Chapter 418: Recruits, Militias, and Border Patrol
"Leifeng, how many people are here right now?" Xiaoyun asked.
"About 100,000 people had shown up so far. We are still counting the people right now."
"Okay... Are the transport ready?"
"We got buses and trucks already waiting for your order, Mr.Governor."
"Great, just start sending to Luoping... I\'ll check the militia later today."
"Yes, Governor."
As Leifeng went over to direct his bureaucrats to begin the process, Xiaoyun stood on the administrative stairs.
Taking out a megaphone, he couldn\'t help but decide to make a speech out of nowhere.
"Everyone! I\'m Governor Chen. I want to let you know that you made the right choice.
You will be fed well and have a chance to fight the zombies that once took our homes."
Xiaoyun paused for a second as the crowd seemed mostly neutral towards him.
"Remember, we are fighting for our survival. There is nowhere safe in the world unless we fight.
This is a struggle that will take years, but we will bring peace and justice to our homeland we all once lived in."
As Xiaoyun finished his speech, a few people started clapping.
But more and more people joined in, eventually leading the entire crowd to clap.
"Thank you."
With a wave, Xiaoyun stepped back down as the crowd seemed more energetic than before.
As some of the buses and trucks began heading towards Luoping, Xiaoyun waited as he watched more and more being sent over.
---
A few hours later...
Xiaoyun stood in the training field, and all the fresh recruits were right before him.
There were 200,000 people right before him, with him allocating border patrols as guards for the day.
Most of the border patrols were former soldiers or militia members who had already completed formal training.
Even though they were the civilian branch, Xiaoyun had no choice but to use them as all of the soldiers had pretty much been sent out.
As Xiaoyun took a closer look at the crowds, many of them were mostly young men, with a few women in the groups.
Only a small fraction of them looked towards the older side, which was expected as the older a person is, the harder it is to survive out there.
Everyone had already changed into their soldier uniform, standing upright in the training field.
"I had already introduced myself earlier. But now that you all are official soldiers, I\'m your commander, not the governor."
After a short pause, Xiaoyun continued.
"The number one rule in the military is to follow the orders. I\'m sure everyone knows this.
I won\'t explain all the rules to you one by one, but I hope you\'re all ready to fight next month.
Remember, sweats on the training field is better than blood on the battlefield."
As Xiaoyun turned his head to the back, he introduced the man who had been standing behind him.
"This is Liu Zhang. He will be your head drill sergeant. He will be conducting all the training you will be receiving."
After stepping aside, Liu Zhang stepped up.
"Good morning, everyone. I\'m Liu Zhang, a veteran who has been serving for ten years.
I hope you are all prepared for what you had signed up for... Since there is not enough housing, the last ones will be sleeping in tents."
Seeing Liu Zhang begin to execute the training plan, Xiaoyun left the stage and headed back to his car.
This time, he drove back to Guangzhou\'s training field, only to see a crowd already exercising.
"Good morning, commander!" One of the drill sergeants saluted.
"Good morning. How\'s the training going so far?" Xiaoyun asked as he looked to the militia recruits this time.
"Going a lot better... Most of them are actual citizens for a long time now, so they aren\'t as malnourished or anything."
The drill sergeants looked a little relieved as if he didn\'t want to work with the people who had been sent to Luoping.
"That\'s good... You\'re also working for border patrol, right?" Xiaoyun suddenly asked.
"Yes, Mr.Leifeng told me to direct a small crew to be here to start the training."
"I see... What is the patrol job like in Guangzhou?" Xiaoyun curiously asked as he knew the ones in Luoping were just wall guards.
"It\'s mostly calm... Usually, the area we check on hasn\'t resisted or committed any crime so far.
We\'re just more of a police that checks with them once in a while since it\'s hard to manage and keep track of so many people in the city."
Xiaoyun nodded in acknowledgment, as the border patrol was simply a pseudo-military force for the city mayor to allocate.
