Chapter 49

  Seeing Lao Ba Lu really wanting to leave, Er Gou Zi also didn't want to say anything more. Every family has its own affairs.

  Finally, Li Tie suggested supplementing the old Eighth Route Army with some weapons and ammunition, saying that it's not easy to come all the way, originally wanted to send some over but the road is too far, and now he himself has a camp full of wounded soldiers, doesn't have many men available, since they've already come, might as well bring some back casually.

  Lao Ba Lu was thrilled to hear that he would be receiving some ammunition for himself, but he didn't hold out much hope. After all, this kind of thing happened often, and every time someone asked for help, they just went through the motions. Many times, a few hundred rounds of bullets and a few dozen hand grenades were enough to get rid of them, and if there were a few hundred hand grenades, he would be secretly delighted.

  Li Tie brought Lao Ba Lu to the front of the arsenal and opened a warehouse door, letting Lao Ba Lu choose for himself.

  Looking at the mountainous supplies in the arsenal, Old Eighth Route was stunned. When had he ever seen so many weapons and ammunition? Even if they piled up all the weapons of the entire regiment together, there wouldn't be this many.

  Seeing Lao Ba Lu standing there, he looked like Liu Laolao entering the Grand View Garden. Li Tie smiled secretly at him, then lightly touched him and nodded towards the weapons. Lao Ba Lu smiled foolishly, embarrassed, and scratched his head, going to touch the heavy machine gun, then touching the small cannon, wanting this and that, but he knew he couldn't be too greedy, as he hadn't been of much help this time. So he was really indecisive there.

  Seeing Lao Baru like this, Li Tie secretly smiled. In the end, he couldn't bear to see Lao Baru suffering there, so he said to him: "I think we should do it this way, throw away all the weapons you can't use, and then equip yourselves with the weapons here. According to the standard configuration of two light machine guns per squad, one heavy machine gun per company, and two grenade launchers, choose the insufficient weapons from here, each person has 200 rounds of rifle bullets, 2,000 rounds of machine gun bullets, and eight hand grenades per person, how about it?"

  "Good, good, good, medium, medium, medium". Old Eighth Route didn't know what to say anymore, his mind only had one thought: this time it was worth coming, he got rich. We usually fire only a few bullets at a time, but because we came to help the friendly army this time, each of us fired five more bullets. Here's the good part - everyone gets 200 rounds, what a thrill! Got rich, got really rich!

  When Old Eighth Route finished equipping, Li Tie went to the medical team and gathered a small package of ordinary anti-inflammatory drugs and bandages, adding fifty penicillin tablets, and gave them to Old Eighth Route. Seeing these medicines that were more precious than gold being given away for free, Old Eighth Route was moved to tears, thinking "What a good person! What a kind person! If only I had such a son-in-law, it would be great!" Unfortunately, he didn't even have a daughter, let alone a wife, and didn't know where they were.

  After seeing off the old Eighth Route Army, everyone sat down to study specific issues after this big war.

  The primary problem is personnel. Currently, each company is undermanned, and there are often too many wounded soldiers. How to replenish troops and the training after replenishment both require time.

  There is another important issue, that is to suspect that there may be a traitor in the base all along, who it is has not been found out yet, need to investigate and find this guy and get rid of him.

  Now it's about the construction of the base. After this battle, some problems with the base have emerged. It has been managed for so long, but was attacked by the enemy in just two days and reached its old nest. This is a great shame and must be carefully reflected upon and corrected.

  Finally, the task of investigating internal traitors fell on Li Tie's head again. Thus, Li Tie became the first public security chief of the base area, although he had not been formally appointed, but that was what it meant.

  After fleeing back to the garrison, Ban Tian became more and more angry. A small detachment of the Eighth Route Army, with only a few hundred people, had actually annihilated his artillery company and even seized all nine cars he had borrowed from others. How could he explain this to others? How could he return the borrowed cars?

  Sitting in the office, Itai was getting more and more anxious and angry. He smashed everything that could be smashed, threw all the documents everywhere, scolded whoever he caught, and beat up whoever he met, like a mad dog. Since his return, no one who had entered his office had been spared, with at least two slaps in the face being the minimum punishment. As for being scolded, that was nothing - Itai's every sentence seemed to contain words like "stupid pig" and "good-for-nothing".

  The white fox's intelligence was too vague, and he didn't even find out about the Eighth Route Army's mountain base. As a result, he fell flat on his face at the mountain base. Now not only is Itami angry with him, but all the devils and puppet troops are also cursing his ancestors and all the women in his family, all because his intelligence was inaccurate, causing them to suffer.

