The next day.
When Xiaoyun woke up, the first thing he saw was the two guards standing right in front of him.
They both helped him out of the bed, despite his repeated statement that he could walk perfectly fine.
Once out of the hospital, he was finally free alongside several other soldiers who had only a few minor injuries on their faces.
All of them were waiting for the bus to bring them home. Learning that it was coming in an hour, Xiaoyun chose to walk on foot.
After walking for what could have been a two-minute drive, Xiaoyun finally arrived back home at last.
"The sun isn't even out yet," Xiaoyun murmured to himself, taking out his key before inserting it.
Looking around the living room, it was empty. Yet the shoe rack at the doorstep remained full, with Leyan's shoe at the very end.
"She must have returned home from her night shift already... Everyone must still be asleep."
With a pair of slippers on, Xiaoyun headed upstairs to take a shower. When he came back down, the house was still empty.
With nothing much to do, he headed over to the kitchen. There, he started creating ingredients out of thin air as he took out the knife.
"Time to cook..."
When breakfast was near completion, multiple footsteps traveled from the living room to the kitchen.
It was Nami and Lily, both waking up surprisingly early as the clock showed the time to be only nine o'clock.
"Hm? Xiaoyun, you're cooking breakfast again?" Nami curiously asked, walking up all the way next to the stove.
"Yeah... Leyan had a night shift yesterday, so I'll be cooking breakfast today," Xiaoyun replied.
Neither of them questioned it any further as they took a seat at the dining table, not noticing any difference in Xiaoyun's appearance.
Five minutes later, both Yueyue and Yuqi had come downstairs together. Their faces seemed wide awake, with water lingering on their faces.
"Where's mom?" Yueyue curiously asked.
"She got night shift yesterday, so she's catching up on sleep... You two take a seat, yours is almost done."
"What are you cooking?" Yuqi curiously asked next, taking a seat rather than walking over to check for herself.
"Just some basic things. It's nothing too fancy since I only got one hour to cook. I hope you two would like it."
As Xiaoyun put two plates full of food before them, both Yuqi and Yueyue were in shock at how fancy it was.
"It's good enough for me, thanks for the breakfast," Nami commented as she and Lily ravaged the food on her plate.
"Is there something wrong?"
Xiaoyun asked, noticing Yuqi just sitting there compared to Yueyue, who's already a third of the way finished.
"No, n-nothing."
Yuqi slowly picked up the chopsticks, eating the bountiful breakfast as Xiaoyun watched from the side.
---
"Man, I really miss this sofa."
As Xiaoyun fell onto the office sofa, the first thing inside the office, both Yuqi and Yueyue rolled their eyes.
"It's only been one day since you're gone from this room," Yuqi commented as she took a seat in her chair.
"You wouldn't understand."
"Okay, Mr.couch potato."
As Xiaoyun relaxed on the sofa and watched his wives hard at work, suddenly someone knocked on the door.
He quickly went to open the door, only to see Yiming and Yezi standing outside with an entire folder.
"This... the military reform?" Xiaoyun guessed.
"Yep," Yezi replied as he handed the document to Xiaoyun.
"Qiqi, Yueyue, you two can keep working. I'll read this myself... You guys can come back after noon."
"Okay."
With both Yezi and Yiming out of the office, Xiaoyun headed back over to the sofa with the folder in hand.
"You sure you want to read this yourself?" Yuqi asked, noticing the folder was almost full of papers.
"Yeah, I can do this. You guys have your own work to do..."
Reading through the paper, minutes began flying by as every page was full of changes that the two of them wanted to implement.
"Changing all unit formations to a squad containing ten people. Every five squads make up a platoon. Then every five platoons is a company... seems pretty standard."
"Expanding the number of soldiers to two companies. So five hundred people. That means we need to recruit one hundred fifty people into the army.
We can definitely do this one as long as we keep growing... Now, soldier rank. Private is the base rank, then corporal is the next rank, leading squads.
Lieutenant to lead platoon. Finally, the captain is leading the company. Wait a moment, no officer ranks at all?"
After flipping to the next few pages, he finally found the reasoning for it.
"No officer rank. All soldiers are promoted through combat and experience to lead each other."
Xiaoyun sat there in silence. His brain was thinking about it for a bit before coming to the same conclusion as Yezi and Yiming.
"None of the soldiers are qualified to be officers, and we don't have a real academy to train soldiers into officers.
Making NCO officers would just be a waste of manpower... Maybe Yiming and his two assistants can train them to be officers eventually."
Flipping to the next page, he finally sees actual structural change applied to the army rather than just abstract unit formation.
"Gantian and Jixi leading the two companies as captains?"
Xiaoyun wondered in confusion as he expected the names to be Yiming or Yezi. In his mind, they should be the ones leading the troops.
Going to the next page, he once again realized the reasoning behind it. One that perfectly explained the whole thought process.
"Yezi and Yiming are both working as military advisors in the central command, with the rank of major, but no direct soldiers tied below them.
Maximum flexibility while still giving them a role to direct Gantian and Jixi, with potential to expand into more units in the future."
With one stack of documents out of the way, Xiaoyun puts it back into the folder as he takes out the next stack to read.
