Chapter 9: Selecting Troops (1)

  Chapter 9: Picking Troops (1)

  In recent days, in order to recover his body more quickly, Wang Changhu and Liu Xinyu had indulged in carnal pleasures to their heart's content. Finally, Liu Xinyu could no longer bear Wang Changhu's insatiable demands and suggested that he take Liu Xinyi instead. Wang Changhu was overjoyed at the suggestion, and for Liu Xinyi, it also meant an end to the nightly torment of being called upon.

  Wang Changhu's injuries healed quickly, and three days later, except for the gunshot wound that still affected his arm's full strength, all other injuries had recovered. His height also grew to 1.78 meters. His skills returned to the level of when he was 21 or 22 years old, but he still had a baby face.

  The two girls were now also charming young women with a captivating charm that made the guards at the door drool sometimes. One time, Wang Changhu asked the sisters, "How old are you?" Liu Xinyu glared at him, "How old? You've been touching us for several days and still don't know how old we are, you idiot!" Wang Changhu was speechless, and immediately corrected his question to ask about their age. Liu Xinyi told him that the sisters were both 17 years old this year. Wang Changhu nodded and thought to himself: Women in the old society grew up so maturely, at 17 or 18 they looked like they were 23 or 24, probably due to practicing martial arts all year round...

  On the fourth day, Wang Changhu called the Young Marshal's residence from Liu Xinyu's home and made an appointment to meet with the Young Marshal at a certain time. He was prepared to come up with a plan for selecting troops. The Young Marshal's residence informed him that he would go there tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock to discuss it with the Young Marshal. Wang Changhu was delighted: It's settled, first I need to establish a selection procedure on my side, and after spending a day working on it, he came up with a fairly satisfactory set of conditions for selecting troops.

  Article 1: Knows how to read and write.

  Know how to ride a horse:

  Article 3: The score of the long and short gun shall not be less than 45 rings for five rounds at a distance of one hundred meters; this condition is a bit high, but Wang Changhu doesn't think so, tens of millions of people can still pick out five or six hundred people.

  Article 4: Those with exceptional martial arts skills;

  Article 5: Special Talents: Piloting aircraft, tank operation, driving cars, telegraphy, locksmithing, trap setting, intelligence gathering, artillery and so on.

  Article 6: Those with good physical strength - carrying a load of 50 kilograms and running 10 kilometers ahead.

  Article 7: The winner of the competition shall be determined by a sudden-death playoff.

  Article 8: Be good at doing business;

  Article 9: Those who can speak Japanese;

  Article 10: Graduated from regular military school;

  After a busy day, Wang Changhu was very satisfied with his achievements and called the second sister to find a few people to write in big character posters with brushes, wrote dozens of them, dried them, rolled them up for use tomorrow.

  After finishing all these things, he thought there was nothing very important and went to find his second sister to heal his wounds.

  On the fifth day, which was March 17th, 1929 of the Republic of China calendar, Wang Changhu embarked on a perilous journey through this world.

  Wang Changhu entered the office of Shao Shuai, who was working and saw Wang Changhu come in. Shao Shuai smiled and stood up: "Tiger has arrived, is your injury healed?"

  Wang Changhu "slapped" into attention: "Reporting to Young Marshal, the wound has fully recovered. Today I'm here to recruit soldiers."

  Young Marshal walked up to Wang Changtian: "Ah, kid's grown up, great! Now you look like a soldier, not a little brat anymore."

  He finished speaking and poked Wang Changhu's chest with his fist.

  The young marshal pulled Wang Changhu to Changsha and sat down with him, asking: "Tell me, what do you think about this time's troop selection?"

  Wang Changhu "pa" stood up: "I think..." Shao Shuai interrupted him: "Sit down and talk."

  "Yes." Wang Changhu sat down and continued, "I plan to select the entire army according to the conditions I have listed, and after selecting all of them, conduct six months of special training. After completing the training, engage in actual combat. If possible, moderately expand the army, then assemble for another three months of training, striving to establish the army by the second half of 2000. The plan is temporarily just this much."

  "Ah, and there's also the condition for selecting soldiers, bring it out if you have it, let me take a look."