  Originally, after receiving the intelligence from the White Fox, Itoda thought that bringing the entire artillery company and going to annihilate a small detachment of the Eighth Route Army would be an extremely easy task. So he borrowed several cars from friendly forces, first to transport ammunition, and second to haul some spoils after the battle was over. Who knew that no spoils were hauled, but instead the cars were given to the Eighth Route Army. It's really a case of losing rice while trying to steal chickens, losing a big handful of rice.

  Itan was like a mad dog in the office, biting anyone he could catch, while Li Tie was sizing up everyone at the base, trying to confirm through his actions whether or not there was an internal traitor.

  Usually, Li Tie would wander around the base, carefully sizing up everyone around him. His cold gaze made people feel a chill, and those with weaker nerves would directly experience a cold sweat, forget what they were doing, and even forget how to walk until Li Tie had left for a long time. This kind of gaze was really too cold. At that time, all the people in the base feared Li Tie more than they feared the enemy, as some people said: "When the enemy comes, you can run, but if Li Tie looks at you, you can't even run." Therefore, in Li Tie's eyes, everyone in the base was suspected of being a traitor. If it weren't for his own conscience knowing this was impossible, he would have started ordering arrests.

  After several days passed, nothing was found. Er Gouzi, the captain, couldn't bear it anymore. If things continued like this, not only would they fail to catch the traitor, but their own people would also be frightened out of their wits. It wouldn't even take another raid by the devils for them to collapse on their own.

  He called Lǐ Tiě over and said with deep emotion:

  "Little Li, this is a long-term task of finding the internal traitor, it's not something that can be settled in a short time. You need to pay attention to the method and conduct it secretly. After all, the enemy is in the dark, we are in the light. As the saying goes, 'it's easy to dodge an open spear, but hard to defend against a hidden arrow'. Since the enemy is hiding in the dark, why don't we also take action from the dark to counter them with darkness?"

  Li Tie felt a kind of baptism by fire from Er Gou's words, realizing he was still too tender and had only been thinking about finding the traitor quickly, relying on his own experience of several decades to make judgments. It seems he was wrong and needs to improve and pay attention to his methods in the future.

  He suddenly thought of a method and whispered it in Er Gou's ear, making the team leader nod straight away. Then they set off separately.

  As the autumn harvest has ended, there is still a relatively sufficient supply of grain in the area. However, this sufficiency is only relative and can only guarantee enough food to eat one's fill. When the troops first arrived here, they mainly ate white rice, with millet being eaten less frequently, let alone other coarse grains which were eaten even less often. Clearly, for long-term considerations, such a lifestyle cannot be sustained for an extended period of time. To establish a foothold in the local area, one must rely on the local grain supply, primarily these coarse grains.

  The Second Dog Brigade Commander, in accordance with the actual situation on the base, unified the management of the troops' food, so all the regiments had to be roughly matched, and it was impossible to only eat fine grains.

  Li Tie was used to eating white rice and noodles, saying that he only ate coarse grains for one or two meals, it's not impossible, after all, there is still a fresh period, but often eating, that's not okay, in his own words, that is, he himself is in the stage of growing up, only eating coarse grains will affect physical and mental development.

  As soon as the captain issued this order, he directly did not say a word. Although he didn't get up and leave, from his face, it can be seen that he won't thoroughly execute this order. Other comrades loudly responded with "yes", but he remained silent.

  The meeting dispersed, he didn't even raise his head and turned around to leave, directly summoning the soldiers back to the mountain cave base.

  Because the devils destroyed the entrance, and the battalion didn't have foreign ash, also known as cement now, they just cleaned up the entrance a bit and didn't do any further repairs. According to Li Tie's idea, it was to wait until later when they got foreign ash to build it well. So this matter was temporarily put aside.

  Although I didn't want to eat coarse grains, the production team still distributed them according to the number of people, and as a result, the amount of fine grains was greatly reduced.

  No matter what, first finish the fine grains, and then think about how to spend the remaining days? Only coarse grains are left, ordinary soldiers don't have a problem, in the past they couldn't even eat rice, let alone fine grains. Now there's both coarse and fine, after finishing the fine grains, eating coarse grains doesn't feel like anything, but Li Tie can't do it, his mouth is picky, without fine grains, how can he live?

  He ate the sorghum rice with a careless air, muttering to himself and boasting to the militiamen beside him about his own merits. "If it weren't for me," he said, "would you be able to eat fine rice and white flour? Now that we've crossed the river and torn down the bridge, I'm left to eat this coarse grain. It's as if they're intentionally making things hard for me. They know I'm not used to eating this stuff, but they still make me eat it. It's really unbearable."