Right as He Jie said this, the walls outside were already a sea of fire. Dense gunfire, bullets, and a storm of explosions drowned out the corpse howls, as if a massacre was unfolding out there.

"Klang klang—"

The steel bastion encircling Chenxi Square opened four gates. Armored personnel carriers mounted with artillery ignored the tide of zombies inside the Iron Wall and rumbled in under a storm of shells, mowing the zombies down like wheat.

Even a Tier One Butcher was nothing more than a slightly bigger water bag in the face of righteous calibers.

The Tier Two Zombies capable of withstanding artillery slaughter were all being held up by Liang Kuan and the others.

Which allowed the Armed Corps’ armored vehicles to advance as if into an unguarded land.

A soft voice sounded in the ears of the Black Star members, "This is Yu Yue from the Armed Train. Captain Jiang, hold on a little longer."

Hearing this voice, Jiang Rong felt a huge weight drop from her heart. She tossed He Jie’s final gift out the window, then led everyone toward the stairwell.

On Chenxi Square.

Mountain Goat stood on the roof of a vehicle and roared, "Operate by sergeant squads as units. Whoever racks up the most kills goes back to get promoted and collect money! The last place gets their ass rolled back to the recruit camp, the bottom twenty get extra training, and the bottom five get personally ’extra trained’ by He Jie!"

"The recruit camp is on the wall right now watching. When the time comes, they’ll be your officers!"

The many sergeant squads whose morale had been sky-high felt their hearts turn cold. Looking back, Lao Er was already leading two hundred recruits to set up defenses on the bastion, the recruits rubbing their fists and watching them eagerly.

Ordinary soldiers were still fine, but the sergeants went straight berserk. A soldier sent back to the recruit camp was embarrassing, sure, but he was still a soldier, rank unchanged. For them, this was basically a demotion.

And Mountain Goat didn’t even mean they’d be with this batch of recruits, but that they’d graduate together with the next batch.

By the time they came out, their subordinates’ subordinates would already be the big bosses!

Under this kind of pressure, the seventy-five sergeant squads unleashed terrifying killing power.

Everything they’d gained along the train’s journey was now displayed on them in full.

The Firepower Hands poured out ammunition to their heart’s content, perception-type commanders coordinated from the center, snipers picked off high-value targets, melee Evolvers specialized in dealing with fish that slipped through under the firepower blockade, while medics and mechanical logistics often doubled as assault troops to make up for any gaps in firepower.

A basic five-man squad covered multiple combat modes from close to mid to long range.

And within the Iron Wall of Chenxi Square were a full seventy-five such sergeant squads.

Add on top the elite squads like He Jie’s overseeing the overall situation from above, and the battlefield instantly turned one-sided.

On the zombie side, whether high-level or low-level, they were completely suppressed.

Their only advantage—numbers—became a joke under the widespread use of the Firepower Hand Profession Potion.

Li Xinlong personally watched as three Tier One Zombies charged a defensive line formed by two sergeant squads. The first jumper to leap up became a live target, simultaneously locked onto by three heavy sniper rifles nearby. In the end, only one arm "jumped" down; the rest of the body had no idea where it flew.

The Firepower Hands didn’t waste bullets on the two Crushers in the very front, instead swinging their barrels to suppress the ordinary zombies in the rear, leaving the two Crushers isolated.

Then the Defenders, who roamed on the very front line as the first layer of defense, immediately stepped up.

At this point, the two Crushers were not facing the Defenders of just two squads, but a Tier One Defender leading four close-combat fighters.

Four pinned them down; the Tier One Evolver was responsible for the kill.

In the blink of an eye, both Crushers had their heads chopped off, and the five men returned to their respective squad fronts.

The Armed Corps’ combat doctrine was laid bare in front of the Black Star members.

A main force of fewer than four hundred, under such calm and efficient coordination, was cutting the corpse tide down in a steady, step-by-step retreat. In contrast, Black Star had come with over a thousand people; add in more than two hundred reinforcements, and they’d still been beaten down to just over four hundred.

If the Armed Train hadn’t arrived in time, they would’ve already been steamrolled in a single wave by the zombies.

Looking at the battlefield below, Li Xinlong’s expression was complicated. He had thought that even if the train was stronger than their Black Star, it would be at most on the level of the Jinfeng Chamber of Commerce. As long as he fought a few more battles, he’d be able to catch up. Being forced to hand people over was, in his view, just a matter of weighing options so other forces wouldn’t reap the fisherman’s profits. But now, he realized how laughably wrong he’d been.

Just like the Armed Corps steadily advancing below—armored vehicles, artillery, equipment, coordination...

Every single item represented terrifying strength.

The Black Star Convoy had over a thousand guns at its peak, but their combat power didn’t even count as militia. Compared with the Armed Corps below, they were more like a bunch of women and children who’d somehow gotten their hands on guns.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to train them; he just didn’t have the resources or the talent, and he didn’t even have a stable base...

In the entire convoy, only one of the Five Tigers, Chen Shan, was a retired soldier. But turning a bunch of ordinary people into elite troops—there was a whole galaxy between those two!

He couldn’t even achieve the basic requirement of full-time training.

’Could the Armed Train itself be made up of actual military personnel?’

Watching the tactical finesse those soldiers displayed, Li Xinlong couldn’t help but feel his heart jolt.

"Ah Shan, tell everyone who’s still alive to learn from this. From now on, we drill exactly like this!"

Ah Shan’s eyes still hadn’t shaken off the shock, but once he snapped out of it, he hurried off to notify the others.

In fact, he didn’t even need to. Everyone in the Black Star Convoy who could still move was plastered to the windows, craning their necks to watch the Armed Corps fight.

Compared to their own agonized struggle, the Armed Corps’ battle was almost the perfect interpretation of war.

"They’ve got so many Tier One Evolvers. In just this short while I’ve already seen over a dozen. The most damn outrageous are those few tangling with the Tier Two Zombies. They’re clearly just around Tier One, but they’ve already taken down two Tier Two Zombies!"