Two days later, Zhao Gang bid farewell to his father-in-law and returned to Liaoyang. Because Zhao Gang does not have a fixed residence now, and it is very dangerous to suppress the bandits, it is difficult to bring his family. Yunlan and Mei had to live in Dandong first, and then move over to live with him after Zhao Gang's bandits were finished suppressing the bandits.

Just two days after arriving in Liaoyang, the imperial edict arrived. Zeng Yun and others knelt down to listen.

"Zeng Yun, the governor of Liaoyang." Zeng Yun looked solemn and listened with pride. "..., Gongzhong is in charge of the country. Zeng Yun was rewarded with the general of Shengjing." (Note that the general of Shengjing was the same as the governor, that is, the governor of Liaoning)

Next should be Zhao Gang's, and indeed, "Zhao Gang..., bravely annihilates the enemy. Zhao Gang rewards the commander of the invaders and temporarily serves as the inspector of Shengjing East Road."

Everyone was envious, and Zhao Gang kowtowed and thanked him and began to prepare for the new army.

After Zhao Gang received the order, he began to make up his mind. The army of the Pangkou and the Eastern Road Inspection Commissioner had a total of 3,000 people. There were 6,000 taels of silver every month. The money was not small, and if you had a vacancy, you could still have tens of thousands of taels left every year.

However, Zhao Gang did not want to take the empty amount. On the contrary, Zhao Gang had to recruit more people. He organized three thousand people. He mixed the ones he had cheated and captured last time and expanded them into more than 7,500 people in eleven battalions, of which two thousand were occupied by the cavalry, led by Wu Junsheng. Although his combat effectiveness decreased significantly in a short period of time, he was still more than enough to deal with bandits.

The only thing that bothers Zhao Gang was the firearm problem. The weapons received were only 648, 23 bird guns, 67 guns, 217 guns, and 440 guns in total, 1448 guns in total, and scattered guns. There were still more than 100 guns in total, and more than 1600 guns. Moreover, most of these guns were damaged and eliminated, and most of them were firearms. Zhao Gang ordered people to count and found that there were thirteen models, and even the same models would have different calibers. Half of them could not be put when trying to put the guns.

80% of them cannot be shot far, and the good ones are only 200 shots. Zhao Gang had to report the situation to the new General Zeng Yun of Shengjing. Zeng Yun attached great importance to it and asked Zhao Gang to go to Shengjing Wubei Bureau to apply for a batch of foreign guns. The General Office of the Military Bureau saw that Zeng Yun's note was Zeng Yun's note, and gave Haqi Shi fast guns. Zhao Gang said that he would not give much, and in the end, Zhao Gang had to give the General Office 3,000 taels of silver. The General Officer saw the money and happily opened the door of the arsenal. The weapons were piled up like a mountain, and Mauser and the gun were mixed together, allowing Zhao Gang to choose, and there was only the same: "Don't shorten more than a thousand guns."

This gave Zhao Gang the chance to bring the gun in his hand and change it out. Unfortunately, there were too few good guns in the military warehouse. At least one thousand quick guns were obtained and they could not find the good gun. At this time, General Changshun of Jilin purchased 2,000 breech guns in Shanghai, and the Shenji Battalion drew 1,000 rifle guns, and the Navy Yamen allocated 1,000 good guns. A total of 4,000 good guns were temporarily stored in the military warehouse. Zhao Gang learned the news and reported to Zeng Yun. He intercepted 500 rifle guns in Haqiqi 500, and took away three boxes of the attached grenades.

After this trouble, Zhao Gang already had 2,100 rifles, 800 rifles, 600 Mauser rifles, and 600 Marin rifles. The rest did not have muskets, so he first equipped knives, spears, bows and arrows and other cold weapons. Finally, he looked like a modern army.

But in this case, there will be a loss of nearly 5,000 taels of silver every month. Zhao Gang's family is just the tens of thousands of taels of silver that were intercepted last time, and only tens of thousands of taels left after buying the horse. Although it is not a problem to support it for a year and a half, it is not a long-term solution after all.

Zhao Gang had no choice. Now he is just a patrol inspector. His official position is light and he has no way to make money except to suppress bandits. In addition, Zhao Gang had the idea of ​​selling horses, but when he thought of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Zhao Gang still bit the bullet and support him. After all, the land of Liaodong is flat and the world of cavalry. Once the Japanese army launches a large-scale attack, the role of cavalry is irreplaceable.

