"But how about at least Yezi''s wife and Yiming''s girlfriend? I can''t disrespect my generals and comrades."

Xiaoyun''s argument made Kate take a step back, as she knew Huayi personally as well.

"Fine——Wait, when did Yiming have a girlfriend? Isn''t he already in his sixties?"

"Well, life finds a way, I guess... Don''t spread this out loud, but I even heard his wife is already pregnant."

"Really?" Kate asked, looking even more shocked than earlier.

"Yeah, really. Yezi told me this before he left. Anyway, you don''t mind me inviting a few of my general''s relatives, right?"

"Fine... But you better keep it small."

"I will."

With reassurance from Xiaoyun, Kate left the house to head to work as he remained seated.

"I probably should go to work now..."

---

When Xiaoyun and Yuqi arrived at the administrative office, they had an urgent issue to solve.

The food crisis was becoming too big of a problem that needed to be solved systemically before he could expand the army even more.

"We live in Guangdong. It doesn''t make sense that we''re running out of food at all.

It''s practically the breadbasket of the country. It grows year-round, and we got everything we needed."

Xiaoyun murmured as he stared at the food production summary, which showed that the reform they had implemented had no effect.

"Yeah, but have you thought we just have too little people and too little expertise?"

Yuqi pointed out that after the two of them had seen that less than 5% of the population was in the agriculture sector.

Not to mention, most of them had never farmed a single day in their life, being city dwellers since their parents lived.

"We could either wait it out, and they''ll improve on their own, or we try something to boost production."

Xiaoyun dismissed Yuqi''s first suggestion, as there was simply not enough time to wait.

It only left the second option, but there was no way to boost food production unless they forced people into farmers.

"How about we make some of them——"

"I had never implemented a draft for the army. There is no way I''m going to make a draft farmers first."

"Then you come with a solution."

Yuqi shrugs her arms as her mind has defaulted on the idea of sending more people to farming as the only solution.

"Forcing people is the most ineffective way of having them work. There has to be a better way to incentivize people to join."

"Everyone knows that..."

As Xiaoyun tried to think of a solution, Yuqi began opening her computer to plan for her daughter''s birthday.

"More Food stamps? No, that''s going to hurt manufacturing... Machinery? They could already rent that."

With more and more roadblocks hitting from every angle, Xiaoyun started to hit rock bottom as his mind started to side with Yuqi''s idea.

"Wait, how about we flat-out give away free lands for people to farm? We pay for their entire thing."

"Here, sir."

.net

As Xiaoyun stepped onto the first obstacle course, a simple tire ran ahead of him.

With back-and-forth steps, he passed the first time with barely any effort put into it.

But the hard part wasn''t completing it.

Rather, it was the stress of constant running back and forth without losing the rhythm and pace.

After running back and forth fifteen times, Xiaoyun stopped as he headed over to the next obstacle.

It was a simple track this time, with nothing besides running in a circle with a time limit.

"Can you time me?"

"Of course, sir."

Seeing the click, Xiaoyun took off, and he ran as fast as he could, not slowing a single bit as he reached the first turn.

All of the soldiers, including the drill sergeant, were in shock as Xiaoyun had already finished half of the track within a few blinks of the eye.

It was almost as if he was teleporting; with every blink, he was already a few steps ahead than earlier.

With the click again, Xiaoyun had finished the track.

"How long was it?" Alex asked as he barely looked to be breaking a sweat.

"T-Three minute."

"Huh, that''s slower than I thought... Wait, how long is this track again?"

"Two kilometers, commander."

"Oh, right. That makes sense... This field did get longer than before. I thought I was just seeing things."

Moving over to the next obstacle course, Xiaoyun planned it as the last one he was doing.

It was the shooting range, with several targets and even moving targets further back.

Xiaoyun slowly raised the standard issued Karabiner 98k, then aimed it towards the target.

Despite being a bolt-action rifle, he used it like an automatic rifle, with lightning-fast pull and redirect.

The soldiers couldn''t even see how he aimed it as he already fired all the shots, putting it back down before turning over to the drill sergeant.

After checking it with a binocular, the drill sergeant was in shock.

Almost all of them landed near perfection, with only a few landing slightly off-center.

"Damn, I guess my shooting never really gotten that much better."

Xiaoyun murmured, thinking back to when he could land all perfectly in front of everyone.

"Anyway, I''m going to leave now. You all can resume training now."

Leaving with a wave, all of the soldiers seemed still shocked by the drill sergeant''s announced score.

The drill sergeant even let several of them check it themselves, only to find the same results.

Soon, rumors began to rapidly spread that Xiaoyun was actually an ex-special force who never missed a shot.

Later, he would even find news reports of speculation that he could kill someone with a flick of his finger that would make him laugh.