"What did you say? The Liberation Army actually disbanded on the spot?"

"That's right, sir. We even captured several former officers of the Liberation Army. They all mentioned that the final command given by Guo Zhun was, 'Why are we fighting tooth and nail here while the people we are supposed to protect are running off to Dawn City? Brothers, we're done fighting, everyone head to Dawn City!'"

"Then the Liberation Army laid down their weapons and dispersed in droves, including those working on the wall, making a total of about two hundred thousand people. They all headed to our evacuation points."

The communicator vividly mimicked Guo Zhun's tone, trying to recreate the scene at that time.

"And what about Guo Zhun?"

"No one knows. After issuing the order, he disappeared. The officers of the Liberation Army don't know where he went either, but many analyzed that he might have fled to Jiangzhou."

"Fled to Jiangzhou?"

Ye Fan opened the Spy Satellite map to check the situation at the riverfront.

He looked for a while, even leaning closer to the map, examining it carefully.

After a while, Ye Fan smiled slightly: "Forget about him for now, how many people are yet to be evacuated from the city?"

"About one million."

"If I remember correctly, the Dawn Army once modified a large number of vehicles and placed them at the positions, using headlights instead of flares, right?"

"Yes, actually only part of them were modified. Many were parked at an angle on the slopes, with headlights pointed skyward to fend off mutated birds, but those vehicles ran out of fuel, otherwise the Liberation Army would have driven them away."

"We have fuel here; we brought an extra two thousand barrels this time. Immediately send people to drive those vehicles over and quickly evacuate people from the East Gate, as many as we can take."

"Yes!"

A battalion of the Dawn Army, along with an engineer unit, first intercepted some of the wall builders retreating from the riverfront, then brought them back and refueled and started thousands of vehicles parked there.

After bustling for over twenty minutes, countless vehicles started up from the riverfront, heading straight for the East Gate.

Ye Fan also ordered all available vehicles and aircraft to return immediately. Time was incredibly tight; they must race against the clock.

However, the feedback he received was not very optimistic.

A quick wave arrived at the East Gate, with these thousands of vehicles departing. Since the vehicles varied in size, they could take at most two hundred fifty thousand people.

The Dawn Army's transport capacity was already maxed out. From the North Gate, about sixty thousand could be evacuated every hour, which was the limit.

The train station was running nonstop, transporting about twenty thousand people every hour.

The airport managed about five thousand people per hour, flying tirelessly.

In other words, besides the first hour, evacuating three hundred forty thousand people, they could only evacuate ninety thousand per hour in subsequent hours.

Additionally, there might be numerous vehicle breakdowns along the way, causing many troubles.

Evacuating the entire one million from Ice City would require at least eight hours.

Meanwhile, the fire at the wall could last for at most an hour and a half, meaning over five hundred thousand people might be forced to remain in Ice City.

Upon hearing the report, Ye Fan just instructed his subordinates to speed up and evacuate as many as possible.

They had already reached their limit; pushing further was futile. He needed to find another solution.

After completing the arrangements, he, along with a squad of guards, arrived at the second wall set up by Guo Zhun.

By his side, Zhuge Yunxue nervously watched the fire situation at the first wall.

"Sir, let's just take a look and leave. The fire here will probably be out in about an hour, by then the zombies will swarm over, and Ice City will surely fall."

Ye Fan paused in silence: "Even if we can't hold, we must try. Evacuating these one million people, even with additional vehicles, will still take about eight hours. We must hold on."

"But we only have one field corps here, the Dragon Teeth Brigade, an armored train, and our guard company. The Second Field Corps is still en route, while the other army units scattered to maintain order across various places cannot come to support."

Zhuge Yunxue voiced her opinion, and Ye Fan nodded, not planning to engage in another wall defense battle.

Though the army response was slow, the air force could come.

"Have our bombers and fighters come and bomb the ice surface of the Great River once."

Zhuge Yunxue was momentarily stunned: "Sir, our aircraft mainly carry missiles, which we can't replenish now. They can only be used once. Though bombers have bombs, we have too few planes, and the ice surface of the Great River is too vast, it may not completely block the zombies. Besides, there are countless mutated birds there. We could strike once, but should zombies be on guard, a second strike is impossible."

"I understand. I'm not aiming to completely block them, but to delay. Bombing before the fire goes out to delay a zombie offensive and intercept the nearest route to the wall should postpone them by about two hours, right?"

"Understood, sir."

The communicator then relayed the orders to the Dawn City Air Force immediately.

