Wang Dabao, nicknamed "Porcupine," struggled to suppress his laughter.

He restrained his wildly beating heart.

He retreated carefully.

All he needed to do now was report to the Taijun (Japanese officer),

and then bring them here.

The silver dollars and the detective position would all be his.

Just as his body took a step backward,

he felt his neck suddenly clamped as if by iron tongs.

A voice rang in his ear:

"If you want to see, come inside and take a closer look."

Zhao Gao grabbed Wang Dabao and dragged him into the courtyard.

Lin Fan looked at this rat-faced rogue,

and asked with a frown, "How did you get in?"

Wang Dabao quickly said:

"I'm a neighbor of Aunt Zhang.

I needed to talk to her about something.

The door was locked just now,

so I climbed over the wall."

Zhao Gao said with a smile:

"This kid's not honest.

When he came over,

he quietly pushed the door.

He didn't even dare to knock.

He also sneaked up the wall,

and after coming in, he didn't go where Aunt Zhang and the others were working.

He came straight here.

He's obviously a traitor trying to get information."

Wang Dabao was startled, wondering if he had the words "traitor" written on his face.

How could this person see through him so quickly?

At this time, he absolutely couldn't admit to being a traitor.

Thinking of this, Wang Dabao knelt on the ground with a thud,

and said with tears streaming down his face, "Heroes, spare me!

I was just thinking that the Qian family had all gone out to avoid disaster.

I haven't had money to eat these past few days.

I wanted to sneak in and find something to make a fortune.

Heroes, let me go!

I really just wanted to steal something."

While kneeling on the ground, Wang Dabao sobbed and pleaded,

banging his head hard against the ground.

His forehead touched the muddy ground, and was covered in dirt.

While kowtowing, he thought:

"I'm offering incense to you now.

When the Taijun arrive, I'll make you return these kowtows."

Looking at the person kneeling on the ground,

Lin Fan instructed, "Tie him up! Gag him, blindfold him, and plug his ears.

Just leave him here, watch him, and don't let him run."

Wang Dabao heard the person who was obviously the leader give this order,

and was so frightened that he kowtowed like a pestle: "Hero! I really just wanted to steal something!"

Wu Junmei and Li Mi immediately stepped forward to take action.

A piece of meat fell from Wang Dabao's arms.

Looking at this piece of meat, which weighed at least three jin (1.5 kg),

Lin Fan didn't say anything.

Wang Dabao's face changed drastically.

He shrieked:

"This meat was bought on credit from Butcher Zheng.

I didn't buy it!"

Wu Junmei and Li Mi completely ignored Wang Dabao's pleas,

and just did as they were told.

Soon, Wang Dabao was tied to a pillar,

standing upright.

Now he couldn't see, couldn't hear, and couldn't speak.

He immediately became obedient.

Zhao Gao pointed to the piece of meat that had fallen from his arms and said:

"He must be a traitor,

drawn here by the smell of meat."

Li Mi also said:

"He just said he had no money and came in to steal things.

This kid has money to eat meat, but he still wants to sneak in and steal?"

The soldiers of the Special Operations Brigade,

of course, knew that the Japanese were offering a reward for their capture throughout Nanjing.

They guessed that this person wanted to claim the reward.

Lin Fan went to the kitchen and found Aunt Zhang.

He said with a smile, "Aunt Zhang! Thank you for your hard work these past two days.

Come over here for a moment, and identify someone."

Aunt Zhang, not knowing what was happening, quickly put down her work

and followed him out.

When Lin Fan and the others came, they had Elder Qian's token.

Butler Fu also recognized Lin Fan.

After all, when Lin Fan first entered the Qian residence,

he looked a bit like a prospective son-in-law.

Although the servants didn't dare to say anything,

they had sized him up as the young master-in-law.

Aunt Zhang quickly said, "It's no trouble! It's no trouble!

When the master was at home, we cooked like this too."

She followed Lin Fan out.

Lin Fan asked in a low voice:

"When you went out to buy groceries today,

did anything special happen?"

Aunt Zhang thought for a moment, "Nothing special happened!

When I came back, I carefully looked behind me,

and no one seemed to be following me."

Lin Fan was well aware of this: his men were monitoring the area within three hundred meters of the Qian residence.

Lin Fan said, "Just now, someone sneaked in by climbing over the wall.

Come and see if you recognize him?

