The Southern Theater Command had its headquarters in Guangzhou and its army command in Nanning. It commanded the 14th, 41st and 42nd Group Armies and the South Sea Fleet. When the meteor shower struck and the world turned upside down, Guangzhou, right on the sea, had to face more than the apocalyptic storm. Seawater was pouring back inland too.

Human losses were heavy.

Because so many of its troops were garrisoned in the mountains, the Southern Theater Command came through with the least damage of all.

The moment the apocalyptic storm ended, the Southern Theater Command organized its surviving troops and launched a full-scale rescue effort. The Pearl River Delta had been all but turned into one great marsh. But the sea had also brought in huge numbers of fish and shrimp and stranded them across the delta. That meat kept countless survivors alive.

They were lucky in one way. When disaster struck, four destroyers and two supply ships of the South Sea Fleet had been in the port of Guangzhou for routine resupply. Once it hit, the ships couldn't put to sea. Instead, by sheer chance, the water washed them up onto the shore and left them stranded. Among the servicemen who survived aboard, a whole crop of iron people emerged.

Among them was even a semi-submersible ship, the Donghaidao.

With those steel giants shoved ashore as their base, large numbers of survivors were able to gather under the military's banner. Once the army and the navy joined up, the Southern Theater Command made Guangzhou its center, then set about rescue and rebuilding.

From then on, the Southern Theater Command quickly opened routes to Shaoguan, Hezhou, Wuzhou, Liuzhou, Nanning and other cities, and moved large numbers of survivors to Guangzhou.

But the new world changed too much. In the early days the Southern Theater Command could still move survivors without much trouble. As the evolved beasts grew stronger and stronger, though, they took over huge areas, and it no longer had the strength to push outward. It even lost Nanning, Guigang, Yulin and other places when several powerful evolved…