayor\'s office.
We didn\'t have enough resources to launch two rescue missions this late at night. Up to you if you guys want to save them or not."
The helicopter soon disappeared into the fog, leaving Xiaoyun with more questions than answers as he stood still below where the helicopter had flown.
"How did they find us when there\'s so much fog here?" Tianci murmured as they began heading back to the HQ tent.
"They probably saw us before we went inside the city," Xiaoyun finally replied as he opened the tent door.
As the two entered the tent, all the majors, as well as Ningjing and Lingang, were already inside.
"You found anything out there?" Xiaoyun curiously asked.
"We only found a few small groups of people hiding... They are still standing outside right now."
"Anything else?"
"Um... Zombies heavily block off the entire street to the mayor\'s building."
Hearing Lingang\'s answer, Xiaoyun\'s heart skipped a beat as he immediately realized it was Zhen Ti and the majority of the civilians were.
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"I\'m not even sure if tanks can spearhead through it without completely breaking down... I really do not recommend trying to brute force it."
With Lingang proposing to find an alternative way rather than his usual brute rushing through everything, everyone was surprised.
But nobody spoke up about it as everyone\'s attention was on how to resolve and save all the people in those buildings.
"How about we try to lure them away?" Ningjing suggested.
"There are way too many zombies, and we don\'t even know which part of the city has no zombies to kite them."
A major immediately spoke up and rejected Ningjing\'s suggestion, with several other majors joining in as well.
"Then why don\'t you come up with a plan, Ji Tian." Ningjing suddenly yelled in anger.
"A plan? Of course, I have a plan. Commander Xiaoyun, I suggest we leave Qingyuan."
The entire tent fell into silence, as nobody expected Ji Tian to suggest abandoning all the people trapped in those buildings.
"Ji Tian, you can\'t be serious... Right?" Lingang nervously asked, not expecting his comrade to suggest something to abandon his fellow countrymen.
"What? Why should we try to save people that aren\'t a part of us? Before you say I\'m a traitor to the people, I want to tell you all that they did this all to themselves."
"What evidence do you have?" Xiaoyun curiously asked as he was also a little troubled by Major Ji Tian\'s suggestion.
"A civilian was hiding in one of the shacks nearby, and he ran up to us and told me what happened last night... Commander Xiaoyun, can I bring him up?"
With a nod from Xiaoyun, Jian Ti left the tent and came back one minute later with a middle-aged man.
"Liu Qing, introduce yourself and explain what happened last night."
"Um, M-My name is Liu Qing, and I-I was assigned to hold metro entrance number three——"
"Liu Qing, there\'s no need to be so nervous. Here, take a seat and take a deep breath."
"Thank you, sir."
After sitting down in Xiaoyun\'s seat, Liu Qing took a deep breath and continued where he had left off.
"It was in the middle of the night when the entrance suddenly blew up into pieces. An entire wall of concrete just vanished right before our eyes.
We immediately sent someone to alert Mr. Zhen Ti and tried to hold them at the chokepoint..."
Liu Qing\'s voice started to get lower and lower as if he were reliving his nightmare again.
"There were just too many of them... We tried our best to hold on, but they just overran us like ants.
And by the time we started running, almost the entire city was full of zombies. I knew Mr. Zhen Ti had no way of holding on, so I ran towards the military base in the north——"
"Bullshit——"
"Ji Tian. Sit down. Let Liu Qing finish first."
Ji Tian sat down in anger, as if Liu Qing\'s words didn\'t match what he had heard from him earlier.
"When I-I got near the front gate, there was already surrounded by zombies and gunshots everywhere.
So I hid inside the nearby shack and waited. By the time I checked outside, everyone inside the military base was gone.
As Liu Qing fell into silence, everyone was confused as they didn\'t have the information that Xiaoyun had.
"The military in Shaoguan saved Zhen Ren and our troops... They are in Shaoguan right now." Xiaoyun revealed.
Everyone at the table immediately let out a sigh of relief, and Liu Qing finally realized what had happened to the people he had expected to see.
Suddenly, Ningjing stood up from her seat and stared at Ji Tian right into the eyes.
"Ji Tian, how does this equate to them doing this to themselves? They clearly tried their best to hold on. It\'s not their fault there were too many zombies."
Facing Ningjing\'s cut-throat questioning, Ji Tian immediately turned his attention to Liu Qian.
"Liu Qing, you didn\'t say any of this earlier. Why are you lying and trying to paint yourself a better picture? It\'s not like we\'re going to punish you for running away."
Ji Tian raised his voice again as if trying to intimidate Liu Qing into admitting the truth or following some sort of script.
Liu Qing\'s face immediately became nervous and tense. His head turned down to the ground as if he couldn\'t decide what to say.
"Liu Qing, just tell everyone the truth. Please. I pardon you of all crime, and you won\'t be punished for whatever you say. You have my words."
After hearing Xiaoyun\'s promise, Liu Qing finally looks up with determination in his eyes.
"Sorry, Mr.Xiaoyun.... I lied. I was a part of the group that ran away right at the beginning. I-I\'m sorry."
Seeing the sudden turn, Ningjing sat back down in silence as her argument had no ground to fight on.
However, a few majors who backed Ningjing earlier still felt wrong about abandoning the civilians, but they didn\'t know how to argue back.
"See? So why should we be forced to clean up after their fuck-ups? That\'s why I\'m suggesting for us to leave and go back home.
There\'s no point for us to save a bunch of cowards who ran away and hid in buildings when they had all the guns and weapons to fight back.
They couldn\'t protect themselves, and I bet most of them ran back to the mayor\'s building since the entire city was blocked off when we tried to get in.
Commander Xiaoyun, are our lives not important? You know there will be many casualties if we try to save them, and it\'s not even guaranteed to work——"
Just as Ji Tian was about to deliver the final blow, Ningjing suddenly stood up from her seat.
"Ji Tian, you are taking this way too far. What you are suggesting is collective punishment for those civilians who did nothing wrong.
Just because some of them ran away doesn\'t mean those civilians deserve to die. If you are scared of dying, just say it. Nobody is stopping you from leaving.
Commander Xiaoyun, are we here not to serve the people and protect our fellow countrymen?
Are we not all human? Do we really only protect people when they are under us? Nobody else——"
"Easy for you to say. I had been a soldier since the beginning of the town, and you know how many brothers I had lost? I\'m not going to have them——"
Just as Ji Tian interrupted Ningjing to fire back, Xiaoyun suddenly slammed the table.
"Enough! Both of you sit down and shut up."
The two immediately sat back down in their seat, with everyone a little shocked as Xiaoyun had always been calm and rational.
Everyone at the table remained silent as they all waited for Xiaoyun\'s final decision, but suddenly, a voice spoke up.