I've blindfolded him and plugged his ears.

But you still shouldn't talk in front of him.

Take a look from a distance, and then come back here to tell me."

Aunt Zhang said gratefully, "Thank you for your consideration, Mr. Lin!"

She followed Lin Fan inside, and recognized him from a distance.

She quickly came back

and said to Lin Fan:

"He's a local hoodlum from the neighborhood.

He used to hang around the streets.

After the Japanese came, he ran around with them all day long.

He leads the Japanese, acts as a lackey.

He tells them which family has ancestral treasures,

which family has a beautiful young wife, and which family has a pretty daughter.

He's led the Japanese to harm them all.

The neighbors all hate him to death.

The Zhao family at the front door, and the Li family were all harmed by him and the Japanese.

These two families didn't want to see their women violated by the Japanese.

The whole families were wiped out by the Japanese.

This kid has sores on his head and pus flowing from his feet.

He's rotten to the core!"

Lin Fan understood, "You haven't seen him today,

and don't mention him to anyone in the future.

Go back to work!"

In this kind of world,

even ordinary people

had seen the Japanese killing and setting fires these past few days.

Hearing Lin Fan's instructions,

Aunt Zhang understood what he meant.

She quickly said, "I've been in the kitchen all along.

I didn't see anything."

Lin Fan smiled,

returned to the courtyard, and said coldly:

"This is a traitor who runs errands for the Japanese.

He's harmed many neighbors.

Give him a quick death and bury him outside."

This person's corpse couldn't stay in the Qian residence.

This was the best way to avoid affecting the people living here.

Today's events

had reminded Lin Fan:

Water leaves traces, and geese leave their calls.

As long as he and his men were active in Nanjing,

they would leave some traces no matter what.

Like this situation,

although he and his men hadn't revealed any traces themselves,

they still had to eat.

No matter where they went to eat,

they would leave traces.

As long as the Japanese looked for them in this way,

they really could find them.

Should they retreat now, or continue to stay?

This was something that needed to be weighed.

If they retreated:

the big traitors had already hidden themselves.

There was no good way to find them for the time being.

Staying here was no longer very meaningful for eliminating those big traitors.

Lin Fan decided to temporarily stop assassinating these big traitors.

From Aunt Zhang's words just now,

Lin Fan could hear her hatred for people like Wang Dabao.

Eliminating traitors wasn't just about targeting the big ones.

The common people hated the small traitors who interacted with them every day even more.

After all, these small traitors were close to the common people.

Every time they betrayed someone,

it harmed specific individuals.

Thinking of this, Lin Fan made a decision:

he would carry out a large-scale cleanup of small traitors in Nanjing.

He wouldn't rush to leave for now.

He would stay in Nanjing for a while longer.

Thinking of this, Lin Fan gathered everyone together,

and explained his thoughts.

The soldiers of the Special Operations Brigade

were all small figures in the past.

They understood the helplessness of the common people at the bottom even more deeply.

Hearing the brigade commander's decision,

they all became excited.

They guaranteed that they would complete this mission well.

That afternoon,

the men of the Special Operations Brigade

left in small groups,

and went to the tea houses in Nanjing to gather information.

In Nanjing now, if you really wanted to find traitors,

they were as numerous as the hairs on an ox.

When the Japanese attacked Nanjing,

many traitors directly pointed out bombing targets for the Japanese planes on the streets.

Even more people acted as guides for the Japanese.

With so many traitors,

all the men of the Special Operations Brigade had to do was sit in a tea house,

and they could hear whose unworthy son had been heavily relied upon by the Japanese.

The envy in these people's voices was undisguised.

Then, someone would begin to list the things this person had done.

The men of the Special Operations Brigade only collected information.

Lin Fan finally sent a telegram to Dai Li.

The telegram mentioned three things:

Chen Lu had been successfully assassinated, Liang Hongzhi's whereabouts were unknown, and the Special Operations Brigade wanted to clean up a group of evil small traitors in Nanjing.

Receiving Lin Fan's telegram,

Dai Li finally confirmed:

the Special Operations Brigade was indeed a formidable force.

They were responsible for the events in Nanjing these past few days.

He just didn't understand:

what was Lin Fan thinking?

He actually wanted to take action against the small traitors in Nanjing.

Lin Fan's telegram was delivered to Chiang Kai-shek.

Chiang Kai-shek hated traitors to the bone.

