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

"Huh? Chinese New Year?"

Bai Lu froze on the spot.

She subconsciously raised her wrist and glanced at the electronic calendar.

He twitched the corner of his mouth, somewhat speechless.

"A lame joke isn't funny."

"What kind of era is this? We're lucky if we have enough to eat and wear; who's thinking about celebrating the New Year anymore?"

Su Ran looked at her, her gaze shifting slightly.

"yes."

He sighed heavily and looked away.

"At this stage of life, who would still be thinking about celebrating the Lunar New Year?"

The apocalypse has been going on for more than half a year.

Human traditional festivals are utterly meaningless in the face of a survival crisis.

"However, in peacetime, people should be buying New Year's goods and preparing to grab train tickets home at this time."

Su Ran spoke as she walked.

"Now, being able to live to see tomorrow's sun is like celebrating the New Year."

"The snow is so heavy now that it could bury a person."

Bai Lu turned her head to look at him.

Why are you so sentimental today?

She raised an eyebrow and looked Su Ran up and down.

"This is not like the style of you, Advisor Su."

Didn't you always say that there wasn't enough time and that we needed to make the most of every second?

Su Ran withdrew her gaze and strode forward.

"Maybe it's because he hasn't been on the front lines lately, and he's been staying at the base too long and his bones have gone limp."

"However, the Great Xia war machine is spinning too fast, so fast that it doesn't even have time to catch its breath."

Bai Lu followed closely behind, her face equally solemn.

"These past few days, I've often seen Mo Yun leading people out in a hurry."

The alarms at the Awakeners headquarters were going off non-stop.

"The front lines are clearly advancing, and the safe zone is expanding, so why are there more and more distress signals?"

Su Ran pressed the elevator button.

"As the saying goes, 'It's easy to conquer territory, but difficult to hold onto it.'"

He looked at the reflection of the metal door, his voice slightly deep.

"The battle lines are stretched too thin, and our forces are being diluted. If the monster finds a single point to break through, the dam will collapse."

Ding!

The elevator doors opened.

"Let's go. There's a high-level strategic review meeting at headquarters, and Director Li has instructed me to attend."

……

Kunlun Base. Central Command Center.

The circular conference table was filled with generals from various war zones and heads of core departments.

The atmosphere was extremely oppressive.

On the holographic projection sand table in the center of the hall, red dots were now densely jumping around in the blue area that originally represented the safe zone.

Zhao Ming, the head of the intelligence department, stood up.

He opened the encrypted file, his face turning ashen.

"In the past 24 hours, a total of 72 top-level anomaly reports have been submitted from the three major regions of Africa, South Asia, and Latin America."

Zhao Ming's voice echoed in the hall.

Li Guodong sat in the main seat and tapped the table.

"Focus on the key points, don't just give a chronological account."

"The key point is that the 'safe zone' we originally cleared is now spiraling out of control on a large scale."

Zhao Ming pressed a button on the control panel.

The sand table view zoomed in instantly, revealing an ultra-high-resolution reconnaissance photograph suspended in mid-air.

The ground collapsed, revealing a huge crater.

The surrounding area was littered with a large number of damaged heavy machines and broken armor.

"African Theater No. 07 Resource Mine Pit".

Zhao Ming pointed to the holographic image,

"In early October, the Third Army of the Expeditionary Force conducted a carpet-style clearing operation in the area."

At the time, radar confirmed that there were no signs of any mutated life forms.

But just last night in the early hours of the morning, all two hundred logistics and engineering personnel stationed at the site to oversee the resumption of work went missing.

"Has the cause of the disappearance been determined? Could a fourth-tier mutated beast have appeared?"

Li Guodong stared at the screen and asked in a deep voice.

"It's not fourth-order. It emerged from an underground mine."

Zhao Zhiping pulled up the last recorded communication and pressed play.

The piercing sound of gunfire, mixed with screams, echoed in the hall.

"It's a swarm of mutated insects! They've emerged from the bottom of the mine!"

"There are too many of them! We don't have enough firepower, we request bombardment! We request fire support!"

"Ah! Fire! Open fire!"

The recording abruptly stopped.

Zhao Zhiping turned off the audio, his face ashen.

Several heavy breathing sounds came from the meeting room.

The faces of everyone present were not pleasant.

"This is the latest footage taken by a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft at 8:00 AM this morning."

Zhao Ming spoke very quickly and brought up the footage.

"A new swarm of mutated insects has hatched at the bottom of the mine, numbering nearly 10,000."

Based on energy spectrum comparison, half of them met the second-order standard.

A theater commander slammed his hand on the armrest.

"Hatched on the spot? Tens of thousands of monsters are growing right under our noses, and all our detection radars are just for show?"

Zhao Ming lowered his head and reported the truth.

"Sir, the advanced crystal core radars all travel with the army. The crystal core radars left in the North African safe zone are all of the second level, with limited penetration power, and are simply unable to detect energy fluctuations hundreds of meters deep underground."

The sand table view switched again.

