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

As his troops recaptured the dozen or so towns, the people in the towns suffered. Chen Xueming's soldiers would not carry out his orders meticulously.

Not only did they loot all the food that the people had just received, but they also took away all their money and food.

What's worse, some young women in the family were also forcibly abducted, which made the local people's hatred towards Chen Xueming reach its peak.

Some people were so desperate that they simply packed up their remaining belongings and headed for Dongshan County with their families at night.

Speaking of Jiang Li, they reaped a rich harvest after the First War. In addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars, three or four hundred kilograms of gold, they also obtained more than a thousand pigs, sheep, cattle, horses and other livestock.

Three or four hundred broken guns and tens of thousands of bullets were seized from the town’s security team and warehouse, which weakened Chen Xueming a little bit.

As for this time, they captured as many as five or six hundred landlords and evil gentry, and about two thousand captured soldiers, but they could not be used with confidence at all at this time.

So he waved his hand and handed these people directly over to the road construction team, asking them to atone for what they had done. After defeating Chen Xueming, he would consider recruiting soldiers from these people.

However, in order to guard against Chen Xueming's counterattack, his army did not disband, but instead defended Qinghe County and Dongshan County, the two most likely attack routes of Chen Xueming.

But after waiting for a long time, he did not receive any news of the enemy's attack. Instead, he saw many people fleeing.

Jiang Li was not surprised to see this, and immediately sent a small team to escort the refugees to a town, build temporary houses for them, and provide them with some basic living supplies.

Jiang Li, who was looking at the map at this time, asked Jiang Youchi, "Has the person who went to Ma Baoguo to report his merits returned?"

Jiang Youchi smiled awkwardly upon hearing this, "He did come back, but he only praised us verbally. He didn't give us any of the weapons and ammunition we asked him for!"

"But Master, don't we have plenty of ammunition? Why do you say we don't have many bullets left?"

Jiang Li chuckled when he heard this, "Of course I know he won't give it to us. Now that we have consumed a lot of ammunition due to a major battle, it is reasonable that we can no longer cooperate with Marshal Ma, right?"

"Now we don't need to continue to use troops. We just need to maintain a stalemate with Chen Xueming and watch them fight each other."

"After a few months, when our new recruits have been trained and have enough manpower, we can consider splitting Chen Xueming with Ma Baoguo!"

But what he didn't say was that if Ma Baoguo had any evil intentions at that time, he would be killed as well, and then one-third of Guangdong would be directly taken over.

As for the current situation of confrontation, it is what Jiang Li hopes to see most. What he lacks the least is time.

In the following period, just as Jiang Li had expected, Chen Xueming did not use a large number of troops against Jiang Li, but still sent a small force to attack the people who were receiving refugees.

Upon seeing this, Jiang Li directly ordered the veterans to lead the new recruits in a small-scale harassment war with the enemy, thus consuming the enemy's resources while quickly training his own recruits.

At this time, counting the number of Jiang Li's troops, there are a total of 7,200 regular soldiers, plus 2,000 new recruits who have been trained for more than a month, and 1,500 captured soldiers recruited from Nanxi and Hui'an counties.

There are also two thousand new recruits who have just been recruited and are currently undergoing physical training.

All in all, he has more than 12,700 people under his command. As long as some time passes and these people are trained and qualified, he can start considering dealing with Chen Xueming.

The days passed one by one for more than two and a half months. During this period, Han Yong came twice and brought over William's two simple bullet production lines.

They also purchased a dozen ships of various sizes and delivered fifteen trucks and a large amount of gasoline and diesel, as well as many auto parts and a number of industrial raw materials to Jiang Li.

The most important of these are naturally steel and coal.

William also came back from India. This time, he not only brought Jiang Li two canning production lines, but also a British active bullet production line, as well as a number of telegraph machines and various machines.

And because the Nanxi County transfer station had been repaired at this time, William's large ship could also enter the Minjiang River.

It is precisely because of this transit station that the various supplies Jiang Li obtained have more than doubled.

The only problem is that transporting these materials requires a large number of workers and many small and medium-sized ships. Otherwise, if you want to transport these things to Qingshui County by land, you will have to take a long detour.

So he allocated another sum of money to Han Yong and asked him to continue purchasing ships to meet subsequent transportation needs.

He also confirmed the identity of the count from William's words, he must be a vampire.

The reason was naturally that the earl William mentioned had a pale face, but spoke with full energy, and he agreed to Jiang Li's request to trade with ordinary horses.

You have to know that Jiang Li's horses are just ordinary horses. Apart from having taken the blood mushroom, they have no other advantages.

Therefore, the earl was willing to trade guns and industrial production lines with him only because of the residual medicinal power of the blood mushrooms in these horses.

After confirming this, Jiang Li not only did not feel the slightest bit of aversion to the vampire lord, but instead looked forward to working more deeply with him.

With the help of this guy, we got a lot of technology and completed industrialization quickly.

But at this time, Jiang Li didn't have time to pay attention to these things, because he and Chen Xueming had been arguing for more than two months.

At this time, the regular army had a total of 12,000 people, and nearly 2,000 new recruits were being trained.

During this period, he used the Lee Enfield rifles produced by the arsenal, combined with previously retained and purchased machine guns, cannons, and motorcycles, to form another three British-equipped infantry regiments.

Those bullet production lines are also running at full capacity, and now we have a strong army and sufficient ammunition.

However, Chen Xueming was constantly consuming weapons, ammunition and manpower under the attack of him and Ma Baoguo.

Just two days ago, Ma Baoguo sent someone to ask Jiang Li to join forces, and the two sides cooperated to capture Chen Xueming in one fell swoop.

After reading Ma Baoguo's handwritten letter, Jiang Li agreed without any hesitation. He was also tired of wasting so much time.

But he also knew that his military strength was smaller than that of both sides, so he must not be the first to take action, lest he be bought by Ma Baoguo and end up fighting with Chen Xueming.

Fortunately, there were few of them, and Ma Baoguo did not ask Jiang Li to travel hundreds of miles to support him from the front battlefield.

Instead, he wanted him to attack Chen Xueming from the rear while they were fighting, forcing him to split his troops and return to defend, giving him the opportunity to defeat Chen Xueming in one fell swoop.

So now Jiang Li has to gather the troops and wait until the frontal battle starts so that he can stab Chen Xueming from behind.

His target this time was the one he had previously explored, located on the edge of Qinghe County, another direction where Chen Xueming might launch a large-scale attack.