In his opinion, if there weren't so many traitors in such a large country,

the Japanese would never have been so rampant.

Whether they were big traitors or small traitors, all should be killed.

Seeing Lin Fan's telegram, Chiang Kai-shek instructed:

provide as much information as possible, and let the Special Operations Brigade carry it out.

Since the Special Operations Brigade had this ability,

and they were willing to do these things,

then let them do a little more.

Eliminating some of the traitors

could also make others understand:

there would be no good end for working for the Japanese.

Dai Li immediately issued orders to the Kuomintang agents lurking in Nanjing.

He ordered them to immediately provide detailed information on all the large and small traitors they had observed,

and deliver it to a specific location.

In just one day, Lin Fan and his men received information on more than three hundred traitors.

Lin Fan flipped through the delivered information page by page:

This traitor named Guo Yuancai

reported his own uncle for sheltering wounded soldiers.

This resulted in his uncle's family of thirteen being shot by the Japanese,

and five soldiers hiding in his uncle's house being stabbed to death by the Japanese.

This Yuan Youcai seized his uncle's family property.

He transformed from a poor man into a small-time middle class person with some wealth.

Lin Fan immediately took out this piece of paper:

this kind of person was unworthy of being human.

This was the first target Lin Fan had selected.

Continuing to read, there were many such traitors.

They led the Japanese,

and then seized other people's houses and property as a matter of course.

Lin Fan selected all such people as priority targets.

Flipping to the middle, Lin Fan saw a traitor named Lan Jie

who led the Japanese to a neighbor's house,

pointing to the attic and saying that the family's daughter was upstairs.

This family only had one daughter,

who had always been treasured.

This treasured daughter was violated by the Japanese in front of her father.

The Japanese also forced the father to go up with a knife.

This traitor named Lan Jie deserved to die!

There was also this Chen Youwei,

knowing that the Japanese were searching for treasures everywhere.

He actually led the Japanese to dig up his own ancestral grave,

literally angering his old father to death.

He immediately became a favorite in the eyes of the Japanese.

He followed the Japanese around every day,

showing off his power.

This kind of traitor deserved to die!

With each page he turned, Lin Fan felt that the actions of these traitors were unforgivable.

The evil deeds committed by these traitors harmed ordinary people.

The number of people they could harm wasn't high,

but Lin Fan decided to take action for those victimized families.

Yuan Youcai, who lived near Tongxian Bridge in southern Nanjing,

had been living extremely well these past few days.

He told everyone he met: a fortune teller had said that his luck would turn after he turned thirty.

Now he was thirty-one,

and ever since he started working for the Japanese,

his luck had indeed turned.

Those who heard him speak

scorned him in their hearts for harming even his own uncle.

But they were truly envious of him:

by betraying his uncle,

this kid had transformed from poverty to being well-off.

His family members had also benefited,

not only living in a big house,

but also having servants.

Half a year ago, his family members were still working for others.

One afternoon, Yuan Youcai drank a few liang (approx. 50g) of wine in the shop.

Feeling comfortable, he swayed towards home.

When crossing the bridge, he stumbled and fell headfirst into the river.

Those who saw him fall

only shouted: "Boss Yuan has fallen into the water!

Boss Yuan has fallen into the water!"

But no one jumped into the river to pull him out.

Some who didn't know the truth

asked who Boss Yuan was.

They heard that this was the person who betrayed his relatives and seized their property.

No one went into the river to rescue him.

When Yuan's family received the news,

and stood on the bank offering a large sum of money to hire someone to pull Yuan Youcai up,

he had already been soaking in the water for two days.

Misfortunes never come singly.

After Yuan Youcai fell into the river, his house was robbed.

All the valuables were emptied out.

That wasn't the end of it.

The house then caught fire, and the entire courtyard was burned to the ground.

Suddenly, everyone in southern Nanjing was spreading the word:

the Yuan family's ghosts had come to demand their lives and take revenge.

This house would be taken to the underworld by Yuan Youcai's uncle.

Heaven's will was unpredictable.

Yuan Youcai's fate frightened many traitors in southern Nanjing.

Which one of them hadn't done evil?

In southern Nanjing, there was a man named Lan Jie

who brought the Japanese to harm his neighbors.

He followed the Japanese around every day.

Although his life wasn't as glamorous as Yuan Youcai's,

he was still living a comfortable life.

