Chapter 671 - The Target
"To the villages." Hu Lanyan nodded slowly. He had heard plenty about how fearsome the bald bandits' "going to the villages" was from bandits who had joined them after fleeing other gangs.
They all knew the bald bandits placed enormous emphasis on "going to the villages." Back in Lingao, everyone had heard of "work teams"—parties of soldiers escorting small groups that penetrated deep into wilderness and remote corners. Some went to villages to gather intelligence, establish camps, and train militia. Others climbed peaks and traversed ridges, making detailed maps of mountains and rivers while collecting various rock and plant specimens. These unassuming small parties were like spiders spinning webs in all directions, ultimately enmeshing all of Lingao in their strands, killing all who refused to submit and forcing everyone else to obey.
"The Australians are foreigners—so why were they able to establish themselves in Lingao?" Gou Xunli brushed taro skin from his hands. "The most critical factor was 'going to the villages.' Stay in the county seat with countless troops, and you still can't know what's happening in the countryside. But once they go to the villages and establish a foothold in rural areas, naturally people start feeding them information."
Hu Lanyan nodded. "Brother speaks true. But what should we do about it?"
"What to do?" Gou Xunli's voice turned vicious. "When a party comes, we slaughter it. Make sure their work teams go to the villages and never come back!"
"The bald bandits have powerful firearms—if our men try to kill them, we're just throwing our lives away." Hu Lanyan looked greatly alarmed. He had never faced the bald bandits directly, but he had heard plenty from others. Generally speaking, rumors were far more terrifying than reality.
"I'll think of a way." Gou Xunli considered for a moment. "Summon Xin Nari."
Xin Nari had barely escaped with his life from the ambush at Daolu Village. After wandering through the wilds for what felt like an eternity, encountering Hu Lanyan's men had finally given him a place to belong.
The Australians had shattered his nerve completely. Among the ranks, whenever someone mentioned Australians, he would eagerly embellish tales of their might—how they appeared and disappeared like ghosts, how terrifyingly powerful their firearms were.
When he heard that Gou Xunli planned to specifically target village work teams, he felt a jolt of alarm. This was exactly what Dang Nagi's remnants had thought. Their inside-outside coordination scheme had been meticulously planned, yet they had stumbled into an ambush they never understood and been annihilated completely. Even his sister had been captured by the bald bandits.
"Second Master!" Xin Nari spoke cautiously. "Work teams may have few men, but they've got thirty or forty, and every single one carries an Australian musket. Face to face, we're no match."
Gou Xunli's eyes glittered dangerously. "Who said anything about face to face? We play dirty."
Xin Nari thought privately that they had played plenty dirty back then, and still couldn't beat the Australians—in fact, they had lost their remaining men and even his sister.
But at this moment, Xin Nari didn't dare show weakness, lest this ruthless Second Master Gou mark him down for later punishment. He was a career bandit from Lingao who knew something of Second Master Gou's infamous reputation in both underworld and respectable circles, and he was quite wary of him. Besides, Second Master Gou was now the gang's second-in-command—far above his own lowly station.
"All according to Second Master's brilliant scheme..."
"Cut the empty talk," Gou Er said impatiently. "You've dealt with their work teams before. Come—tell me the details."
"We're strangers here—coming out to the countryside is rather nerve-wracking," Wang Wu said, looking out at the pitch-black night with undisguised concern. As he spoke, he unconsciously touched his pistol holster, which contained the Lingao-version revolver.
Liu Dazhu was busy making grass sandals for himself and laughed carelessly. "Those who get a bit of money turn into cowards. We've got guns, thirty-plus people counting team members and soldiers. What clueless bandit gang would have the guts to come and die?"
Wang Wu felt a flush of embarrassment. "Well, that's true." He murmured. He wanted to object but felt the other man had a point. They were only ten li from the garrison at Danzhou city, and most bandit gangs had only a few dozen men—a hundred counted as a large gang. With guns, grenades, and a sturdy building for cover, any bandit foolish enough to raid their camp would be practically suicidal.
"You're exactly what Chief Du calls a 'petty proprietor with wavering revolutionary will'!" Liu Dazhu expertly dispensed the teachings he had swallowed whole from Du Wen. "Struggle against enemies involves all kinds of danger. If you're afraid of this and that, how can you possibly do the work?"
"Yes, you're right." Wang Wu couldn't match Liu Dazhu's fluency and could only agree awkwardly.
Both Wang Wu and Liu Dazhu hailed from Daolu Village. After the Thirteen Villages area had been pacified, the region became a pilot zone for "bringing the regime to the villages." Many people were absorbed into various local pilot organizations and training courses. One was the Village Cadre Training Course, which specifically trained grassroots rural cadres and village work-team members.