  Wang Changhu handed over a "Ten Standards for Selecting Soldiers" to the young marshal, who took it and looked at it for a while before saying: "Isn't this 'Ten Standards' set too high? Some of it is unrealistic."

  Wang Changhu's heart skipped a beat: "No way, how can General Shao's troops have tens of millions, and not be able to pick out just 500 people?!"

  Young Marshal smiled wryly and said, "I can tell you for sure that the 500 men you want are not available here. Not just me, but even if all the warlords in the country, including Commander Chiang, were to pool their resources together, they still wouldn't be able to come up with the number of men you're asking for."

  Wang Changhu let out an "ah" and was immediately stunned;

  Shao Shuai started counting on his fingers with Wang Changhu: "Look at your first point, you can recognize characters. Nowadays, which soldier can recognize characters? In our army, there are not even a dozen generals who can recognize characters, let alone low-ranking soldiers; the second point is fine, this is no problem;

  Article 3, you see how big the tone is, a hundred meters away five bullets forty-five rings, this requirement is simply nonsense, if there are such soldiers, I want as many as I want; Article 4 This difficulty is not great either, after all, being a soldier for a while, there is still some skill, but wanting five hundred people also has some difficulty.

  Wang Changhu's face twitched as he listened. He rubbed his cheeks with both hands and said to Shao Shuai, "Then how do you fight?"

  Young Marshal said: "My Northeast Army is well-equipped, and during battles, there are also planes and artillery. When encountering difficulties in battle, we can use equipment to make up for it. If it were other warlords, they would have to use human lives to make up for it, especially the Northwest Army, which wields big knives fiercely."

  Wang Changhu scratched his head: "If it's really impossible, let's distribute this condition and see if anyone signs up before making a decision."

  The young marshal waved his hand: "No need, I'll call Captain Liu over and let him take a look at the conditions. He knows more about the Northeast Army than I do, except for the air force, all other troops have to go through his department after enlistment, so he will give you a satisfactory answer after seeing your conditions."

  Wang Changhu was still thinking about the knife on his bedside table. The situation was forcing him, so he could only reluctantly nod: "Okay."

  Then, the young marshal's men brought Liu to see him, and showed him the conditions for selecting soldiers. Officer Liu shook his head as he read through them, occasionally using his fingers to calculate something, which made Wang Changhu's heart feel uncertain.

  Commander Liu thought for a moment and said to the young marshal: "The most difficult ones here are the first, fifth, and ninth items. If you can help solve these, the others won't be a problem."

  "How can it be solved?" asked General Shao.

  Liu said: "I think these are all cultural and technical things. If the soldiers are selected, they can be trained intensively."

  The young marshal walked around the room, seemingly about to make a major decision. Suddenly, he walked over to the table and slapped it, saying: "Alright! But we can make it bigger. We'll set the number of trainees at 2,500 people. After Tiger selects 500 people, the whole army will select 2,000 people. The name will be under the Northeastern Martial Arts Academy's short-term training class. After completing their studies, they will return to their original unit and be promoted one level."

  "Alright, but there are a few issues here that need to be taken into consideration," said Instructor Liu.

  "What's wrong?"

  Liu said: "The first question is the person Tiger wants, I can make some effort to gather them, so the people he chooses are not included in the army's selection."

  "Shao Shuai and Wang Changhu exclaimed in unison: 'What?!'"

  Liu said with a smile: "Indeed, there is a group of people who basically meet Tuzi's conditions."

  Shao Shuai said to Instructor Liu: "I didn't know."

  "Commander Liu said to the young marshal, "You know, but you just don't usually pay attention to them." After finishing speaking, he started whispering in the young marshal's ear. The two of them burst out laughing at the same time. The young marshal said, "Alright, alright! I didn't expect that my subordinates would be so talented. Tiger, your wish will soon come true!"

  Wang Changhu looked at the two people with a very strange smile, and his heart was somewhat nervous. However, in order not to lose face, he still emphasized: "Since there is such a batch of people, I think you should not compete with me. This batch of people has as many as I want, and I also want to implement an elimination system."

  Shao Shuai and Liu Jiao exchanged a glance, then burst out laughing. Wang Changhu didn't know what they were laughing at, but instead lazily ignored them.

