In the apocalypse, I hoarded goods and handed over my storage space to the government.

Yanshan Iron and Steel Plant.

The deafening roar of the massive blast furnace drowned out everything else.

The air was thick with the smell of coke and sulfur, and the temperature was so high it was suffocating.

Wang Lei was shirtless, with a towel around his neck whose color was no longer discernible, and a thick, long steel shovel clutched in his hand.

"Water has been pumped from Boiler No. 3!"

A rough roar pierced through the noise.

Wang Lei wiped his face, grabbed a steel shovel, and rushed to the iron tapping hole.

Several fellow workers nearby worked in perfect harmony, operating the hydraulic mud cannon with practiced ease.

The golden-red molten steel rushed down the iron trench, and the heat wave instantly made the eyebrows of the people around them curl up.

No one backed down.

This little bit of buzz is nothing compared to those man-eating monsters outside.

"The quality of this batch of molten steel is absolutely amazing!"

Old furnace foreman Zhang Jianguo shouted at the top of his lungs, holding a sampling spoon in his hand.

"The carbon content is perfectly controlled! This batch alone would be enough to make exoskeleton armor!"

Wang Lei grinned, revealing a set of white teeth.

He pushed the steel shovel aside, picked up the military water bottle hanging on the wall, and took a few big gulps.

This is both the rear and the battlefield.

Every ton of steel they produce is immediately transported to the neighboring arsenal to be transformed into shell casings, gun barrels, and tank tracks.

Then send them to the front lines hundreds of kilometers away and smash them on the heads of those monsters.

"Lei Zi, take a break!"

Wang Lei's coworker Li Hu came over and handed him a cigarette.

This stuff is hard currency now.

Wang Lei took the cigarette, lit it, and asked, "Brother Tiger, how's the fighting going at the front?"

"I just heard on the radio that they've pushed the defenses to the outskirts of Tianjin Port."

Li Hu plopped down on the ammunition box next to him.

This thing is now a stool.

"The batch of Type 56 rifles we manufactured were just distributed to the militia yesterday."

"That's good."

Wang Lei leaned against the railing, looking at the gray sky outside, "As long as the front line holds, our furnace fire will never go out."

"Ugh!"

A sharp alarm blared without warning.

It's not an air raid siren.

It's a factory intrusion alarm.

"Damn it! Another one of those clueless idiots is here!"

Li Hu cursed, and the fatigue in his hands vanished instantly.

He grabbed a Type 56 assault rifle directly from the ammunition box next to his buttocks.

Wang Lei was even faster.

He pulled the bolt the instant the alarm sounded, his movements as practiced as a veteran.

"Two Tier 1 mutated dogs are scaling the wall towards Gate 3!"

The calm voice of the security captain came over the factory's loudspeaker.

"Get to work!"

Wang Lei tightened the towel around his neck, grabbed his gun, and rushed out.

There was no panic, no screaming.

Some of the workers around continued to stare at the blast furnace instruments, while others didn't even look up.

Only a dozen or so people responsible for security in this area followed Wang Lei, grumbling and cursing as they picked up their weapons.

This is what we now call "everyone is a soldier".

At Yanshan Iron and Steel Plant, everyone is both a worker and a soldier.

North wall of the factory area.

Two mutated dogs, each the size of a calf, had just climbed over the electric fence, their bodies billowing with acrid black smoke, and were baring their teeth, preparing to pounce on the nearest stockpile.

"Da da da!"

Wang Lei didn't even stop; he raised his hand and fired a short burst.

The bullets struck the concrete, sending sparks flying and forcing the mutated dog to flee to the left.

"Don't let it into the storage yard! The coke over there was just unloaded!"

Li Hu roared, and a tongue of fire shot out from the gun in his hand.

A crossfire network of more than a dozen submachine guns instantly covered that area.

There were no tactics involved, just simple firepower suppression.

The two mutated dogs were riddled with bullets in the hail of bullets, twitched a few times, and then lay still.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!!" Wang Lei shouted.

The gunfire stopped abruptly.

He walked over and kicked the dead dog. "Damn it, this thing's meat is sour, otherwise we could have given the cafeteria an extra meal."

"Alright, call the logistics team to clean the floor."

Li Hu slung the gun over his shoulder, glanced at the still-smoking muzzle, and

"Go back to work, the molten iron in the furnace is still waiting to be tapped."

The crowd dispersed with a burst of laughter.

……

The former site of Jiangcheng, the front edge of the 311 position on the western front.

"Ready! Fire!"

At the commander's order, the thirty-two self-propelled howitzers positioned behind the hillside roared simultaneously.

"Boom boom boom boom!"

In the distance, amidst the ruins of Jiangcheng, dense fireballs rose into the sky.

This is the latest crystal energy armor-piercing sheet developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

With a single shot, everything within a hundred meters, whether it was a first-tier zombie or a sturdy concrete building, was reduced to ashes.

"Heavy Armored Brigade, launch!"

The roar of the engines drowned out the sound of gunfire.

Hundreds of Type 99A main battle tanks, painted in camouflage, roared out of their bunkers like a steel torrent.

On the flank of the tank formation were several mechanized infantrymen wearing "Xingtian" exoskeletons.

They relied directly on the mobility provided by their exoskeletons to leap and weave rapidly through the ruins.

"Da da da da!"

That was the distinctive, crisp sound of the Crystal Energy Rifle.

A soldier leaped from a three-meter-high broken wall. The moment he landed, he flicked his gun, and a particle beam pierced through a mutated dog that was lunging at him from the side.

"Team 1 has been cleared! Requesting further advance!"

"Group 2 has detected a second-order target and requests air support!"

"Buzz".

A sharp whooshing sound echoed through the sky.

Four armed helicopters flew low overhead, and anti-tank missiles roared out, blasting a giant, roaring mutated creature in the distance into pieces.

This speed of advancement is terrifying.

In the past, post-apocalyptic novels often depicted humanity struggling for years to recapture a city.

However, with the full operation of the Great Xia's national system and the material support provided by Su Ran, this counterattack turned into an industrial massacre.

The tank commander pushed open the hatch, leaned halfway out, and looked through binoculars at the burning street ahead.

"Cool!"

The train commander slammed his fist on the hatch and shouted loudly.

"Keep pushing forward!"

The battalion commander's order came through the radio again: "Before nightfall, I want this flag planted on the county government building!"

"Advance! Advance!"

The tracks turned, and the steel torrent crushed the charred corpses.