One morning, while crossing the bridge,

he also fell into the water.

By the time he was pulled up, he was already dead.

This time, his family hired a detective to investigate carefully.

Lan Jie hadn't drowned,

his cervical vertebra was broken.

The detective believed that when Lan Jie fell into the water,

his head went down first, and his neck broke on the riverbed.

The detectives at the garrison headquarters were of course aware of what these traitors had done.

This was the second traitor to die by falling into the water.

The garrison headquarters took this very seriously.

They specially sent the experienced Detective Jin to handle the case.

Detective Jin had even met Lin Fan and his men.

During the Battle of Nanjing,

Lin Fan annihilated Fujiwara Yuzhen's special task force in the city.

This Detective Jin was the one who cleaned up the aftermath.

He was still working as a detective,

and he despised these traitors very much.

He wasn't willing to expend much effort on this.

Although he also felt that it was a bit strange for two people to have died from falling off a bridge in succession,

Chen Youwei was the third traitor to die by falling into the water.

Although the evil deeds committed by these traitors were different,

their deaths were the same.

They all died from falling into the water.

After this, the number of traitors in Nanjing who had accidents increased significantly.

They all died from falling into the water.

Now, rumors began to spread in Nanjing:

the Water Dragon King had gotten used to eating blood at the beginning of spring.

He hadn't eaten blood for several months.

So he took the initiative to find the traitors who had done bad things.

This legend came and went without a trace.

But it seemed to make some sense. Nanjing was so big.

It was normal for a few people to die every day.

What was abnormal was that so many traitors had died from drowning these past few days.

From one or two a day at the beginning,

to more than a dozen traitors drowning in a day.

Although these deaths were insignificant traitors,

the Japanese didn't care about their lives at all.

The Japanese hadn't even paid attention to these traitors.

After all, too many people had defected to them, and they couldn't manage them all.

But those families who had been harmed by these traitors

had been secretly praying these past few days:

let the person who harmed me die!

So a saying spread in Nanjing:

as long as you wrote the name and deeds of the traitor who harmed your family on waxed paper,

folded it into a paper boat, and put it in the river,

the Water Dragon King would investigate. If what was written was true,

the traitor would walk to the water and drown himself.

If what was written was false, falsely accusing a good person,

one person in the family who released the paper boat would walk into the water and drown.

Hearing this news, someone actually tried it.

No one dared to say whether it worked.

They were afraid of being retaliated against.

However, there were indeed more paper boats floating in the river.

No one dared to fish these paper boats out.

They were afraid of offending the Water Dragon King.

This year, the number of people who had drowned in Nanjing had indeed increased a lot.

Later on, the people at the garrison headquarters couldn't manage it anymore.

Anyone with eyes could see that what Water Dragon King and what wishing?

Someone must be manipulating this behind the scenes.

However, since the people who died were all traitors, as long as the Japanese didn't care,

no normal person would care about the lives of these traitors.

However, the people living in Nanjing could feel it:

the attitudes of the traitors in Nanjing had changed.

Some traitors had begun to apologize to the families they had harmed,

begging for forgiveness.

All the traitors began to restrain their tempers,

no longer acting as arrogant as they used to, and no longer finding ways to entertain the Japanese for no reason.

These days, people in the tea houses were always whispering:

"Did you hear? That bastard who harmed the Li family drowned."

"He deserved it! He should have died long ago.

He harmed the entire Li family, seven people!

He was worth only seven lives, too good for him."

"Did you know? Li Sanmazi, who led the Japanese into the school, drowned."

"Good riddance!

The church had sheltered so many women in the school.

This Li Sanmazi forced his way into the school with the Japanese,

dragging people out and sending them to the Japanese.

He sneaked over the wall at night to scout for the Japanese.

He committed too many sins, he should have died long ago."

…

There was new news like this appearing in the tea houses every day.

These dead traitors had drowned so quietly.

No leaflets or anything had appeared on them.

Every traitor's death was the same kind of accident, drowning.

Only ordinary people believed that this was the eye of heaven,

that evil would be repaid with evil.

Anyone with sense knew that one traitor dying like this was an accident.

Now that hundreds of traitors had died in the same way,

this was obviously someone doing it on purpose.

Someone was deliberately using this method to warn those traitors:

no one would forget what you had done.

The evil you had done, the debts you owed would always have to be repaid.