After giving the orders, Ye Fan walked up to the second wall. This wall built by Guo Zhun wasn't bad, ten meters high and three meters thick. Though not as strong as Dawn City's wall, it was solid enough.

However, several gates here hadn't been installed, practically rendering the wall useless.

Ye Fan tried it, but he couldn't install the main gate of his defense building here.

It didn't matter if it couldn't be installed. Ye Fan simply used a ten-meter wall to seal up these gaps.

This kind of blockade wasn't very effective, because the ten-meter-high wall, without guards, could easily be breached by zombies.

However, the speed of such a breach would be much slower, which is a way to delay the zombies' advance.

After finishing this job, Ye Fan had no other options.

He had done everything he could; further interception would require the Dawn Army to go up on the city wall themselves.

But Ye Fan wouldn't do that, the zombie horde was too large now; if absolutely necessary, he would choose to let the Dawn Army retreat first.

.....

The tense transportation continued, and after more than an hour, the sea of flames at the riverfront began to die down.

Over at Jiangnan, Wang Huining and the three Corpse Kings were growing impatient.

When the fire had diminished, a horde of two hundred thousand zombies set out impatiently.

Among them were five Tyrannosaurus and five Lickers. This wave of zombies was extremely powerful; through these days of resistance by the Liberation Army, they knew the Liberation Army was at the end of their tether, and it was time to deliver a fatal blow.

But as the zombie horde was marching on the river surface, they heard the sound of roaring from the sky.

Hearing this sound, Wang Huining and Little One's bodies shivered slightly.

Because this sound was somewhat familiar, it seemed like the sound of the Dawn Army's planes.

Of course, all planes sounded pretty much the same, and they couldn't distinguish them specifically.

But before they could react, the Dawn Army's airstrike arrived.

Twenty Attack-8 Fighters, along with ten White Bear Bombers, swept over the Jiang surface from the high sky.

Their task was simple: bomb the Great River, bomb the section of the river closest to Ice City's south gate, drop all the ammunition to definitely blast open a segment of the river approximately seven or eight kilometers long.

The thirty planes came without reservation, unleashing all missiles and bombs as if they were free.

Due to the sudden occurrence, Little One and they didn't even have time to summon mutated birds to intercept, allowing the Dawn Army to succeed.

Missiles and strings of bombs poured down, falling onto the thick ice layer.

Boom boom boom~~~!

Many zombies on the march were blasted to smithereens, but this was nothing to the massive zombie horde.

However, those ice layers simply couldn't withstand such bombing and shattered amidst the continuous explosions.

Huge ice layers broke apart, the long-lost river water blasted upward.

Countless zombies could no longer stand on the ice surface, struggling, roaring, and fell into the turbulent river water.

Many mutated zombies sank due to their weight, carried down by the river water, not knowing where they would be washed to.

They wouldn't die, but they would likely come ashore only after the ice layers completely melted, and they wouldn't be controlled by Little One anymore; they'd revert to wild zombies without the leadership of a Corpse King.

Soon, a segment of the river approximately seven kilometers in length, more than three hundred meters wide, reappeared.

The pitch-black river water roiled, its temperature elevated slightly due to the bombing.

At the current temperature, it wouldn't freeze again for a short time, at least not until tomorrow night.

So, for the horde to attack Ice City again, they could only detour from the flanks, which would undoubtedly take a lot more time.

Wang Huining and Little One were surprised and angry. They ordered the mutated birds that had flown over the Great River, ready to attack the city, to return and intercept any planes that might bomb again.

But the Dawn Army's planes were ordered to bomb only once, and after exhausting their ammunition, they effortlessly returned to Dawn City.

"This is... Ye Fan!"

Little One watched the Dawn Army planes disappearing into the sky, muttering two words.

Wang Huining was also startled, this indeed seemed like Ye Fan's handiwork; if Guo Zhun had such strong firepower, he would have used it days ago.

But Wang Huining was quite shrewd, telling Little One: "It should be, but it's just the Air Force. This time we're prepared, they probably won't come again. At worst, we detour, we can still take Ice City."

Little One also nodded, since Ye Fan only sent the Air Force over to harass, there was nothing to be afraid of.

He immediately ordered the zombie horde to start detouring, advancing towards Ice City from the flanks.

Such back and forth delays, detouring a few kilometers, two hours would pass.

However, zombies have patience aplenty, time is meaningless to them; after two hours, let's see who else will come to rescue Ice City.

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