After retreating to the high school, the soldier began getting off the bus, followed by Xiaoyun, Jixi, and Gantian.
"I think we should call it a day," Xiaoyun suggested.
"Why? It's not even one o'clock yet." Gantian questioned after checking the time on his watch.
"We wasted a lot of ammo, and we don't have a way to restock it besides going back to the town," Xiaoyun explained.
"He's right, everyone start packing up... Let's wait for the two buses to come back first, though." Jixi agreed.
Eventually, the two buses were finally back after waiting for ten more minutes, picking up the last few batches of civilian survivors as the soldiers hopped into the other buses.
---
After going on rescue missions twenty more times for the entire month of March, Xiaoyun finally stopped going and let Jixi lead them.
When Xiaoyun approached the administrative building for the first time in a while, he noticed the store below had been completely removed.
In its place were twenty front-facing booths, with lines of people waiting and talking to what seemed to be customer service.
Walking inside the main office, he noticed almost every single cubicle had people working inside now.
All of them had stacks of paper next to them, some busily working alone while some were constantly talking to each other in small groups.
When Xiaoyun entered Yuqi's office, he immediately noticed her room had doubled in size, with five office tables inside.
Both Yuqi and Yueyue were in there, which was expected since Yueyue had been working with her for a while now.
However, seeing Nami and Leyan working alongside them shocked Xiaoyun, much more than he had ever imagined.
"Finally you came back, there's so much work thanks to your city rescue,"
Yuqi murmured as she didn't even look at Xiaoyun, her eyes and hands busily working at the piece of paper in front of her.
"When did Nami and Leyan start working here?" Xiaoyun curiously asked, looking over to the other two who were just as busy.
"I don't have enough people that I can trust, so I called Nami to work here as my assistant instead of the store.
And Leyan has retired from her nurse position since she found a replacement... And her belly is getting too big to work there just like Yueyue."
Yuqi explained as she finally stopped working, looking back over to Xiaoyun, who had taken a seat on the sofa.
"Huh, why didn't any of you guys tell me about this? We still see each other every night." Xiaoyun questioned.
"Why would I bring work into the bedroom? Anyway, here's a stack of work for you to sort through."
Yuqi threw an entire stack of paper in front of Xiaoyun's new desk, forcing him to get up again as he slowly walked over to his desk.
With a single glance, he was completely stunned in place. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of things on the list he needed to do.
"Come on, Xiaoyun, it's time to start working," Yueyue murmured after noticing Xiaoyun was frozen at his desk.
"Yeah, okay."
Xiaoyun let out a small sigh before sitting down in his seat, closing his eyes to rest for a bit as he rubbed his eyes with his hand.
"Oh boy..."
---
While Xiaoyun was working, he learned that the town had grown to over six thousand people, almost tripling the size of the town in a single month.
This led to two completely new zones just for residential area massive expansion further toward the forest to build a massive amount of cabins as temporary housing.
There are also three schools now, with a new government store on each corner of the town to supply goods to civilians.
The farms and factories have also massively expanded their production to keep up with the surging demands.
Besides the massive growth, there's also a small food shortage coming soon as the inventory level has reached an all-time low.
"Yuqi, do you want me to go create more food?" Xiaoyun asked.
"Not yet, the next farm harvest should be enough to cover it... But the raw material has been running low now."
"Okay, I'll go there right now."
Xiaoyun quickly left the office. As he walked on the street, there were many new faces that he had never seen before.
Only a few of them waved towards him, as most of them didn't seem to recognize him or were too shy to speak up to him.
After walking for ten minutes, Xiaoyun finally arrived at the storage room. Although it was called a storage room, it was more of a warehouse.
It held the food and raw materials in bulk for the stores, commercial sectors, and factories. Everything valuable in the town was in here.
Xiaoyun quickly dismissed the five militia standing guard and started cloning the raw material without bothering to make it appear to be transported from the outside.
He was just too tired and lazy at this point. More importantly, he doubted someone would care about the supply increase compared to it being missing.
After two hours, Xiaoyun finally finished cloning it.
"Don't ask questions."
Xiaoyun gave a heads-up to the five militia and left the warehouse, leaving them all confused as they stood at the entrance.
When he arrived back at the office, most people had left for lunch break. This didn't include the three of his wives and Nami, who were still working.
"Xiaoyun, I want you to pause the rescue mission for a week," Yuqi immediately spoke up as soon as he stepped inside.
"Why? Is it too many people?" Xiaoyun questioned.
"No, they are just using way too much ammo every single day. The factory can't keep up, and don't you try to clone the bullet yourself.
It's nowhere near enough even if you sit there and clone all night. Cloning the raw material is already more than enough."
After thinking about it, Xiaoyun agreed with her idea in the end. He didn't really want to push himself any further beyond getting a headache.
"Okay, I will pause it when they come back." Xiaoyun folded.
---
When it got to five o'clock, all the soldiers were back from the rescue mission.