When Du Wen selected future village cadres, she preferred poor peasants, believing they approximated the proletariat and possessed genuine struggle consciousness. Liu Dazhu, the poorest peasant in Daolu Village, joined the training course. His motivation was simple: the Village Cadre Training Course provided free meals three times a day—something his family could never achieve on their own.
Though Liu Dazhu was poor, he was clever. With no property to manage, he quickly poured tremendous enthusiasm and time into this new career that let him eat his fill. He became an excellent student, earned a Class C diploma, and spent nearly all his waking hours at the cadre course, voraciously reading the various educational pamphlets printed by the Education Department. He rapidly became a "highly conscious" trainee, greatly valued by Du Wen.
Wang Wu was different. As a rich peasant with property and business interests, he had no intention whatsoever of becoming a "village cadre." But the transmigrators' bandit suppression had taught him a critical concept: property ultimately came from the barrel of a gun. When the Thirteen Villages Backbone Militia Company was organized, he immediately enlisted. Wang Wu proved very enthusiastic about defending the "new life." With plenty of family labor available to cover his absence, he devoted substantial time to militia organization and training, eventually becoming a militia squad leader.
"Summer Awakening" required large numbers of work-team cadres. Not only were all transmigrators willing to serve on work teams drafted, but many native cadres and students from Fragrant Garden and the communes were also conscripted to fill out the ranks. Wang Wu and Liu Dazhu were drafted into the Danzhou Work Team under precisely these circumstances.
Once Liu Yixiao had established a preliminary foothold in Danzhou and built up the liaison officer system, he divided his work-team members into numerous small parties. Each work team consisted of seven or eight native cadres and students, plus an infantry platoon as a guard force. Following the principle of near-first, far-later, they would expand village by village until village-level regimes were established throughout all of Danzhou's territory.
The work team assigned to Wang Wu and Liu Dazhu had arrived at Zhaopu Village, a settlement more than ten li outside Danzhou city.
It was a small village—just over thirty households. Though not far from the prefectural city, the terrain was quite rugged, requiring half a day's walk on foot. The route passed through nothing but wilderness; the surrounding environment was desolate indeed.
The villagers farmed the land at the mountain's base for their livelihood and had also cleared some terraced fields higher up. Water sources were scarce; farming depended entirely on rain. The people lived in great hardship—though of course, this was the norm for rural areas in this timeline, nothing particularly unusual.
Because they were poor, there were no wealthy-peasant-level households locally. It was a desperately poor village through and through. Its selection as a first-priority target for "bringing the regime to the villages" was partly because it was nearby, but mainly because of its poverty.
Poverty breeds desire for change. Such villages held little appeal for ambitious young people. And poverty meant that small amounts of material incentive could satisfy people. The work team could easily cultivate the first batch of usable personnel among the local population. A portion of the large quantities of grain and cloth from Danzhou's granaries had been locally allocated to Liu Yixiao for current operational expenses.
After the Zhaopu Village work team arrived, they began work according to the procedures laid out in the Work Manual. The division of labor was clear: Liu Dazhu was responsible for "village administration"; Wang Wu for "militia." Liu Dazhu's clan niece, a women's training graduate named Liu Bing, was responsible for youth and women's work.
The work team surveyed local conditions and distributed some grain and supplies, providing relief to the poorest families. They convened a meeting of household heads. When the people discussed local conditions, the dominant theme was, unsurprisingly, "poverty."
The village barely produced enough grain for subsistence. With poor transportation, essential consumer goods like salt, cloth, and iron tools had to be brought in from outside, making them prohibitively expensive and leaving the people even more impoverished.
Bandit problems weren't severe here—apparently the area was too poor and too remote for even bandits to bother with. Wang Wu paid careful attention to whether any locals had become bandits themselves. After checking through various channels, he found none.
Liu Dazhu took guards to tour the village and its surroundings. He was no stranger to farming, but here there was little flat land and much mountainside—completely different from Daolu Village.
"We need the Tiandihui to come," he murmured to himself. He decided to add this observation to his report.
That evening, they held a meeting and wrote their reports by gaslight.
"There's surplus young, able-bodied labor here—they could absolutely be absorbed as the first recruits for the Danzhou Garrison Company."
"I tentatively tested their interest. Quite a few are willing. We could send at least twenty soldiers. That's practically one adult male per household."
"Then won't the local militia have no one left?"
"A village this small, everyone able-bodied is naturally militia. The remaining men can still form a militia platoon."
"How's the Azure-Blue Plan going?"
The "Azure-Blue Plan" was the transmigrator regime's special program for taking in orphans from occupied territories—an important metric for work-team performance evaluation. To make his team's intake numbers look good, Liu Dazhu had been vigorously persuading particularly poor multi-child families to hand over their underage children to the work team for transport to Lingao for upbringing. This practice wasn't against regulations—in fact, it was actively encouraged. The Education Department welcomed more children falling into their hands, to be molded into a generation of "new people."