My Apprenticeship to Uncle Jiu: I Was a Warlord in the Republic of China

Of course there was no shortage of work, such as transporting the landlords' money and grain, digging and clearing ditches, leveling damaged roads, etc. In short, as long as you were willing to work hard, you could make a living.

It only took him a few days to quickly gain a foothold in Guyang County, and it was even smoother than before.

But just when everything was going in the right direction, he received a very annoying piece of information.

It turned out that the Zhang family, who had supported Zhang Tiande, wanted to bribe Jiang Li with money to ask him to show mercy when they saw Zhang Tiande being destroyed. However, Jiang Li was not moved at all and still interrogated the entire Zhang family.

As a result of this trial, more than half of the Zhang family was emptied out, more than a dozen were killed, and dozens were imprisoned. The remaining elderly, weak, women and children were given some land and money to cultivate and support themselves.

But those people in the Zhang family were used to a life of having everything provided for them, so how could they concentrate on farming at this moment? The remaining men of the Zhang family, who had only made some minor mistakes, thought about it.

They simply went up the mountain and became bandits. In order to show their loyalty, they led a group of bandits down the mountain and looted a village. More than a hundred people in the village were either killed or fled.

Those women who were slightly pretty were even captured and taken to the mountains for people to play with.

When he learned about this situation from the villagers who had fled for help, he immediately became furious and called all the company commanders under his command to discuss how to suppress the bandits.

Fortunately, Jiang Youchi had already found out the situation of the entire Guyang County clearly. When Jiang Li asked him about it, he knew everything like the back of his hand and quickly explained the situation of these bandits to everyone.

After two hours of discussion, they finally decided to disperse the 800 prisoners into various companies and let them participate in the battle.

On the one hand, it can boost their morale and reduce casualties among their own soldiers. On the other hand, it can prevent these people from causing trouble in the rear right after they set out to suppress the bandits.

With the addition of these people, Jiang Li now had an army of 2,300 people. He waved his hand and divided his troops into four groups to attack from all directions, determined to wipe out all the bandits in Guyang County in one fell swoop.

In order to avenge the villagers who were massacred, he led his troops directly to kill the group of unscrupulous bandits.

But when they arrived at the bandits' lair, he frowned slightly. The reason was that the terrain of the bandits' lair was too dangerous, and the bandits had built three lines of defense with stones on the way up the mountain.

Due to the steep mountains and narrow roads, it was impossible to deploy all the troops. If a strong attack was launched, the casualties would be heavy.

At this time, Ah San came over and whispered, "County magistrate, I think we should let these surrendered soldiers take the lead and just let them charge. It doesn't matter how many of them die anyway!"

Jiang Li glanced at him and said, "They want to take the lead, but not in this way."

Then he found the second company commander and said, "I'm going to give you a mission. Have your soldiers fire ten rounds from each gun. Have them aim and shoot. Make sure to clear the enemy walls and firing holes!"

"Tell me, can you do it?"

"Report to the county magistrate, I, Shen Quan, promise to complete the task!"

As he spoke, he ordered the soldiers to adjust the angle of the gun muzzle, and then began to fire accurately, and soon all sixty shells were fired.

The bandits hiding behind the stone wall on the mountain were so frightened by the fierce artillery fire that they dared not show their heads.

The explosion of a 75mm shell can kill people within a range of 10 to 20 meters, so after dozens of shells were fired, even though the bandits were protected by a stone wall, they all huddled at the foot of the wall, but they still suffered heavy casualties.

But Jiang Li saw that the three stone wall defense lines on the enemy's mountainside had not been completely destroyed, so he ordered again, "Fire me ten more rounds, I want to see how long these guys can hold out."

Then the sound of artillery fire rang out again, and he called Jiang Youchi over, leaning close to his ear and asking, "Are you sure there are less than 300 people on the mountain? I saw they built three stone walls, so there must be a lot of people. If we are wrong, there will be a lot of casualties when we attack the mountain!"

Upon hearing this, Jiang Youchi immediately stood at attention and saluted, then answered loudly, "Master, don't worry. We have investigated carefully and found that they only have about 300 people and more than 200 guns. Even if they have recruited some people during this period, they should not be able to get guns in a short period of time, so the specific number will not make much difference!"

Upon hearing this, Jiang Li did not ask any more questions. He directly ordered someone to call the 200 surrendered soldiers and attack the mountain under the cover of artillery fire.

When they reached the foot of the mountain, they ordered their men to stop shelling to prevent accidental injury to him. As soon as the shelling stopped, a number of heads popped out from behind the stone wall on the mountain, and they immediately opened fire to drive back the surrendered soldiers.

Looking at the defeated soldiers, Jiang Li directly ordered his men to use light machine guns to stop them from advancing, and sternly demanded that they turn around and charge again.

But these people were already frightened out of their wits and didn't dare to charge again. Jiang Li was speechless and ordered the supervision team to kill a few of them. Only then did they grit their teeth and attack the mountain again.

This time, with the deterrence of the supervision team, they finally managed to get some momentum. They quickly rushed to the broken first line of defense and used the cover of the stone wall to exchange fire with the bandits.

Jiang Li nodded slightly upon seeing this, and then ordered the artillerymen to raise the angle of their guns, so as to use artillery fire to attack the bandits above and provide firepower support to these fleeing soldiers.

This is a problem. The bandits are now fighting fiercely with the enemy and cannot curl up and hide like before, which greatly increases the lethality of the artillery fire.

Although those bandits were desperate criminals who committed arson, murder and looting, they had never experienced such fierce artillery fire. In just ten minutes, they were defeated, abandoned their positions and retreated to the mountain stronghold.

Seeing that this was a rare opportunity, Jiang Li directly sent two companies to support them. The final result was not beyond his expectations. With the addition of a fresh force, they successfully broke into the mountain stronghold.

When Jiang Li sent out his troops, he said that not a single bandit from this mountain stronghold would be left alive.

After entering the mountain stronghold, they went through another half an hour of sporadic fighting before the group of more than 300 bandits were completely killed.

After Jiang Li entered the mountain stronghold, he ordered his men to count the spoils. In addition to more than a hundred intact guns, there were also 40,000 bullets, 40,000 yuan, more than 20 kilograms of gold, 160,000 kilograms of grain, and more than 200 pigs, sheep, cattle, horses, donkeys and other livestock.

As for the various jewelry, antiques, calligraphy and paintings, they will not list them one by one. In the bandits' cell, they also found dozens of women who were abducted to the mountain.

Judging from their expressions, except for a dozen of them who looked terrified, most of the others looked numb, with disheveled clothes and covered with scars, and it was obvious that they had been arrested for some time.

Seeing this, Jiang Li had no choice but to have someone take them away and take good care of them, and then let their families claim them when they return to the town.

After looking at the list of spoils, he began to look at the casualty report. Among his own troops, three people were killed and eight were injured.

The casualties among the surrendered soldiers were heavy, with 54 dead and almost everyone else injured.