The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 61: Mass Mobilization Meeting

“Mobilize?” Fu Qingdai panicked, her eyes wide. “Brother, I don’t know how to do that!”

“Then what the hell can you do?” Cheng Du shot back, raising an eyebrow.

“I… I…” Fu Qingdai stammered, wringing her hands before finally blurting out, “I-I know how to collect class fees…”

“Cheng Du, back the fuck off! My daughter is just a kid!” Fu Hu roared, his face flushing with anger.

Su Jin’s smile evaporated into a mask of cold pragmatism. “Qingdai, listen to me. Tomorrow, you don’t need to lift a finger. Take a hot shower, put on some clean clothes, and stand at the front of the room looking down at everyone. Don’t flinch. Don’t smile. Leave the heavy lifting to me.”

“There will be other tasks later, but they won’t be hard. I’ll walk you through them myself.”

Fu Qingdai gave a slow, uncertain nod.

Su Jin turned his attention to the rest of the room. “Listen up. We’ve hit a critical juncture today. This is the bottleneck that decides if we live or die. I need you all taking this dead seriously. Any task I assign must be executed to absolute Perfection. You see a problem, you report it immediately.”

“Fu Hu, Cheng Du—go drill your abilities. Sister-in-law, grab Qingdai and Sister Liu and get those files organized.”

At his barked orders, the group muttered their agreements and scattered to their rooms.

Sun Ya and Wei De remained, watching Su Jin with half-lidded, calculating eyes.

Su Jin rubbed his temples. “You two tracked the back-end of that process closer than I did. Did we miss anything in the screening?”

Sun Ya shook his head. “No. But Old Wei and I compiled a watchlist. We’ll keep a tight leash on them for you. Also, we scavenged a stethoscope from one of the apartments. I plan to pull everyone in for one-on-one interviews.”

“Trip them up with the questions. We monitor their heart rates with the stethoscope and watch their pupillary responses. We’ll get a much clearer picture of who’s hiding what.”

Wei De caught the flash of frustration in Su Jin’s eyes. “Xiao Li, pulling this off today was a miracle in itself. We’ll tighten the net and weed out the threats. The die is cast; don’t overthink it now. Play your hand.”

“Understood. Thanks for the hard work, you two. Get some sleep.”

…

The next day dissolved into another grueling twelve-hour grind. The screening wrapped up; no additional Disguised Infected were rooted out.

Every surviving resident hunkered down in the Talent Residential Community had been herded into the Community Activity Center.

Two hundred and thirty-five souls in total.

Back in the day, the Talent Residential Community had been a luxury enclave for the city’s white-collar elite.

By pre-apocalypse standards, the center itself boasted some serious square footage and premium facilities.

Now, it just looked like a dilapidated warehouse waiting to collapse.

But it had one saving grace: the floor space was massive.

Every table and chair had been dragged out to make way for a sprawling sea of floor mattresses, providing just enough breathing room for the two-hundred-plus survivors.

The bitter remnants of the initial impact zone still hadn’t thawed.

Despite the calendar creeping toward summer, biting drafts still knifed through the air.

Terrified that a simple sneeze or fever would get them executed as an anomaly, half the crowd was still sweating in heavy winter parkas and down coats. The rest were dressed for the sweltering heat.

The center was packed to the gills—a chaotic, jarring kaleidoscope of mismatched winter gear and summer rags.

No one dared to raise their voice, but the low, anxious buzz of whispering was a relentless drone.

They had been cut off from the world for too long, rotting away in their claustrophobic little apartments.

Forget the roaming hordes of Zombies—just the severed water lines, the dead power grids, and the suffocating, silent isolation were enough to snap a person’s mind.

But now, these broken civilians were finally tasting the illusion of a military rescue and rubbing shoulders with living, breathing neighbors.

For the first time since the world ended, they could actually breathe. They felt a phantom, long-lost sense of security.

3:30 PM.

Against the far north wall of the Community Activity Center sat a small clearing, miraculously free of sleeping bags.

In its place sat a makeshift, elevated stage.

The second Su Jin marched through the doors with his crew, the drone of whispers died.

Fu Hu and Cheng Du flanked the entrance like bouncers, slamming the heavy main doors shut and locking them with a deafening clack.

Two hundred and thirty-five pairs of eyes locked onto Su Jin.

Most of them recognized him from the sweeps. They didn’t know his rank or his name, but the body language was obvious… this guy was the alpha. The commander of their salvation.

Su Jin didn’t spare them a single glance. He strode straight down the center aisle and stepped up onto the platform.

The crowd’s gaze tracked his every move.

Su Jin stared down at the sea of faces, snatched up a megaphone, and flicked the mic.

“Testing, testing.”

The tinny, amplified voice bounced off the concrete walls. Su Jin let the silence stretch for a moment before meeting their eyes.

He’d given plenty of presentations back in his corporate days, but those were just sterile slide decks pitched to middle management.

Cultivating a herd of traumatized apocalypse survivors? That was a new KPI.

Doesn’t matter, he thought. The playbook is the same. Zero substance, pure emotion. Break them down, then build them up.

He took a slow breath, centering his manic exhaustion into a mask of absolute authority. He raised the megaphone. “Listen up. Most of you have seen my face by now, but you don’t know who I am.”

“Let me introduce myself. My name is Li Haocheng. I am a Director for the National Key Risk Intervention and Execution Bureau. You can call it the Guogan Bureau.”

A ripple of confusion washed over the crowd. People traded bewildered glances, muttering the unfamiliar acronym.

Su Jin cleared his throat. “I know the name means nothing to you. The Guogan Bureau was a black-ops division reporting directly to the top brass. Our operations were completely off the books. Only a handful of people in the country even knew we existed.”

He gestured to the two older men standing off to the side. “Senior Sun Ya and Senior Wei De. A lot of you know them. These two experts briefly contracted for the Bureau as technical advisors. They can vouch for my credentials.”

Sun Ya took half a step forward. “It’s true. We served as technical consultants for the Guogan Bureau. You don’t need to doubt that,” he stated clearly, before stepping back into line.

The nervous murmurs died down.

Sun Ya and Wei De had serious clout. Not everyone in the Talent Residential Community knew them personally, but they were universally respected as heavyweights in their fields.

Su Jin let the silence hang, then gripped the megaphone tighter. “Before I brief you on our current operational directives, there is something I have to make absolutely clear. You all think we’re a standard state rescue op. But you also saw the final broadcast before the grid died—the one declaring the collapse of the central government. You’re wondering how both can be true.”

“I am going to give it to you straight: the nation is dead. This cataclysm hit fast, and it hit everyone. Every superpower on the globe has been wiped off the map. That infallible government safety net you’re all praying to? It’s gone. It’s completely collapsed.”

The air was sucked out of the room. Two hundred and thirty-five people stared at him in horrified disbelief, the color draining from their faces.

They had watched their world burn, only to be tossed a lifeline by men in uniform. They had spent countless agonizing nights clinging to that desperate sliver of hope. And now… this commander, standing before them in the name of the state, was ruthlessly tearing that hope to shreds.