In order to save costs and to cover up the news, Zhao Gang led all his troops to Lianshan Pass outside Liaoyang City, and rebuilt a huge barracks on the basis of the original barracks. In order to avoid others knowing that he had recruited more people, Zhao Gang took half of his troops to take turns to suppress bandits every day, which seemed to be only two or three thousand.

After Zhao Gang's training for a few days, the team's combat effectiveness improved, and the bandits in Liaoyang were basically wiped out. The inspectors of the other three routes of Shengjing jointly invited Zhao Gang to jointly send troops to suppress the bandits.

Zhao Gang happily agreed that according to the agreed plan, the North Road Inspection Envoy advanced from Siping-Xifeng Line to the south, the South Road from Kangping-Zhangwu Line to the south, and the West Road from Kazuo-Huludao Line to the east, forming a large net that wrapped the bandits in the middle and drove them to the Lianshan Pass area of ​​Liaoyang. Zhao Gang, who was waiting for the battle, led the Pinggang army to form the bottom of this big pocket, and captured all the bandits in Shengjing in one fell swoop.

Zhao Gang believes that the feasibility is very low. Zhao Gang is very clear about the combat effectiveness of the bandits. Generally speaking, the individual combat effectiveness of the bandits is similar to that of the current officers and soldiers, and it is even better without considering the factors of weapons.

However, because of the lack of commanders, the fighting method is to fight alone, and there is no way to cooperate effectively, and the number of people is inversely proportional to combat effectiveness. Therefore, bandits have always performed poorly in siege battles, but bandits still performed very well in guerrilla warfare. Although this time, 10,000 people were used to pull the net, it seemed that there were a lot of people, but the area to be controlled was too long, and there were loopholes everywhere, and there were no effect at all.

Although he was not optimistic about the plan to pull the big network, Zhao Gang did not object. On the one hand, this plan was very beneficial to Zhao Gang, and he only needed to wait for his work at Lianshan Pass. If the bandits were trapped online, his new army would definitely get the greatest military achievements; on the other hand, if the bandits were not brought online, it had nothing to do with him, and that was the fault of the other three inspectors. Thinking of this, Zhao Gang agreed to this plan.

No matter how progress is, I have more than ten days to prepare for the battle. Zhao Gang took a break from his busy schedule and started a simple shooting training.

During this period, soldiers practice aiming every day. Because of the lack of ammunition (4,000 guns, only 200,000 bullets), the soldiers had to get the gun and train for empty bullets. Every Monday, one person shot two rounds on average, and the consuming of about 10,000 bullets. After intensive training, the hit rate of the new recruits increased significantly. The average score of two bullets within a hundred meters was 7 rings, while the previous score was 0.03 rings. The veteran's hit rate increased from 11 rings to 16 rings.

At the same time, to Zhao Gang's surprise, the other three inspectors' bandit suppression progressed very smoothly. According to the war report, in the past half month, the three army fought fiercely dozens of fierce battles, defeated more than a dozen large bands, and captured tens of thousands. About 30,000 bandits' remnants were pursued by the three inspectors, and now they are less than a hundred miles away from Zhao Gang's troops.

Zhao Gang was a little confused. These bandits were too bad. Never tens of thousands of people had fought thousands of people. Either the bandits' combat effectiveness had dropped greatly, or the combat effectiveness of officers and soldiers had greatly increased. These were impossible. Or these inspectors and former deputy generals of Liaoyang were all the same, and staged a farce of officers and soldiers catching bandits in front of Zhao Gang.

If this is true, Zhao Gang fell into deep thought. After a while, Zhao Gang called Wu Junsheng.

Wu Junsheng is now the number one general under Zhao Gang, serving as the leader of the cavalry battalion. The cavalry battalion is very awesome. Wu Junsheng now has two thousand cavalry, which is an invincible assault force in the Northeast. Zhao Gang has always been hiding, with the purpose of fighting a bandit unexpectedly. Unexpectedly, the first time he used cavalry was to deal with his colleagues.

Just as he was thinking, Wu Junsheng had already walked in, took off his dog-skin hat casually, and roasted the fire comfortably by the stove. He also asked, "Inspector Zhao, why are you looking for me, Old Wu?"

Zhao Gang didn't care, so he threw a wine gourd over: "Drink first, then talk about the important things."