"Now the second stack of the document."
Xiaoyun quickly flipped several pages in a row this time, as it was just a bunch of soldier names with their new starting rank.
All of the Lieutenant roles are already filled. However, there's still a massive gap in the corporal and below since not all five hundred spots are fulfilled.
Oddly enough, he also noticed the statistical report that showed 70% of the army was men, whole 30% made up of women.
"The women are also put mostly in their own squad and platoon... I guess Doctor Li was right about people getting stronger."
A flash suddenly popped into his mind. One that made him shake his head several times as he glanced at two ladies over at the desk.
"I shouldn't think so backward like this. Of course, women can fight. I got a perfect example in front of me..."
"Hm, Wuli is a corporal leading a squad, with no soldiers below her as of yet due to the empty gap between two companies."
After finishing the second stack of paper, Xiaoyun finally moved on to the final stack of paper in the folder.
"Salary and payment... Hey Yuqi, can you read this?"
"Sure, I can read it. Yueyue, can you take over my work?"
"Okay."
After putting the third stack over to Yuqi's desk, he could hear her furiously writing something down on the very first page.
Through the ten minutes of reading, Yuqi kept on writing over and over onto the paper nonstop.
By the time Yuqi waved him over to take it back, Xiaoyun was not surprised at all by the crazy amount of edits.
Every single number originally on the paper was replaced with a much lower number, cutting the salaries of the soldiers across the board.
"Yuqi, are you sure this is a good idea? I'm not sure if the soldier will be fine with this..." Xiaoyun questioned.
"Read the last page on that document," Yuqi responded.
Xiaoyun flipped to the last page only to see something that wasn't edited. One caught him by surprise.
"Soldiers are allowed to keep loot that can fit in their backpack, as long as it doesn't interrupt combat capabilities.
They can either bring it back home or resell it to the administrative store only. Selling to another citizen without military approval will lead to termination."
"No wonder the salary you set is a little lower. It's like tips that soldiers can collect outside while they are on a mission."
"Mhm. And now you want to ask me why I set it lower? Thank god those two don't have any say in the budget anymore."
As Yuqi made her offhand remark, Xiaoyun awkwardly scratched his head, as what she said was all true.
"Yeah, yeah, anyway, then the military reform is good now. I'll just sign it and hand it back over to the two of them."
After signing his name at the bottom of each stack of paper, Xiaoyun puts them back into the folder.
"You guys want to go eat lunch? It's already noon." Yueyue suddenly chimed in as she rubbed her empty belly.
Both Yuqi and Xiaoyun looked over to the clock, only to find the hour hand pointing to twelve already.
"Sure."
---
After coming back from a short lunch outside, Xiaoyun immediately lay back down on the sofa as the other two continued their work.
Soon, Yezi and Yiming came to the office, forcing him to get back up as he headed over to the door with the folder.
"Here's the authorization. Besides the salary and payment, everything else I had approved with the new edits."
"No problem, we were expecting you to lower it... But you didn't lower it too low, right?" Yezi questioned.
"Of course not. It's reasonable."
The two of them didn't question it any further, heading out and leaving the room as Xiaoyun closed the door.
As he fell back to the sofa and looked up at the ceiling, he suddenly remembered something.
"Hey Yuqi, can you allocate more funding to the school? Also, we need to expand more stores in the town."
"Sure, I'll change their funding right now, and for the store, I can add it to the construction crew agenda."
Yuqi took out several different records and edited them, putting them on the side as she didn't put up a fight at all.
It was almost as if what he suggested had already been on their mind. Now with nothing to do, he started staring out the window.
"Hey, Qiqi and Yueyue, how many months are you guys in right now?" Xiaoyun suddenly asked.
"Six months in now. Why are you asking that?" Yuqi questioned back.
"I just thought you guys might want to take a break when it gets to the third trimester. I can do some of this work if you want."
"Nah, we don't need it... Right, Yueyue?"
"Yeah, right. It's not like we are disabled. All of this is office work that doesn't even need to go outside." Yueyue answered.
"Okay, okay, I was only making a suggestion... Anyway, I'm returning to the rescue team tomorrow."
"Why?"
Both of them asked despite already knowing from yesterday's phone call, their faces filled with a hint of anger and confusion.
"Tomorrow, they are going to have all the fresh recruits and old soldiers to be in their newly assigned groups.
There is no better time than now to test and show my capability to the other soldiers. I really need to be a part of this army."
Xiaoyun paused for a second, then continued.
"Don't worry, I'm not going in as a soldier this time. Yezi and Yiming are going to let me be the commander-in-chief.
I swear this is literally the safest position I could ever be in an army. There's zero chance of me getting injured this time."
After a short silence, both of them let out a small sigh. Their faces still showed hints of annoyance, but they accepted Xiaoyun's terms.
"Fine... Whatever you say."
"Oh, right, I almost forgot to mention the most important thing, the rescue team isn't even going out on a mission any time soon.
The outskirts are full of zombies right now. There are way too many zombies leaving the city center right now."
"So... You are just visiting the training center tomorrow?" Yueyue questioned.
"For now, yes. But in the future, I'll still need to be a part of a military trip at some point." Xiaoyun answered.