Zombie Apocalypse: Creation

As anyone would have expected, the bank tour was as boring as it gets.

The four checked inside a room that held all the food stamps and then talked to Liuqian, who was still managing and overseeing everyone in the back office.

Although the tour was overall boring, Xiaoyun did find one interesting thing during the tour.

It was a man with a receding hairline typing furiously as the keyboard back and forth, with a bunch of lines that Xiaoyun couldn't understand at all.

"What are you working on?" Xiaoyun asked curiously.

"Trying to set up a banking system and a bank app that can work on everyone's phone... Ugh, why did Manager Chen make such a ridiculous request?"

"Why is it ridiculous?" Xiaoyun asked as he got a little intrigued.

"Because he had only hired me to code all this all by myself with a month's deadline. Even if I have two hundred years of experience, there is just no way.

Like this is supposed to be at least a ten-man job, no one would ever ask a single person to do this. Not to mention the lack of equipment.

I should have never bragged about being a senior developer..." The man complained as his hand was still typing on the keyboard.

"I'll tell that to Liuqian. Don't worry about it." Xiaoyun decided to help by reassuring him.

"Thanks... Wait, who are you?"

The man finally stopped typing and turned around as he realized the voice didn't sound like anyone he knew from the bank office.

"I'm Xiaoyun, the mayor of the town."

"The mayor! Oh my god! Wait, wait, wait, can you sign an autograph for me? My daughter will be so happy if she gets this." The man pleaded.

"Sure."

Xiaoyun signed the piece of paper and handed it back to the man.

"Can I ask what your name is?" Xiaoyun asked as he realized he had been talking the whole time without even knowing the man's name

"My name is Pianma."

"Nice to meet you, Pianma... Actually, I have a question."

"What is it? Please don't be more coding." Pianma asked as he looked a little afraid of what Xiaoyun was about to ask.

"Is it possible to develop a local internet for the town to use? Like being able to share information from computer to computer." Xiaoyun asked.

Pianma thought for a second, then replied.

"It is possible. It just requires some setup for a LAN network... But you are asking for the entire town to be able to use it, right?"

Xiaoyun nodded in agreement.

"I don't know. I only have surface experience with this kind of stuff. I'm only a software developer... But I know a friend who specializes more in the network side."

"Oh, that's great to hear. Do you know how to contact them?" Xiaoyun asked.

"Yeah, I know how to contact them. She's my wife." Pianma replied with a proud smile on his face.

"You have a wife?" Xiaoyun accidentally spoke his mind out loud.

"Of course I do. How do you think I already have a daughter?" Pianma pointed out.

"Oh. Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you." Xiaoyun apologized as he didn't expect a woman to work in computer science at all.

"It's fine. I get this a lot... Is it my receding hairline that's causing everyone thinking to think like that?" Pianma got quieter and quieter as he pondered the reasoning.

"Um, how can I talk to her?" Xiaoyun shifted the topic back.

"She's working at home right now doing the networking part of the bank app and taking care of our daughter. I can give her a call right now if you want."

"That would be great! Thank you so much!" Xiaoyun bowed down in gratitude.

"No problem... Just please tell Mr.Chen that I can't do this alone."

Pianma took out his phone as he finished talking

"Of course. I'll go tell him about that right now.'"

---

When Xiaoyun went over to Liuqian and talked about the problem Pianma was facing, Liuqian gave Xiaoyun a surprised look.

"I didn't know Pianma couldn't do it himself. I should have realized that sooner."

With that, Liuqian chose to hire more developers in the end as Xiaoyun headed back to the bank office and waited for Pianma's wife to come over.

"Why are we waiting here?" Tianci asked as all three of them came back from checking the rooftop.

"I'm planning to get internet in the town. It's just too inconvenient for people to manually do things on paper or need to transport files by physically carrying them over." Xiaoyun explained.

"Internet? But I thought all the cell towers and satellites were cut off." Kate got a little confused by Xiaoyun's explanation.

"Yes, which is why I said in the town. It's only going to be local and for office usage. We don't need to make phone calls over thousands of miles or connect to a global internet."

"I thought we could still call on our phone, no?" Shuli asked curiously.

"Yeah, but the cell service is so unreliable at this point. I tried to call Yezi a few days ago, and I had to call five times before it went through...

Also, I'm not talking about phone calls. I'm talking about having files transferred between computers in the town.

Yuqi had been complaining about doing work on paper between different departments and even needing to use USB to transfer computer files."

After Xiaoyun finishes explaining, Pianma finally comes back from the entrance with a young woman behind him.

It was a young woman with glasses, long hair, and much more tanned skin than most people, indicating she had worked in outside conditions much more than indoors.

"This is my wife, Qinpan." Pianma introduced her as they sat down across from Xiaoyun.

"Hello, Mrs.Qinpan. I heard that you specialize in networking?" Xiaoyun asked straightforwardly.

"Yes, I have been working for ten years as a Network Engineer and Network Administrator."

"That's great to hear. So what do you think about my idea of installing an internet that can cover the entire town?" Xiaoyun asked curiously.

"You're going to need a lot of equipment... Like a lot of things that needed to be found in the city and transported all the way over to the town." Qinpan explained.

"That's no problem. Just write a list and where to find them. I'll send soldiers to retrieve it."

Xiaoyun signed the piece of paper at the bottom and handed it over to Qinpan.

Qinpan thought for a second and returned an empty paper to Xiaoyun.

"I want to be hired for this. I'm not doing this for free." Qinpan asked as if she was afraid Xiaoyun was going to use her as free labor.

"Don't worry. This will be a contract later that will state you will be formally hired as the head of telecommunication.

You can write the salary and even hire the workers you are looking for on the paper. Just give the paper to the booth over at the administrative building when you are done."

Xiaoyun handed the paper back to Qinpan and got up from his seat.

"Thank you, Pingma, you really helped me a lot today."

"No, no, no, Mr.Mayor, you helped me way more today. I can't even thank you enough for saving us." Pianma suddenly bowed down in gratitude.

"Huh? When did I do that?" Xiaoyun asked as he couldn't recall seeing Pianma in the past.

"It was almost a year ago. I remember it was your soldiers acting in your order to start saving people in the city outskirts. Me and my wife were among the lucky few that they rescued."

"No need to thank me. The soldiers are the ones that did all the hard work." Xiaoyun distanced himself from taking the credit.

"Still, you were the one that chose to continuously save people rather than abandon us like those military bastards."

"Ahem, look like I need to go now. It was nice meeting you two."

The two waved goodbye as Xiaoyun left with the three behind him.

---

"What a coincidence that the people you saved turned out to be the people you need?" Kate murmured to herself.

"I mean, Xiaoyun has rescued many people and brought them to this. I'm sure at this point he has people from all different backgrounds and jobs." Tianci heard Kate's murmur and stated her opinion.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Where are we going now?" Kate asked curiously.

"We're going back home to eat lunch. Just a late afternoon lunch." Xiaoyun replied as they started walking toward the house.

Shuli suddenly let out a sigh of relief right after Xiaoyun finished replying.

"Hm? Shuli, do you have something to say?" Xiaoyun asked as he heard the quiet sigh sound.

Shuli quickly shook her head, but her face was blushing a little as if she was hiding something.

But Xiaoyun didn't think much of it and shifted his attention back to the road.