Zombie Apocalypse: Creation

"It's my failure that I couldn't prevent this tragedy... I'm sincerely sorry."

Seeing Xiaoyun bowed down with no sign of getting back up, Yezi decided to speak up.

"No plan is perfect. At least we learned that those zombie mutants can come in packs like those."

"Yeah, Commander Xiaoyun, there's no need to be so harsh on yourself... Everyone knows the risk they are signing up for." Han Bang spoke up.

Xiaoyun finally gradually got back up, but his face still looked very down.

"You guys are right... But I cannot excuse myself for this big of a failure... Almost a hundred dead. A. Hundred. Soldiers."

Suddenly, Xiaoyun's face changed as if he had decided something in his head.

"Today, I'm going to step down as the commander, and Yezi——"

"Absolutely not." Yezi instantly rejected the proposal.

"Xiaoyun, you seem not to understand. You killed over a hundred of thousands of zombies and only lost less than a hundred soldiers. You should be proud of that."

Yezi raised his voice as he added the next part.

"Nobody, I mean nobody can do this without people dying. I would have never come up with this plan. It's just a small setback, and you're already calling quit?"

"I——"

"Li Miao, Zhao Ri, do you hate Xiaoyun for coming up with this plan?" Yezi shifted the attention to the two.

"Of course not. We would never blame the commander for not planning something that nobody knew about." Zhen Ren replied first.

"We would have planned something worse that would have gotten everyone killed." Li Miao added.

"Xiaoyun, you see? Nobody is blaming you for this... We should be hearing a new plan from you right now, not some apology." Yezi finally ended his argument.

"You're right. Those soldier's efforts shouldn't go in vain."

Xiaoyun finally looked much more motivated, as he didn't mention stepping down again.

---

Back in the living room at home.

"Mom... should we do something for Xiaoyun?" Nami asked curiously.

"We should just give him some space for now," Leyan replied as she lifted Yongyi from the floor.

"Really? We're not going to do anything for him?"

"Later... It's just not a good time right now." Leyan paused for a second before continuing.

"I know he likes to have some alone time when he's in deep emotions like these. Besides, what are you going to do? Come up with a military plan for him?" Leyan asked.

"What military plan?" Nami looked confused at Leyan.

"Wuli probably didn't tell you this... but Xiaoyun's plan went wrong after some unexpected things happened," Leyan explained.

"Oh..."

As the mood became more grim, Nami decided to bring something up.

"Hey, Mom, are we going to celebrate Xiaoyun and Yueyue's birthday next week?"

Leyan thought for a second, then replied.

"I was just thinking of a normal birthday party... You have something in mind?"

Leyan asked as she noticed Nami seemed to be holding back something.

Nami moved closer and whispered something into Leyan's ear. As the two separated, Leyan's face was blushing red.

"I don't know, Nami... that doesn't sound like a good idea."

"Come on, Mom, I'm sure babe would be so happy to see it happen." Nami grabbed onto Leyan's arm as if she were trying to make her accept the idea.

Seeing Nami looking much more energetic than earlier, she decided to go along with it.

"Fine, but you have to convince the other four." Leyan reminded her.

"I know, I know. I'm sure they'll accept it..."

---

Back in the command center.

"A new plan... how can I come up with something safe and be able to kill a lot of zombies at once?"

Xiaoyun tapped at the table with his pen as he sat in the room alone.

"What is our strength? What is something that we have that the military doesn't?"

Xiaoyun turned back around and stared at the board that had words written all over it.

Many of the words were written during the meeting to discuss what went wrong with the plan.

One of the important points was the lack of an escape route for the two regiments inside the office building and the reliance on them being able to stall long enough for another regiment to lure them away.

The other two main points were another regiment simply too far away to avoid attracting zombies and the failure of the artillery due to improper planning.

As Xiaoyun read more and more into it, he suddenly realized how much worse the plan could have gone wrong.

"Why did I think static defense like this would even work? What was I thinking?"

With a new sense of direction, Xiaoyun shifted the new plan to a more mobile one.