  "Secondly, when these people come out together to study and establish a number, what is this number called and who will be the leader of these people?"

  Shao Shuai thought for a moment and said, "I think we'll just call it the Northeast Border Defense Military Instructional General Corps. I'll be the commander of this corps, and Hu Zi will be the deputy commander. Let's make Hu Zi a lieutenant colonel."

  After he finished speaking, he looked at Hu Zi and saw that Hu Zi had no opinion on this matter, so it was settled.

  Director Liu said a third question: "This training is on a large scale and the cost is huge, did General Shao ask Hu Zi to pay some training fees?"

  Wang Changhu immediately refused: "Why should my people pay for training, and after they're trained, aren't they still serving the Northeast? If you take money from them, how will others look at it?"

  The young officer looked at Instructor Liu in confusion; Instructor Liu smiled mysteriously: "If you don't have money, we can solve this problem in another way. There are too many people in this batch, and the teachers are relatively scarce. As long as you consider teaching the students, we won't charge you."

  The young marshal suddenly enlightened, gave a thumbs up to Instructor Liu.

  This matter Wang Changtiger definitely cannot agree to, he doesn't want to take on the role of instructor, in case the Northeast Army enters the pass and fights with the Red Army, and their tactical skills improve too quickly, causing heavy losses for the Red Army, then he would become a criminal. However, if it's about money, it must be a large sum, this money is taken somewhat unjustly, even if taken, it can't be taken in vain. Having made up his mind, he said to the two old foxes: "Taking money is no problem, you see how much per person is suitable, also, I won't take this money for nothing, I plan to include the fourth and seventh items of the recruitment rules into the training content, what do you think? Also, I don't have money now, after half a year of training, when we start actual combat, that's when I can pay you."

  Just as Xiao Shuai was about to nod in agreement, he saw Instructor Liu wink at him. This scene caught Wang Changhu off guard, and he silently cursed Instructor Liu: Old stick, I'll get you back for this.

  "Captain Liu scratched his head: "It's hard to get things done without money now! The factory is going to relocate, the family members need to be arranged, and Young Marshal's days are not easy either. If Young Marshal is not doing well, he will pay less attention to training matters, which will inevitably affect the quality of this batch of trainees. I think Colonel Wang Changhu is taking other trainees with him during actual combat, so that they can also gain experience."

  Wang Changhu immediately asked about the female ancestors of Officer Liu's family for eighteen generations.

  If there weren't these two thousand people, Wang Changhu's five hundred men would come and go like the wind in the Northeast, freely roaming wherever they pleased; even if they dispersed and acted separately, it would be easy. But with the addition of two thousand, the scale of battle, marching, supplies, expansion, etc. would all be affected. Especially when looting large households, bringing two thousand people is not that simple! The difference in impact between dozens of people doing banditry and thousands of people doing banditry is too great. The key is that these people will eventually return to their original unit in Wang Changhu's eyes. If they learn his combat skills, it would be very bad; because those combat skills are the result of the People's Army's thousand hammerings and hundred refinements from the original world. If two thousand people were to learn them, even if only a little bit, Wang Changhu feels it is very dangerous: what if someone learns them and uses them against the Red Army, expanding their gains... just thinking about it makes Wang Changhu feel fearful.

  Talk is cheap, it's action that matters.

  Wang Changhu said, "In the real battle in the entire Northeast, I think these two thousand people don't need to participate. If it's really not possible, next year's Central Plains War, I'll take them to fight against the autumn wind, can that be okay?"

  The young general and Captain Liu exchanged a glance, smiled wryly at each other, and could only accept it as it was.

  After making various arrangements, General Shao told Wang Changhu that he would send a car to pick him up tomorrow to go to Beidaying to select soldiers, and Wang Changhu took his leave.

  "Sorry, Young Marshal," said Instructor Liu, "but it looks like you've been outmaneuvered."

  Young Marshal said, "If we are not of the same family, we do not enter the same gate; it is right for you to think of him, but what I value more is that you want to leave some bloodline for my Northeastern Army." As he spoke, Young Marshal bowed deeply to Instructor Liu.

  Officer Liu hastily supported General Shao and said: "I've done everything for the gang, whether it's a mule or a horse depends on this little guy."

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