With so many traitors dying,

the daily conversations of ordinary people had changed.

In the tea houses, people no longer envied the traitors for living well.

Instead, many people were watching coldly as those traitors drowned.

The people in the tea houses were now saying:

work hard, be a good person,

don't be a traitor!

Being a traitor is great for a moment, but then comes cremation.

This kind of public opinion was what Lin Fan wanted to see.

What people were talking about in the streets

was no longer which family had become better off than others because they were working for the Japanese and being traitors.

These ordinary people, who used to be objects of envy,

had now mostly drowned and become water ghosts.

So these ordinary people no longer envied them,

they said that you had to have the life to earn money, but also the life to spend it.

Throughout Nanjing, the traitors were all in fear.

As for those dead traitors,

even if someone reported the case,

no one would pay attention now.

First of all, the newly established puppet Nanjing Reformed Government officials were panicking.

They were all afraid of when the assassin squad would come knocking on their door.

Besides, these big traitors were thinking about how to please their masters.

They didn't have a single thought for such small matters.

The big traitors thought this way.

Of course, their lackeys were even less willing to do these thankless tasks.

Besides, most of these dead traitors didn't have any victims.

Since no one was pursuing the case, of course no one was willing to solve it.

Commander of the China Expeditionary Army, Yan Junliu, was no longer focusing his attention on the traitors in Nanjing.

His eyes were on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

The China Expeditionary Army had launched an attack towards Wuhan.

They had already captured the Madang Fortress.

Yan Junliu didn't actually care much about the lives of the traitors.

There hadn't been any explosions in Nanjing at night these past few days.

That was enough.

For him, being able to achieve this situation was enough.

The Japanese search for assassins in Nanjing finally stopped.

It was easier for Lin Fan and his men to move around outside.

They had been taking action every day these past few days.

They also learned about all the Japanese banks in Nanjing.

This was what Lin Fan intentionally let Wu Junmei and Li Mi learn.

He had to do what he had promised.

It just wasn't time to take action yet.

Lin Fan was preparing for the various squads of the Special Operations Brigade

to take action in several cities at the same time.

This way, the Japanese would be unprepared, and they would achieve the greatest effect with one action.

And this matter would also be of great benefit to the Special Operations Brigade.

Now, all kinds of construction for the Special Operations Brigade required money.

Lin Fan felt that there was nothing wrong with using Japanese money to develop his own industry.

The public opinion in Nanjing had changed.

Lin Fan felt that his actions in Nanjing

were now truly meaningful.

This was much more influential on a city than killing one or two big traitors.

By the time Lin Fan returned to Jurong, it was already after July 7th.

On this day, an article appeared out of nowhere.

"On Protracted War" was placed on Chiang Kai-shek's desk.

He saw that this article discussed the ongoing battle in detail.

It made a detailed comparison of the strength of both sides' military forces and national power, drawing scientific conclusions.

It also gave a fair evaluation of the several battles that the Kuomintang army had fought in the previous stages.

This evaluation fully affirmed his leadership and command.

This made Chiang Kai-shek very satisfied.

Originally, he had strictly controlled all the remarks made by his former opponent.

But this time, not only did he order the newspapers to reprint the full text,

but he also ordered that this article be edited into a book and distributed to officers at all levels.

This was to allow them to have a detailed understanding of the entire war of resistance.

This time, Chiang Kai-shek finally had a powerful weapon in his hand to refute the defeatists.

This article not only caused a strong reaction in the country,

but it also attracted attention abroad. Even the Japanese took this article and studied it in detail.

In the end, they sadly discovered that everything said in this article was true.

In the foreseeable future, the entire war would develop exactly as written in the article.

The key was that even if they knew the ending,

the Japanese still didn't know how to break the situation.

Unless they stopped the invasion now and returned the lands they had occupied at great cost.

But this was definitely something the Japanese couldn't do.

So they could only continue to slide towards the abyss of destruction.

Returning to Jurong, Lin Fan didn't rest.

He only stayed in Jurong for one day.

Then he set off for Hangzhou.

There was someone there he had dealt with before,

an important target that Dai Li had specially reminded him of.

Zhang Xiaolin, the only one of the three Shanghai tycoons who had defected to the Japanese

and become a traitor.

Of the three Shanghai gang tycoons,

Huang Jinrong had been living in seclusion at home since the Japanese occupied Shanghai, no longer showing his face.

