Chapter 426: Food Crisis and Exercises
"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."
"You think we aren't already doing that? I already have this kind of program in place," Yuqi said as she rolled her eyes.
"Then there's only one other place we can improve on..."
Xiaoyun forcefully pulled the computer away from Yuqi before pulling up the database.
"How many people graduated with an Agriculture major? There has to be at least a thousand of them, right?"
As he typed the things he was looking for into the filter, he was surprised to see over ten thousand people had an agriculture major.
More surprisingly, most of them were not working in agriculture at all. Instead, they were all in the army.
Some were even in high positions, with Li Miao being the highest one, being a college student majoring in agriculture before the outbreak.
"What? Why are they in the army? Why are they not doing their major?"
Xiaoyun murmured as he scrolled down further to see their occupation.
"Because the army pays more than just being a farm... Besides, they had been in the army a long time ago.
They don't want to leave what they had worked for and suddenly just go farming.
Hell, I asked both Yezi and Yiming, and they told me they would rather kill me than have them be farming."
Hearing Yuqi's sarcastic tone with a hint of anger, Xiaoyun finally realized what the issue lay.
"I'll talk to them myself."
Xiaoyun printed a piece of paper with most of their names before leaving the administrative office and heading straight to the logistics.
When he arrived at there, he immediately found the head of the department and handed the piece of paper to her.
"I want people on the paper to all head back from the front line. I want to see them by tomorrow."
Realizing the urgency in Xiaoyun's voice, she didn't question it and immediately handed it to the radio office.
After waiting for a few minutes, she finally returned with several printed copies of the paper.
"The radio operator is currently sending the message over to them."
"Good. Call me when they have all arrived back in Luoping."
As Xiaoyun left the logistic building, he could see all the recruits training in the fields.
With nothing much to do, he decided to head over to the training field.
"Good morning, commander!" Several of the drill sergeants said out loud at once before saluting.
"Good morning."
After saluting, Xiaoyun turned his attention to the soldiers, who were all completing various obstacle courses.
"How are these new soldiers doing? Are they doing any good?"
"Um, I don't know how to put this nicely... But, sir, they had been the worst batch of soldiers I have ever seen."
The answer didn't surprise Xiaoyun much, as they were just civilians who were on the verge of malnutrition a few days ago.
"Give them a little break. I want to try it myself."
A sense of nostalgia started to appear in Xiaoyun's head as he could still vividly remember him fighting Wuli in the same training field.
"Everyone stop. Commander wants to give all of you a break." One of the drill sergeants yelled out loud through a megaphone.
Immediately, all the fresh recruits collapsed onto the nearby floor, turning their attention to Xiaoyun, who stood next to the sound.
"Here, sir."
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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.
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