At the highway out of the city...

"Sir, we have thirty minutes before arriving at our first destination." The driver mentioned.

"Okay, remind me again when we are five minutes away." Lingang sat back in his front seat and pulled out the map Xiaoyun handed.

The map was by a trader who had traveled through hundreds of settlements, with their route drawn toward the tenth largest settlement they could reach within a day.

"It''s nuts that there are nearly a hundred settlements near our base. How did we miss all these Qi Ren?" Lingang muttered.

"Probably ''cause we stuck to the city and didn''t explore the countryside much," his second-in-command Qi Ren pointed out.

"Yeah, now that I think about it, Xiaoyun''s plan to rescue people from the city instead of the countryside feels a bit backward."

"I wouldn''t say that, sir... if it weren''t for Commander Xiaoyun, half of us wouldn''t be here," Qi Ren objected.

"Oh, right. My bad." Lingang quickly backtracked.

After twenty-five minutes of a bumpy yet contemplative silence, they spotted the road and a tall tower in the distance.

"I wonder what these other settlements look like," Lingang mused, envisioning old houses reminiscent of his father''s hometown.

"One thing''s for sure—they''re probably living worse than us."

"True... honestly, it feels like Xiaoyun''s been treating us better than city life ever did."

"Yeah, with the crippling house debt, the nine-to-nine grind, and trying to raise a kid in all that chaos."

"Isn''t it ironic that our lives improved after a zombie apocalypse?" Lingang chuckled.

After a moment, he noticed Qi Ren stayed silent.

"Ah, shit. My bad. Forgot about that..." Lingang apologized, recalling that Qi Ren had lost his parents to the zombie apocalypse.

"No need. You''re not wrong, though. Our lives are much better under Commander Xiaoyun."

After a brief pause, Lingang leaned forward and signaled the driver to prepare for a stop.

"Hold on, there''s a roadblock up ahead."

With a sense of urgency, Lingang grabbed his walkies-talkie, eyeing several figures inside a makeshift security booth next to the roadblock.

"Everyone, get ready!"

As the bus stopped just before reaching the roadblock, Lingang instinctively reached for his gun.

"What do you want?" One of the people behind the security booth yelled out.

Lingang rolled down the car window and called, "Can I talk to your town''s leader?"

"Wait for five minutes." A middle-aged man in the security booth replied.

"Okay, we''ll give you ten minutes." Lingang rolled back down the window and waited.

"Lingang, should we be in the front like this?" Qi Ren asked as he and Lingang were both in the car at the front.

"Do you think they will attempt to attack us? What firepower do they have?" Lingang dismissed Qi Ren''s worries.

After a few minutes, a car drove out from the direction of the settlement.

---

As Xiaoyun predicted, over the five days, the number of people has drastically dropped from three thousand in a single day to around five hundred.

Still, it was a massive increase as the town population approached thirty thousand people.

With the population growth, Yezi started pushing Xiaoyun to expand the military again from ten thousand to fifteen thousand to maintain the fifty-fifty split between civilian and military.

But Xiaoyun flat out rejected the suggestion after talking with Yuqi.

When Yezi asked why not, Xiaoyun replied word for word from her.

"I''m going to quit if you raise the military size again."

With that, Yezi gave up the idea of expanding any time soon. However, Yezi started to look for another angle to strengthen the military as he spent more time with the arms factory.

As the month came to an end, a bigger problem that Xiaoyun had been ignoring was starting to haunt him.

"Hey babe, what are you planning for Mom''s birthday present tomorrow?" Yuqi asked.

"Um, you''ll see tomorrow... It''s a break day tomorrow, right?" Xiaoyun nervously chuckled.

"Tomorrow is Friday, not break day at all." Shuli chimed in.

"Oh." Xiaoyun kept a straight face as an act, but deep inside, his brain panicked.

"Fuck, I completely forgot about it... Leyan said she didn''t care if I gave her a present, right? But maybe she''s just saying it to make me feel better." Xiaoyun''s brain couldn''t come up with a conclusion.

"Xiaoyun... you forgot?" Nami noticed the long silence from him.

"What? No. I told you all that you''ll see it tomorrow. How about you guys? What gift did you make?" Xiaoyun shifted the attention away from him.

"I brought Mom a dress," Yuqi replied first.

"I brought Mom yarn and needles since she always wanted to knit something," Nami replied next.

"Wuli and I ordered a cake from the bakery," Shuli replied last.

Xiaoyun suddenly got up from his seat.

"I need to go do something. I''ll be right back."

Xiaoyun and Tianci both left the office and walked to the commercial district.

"Fuck, of course, they took all the possible options from me... I can''t just do the same thing." Xiaoyun mumbled.

"Perhaps you should buy some flowers for Mrs.Leyan, or perhaps you should just be honest with her," Tianci suggested as she realized Xiaoyun was shopping for a gift.

"You said the same thing an old friend said to me." Xiaoyun thought back to the conversation he had with Yiming.

"I can''t just gift something so generic or go empty-handed. All of them is going to poke fun at me for that."

"Flowers are not generic or boring. I''m one hundred percent sure that Mrs.Leyan is going to love it." Tianci pushed her suggestion forward again.

"Really?" Xiaoyun started considering it as they walked past a small shop selling flowers.

"Yes! I promise she will love it. What matters is it''s coming from you. If Yuqi gave her a flower, Mrs.Leyan wouldn''t like it as much as a flower coming from you." Tianci explained.

"Hm... I guess that''s a valid point." Xiaoyun thought about it more and started to agree with Tianci''s point.