His initial idea of militia was an attempt to make a balanced force to counteract pre-existing border patrol.
But as he thought more and more, it became clear that there wasn\'t really a point to having it under the military.
It was simply an extension of the border patrol that would lead to conflicting roles, as cities like Guangzhou don\'t have walls.
"If I just make the militia a part of the border patrol, do you think it will make your guy\'s job easier?"
"Um... I\'m not sure about that. But I think it will allow us to have more men to patrol incoming zombies."
After a short silence, an idea formed in Xiaoyun\'s head.
"Thank you for your answer."
As Xiaoyun left Guangzhou\'s training ground, he headed over to Leifeng\'s office.
"Mr.Governor, is there something I can do?"
"I want to have the militia merged into the border patrol."
"Um, I don\'t think I can do that. You\'re the commander, sir." Leifeng pointed out, not overstepping his power.
"Oh, right."
Xiaoyun quickly took out a piece of paper before making a letter of confirmation of the merger idea.
With his signature added, it was now official, and he handed it over to Leifeng.
"You can use them however you like to keep Guangzhou safe."
"Thank you, sir... I really appreciate it."
Leifeng seemed to be on the verge of tearing up as if Xiaoyun\'s trust to handle the militia over to him was too big of a heart.
"No problem. If you have any trouble, just call me. Here\'s my phone number.
I\'m most likely going to be busy for the next few weeks, so you\'ll need to manage moving people over to Foshan."
Xiaoyun quickly left before Leifeng started bowing down in gratitude and rambling about how much trust he was putting into him.
---
When Xiaoyun arrived at the administrative office in Luoping, it was already three in the afternoon.
"You finish settling out the recruits?" Yuqi asked as he walked into her office.
"I didn\'t need to do that much besides showing up. The logistics and the drill sergeants can handle it." Xiaoyun replied.
"Yeah, my drill sergeants. Not yours. They are still supposed to be on border patrol."
"Yeah, but, like, there isn\'t much for them to do anyway. There\'s already a police department in Luoping.
And to attack Luoping, they would have to go through Guangzhou first. I might as well just have them back into the military——"
"Xiaoyun, don\'t you dare do that. They are my soldiers, not yours." Yuqi warned.
"I\'m just joking. Anyway, I\'m probably just going to disband the militia in Luoping."
"Wait, why?" Yuqi asked in confusion as she stopped her work to look at Xiaoyun.
"Because I already merged the militia to Leifeng\'s border patrol. There\'s no point in having two separate ones.
It\'s not like five thousand people can suddenly start beating the entire army out of nowhere."
"I guess... How about the militia in Qijing? I\'m pretty sure the mayor over there had already recruited the militia that you wanted."
"I haven\'t decided there yet..."
As Xiaoyun fell into silence, Yuqi suddenly bent over to her drawer to retrieve some sort of document.
"Speaking of Qijing, can you read this idea I have?"
"Sure."
As Xiaoyun accepted the document Yuqi handed over, he was a little caught off guard by the title.
It was called the \'Guangzhou-Qijing merger plan.\'
"Why do you want to merge the two cities out of nowhere?" Xiaoyun curiously asked.
"Because there\'s no point in having two cities that are close to each other. Qijing is just Northeast of Guangzhou and south of Qingyuan.
There is no point in having a separate city that costs double the management cost.
Xiaoyun thought for a second, then realized she had a point as he read the document\'s reasoning.
It first listed how sparsely populated Qijing was. There really wasn\'t a point in having it as a city that required its branch of government.
It could have just been considered a rural part of Guangzhou, which was already true before the outbreak.
Qijing was just a small district and town under Guangzhou\'s city administration, and it had only been a five-minute drive since the road was repaired.
"Isn\'t Luoping even closer? Wouldn\'t it make more sense to merge us with Guangzhou?" Xiaoyun suddenly raised his point.
"Yeah, but does Qijing have the same population as the other two cities?" Yuqi argued.