A deep underground passage. The passage walls were violently torn apart, exposing cross-sections of the rock strata.

"Take a look at the Mumbai defenses."

Zhao Zhiping pointed to several satellite photos.

"Our engineering team spent half a month just finishing the outer defensive wall."

The main force had just withdrawn to support the next war zone when the underground tunnels inside the defensive line were completely breached.

"The 160 elite soldiers who remained at the outpost were all wiped out."

"The last images they transmitted before they died showed that the attackers were also a mutated earthworm, all of them second-tier."

Moreover, they didn't attack from the outside; they crawled directly out from inside the safe zone!

Zhao Ming scanned the entire room.

"In addition, frontline commanders in Latin America and Eastern Europe also sent urgent telegrams back to Kunlun."

They confirmed on-site that the safe zone contained a large number of mutated creatures that had not been completely eradicated.

The room fell into dead silence.

The generals looked solemn.

"Is it possible that the frontline troops are advancing too quickly, and the engineering units haven't kept up with the follow-up investigations?"

A general asked a question.

"Being unable to keep up is one aspect."

Zhang Qian, the representative from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, stood up, his tone resolute.

"The advance of the tens of millions of expeditionary troops far exceeded the speed at which the engineering corps built fortifications."

The soldiers on the front lines were desperately trying to capture territory, but the cement, steel bars, and fire nets behind them simply couldn't be laid across.

In the event of an emergency, there is simply no time to react.

On the surface, the safe zone is expanding, and we are recovering lost ground globally.

In reality, the troops were severely dispersed.

We simply cannot maintain a stable hold on these areas.

"Moreover, there's another reason."

Zhang Qian pulled up a data chart, with several intersecting curves projected above the sand table.

Zhang Qian pointed to the curve,

"This is also an inevitable result of the growth cycle of alienated organisms."

Everyone's eyes were fixed on the chart.

"When the expeditionary force swept across the globe, the highest-level monsters they encountered when they first cleared out those areas were only Tier 2."

They really killed them all; not a single one was left alive.

Zhang Qian's voice was very deep and calm.

"But you've all overlooked a blind spot."

How many Tier 1 monsters are hidden in those underground fissures, deep-sea tributaries, and even the sewers of city ruins?

How many more rodent-like mutant beasts were there, whose teeth hadn't even fully grown back then?

Zhou Rui stood there, stunned.

"In the first round of clearing out, no matter how fierce the firepower, it is absolutely impossible to achieve 100% coverage without any blind spots."

Missing some losses is within the normal probability of battle casualties.

Zhang Qian tapped his knuckles on the table.

"Now, more than half a year has passed since the red rains fell."

"Those low-level monsters we missed back then, their growth cycle is over now."

"Academician Zhang, do you mean that those that were missed back then used this time to complete their evolution?"

Li Guodong frowned.

"right."

Zhang Qian nodded, "Those who were once at the first rank have all grown into second or third rank as long as they survived."

The hot-tempered theater commander glared wide-eyed.

"Then use bunker buster bombs! Use high-energy thermobaric bombs! Scrape down three meters of the ground, and that won't wipe them out!"

"They can't be destroyed by bombing."

Zhang Qian looked directly at the other person.

"Bombs can destroy physical objects, but they cannot destroy the microscopic environment."

Red rain has brought about genetic mutations, which have long since seeped into the soil and water systems.

As long as the base number is large enough, some will always survive.

The air pressure in the hall dropped to freezing point.

While millions of soldiers were fighting bloody battles on the front lines, the rear was filled with detonators ready to explode at any moment.

"How are we supposed to fight this battle? The front lines are pushing outwards, while the rear is leaking everywhere. The brothers have to both clear land and defend, they don't even have time to catch their breath!"

One of the pro-war generals spoke up.

Li Guodong's face was equally ashen as he stared intently at the map covered in red dots.

"In other words, the safe zones we painstakingly built up are actually all ticking time bombs."

Zhang Qian nodded, glanced around, and spoke with utmost seriousness.

"Such resurgences will continue to occur in the future."

The current localized loss of control is just the beginning.

In particular, the non-core security zones designated in the early stages will inevitably face the most severe and repeated tests.

Li Guodong leaned back in his chair, lost in thought.

The previously favorable global situation was instantly dragged into a quagmire by these words.

Humans tried to wipe out the monsters in one fell swoop, but the monsters quietly grew up right under their noses.

Su Ran sat at the end of the conference table, listening quietly.

"They can't kill them all. The front lines are pushing, but the rear is regenerating."

Li Guodong looked at Zhang Qian, gritted his teeth, and asked,

"According to your Academy of Sciences' projections, how long will this period of rear-area fire and recurring monster relapses last?"

All eyes were now focused on Zhang Qian.

Zhang Qian remained silent for a few seconds before speaking again, interrupting everyone's discussion.

"This is not the period of labor pains."

He stood up, placed his hands on the table, and looked directly at Li Guodong.

"Director Li, prepare to accept reality."