"Quick, everyone, come help! Let's get all the liquor off the truck and into the cafeteria." A man climbed down from an armored cargo truck and called to the people inside.
"Is that the Second Exploration Team? That's a lot of liquor. Which distillery did you go to?" asked a coworker who was about to help.
"Huang Kang Distillery. We hauled all the liquor there back with us."
"Impressive. That place must be almost twenty kilometers away. And this liquor smells amazing."
"Of course. We had to kill plenty of monsters to bring it back."
As they exchanged questions and answers, they unloaded all the liquor from the truck.
Curious, someone in the cafeteria asked, "Where are your captain and the others? Why didn't they come back with you this time? We're almost done preparing the meal."
The man replied, "We ran into some people from the county on this trip. The captain took them to meet Director Gao."
-
Inside Gao Zheng's office.
Ma Tianxing had already introduced Zhang Xiaoyang and the others to Gao Zheng. The one leading the group, however, was the bespectacled man they had met earlier. His name was Cai Fenghua, and he was an office clerk. He had been responsible for deciding the team's general course of action and drawing up its plans, as well as recording everything they had gained during the expedition.
Cai Fenghua pushed up his glasses and said, "Hello, Mr. Gao. I often heard your name mentioned back in the county. Leaders at every level have been keeping a close eye on Xingyan Group. Your survival is a great blessing for Hehe County."
Gao Zheng no longer felt much of anything when he heard words like that. He merely nodded slightly and said, "Xiao Cai, could you give me a detailed account of the county's current situation? Ever since all the signals went down, we haven't known what's happening outside."
Cai Fenghua agreed, and the events of the past three months beyond Xingyan Base slowly unfolded before Gao Zheng.
As it turned out, after the Thunder Dragon Emperor appeared that day, Hehe County had also been hit by a massive Beast Tide.
The Beast Tide consisted of more than three thousand monsters. This was because over seventy thousand people had gathered inside Hehe County's safe zone, drawing nearly all the monsters in the surrounding area toward it.
Fortunately, the county had plenty of police officers, firearms, and ammunition. A platoon of soldiers had also made an emergency retreat to the county.
After nearly thirty thousand able-bodied men and women were mobilized to the front lines, the monsters were finally wiped out under a barrage of modern weapons.
However, the battle cost the safe zone more than a thousand lives. All of them were able-bodied men and women who had fought on the front lines.
After that battle, Hehe County's ammunition reserves were nearly depleted. They could no longer rely on modern weapons to withstand the next Beast Tide.
At that point, the county leadership used an emergency communications channel to contact the city and ask about the situation and request aid.
The emergency channel sent messages through satellites in geostationary orbit, safely beyond the Thunder Dragon Emperor's range.
But the city's response was extremely hard for the county leadership to accept. There would be no aid, and the city was unable to provide any. Under the circumstances, people could only save themselves.
There was nowhere in the world that was safe. Every settlement had suffered a Beast Tide of one scale or another, and all cities were busy rebuilding, with no time to help anyone else.
Besides, the roads between cities had become unsafe. How could they transport supplies or personnel to support another city?
After reorganizing and screening the people in the safe zone, Hehe County assigned everyone new work and responsibilities.
People who had worked in secondary industries were reassigned to similar fields to help with production. Researchers were gathered and sorted by discipline to carry out related research. Administrative staff continued their management work, while everyone else was assigned wherever needed.
Within a week, construction of the safe zone's defenses was mostly complete. Housing was also allocated and rebuilt so that each household had its own home.
Over the following half month, the leadership introduced scheduled exercise programs to improve people's fitness and began teaching cold-weapon techniques to those willing to go to the front lines.
A little over ten days later, the county leadership finally heard from the city again. The city shared several important pieces of information.
Based on communications and discussions between countries, they had largely settled on a system for classifying all monsters.
All monsters that had appeared so far were divided into three ranks: Soldier-level Monsters, General-level Monsters, and Lord-level Monsters. Each rank was further divided into low, middle, and high levels.
Every step up in level brought a tremendous leap in a monster's strength, while each increase in rank could even lead to a change in species.
These classifications had been established because monsters of every level had already appeared. Most had emerged in coastal cities. At that point, the strongest monsters inland were no more than high-level Beast Generals, but even those were beyond what humanity could withstand.
However, as the monster ranks were being established, some humans had emerged who could fight monsters with nothing but their bare hands.
After discussion, these people were called Martial Artists. Most were people who had practiced martial arts or boxing in different parts of the country. Their physical abilities far surpassed those of ordinary people. Almost all could hold their own against low-level Soldier-level Monsters, and some could even kill them.
Later, in Huaxia, as monsters rampaged across the land, people accidentally discovered a ruin. Inside, they found a cultivation method called Five-Heart-to-Heaven, though the method was somewhat incomplete.
After Martial Artists tested it, they gradually refined the method. Through its practice, they gained astonishing increases in strength, and many developed enough physical power to rival General-level Monsters.
Taking the monsters' ranks as a guide, people then established a ranking system for humanity: Warrior, Battle General, and War God. These ranks were likewise divided into low, middle, and high levels.
To qualify as a low-level Warrior, one had to be strong enough to kill a low-level Beast Soldier. The same principle applied to the ranks above.
However, practicing this method required meeting certain conditions. A person needed a sufficiently strong physique. If they failed to meet the required standard, they could not cultivate, no matter how hard they tried, because they would be unable to sense the energy of the universe.
Countries had tried to revise and improve the method, but none had succeeded. The revised versions either reduced cultivation efficiency by a huge margin or could not be practiced at all. Gradually, most organizations gave up.
After receiving the cultivation method from the city, Hehe County began promoting martial arts on a large scale and with strict requirements. They also made the method public, requiring everyone capable of cultivating to practice it.
Cultivation produced many powerful people, helping Hehe County withstand several subsequent Beast Tides.
Later, once the county had the strength to spare, it organized people with decent abilities into Martial Artist teams. They protected researchers and clerks with assigned duties as they traveled in every direction to explore. That was how their team had come to be.