Jiang Rui had all but given up hope, but upon hearing Lin Xinghai’s words, his eyes instantly lit up. He looked at him with eager anticipation.

"The method I’ve devised is worth a shot, but if we actually go through with it, your Mercenary Guild will probably have to take a huge financial hit," Lin Xinghai warned him upfront.

"That’s fine. As long as it helps the Star Shield Shelter develop quickly, it’ll all be worth it. Brother Lin, just tell me what you have in mind," Jiang Rui said with a smile, though he felt a knot of unease.

But as long as Lin Xinghai could provide a solution, the Mercenary Guild would have to grit its teeth and go through with it, even if it meant hemorrhaging funds.

"According to your plan, after our exploration team returns, you’re supposed to contact the major Third Level Mercenary Corps and have them follow our route to conduct a preliminary sweep, killing Ordinary Zombies. If they run into trouble, the Military Department will be dispatched. Correct?" Lin Xinghai said.

"Yes, that’s correct," Jiang Rui nodded.

"The problem, then, is that Guanghan City is too dangerous. If they encounter Mutated Zombies or a zombie horde, the Third Level Mercenary Corps that go in might not make it back out," Lin Xinghai continued.

"Exactly. The moment the Mutated Zombies inside Guanghan City realize what’s happening and trigger a zombie horde, even several Third Level Mercenary Corps working together would be wiped out," Jiang Rui agreed, nodding repeatedly.

For a Third Level Mercenary Corps, encountering a Mutated Zombie wasn’t their greatest fear. After all, the minimum requirement for a Third Level Mercenary Corps was owning five Mechas; if they couldn’t win a fight, they could at least escape. But if the Mutated Zombie also launched a zombie horde, escape was no longer a certainty.

Lin Xinghai activated his wrist-mounted computer’s projection function, displaying a map of Guanghan City. He then drew a red line along the route they had taken.

"According to your plan, the Shelter needs to open a direct transport route to the Industrial Park. This requires the Mercenary Corps and the military to push deep into the city. But once the Mutated Zombies realize something is amiss, they will almost certainly unleash a zombie horde."

"And on a narrow path like that, if the horde is large enough, any team that goes in will be completely surrounded, correct?" Lin Xinghai said.

"Yes," Jiang Rui nodded again, but a hint of confusion crept into his eyes.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand Lin Xinghai. On the contrary, the logic was so painfully obvious that it hardly needed to be stated.

"Alright! Now, what if our zombie-clearing zone looked like this?" As he spoke, Lin Xinghai drew a large red circle on the projected map, encompassing the entire area of several dozen kilometers from the edge of Guanghan City to the Industrial Park.

"If we can clear out the Zombies on a massive scale, this entire cleared region becomes a buffer zone. Even if the Mutated Zombies launch a horde, it takes Time for a horde to form. With this buffer, and relying on the speed of the Armored Vehicles, there would be more than enough Time to get out."

After hearing this, Jiang Rui gave Lin Xinghai a strange look. He held back for a long moment before finally forcing out the words, "But we can’t do that."

’What the hell?’ he really wanted to say. ’If we had the ability to clear such a large area, why would we have bothered with any other plan in the first place? We would have just steamrolled through.’

But considering Lin Xinghai’s status and power, he could only swallow his words.

"No, the Mercenary Guild actually can do it. You just need to mobilize all the First, Second, and Third Level Mercenary Corps. With the Military Department dispatching troops to coordinate and respond to emergencies, it’s not a problem," Lin Xinghai stated.

Hearing this, Jiang Rui’s eyes went wide. He was genuinely bewildered. ’Is there something wrong with his brain, or is it mine?’ he thought. ’It feels like we’re not even talking about the same thing.’

Guanghan City needed to be cleared of Zombies, and yes, they were short on manpower. But the manpower they lacked was Third Level Mercenary Corps!

What good would those First and Second Level Mercenary Corps be if they went in?

Second Level Mercenary Corps might be able to help out, following behind the Third Level ones to clean up any stragglers. But a First Level Mercenary Corps going in would just be courting death.

You have to understand, in many First Level Mercenary Corps, you’d be lucky to find even one or two members with good Gun Technique. They even needed to deploy Mechas just to deal with High Level Zombies.

In a place like Guanghan City, where High Level Zombies appeared so frequently, a First Level Mercenary Corps would likely be crippled after encountering just two or three waves of Zombies.

Besides, even if they could somehow avoid such scenarios through careful planning and coordination, the real question was: would those First and Second Level Mercenary Corps dare to go? Would they even be willing?

That was Guanghan City, the place known as the Mercenary Restricted Area!

Even among the Third Level Mercenary Corps, probably less than half would be willing to accept a mission in Guanghan City.

"Brother Lin, I’m afraid your plan is a non-starter. Those First and Second Level Mercenary Corps will definitely refuse to go. And the Shelter can’t issue a war mobilization order unless it’s a matter of life and death," Jiang Rui said with a soft sigh, deciding to be blunt.

This was the fundamental problem. The Mercenary Guild wasn’t the Military Department; it couldn’t force anyone to do anything.

"Supervisor Jiang, I understand your worries. That’s why I said from the start that this plan might require you to take a huge hit," Lin Xinghai said, a mischievous grin spreading across his face.

After being led around in circles by Lin Xinghai, hearing those words again hit Jiang Rui completely differently.

He knew that whatever Lin Xinghai said next would be the real crux of the matter, and the part about "taking a huge hit" wasn’t just an expression.

"Go on," Jiang Rui said, swallowing hard. The words came out with some difficulty.

"If you want to mobilize every Mercenary Corps, the method is simple: raise the mission rewards. For any Mercenary Corps that goes to Guanghan City, they will receive 10 Points for every Ordinary Zombie killed, 15 Points for every Intermediate Zombie, and 20 Points for every High Level Zombie. Elemental Crystals will be rewarded separately," Lin Xinghai stated slowly.

Even though Jiang Rui had braced himself, he couldn’t help but gasp when he heard Lin Xinghai’s proposal.

If they actually implemented a reward system like that, the Mercenary Guild could very well go bankrupt.

Normally, while they paid out large sums of Points for missions, they also received mission items in return.

By selling the collected materials to the Military Department or other agencies, the Mercenary Guild could at least break even, if not turn a profit on Points.

But under Lin Xinghai’s proposal, every Zombie kill would be a net loss! It was easy to imagine that the total expenditure would be astronomical.

Take a Third Level Mercenary Corps, for instance. On a single mission, they would kill at least 500 Zombies.

At the very minimum, assuming they only killed Ordinary Zombies at 10 Points each, the Mercenary Guild would have to pay out 5,000 Points.

Of course, that was the number of Zombies a Third Level Mercenary Corps would kill incidentally while on a normal mission.

If the Guild issued this kind of sweep-and-clear mission, the number of Zombies a Third Level Mercenary Corps could hunt on a single trip would increase by at least five or six times.

Wouldn’t that mean the Guild would have to pay out 20,000 to 30,000 Points for a single trip by just one Third Level Mercenary Corps?