"Hahaha... indeed, that makes sense." The Candle Dragon laughed heartily, "This idea is really fascinating!"

"Back to the point—Sun Hang, what you just said means: instead of guarding every town and village, it would be better to stay in Tianfu City and wait for Chimera 17 to come to us once it regains full strength?" Yang Qi said solemnly, "But have you considered how many people will fall victim to Chimera 17 this way?"

"No matter what we do, those people will die." Sun Hang shrugged, "You can have the Disaster Response Committee implement the large migration plan, and you can also organize elite Hunters to ambush Chimera 17... but no matter what we do, the final battleground will most likely still be in Tianfu City."

"..." Yang Qi fell into contemplation.

"Don't you think there's something wrong with what I'm saying?" Sun Hang suddenly asked.

"Huh?"

"Aren't my words contradicting the question you asked me during the job entry test back then?"

"This..."

"I also raised this question to Pei Zongjun." Sun Hang shrugged, "He told me that this is a war, and war requires sufficiently cold-blooded decision-makers... and he hopes I can become such a decision-maker."

"Since Mr. Pei said so, there must be no problem." The Candle Dragon said from the side, "Decision-makers indeed need to be cool-headed, but that doesn't mean they are devoid of humanity... quite the opposite, it is human nature that drives them to make choices that allow the most people to survive."

...

...

Sun Hang and his team's car hadn't even entered Lizhou City yet when they saw several armored vehicles full of City Defense Guard soldiers coming out from the city. The leading armored vehicle stopped about a dozen meters away from them, and a lieutenant jumped out, adjusted his helmet, and quickly ran over to Sun Hang's team.

"Hello, officer!" The lieutenant saluted Sun Hang and his team through the car window, "I'm the deputy leader of the second squad of Lizhou City's City Defense Guard, and I'm very grateful for the intelligence you provided. Our unit is currently heading to the western suburbs of the city to gather and prepare to search and rescue surviving citizens from the Qiang People's Settlement!"

"How many people do you have?" Yang Qi asked before Sun Hang could.

"Two squad's strength, about eighty men, plus three field units from the Investigation Bureau," the lieutenant reported.

"No Hunters accompanying you?" Yang Qi realized this question was a bit redundant as soon as she asked—Sun Hang and the Candle Dragon were probably the only two Hunters stationed in Lizhou City, and even if the Management Committee wanted to dispatch Hunters for this operation, they had no extra Hunters to send...

"No," the lieutenant shook his head, "Our superiors told us that Hunters would arrive soon and instructed us to hurry and rescue as many surviving citizens in the mountains as possible."

"A piece of advice for you," Sun Hang adjusted the rearview mirror by the car window so that he could see the dark mountains reflected in it, "Don't go into the mountains until the Hunters are in place."

"I'm sorry, officer... that's an order from our superiors, we..." The lieutenant hesitated, then looked troubled.

"I'm just saying," Sun Hang turned his head back and faced the oncoming convoy, "as for orders or survival, it's up to you to choose."

Then, he started the car once more.

...

...

Lizhou City, Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital.

Despite repeated attempts by Lizhou City's Management Committee officials to persuade him to stay, Sun Hang was determined to leave, and no conditions they offered could make him stay.

Lizhou City... or rather, the Qiang People's Settlement west of Lizhou City had already been "plundered clean" by Chimera 17, and it would not linger in Lizhou City any longer... this strange creature was cunning and knew how to minimize risks—compared to launching an attack in the densely populated city area, the vast Shuzhou Territory had many more remote towns that were better suited as hunting grounds than Lizhou City.

It's important to note that some towns had so few armed forces they could be ignored—a Public Security Bureau only about a dozen square meters in size, three or four sheriffs who had only undergone one month of standard military training, an old automatic rifle, a rubber-bullet loaded shotgun, and perhaps two or three 9mm pistols that might not even penetrate body armor, this might be the entirety of the town's armed forces.

Even as a border area, the militia structure in Shuzhou remained... but whether those untrained militiamen had the courage to aim and pull the trigger when facing the fierce anomaly was completely unknown.

Besides the line of "military strongholds" bordering the Yundian Region, within Shuzhou, apart from the major cities, other areas were essentially undefended.

It's not that the Federation Government doesn't want to, but it's not feasible.

Training a qualified soldier requires the tax support of at least fifteen to twenty ordinary citizens, and with the procurement and consumption costs of various weapons and equipment, this number rises to over thirty... For a nation not in a state of war, if the ratio of the military personnel to the total population reaches one to thirty, the financial strain is immense... The Federation couldn't possibly maintain such a large and entirely non-working army, for if it did, an assault by anomalies wouldn't be necessary—sustaining it for just a few years would lead the Federation's economic situation toward collapse.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.