Southern guerrilla warfare: I led the Red Seventh Army Corps to amassed a million troops.

The team stayed in Youxi for two days. When the political commissar Le Da, who was addicted to raiding houses, was about to leave, he looked at the county town that had just been "baptized" and felt that he had not had enough.

Zhou Zeyuan wasn't entirely sure how much money and valuables were seized during these two large-scale raids, but he knew that the Legion Headquarters had specially formed an enhanced supply company for this purpose.

Only a portion of the company consisted of traditional logistics and transportation personnel; the majority were elite soldiers drawn from various divisions who were politically absolutely loyal and possessed outstanding military skills.

Equipped with the best weapons, they are specifically responsible for escorting and protecting this vital "family fortune".

This risk-free business is addictive, but others won't tolerate it.

If each time a county was captured, it would take several days to stay and launch a large-scale mass movement, then even without the Kuomintang army's encirclement and suppression, the mission to march north would definitely not have been completed.

Time is their most precious and scarce resource.

In the past two days, Su Yu has sorted out more than 400 guns of various types and donated them to the local armed forces of the Youxi County Party Committee.

In return, the local county committee leveraged its strong grassroots support and quickly mobilized over 500 able-bodied young men, many of whom were deeply resentful and had suffered greatly, to join the army.

This is just the first batch. They promised to continue mobilizing, but the main force cannot move too fast, so that those who come later can catch up with the team.

However, the results in mobilizing prisoners of war were not ideal.

Lu Xingbang's troops were plagued by a lack of discipline, especially his guard battalion, which committed numerous atrocities in oppressing the people and harming the innocent.

More than half of these prisoners were executed at the subsequent trial organized by the Political Department.

The remaining half were also terrified by this situation. Even though Zhou Zeyuan personally stepped forward and talked himself hoarse, he only managed to mobilize about three hundred people to join the Red Army.

A secondary reason was that Le Shaohua interfered, intentionally or unintentionally setting extremely strict standards for the trial.

Anyone who committed a slightly serious offense or was suspected of oppressing the people was often sentenced to death without a thorough investigation.

This time, however, he raised the banner of "eliminating harm for the people" and used the accumulated public anger of the people in central and northern Fujian to silence all those who held different opinions, including Zhou Zeyuan.

Zhou Zeyuan weighed the options in his mind. In exchange for a wave of solid public support, he could consolidate the grassroots foundation in the newly developed area. At the same time, he could deter potential hostile forces. In the long run, it didn't seem like a bad deal.

In any case, in the short term, there is not a particular shortage of soldiers by confiscating the wealth of the rich and recruiting new soldiers. Reducing the number of prisoners of war with complicated thoughts by converting a few hundred prisoners of war may make the army purer and easier to manage.

In the attack on Youxi County, the Seventh Red Army Corps suffered more than 100 casualties and more than 400 wounded.

The newly added 300 converted prisoners and 500 recruits not only completely filled the gap in combat losses, but also had a considerable surplus.

Of the 400 wounded, more than half were too badly injured to keep up with the troops on the long march and were settled locally, where they were cared for by the county committee and reliable local people.

In the period that followed, after the two hundred wounded soldiers recovered, the armed forces of Youxi experienced a qualitative leap.

Two hundred veteran soldiers of the regular army, tempered by blood and fire, along with the weapons left behind by the Seventh Red Army Corps, utterly defeated the newly formed security regiment, and even frightened the security regiments of neighboring counties into not daring to show their faces.

For a period of time afterward, the Seventh Red Army Corps was like a highly efficient "seed planter" and "catalyst".

Wherever they passed, they would help the local guerrillas defeat some Kuomintang troops or militias, whenever possible.

Transfer some of the weapons and equipment that the troops no longer need, leave a small number of wounded soldiers as the backbone, and then recruit a batch of new soldiers from the local area to supplement them.

The resulting positive cycle of "combat - capture - arming local forces - replenishing new recruits - fighting again" enabled the northward anti-Japanese vanguard to grow stronger like a snowball.

Meanwhile, wherever they went, guerrilla forces in various places rapidly grew stronger, and along the route taken by the advance team, a discontinuous guerrilla zone was vaguely formed.

Some well-established local armed forces, such as those in Youxi County, have even established small guerrilla bases.

In the past two days, Zhou Zeyuan not only carried out the training of his troops, but he also sent out his regiment, which had already achieved standardization of its language, to capture Zhanghuban to the north.

There was indeed a regiment of soldiers in the area, but after Lu Xingbang fled Youxi County, he quickly ordered them to preserve their strength.

He was indeed very angry and wanted to organize a counterattack to take back everything he had lost!

But as long as you think about it, anyone who's been out in the world knows that if you lose, you have to admit it, and if you get beaten up, you have to stand up straight!

If he can't win, he can't win. The reinforcements promised by the Central Army won't arrive anytime soon. If he insists on going head-on, he'll be utterly wiped out!

As a result, the soldiers of the regiment marched towards the Minjiang River with great enthusiasm, only to encounter a company of old, weak, sick, and disabled soldiers.

After a volley of gunfire, the situation collapsed. Dozens of prisoners were captured, and of the guns seized, only a dozen or so were intact.

Therefore, before the troops marched north to the Minjiang River, Zhou Zeyuan had already completed the heavy responsibility of being the vanguard, clearing the roads, occupying the ferry crossings, and collecting boats.

After the Battle of Youxi, the weaponry of the entire Seventh Red Army Corps was greatly improved. It had a total of about 7800 rifles and pistols, plus more than 200 light and heavy machine guns, including 36 heavy machine guns and 50 80mm mortars.

The number of soldiers was 11300, a slight increase compared to when they were in Daejeon County, and the overall armed force rate reached 70%.

Ammunition reserves remain a concern; even with this latest capture, the entire legion has only 450,000 rounds of ammunition.

This was certainly above the average level of the Red Army, but in the eyes of Zhou Zeyuan, who suffered from severe firepower deficiency phobia, it was merely a transition from extreme poverty to poverty.

It should be noted that a standard load of rifles in the National Revolutionary Army consisted of sixty rounds of ammunition, although many soldiers might not carry a full load of ammunition when they went out.

But the other side had a constant supply of reinforcements, while the Northern Expeditionary Anti-Japanese Vanguard could only rely on captured supplies.

"It seems that after crossing the Minjiang River, we'll have to find a way to get some more weapons and ammunition." Zhou Zeyuan thought to himself as he looked at the Minjiang River flowing eastward.

With this in mind, on the morning of July 26, Zhou Zeyuan led the 7th Division of the Red Army as the vanguard of the entire army and took the lead in crossing the Minjiang River.

But who would have thought that his flapping of the butterfly's wings, while saving the Red Army from some losses, also caused some ripples prematurely because of the commotion it made.

On land, the Nationalist army was constrained by the complex mountainous terrain in central and northern Fujian, as well as the fact that the main force of the Eastern Route Army was tied down by the Ninth Red Army Corps and other troops were slow to move. Therefore, it was indeed impossible for them to gather a large force to encircle and suppress the enemy in the short term.

However, the vast sky is not hindered by this.

After crossing the river, the troops continued northward along the road on the north bank, heading straight for Gutian County.

(The Gutian County mentioned here refers to Gutian County in Ningde City, not Gutian Town in Shanghang County, where the Gutian Conference took place.)