Xiaoyun stood alongside Yezi and Yiming at the training field, waiting for Jixi and Gantian to lead everyone out of the buses.
"Hello everyone. I have an announcement to make before you are all dismissed." Xiaoyun said out loud before the podium.
"Due to your hard work, we have saved over four thousand people in a single month. I thank you all for your hard work."
As Xiaoyun gave a round of applause to the soldiers, both Yiming and Yezi applauded at the same time.
"Since you guys have worked so hard, we have decided to give everyone here a one-week break to relax.
Don't worry, you will still be paid during the week off. Please spend some time on yourself and enjoy it with your family."
The soldiers cheered and clapped in excitement. They couldn't believe their ears as they were all overjoyed.
Except for Yezi and Yiming, who looked shocked and confused.
"You all are dismissed. Have a good day, everyone."
As Xiaoyun walked back down the stage to the two of them, they both immediately confronted him with questions on the trigger.
"Looks like people wanted a break for quite a while now," Xiaoyun commented first before they could speak up.
After a short silence, they kept the question to themselves as it became clear the decision was set in stone.
"It's hard to go on a straight rescue mission for a month straight... By the way, do you have any plan to expand the military more?" Yezi asked.
"Hm. We do have six thousand people now. We can definitely expand to two thousand." Xiaoyun acknowledged.
"Before that, we should wait for everyone to finish militia training first. All these new people had been somewhat unruly in the training field.
It's going to take some time to drill discipline into them. Let alone properly handling a gun and fighting zombies with it." Yiming argued.
"Sure, we can do that too. We can recruit more militia while turning the current militia into soldiers."
As Xiaoyun thought of a compromise, both of them nodded in agreement. But a question soon popped up into his head.
"If we are expanding to two thousand... that is a lot of new officer positions to fill," Xiaoyun murmured.
"It's fine, we can have the current soldiers fulfill the higher-up positions as a rank-up, then fill their lower positions with the recruits," Yiming suggested.
"I guess... how are we going to format the soldiers then?"
"How about we continue the structure we have right now and just keep going up? So we will have Battalion up next for every five companies." Yezi suggested.
"We will only have one full battalion and two companies missing in the other." Xiaoyun calculated it in his head.
"I don't recommend using a battalion so fast... we should just continue using company as the highest possible size, as we don't have real officers to manage an entire battalion."
Seeing Yiming disagreed with Yezi's idea, Xiaoyun immediately sided with Yiming, as he was the man who had more military experience.
"He's right, we can just stick to company format for now... Anyway, Yiming, can you open a military academy and be the teacher of it?" Xiaoyun suggested.
"Sure. I can just start teaching them in the cafeteria. No need to build a new place."
"Good, they can spend their break learning here as well for free lunch. What perfect timing." Xiaoyun murmured.
---
After sorting out and ironing out the next military expansion with Yezi and Yiming, Xiaoyun finally went back to his house.
"Welcome home!"
As Leyan opened the door, she quickly helped him take off his jacket, putting it onto the coat hanger before Xiaoyun put his pistol strap inside the shoe cabinet.
"You guys already at home?" Xiaoyun asked, noticing the four of them already sitting on the sofa.
"Honey, look at the clock already. It's six o'clock." Leyan murmured as the two of them walked further inside the house.
"Oh right, almost forgot the time... Ahem, is dinner ready?" Xiaoyun asked out loud as all four of them turned their attention to him.
"Of course it is. We're just waiting for you."
All four of them quickly got off the sofa and walked toward the kitchen as Xiaoyun and Leyan followed right behind.
After finishing dinner, Leyan decided to pull out mahjong to play.
As everyone took turns playing, with the loser rotating out with the other person, Xiaoyun somehow managed to lose the most.
Even more than Nami somehow, who was actually playing for her first time compared to the other three more experienced players.
"Looks like someone isn't the god of gambling as they proclaimed." Leyan laughed as she watched Xiaoyun lose again.
"Yeah yeah, just unlucky today." Xiaoyun switched seats with Yueyue as he lost again, letting her take over his spot.
Xiaoyun and Lily both watched from the side as the four of them played until one of them lost, allowing Xiaoyun to join back in.
After playing til ten o'clock, he managed to break even at the end while Yuqi was the biggest winner.
"I'm too sleepy now. I'm gonna take a shower and sleep... Come on Lily, let's go." Nami yawned as they both left the dining table.
"Well, let's go take a shower and go to sleep as well. I'm kinda sleepy too."
As Yuqi spoke out, the other two nodded in agreement, leaving Xiaoyun to stay behind to put everything back into the case.
With everything put away, he headed upstairs to take a shower himself. But soon he found himself in a little pickle.
"Hmm, both showers are full... Which one is it?"
Xiaoyun didn't know which one had his three wives inside, as opposed to having Nami and Lily.
"Is it Leyan's room or the outside one? It has to be the master bathroom, right?" Xiaoyun murmured as he walked into Leyan's bedroom.