Beside the warehouse.
The survivors carrying handbags looked at one another, exchanging surprise and confusion in their eyes.
"Join the New Alliance?"
"...Are they serious?"
"The mayor didn't sound drunk, either."
"Shh... Don't say that carelessly. What if those people with guns hear you?"
No one disliked the decision.
They just found it hard to believe.
The New Alliance was actually willing to take in scavengers like them, people who lived by picking through trash?
It sounded far too fantastical!
No matter how they thought about it, there was nothing in Xizhou City that those people could possibly want.
Other than concrete ruins resembling a vast graveyard, there was only Xizhou Lake, which flooded year-round. Its waters had not only turned the entire eastern shore into a swamp, but had also backed up into the low-lying urban districts. Finding even a patch of land suitable for farming was difficult.
As for trade value, it was practically nonexistent.
Ordinary merchants never came here. River Valley Province had only two strips of plains, north and south. Between them were either mountains or rivers. Even without raiders, few people would come this way. Until last year, they had lived almost completely cut off from the rest of the world.
"Do you think the mayor might just be feeding us empty promises?" a gaunt middle-aged man muttered quietly.
"...Very likely," the shorter old man said, swallowing. "If I were the leader of the New Alliance, I definitely wouldn't invite a bunch of beggars into my home."
Although Wu Chengyi had made it sound convincing on the broadcast, almost none of the survivors believed him.
Unlike those survivors, however, the guerrilla soldiers knew very well that their leader never joked around.
Especially not about something this serious.
"So... from now on, we're New Alliance soldiers?"