Two days had passed by the time Xiaoyun finished writing the treaty and handed it over to Gantian.

Xiaoyun, in the end, decided to follow through with his intention of just allying with Yiming rather than directly annexing them into being directly administered.

When Gantian returned to Luoping with a return letter from Yiming, Xiaoyun let out a sigh of relief as he read the letter.

In the return letter, Yiming was extremely thankful for the food supplies that he had sent along with Gantian when he traveled back to Shaoguan.

Yiming was also very thankful for Xiaoyun''s choice, as the letter revealed he still needed time to convince the officers to follow his command, which would have been hard if Xiaoyun had been the de facto leader since he had no military background.

At the end of the letter, Yiming promises to join Xiaoyun''s faction when he gets everything sorted out.

"What a sneaky guy... I guess he does need to think for his fellow soldiers first."

Xiaoyun murmured as the letter avoided the exact number of soldiers Yiming was going to bring for his operation to clear Foshan.

---

Soon, December was one week away as November quickly flew by.

The villages between Qingyuan and Luoping were now fully centralized in Qijing, which had walls and Li Miao''s entire brigades stationed there to protect the villagers.

When the new village leader announced the new management under Xiaoyun''s administrator, none of them opposed it.

Rather than resistance, it was more of a happy welcome, as everybody was happy to see more soldiers being sent to protect them as the threat of zombies was increasingly getting bigger and bigger.

Still, not everyone was happy as the new administrators of the town were finally enforcing the same laws in Luoping and performing a census on everyone living inside Qijing.

Some of the people tried to flee Qijing as soon as they heard the announcement, as they would have been arrested for drug trade, human trafficking, and other illegal operations that were turned a blind eye in the villages.

The new village leader was at first unhappy seeing Xiaoyun''s troops enforcing the laws set out by the administrators.

But he quickly shut his mouth when a person in full black showed up at his doorstep in the middle of the night.

"Your letter." The cloaked figure murmured as he handed the letter to the village leader.

The letter was full of records of what he had done in the past, many of which were illegal under Luoping''s law, and he had done in secret to benefit himself.

The cloaked figure took the letter back, ripped it right before the village leader''s eye, and turned around.

"You lucky Mr.Mayor decided to go light on you after she reported your record to him... Remember, we''re always watching."

"Wait, who''s she?"

Before the village leader could ask, the cloaked figure was gone.

If it weren''t for the paper on the floor, the village leader would have treated it as a nightmare dream.

The new village leader quickly changed his entire attitude as he began cooperating with the new administration to crack down on all the illegal operations that stayed.

"Yes, there is a lot of armed militia there that Zhen Ti didn''t control. But since they are so disorganized, many of them didn''t put up much of a fight in practice.

And for the big ones, after a short shoot-out, they all surrender quickly after Han Bang threatens to fire artillery in the city."

As soon as Xiaoyun finished talking, Yuqi raised her hand.

"So Han Bang just illegally annexed Qingyuan even though there''s no point in us holding onto it?"

Xiaoyun thought for a second, then replied.

"As I said, he had no choice. If he didn''t do anything, the new leader those factions elect might end the trade deals or cause instability in our relationship.

I would have done the same if I was Han Bang... Anyway, at the end of the letter, he had asked us what to do next."

Lingang immediately raised his hand.

"We need to send more troops to secure Qingyuan. It''s the best time to establish our presence there and have it under our control completely."

Xiaoyun thought for a second, then nodded in agreement as Wuli quickly raised her hand to raise her concern.

"If we annex what everyone views as an ally, it will just cause distrust from everyone that wants to ally with us in the future.

Especially when Zhen Ti hired the troops stationed there as security, nobody would ever want our soldiers to protect their doorstep if we do that."

"Valid point... that would ruin all our potential allies in the future," Xiaoyun murmured as he quickly dismissed Lingang''s suggestion from earlier.

Seeing his side quickly losing favor, Lingang looked over to Zhen Ren, who had been silent the whole time.

"Um, I think we should just keep the status quo... If Mr.Zhen Ti wakes up, we wouldn''t have to do anything at all."

Hearing Zhen Ren''s compromise, Xiaoyun liked that option out of the two polar opposites.

"Status quo? But Xiaoyun, we have to supply the troops and the population there now, right?"

Yuqi spoke out as she quickly drew everyone''s attention back to the starting statement Xiaoyun made. powered-by-MvLeMpYr

"Yes. We do have to supply our troops ourselves since there was a food shortage before Zhen Ti fell into a coma... And the population there has been slowly running out of food." Xiaoyun explained.

"So we either annex them and gave them food. Or we withdraw and let them decide for themselves. I''m not giving food for a status quo that doesn''t do anything for us.

Xiaoyun, I hope you know that all the brigades you are sending out are burning through our food supply rapidly. You just sent out food to Shaoguan for free, and now you want to give it to Qingyuan?

Not to mention your upcoming operation to clear Foshan''s needs some food to be stockpiled, and we still need some time before Qijing can harvest their food and send it over to Luoping."

Yuqi quickly pointed out the food constraint that had been building up.

"I know, I know... Fine, I''ll send a letter to Han Bang for him to withdraw——"

Before Xiaoyun could finish talking, Yueyue, who had been silent the whole time sitting next to Renqin, suddenly got up from her seat and whispered something into Xiaoyun''s ear.