Du Yuesheng had left for Hong Kong with his family.

One lived in seclusion, and one left.

The remaining Zhang Xiaolin, who had defected to the Japanese,

immediately became one of the most powerful figures in Shanghai.

Tens of thousands of his disciples all followed him.

Not only did this make it difficult for Dai Li's intelligence personnel to operate in Shanghai,

but it also greatly affected Du Yuesheng's influence and business.

Killing Zhang Xiaolin had become a common idea for many people.

Lin Fan had already warned him last year.

He told him not to follow the Japanese.

He hadn't expected that this gang tycoon

would eventually take the step of becoming a traitor.

Lin Fan always eliminated such people quickly.

According to the information given by Dai Li, this traitor was recently in Hangzhou.

Lin Fan traveled by land, all the way along Lishui, Guangde, to Deqing.

Along the way, he saw that the situation in the base area was good.

There was no sign of war damage in the various county towns.

The houses in the city that had been destroyed by the Japanese

had all been rebuilt.

The businesses of the merchants in the county town were all good.

Ever since the Special Operations Brigade drove away the Japanese,

they had been investing in roads and communications throughout the base area.

This had given the people many job opportunities.

The lives of the common people were better, and they had money in their hands.

Of course, the businesses of the merchants in the city were doing well.

Every time Lin Fan went to a county town, he had to go to the schools to take a look.

A major feature of the Special Operations Brigade in the base area was the schools and night schools.

All school-age children had to go to school,

and all long-term workers also had to go to night school.

Only those who had been farming all the time were not required to do so.

However, the Special Operations Brigade had been promoting it, and there were policy incentives for those who attended night school.

The Special Operations Brigade attached particular importance to women attending night school.

According to Lin Fan's understanding, a literate housewife

could influence a family.

After all, according to tradition, men were in charge of external affairs, and women were in charge of internal affairs.

Children were in contact with their mothers for a longer time.

A literate mother would educate her descendants differently.

In the mountains of Guangde, Lin Fan specially went to see the Special Operations Brigade's arsenal.

Products with mature technology were produced here.

Now, the Special Operations Brigade was gradually dispersing its production bases.

Yixing was mainly for developing ships.

The remaining products were all placed in Guangde.

In particular, the manufacturing of airplanes and rocket launchers were the most powerful weapons that the Special Operations Brigade could manufacture themselves.

Lin Fan originally wanted to develop large-caliber artillery, but it was not possible to test it yet.

Large-caliber artillery weighed more than ten tons, and had to be equipped with a tractor.

Or it could be developed directly into self-propelled artillery.

But these not only required artillery manufacturing technology, but also automobile manufacturing technology.

This was a bit too technologically demanding for the Special Operations Brigade.

The large-caliber barrel alone was a very difficult hurdle to overcome.

Therefore, Lin Fan temporarily decided to concentrate his efforts on developing rocket launchers.

This weapon did not have high requirements for the launch tube.

The main thing was that the Special Operations Brigade already had the successful experience of the 120mm multiple rocket launcher.

They were now studying the 240mm rocket.

This was the direction Lin Fan wanted to vigorously develop militarily.

In addition, there was the improvement of the rifle. The AK-47, which would not appear for several years, had already been successfully manufactured in Guangde.

The process drawings of each component had been completed, and they were waiting for the machine to be installed and debugged before trial production could begin.

Having traveled this road, the situation in the entire base area was very satisfactory.

Lin Fan clearly knew that every regime had its merits when it was first established.

As time went on, problems would always arise.

At this time, the regime needed to adjust and purify itself.

Therefore, during this trip, Lin Fan looked at the homes of ordinary people and listened to them in every place he went, no matter how busy he was.

He wanted to ensure that what he saw and heard was the most authentic.

In fact, Lin Fan was overthinking it.

The base area here had only been established for half a year, and there was a strong enemy outside.

At this time, there were still few people with ulterior motives.

Traveling and looking, Lin Fan was still satisfied.

Now, because of the Huayuankou Dam breach, water was used to block the Japanese.

Although this blocked the Japanese mechanized troops,

it caused huge losses to ordinary people.

Lin Fan had already sent people to the flood area to spread the word: Go to Jurong! Go to Sishui!

Lin Fan had made preparations in both of these places.

The base area would allocate the refugees who came to Jurong to various counties to reclaim wasteland.