"How can I make it more mobile? Having soldiers go around in cars? But where do I even get that many cars? I can barely keep up with the fuel demand in the town..."

As Xiaoyun pondered deeply at the question, he suddenly remembered something that Li Miao had said during the meeting.

"The captains do a better job than I do at leading fellow soldiers..."

Xiaoyun kept murmuring it as he felt like it was the clue to the new plans that he could make, but he just couldn't put it into words.

"If captains are better than the Majors... Then why do I have them in the first place?"

A doubt started developing in his mind as he felt the military reform perhaps had gone wrong at some point.

"Perhaps I should have kept the units smaller to allow more flexible decision-making... But small units can't deal with mutants, at least not yet."

Xiaoyun kept writing different possible combinations of the units, but he couldn't come up with one that fit what he wanted.

"Wait, why am I so fixated on changing the entire unit system?"

Xiaoyun grabbed his pen and began a completely brand-new idea in his mind.

As time passed to nighttime, Xiaoyun was still writing on the piece of paper.

"Xiaoyun, it's six o'clock..." Tianci walked inside the command center to remind him.

"You two can go home first. I'll go when I finish this."

Seeing Xiaoyun still fully focused on writing his plan and looking over all the different types of data, Tianci walked back to the outside.

"What did he say?" Kat asked as she stood there with nothing much to do.

"He said he'll go back when he finishes, and we can go early."

Kate sighed as she looked extremely bored from doing nothing, but she didn't want to lose a job that gave such a hefty salary.

"Yueyue will fire us if we go away like that... Whatever, I guess we're waiting here."

---

When Xiaoyun finally left the office, it was already past eight.

"You two still out here?" Xiaoyun asked as he looked surprised by the two standing outside.

"Yeah, we are just waiting for you... Look like you are done?" Kate noticed Xiaoyun's tone had completely shifted.

"Yes... It's the best plan I have ever made. Even Yiming would be surprised by it." Xiaoyun replied with a proud smile.

"Who's Yiming?" Tianci asked curiously.

"He's used to work for Xiaoyun... Actually, what happened to him, Xiaoyun?" Kate asked curiously as well, as she couldn't recall when Yiming disappeared.

"He went back to the military... Anyway, let's go home now."

---

"Welcome back! What took you guys so long?" Leyan asked as she opened the door for the three.

"Just some work. Is dinner ready?" Xiaoyun asked as he hung his backpack at the door rack.

"Yeah, but all of them have already eaten and gone to sleep early today... but there is still some leftover."

"I'm fine with it."

As the two walked inside the kitchen, Leyan noticed Kate and Tianci standing behind them.

"Oh my, how can I forget? You two must be hungry, too... Let me go cook something right——"

"No need, I can make it for them."

Two plates full of food instantly appeared in front of Xiaoyun, and he handed them over to the two.

As Kate put the plate down at her table, her hands were shaking as if the food in front of her wasn't real.

"Holy shit! How did you do that? Tianci, you seeing this?!" Kate asked in shock.

"Yeah...you don't know he can do that?" Tianci replied as she calmly sat down and started eating the food.

"What do you mean? That's like magic!"

"Leyan, should I tell her?" Xiaoyun whispered into Leyan's ear.

"Go for it... It's only a matter of time before she finds out anyway..." Leyan whispered back.

The two separated again as Xiaoyun looked back to Kate.

"Do you want to hear the whole story or just a short version of how I got this power you just saw?" Xiaoyun asked as he got a nod from Leyan.

"Whole story!" Kate immediately replied.

Leyan immediately started blushing as she didn't want to stay in the kitchen anymore.

"I'm going to sleep now. Goodnight, honey."

Leyan sped off the kitchen as fast as she could before Xiaoyun could even say goodnight.

"Kate, you might have already heard of it last time we met a few months back, but I'm going to explain the whole thing just to clarify it for you..."

As Xiaoyun began explaining from the beginning of his life to the end of Kate, he got so into telling the story that he didn't even notice Anna, who got out of her room for water.

Intrigued by the story as Xiaoyun kept saying things that were practically impossible, Anna sat down silently next to Tianci and listened in.