Chapter 19 Qualification

As if to confirm Li Tianran's words, all the survivors saw the Beast Kings who had broken through the shelters and forced the national army and evolutionary forces to retreat, now easily slaughtered, their massive bodies falling down.

The warriors in silver battle armor planted blood-colored flags all over the ruined city, stepping on the corpses of the Beast Kings, holding their swords high!

This scene gave the survivors a huge shock.

They looked at these warriors and sensed something extremely precious in them.

This was not powerful weaponry, nor extraordinary strength.

It was freedom!

A freedom to control one's own destiny, rather than entrusting it to others!

This freedom was more enticing than the devil's apple!

The man gripped his knife in one hand and held his daughter's hand in the other. He walked forward with firm steps, standing before Li Tianran and asking in a pleading voice, "Can I follow you?"

As the man asked this question, the other survivors also looked at Li Tianran, wanting to ask the same thing.

The fear and anger towards the Beast Kings, the despair of being abandoned, and the helplessness of life had plunged them into hell, and now, the only path of hope had appeared before them.

No one wanted to be left behind!

"The vision for life and a better future is the most primal desire of life, and this desire can unleash the most fearless power." Li Tianran looked calmly at the survivors and said softly in the local language, "But to follow me… do you have the qualification?"

The survivors tensed their muscles and gritted their teeth.

The man at the front gripped the steel knife in his hand.

Did Li Tianran's words represent rejection?

No!

It was not a rejection!

Li Tianran squatted down, picked up the man's daughter from his arms, and said softly, "Ability, wisdom, loyalty, courage… at least I need to see one of these things in you!"

The survivors were stunned.

Li Tianran held the little girl in one arm and pointed to a small group of mutated beasts in the distance, saying in a deep voice, "Go and prove it to me."

"Ah!!"

Most of the survivors roared with excitement and anger, gathering together and rushing towards the mutated beast group in the distance.

Among these people, some might die, but more would survive and become new pioneers.

As long as they dared to swing their knives at the enemy, these people had already completed the first and most important step in the transformation from weaklings to warriors!

And in this process, Li Tianran planted a seed called "hope" in the heart of each of them, and when this seed grew and sprouted in their hearts, becoming a towering tree, they would firmly surround Li Tianran, becoming the most loyal warriors.

Of course, there were also some people who did not have the courage to pick up weapons and charge at the beasts. They knelt on the ground and begged bitterly, telling of their plight and fear, of the gap between ordinary humans and mutated beasts, of their unease about death, with tears streaming down their faces.

Li Tianran said softly, "Do you like being saved so much? Once? Twice? Three times… countless times?"

Those people were still crying.

Li Tianran stopped looking at them, taking a deep breath. For this era, these people were destined to be eliminated.

Just like the four most important qualities Li Tianran mentioned, what qualification did someone who didn't even have the most basic courage have to become a warrior under him?

Thirty minutes later.

The man who had first spoken to Li Tianran thrust the steel knife in his hand into the head of the last mutated beast, covered in blood, collapsing weakly in the ruins, looking at the sky, and suddenly burst out laughing.

Beside him, there were hundreds of equally disheveled survivors, kneeling on the ground, opening their arms and hugging each other.

As if embracing their new life.

"Boss, Derma City has killed a total of two hundred and seventy-six Beast Kings, including thirty-eight God-Descended types and twelve Artificial Intelligence types! Three thousand six hundred and eighty-four mutated beasts! Three hundred and seventy-two survivors meet the requirements…" Lu Chi stood beside Li Tianran, reporting the detailed data of this battle in a low voice.

Li Tianran nodded, glanced at the satellite map, and said, "Continue to the next location!"

…

Li Tianran led the pioneers' legion to continue forward, covering more than three thousand kilometers in just 72 hours, fighting in a total of seventeen cities.

In this process, he personally witnessed the despair of countless survivors and the madness of the beast tides.

In 72 hours, the pioneers' legion killed a total of six thousand eight hundred and forty-two Beast Kings, more than two hundred thousand mutated beasts, including five hundred and forty God-Descended Beast Kings and three hundred and eighty Artificial Intelligence Beast Kings. Most importantly, there were also three "Overlords," one of which was the Sea Lizard Beast King that had caused the Mackde Port attack.

These important spoils piled up dozens of freighters. If Li Tianran hadn't seized hundreds of large ships in the beast nest, he probably wouldn't have been able to move these Beast King corpses.

As the pioneers' legion continued to advance, blood-colored banners of swords and hibiscus flowers were planted in the cities they passed. At the same time, Li Tianran also gathered a large number of qualified survivors. In battle, he converted some particularly outstanding survivors and incorporated them into the pioneers' legion.

The pioneers' legion slowly grew from the four hundred people who left Kuangxi Island at the beginning to six hundred, eight hundred, one thousand…

When Li Tianran set foot in the eighteenth city, the number of pioneers' legion had reached one thousand and two hundred, and the number of survivors gathered had reached more than three thousand seven hundred!

This was a terrifying number.

In the war against the beast tide, Li Tianran allowed these unconverted survivors to participate in the battle, using this almost crude and barbaric method to quickly cultivate a sense of trust and cooperation with each other. One bloody battle after another, one walk between life and death after another, allowed these survivors to quickly adapt to the rhythm of the pioneers' legion.

Each of them already possessed the qualities to become a pioneers' warrior!

And if Li Tianran hadn't considered that the situation was turbulent and it was not safe to carry out large-scale conversions in this chaotic land, he could have even increased the number of pioneers' legion to five thousand in one hour!

"Notify home, let Damian work overtime for me and continue manufacturing Tyrannosaurus-type individual combat armor!"

"At the same time, send some people to take the survivors back, complete all the conversions at home, and after rapid training, catch up with our footsteps!"

Li Tianran said to Lu Chi:

"And what we have to do is, advance! Advance! Advance!"