They would form base area farms.

Or they could enter the Special Operations Brigade's mines and factories.

The refugees who came to Sishui were all organized into farms by regiment.

Everything was managed according to the military system.

Most of these refugees were destitute. The base area had to take care of their food, clothing, and shelter.

For this reason, the clothing and bedding that the Special Operations Brigade had looted from the Japanese were all used.

In the Lunan area:

each reclamation regiment was composed of about three thousand people.

They were divided into fifteen companies for management.

Everyone ate in the same canteen, and the first thing they did was build houses.

These houses were where these people would live.

Gu Xiuming managed these refugees according to Lin Fan's method of managing the Special Operations Brigade.

Of course, the Lunan Detachment could not provide unlimited food to the hundreds of thousands of people who had suddenly poured in,

nor could they guarantee that these refugees would have meat every day.

However, Gu Xiuming allocated eight liang of grain per person per day to all the refugees.

These refugees, who had fled from the disaster, knew that the Lunan Detachment was giving them a standard of eight liang of grain per day.

Most of them were grateful to the Special Operations Brigade officers and soldiers.

There were also a few people who saw the Lunan Detachment distributing thousands of jin of grain every day.

It was received by the various reclamation regiments, and then distributed to the various company mess halls.

Some people were thinking of doing something with this grain.

Now, the refugees had not only arrived at the Lunan Detachment's base area, but more had gone to other places.

Food prices were rising everywhere.

The Lunan Detachment's large-scale actions had naturally attracted the attention of many people with ulterior motives.

These people began to unite with some people in the reclamation regiments:

they intentionally cut corners when cooking.

In the eyes of these people, the food had been sent by the Lunan Detachment anyway,

and most of the refugees were eating for free.

As long as they had something to eat every day, they wouldn't starve to death.

These people hadn't thought that they were also refugees!

The number of people from the Lunan Detachment who had arrived here was not large to begin with, only four companies and two platoons.

Even though the Flying Squadron had been sent later, only these people had received long-term education.

The rest had been converted from prisoners of war on the battlefield. These people had not been educated for long.

Now, a part of them had entered the ranks of managing the reclamation regiments.

Although those refugees had not come into contact with the grain,

the Lunan Detachment had posted notices everywhere,

stating that they each had eight liang of grain per day.

When they first started eating, the porridge could still stand up chopsticks.

Later, they could see their reflections in it.

Many people were angry but dared not speak out.

Gu Xiuming began to doubt the work efficiency of the reclamation regiments:

the houses were being built more and more slowly, and some places had even stopped.

He personally went to the scene to take a look.

At a glance, he was shocked: the place he went to was a site thirty li outside Sishui City.

Of the people in the entire site, he only saw a dozen rosy-cheeked refugees.

The rest were all listless and skin and bones.

This site concentrated five reclamation companies, a full thousand people.

Jia Youde, who was in charge here, saw that the highest officer in the entire base area had arrived.

He quickly ran up to greet him.

The dozen rosy-cheeked people were all following behind him.

Those who were building walls were all listless and moved slowly.

Gu Xiuming walked to an old man and said:

"Old man! You are building this house for yourselves to live in.

Why aren't you putting in any effort?"

The old man glanced at him and opened his mouth.

Seeing the people accompanying him, he didn't say a word.

Jia Youde, who was accompanying Gu Xiuming, shouted loudly:

"The officer is asking you a question! Are you deaf?"

Only then did the old man speak weakly: "I'm old, I can't work anymore."

Gu Xiuming stopped talking and just stood there watching these people build the wall.

Jia Youde quickly said, "Commander Gu! Have lunch with us today! We have chicken today! Fish!

And wine!"

Gu Xiuming found it strange: he hadn't allocated chicken or fish to any of the reclamation regiments.

He asked with a smile, "Where did these things come from?"

"Exchanged! Exchanged!" Jia Youde smiled awkwardly.

At this time, he remembered that these things had all been exchanged with grain.

"What did you exchange them with?" Gu Xiuming's expression became ugly.

…

Jia Youde was speechless.

Seeing Gu Xiuming's expression getting worse and worse.

"I used a little bit of grain to exchange them." He finally said.

Gu Xiuming was angry and ordered: "Arrest these people for me."

The soldiers following him rushed up and tied up the dozen or so rosy-cheeked people.