Wu Junsheng took the wine gourd, opened the plug, and took a sip:

"Good wine, what about the wine and food?"

Zhao Gang smiled and said:

"I know you like to eat beef, and I have prepared it for you." After that, I took out a large piece of beef from the table, which looked like four or five pounds, and placed it on a large piece of oil paper. The two of them sat opposite each other and drank.

Wu Junsheng cut a large slice of the meat and ate it a lot. Zhao Gang was not behind, but also drank a large piece of it. The two of them seemed to be indecent, but they ate it very quickly. In a short while, all the wine and meat were wiped out.

After drinking and eating, Zhao Gang burped contentedly and said to Wu Junsheng:

"Brother Wu, there is something I think I think you can do after thinking about it."

Wu Junsheng didn't say anything, his ears stood up and said to Zhao Gang's next words.

"Tomorrow, I will give you all the rifles, and you will bring all the cavalry to Jiguan Mountain to hide. If you look at the wolf smoke during the day, the bonfire at night, and check the news here day and night. Once you see the signal, you will pounce back immediately and see whoever you kill along the way."

Wu Junsheng hesitated for a moment and asked:

"Inspector Zhao, what if Lao Wu saw several other inspection envoys?"

Zhao Gang didn't say anything, and used force on his hand, and a pair of chopsticks broke in half...

The day after Wu Jun was exiled, some thieves appeared in front of Zhao Gang's camp. Zhao Gang was unmoved and ordered people to attack only when the bandits were too close, and the attack distance should not exceed five miles. After eating a few bandits in this way, no small group of bandits came to harass him.

However, the reconnaissance personnel who were discharged from Zhao Gang found that the bandits had rushed from all directions. The nearest enemy was less than 5 kilometers away from us, and the farthest was only 30 kilometers, with a total of about 40,000. The other three routes of inspection commanders kept a distance of more than ten miles from the bandits. According to the investigators, the officers and soldiers and bandits were still trading arms.

It was very obvious that the matter had reached this point. These officials and bandits colluded with each other and wanted to destroy Zhao Gang in one fell swoop with twenty times the force. But what they did not expect was that Zhao Gang's strength was not about two thousand (they believed that Zhao Gang's strength came from the Pingkou Army and the remnants of the Liaoyang Army), but 5,500 people. This misunderstanding is enough to be fatal.

The bandits began to attack at night after nightfall, but the quality of the bandits was really not satisfactory. The teams that came to attack from the south and west actually held up torches and became the best target in the dark.

The bandits didn't even find the edge of the base camp for the first time. They left dozens of corpses and were defeated. Since then, no effective attack was organized until dawn. Zhao Gang was worried that there was no movement in the north. In fact, there were bandits attacking the north, and there were no torches for concealment. But the bandits actually got lost. They didn't find the way until dawn, and it was a day later to form a team and return to Lianshan Pass.

During the day, the bandits' attack opened their eyes to Zhao Gang's new recruits. The loose-formed bandits shouted loudly and ran over from thousands of meters. These bandits did not know how to hide themselves or save their energy. They were exhausted and panting when they ran to hundreds of meters. They were easily knocked down by the soldiers of the Pingko Army. They ran back in a bunch of corpses left behind.

After two days of battle, the new recruits of the Pingke Army gradually became well-trained veterans. They were no longer afraid of the enemy and could easily tell dirty jokes during the battle. Of course, they killed thousands of bandits, and the Pingke Army also paid an extremely "heavy" price. Lao Li, the Huoto Army, was burned because he secretly drank a portion of broth, and became the person with the most serious injuries in the Pingke Army.

Seeing the north wind gradually rising, there will be heavy snow in a few days, and the bandits stationed in the wilderness will face the test of severe cold. There are not many choices in front of the bandits, one is to attack with all their might, and the other is to retreat. In Zhao Gang's view, the bandits' choice will inevitably be attacking, and a more fierce attack.

Sure enough, the attack on the third day was completely different from the previous two days. Groups of bandits flocked to the scene, followed by the supervision team, and those who dared to turn around immediately killed them. Tens of thousands of bandits had no way out and rushed over like a tide. The dense bullets could only create some small gaps, and the bandits quickly approached the camp of the Pingkou Army.

Seeing the bandits coming in full force, Zhao Gang hurriedly ordered people to light up the wolf smoke and sent a quick horse to report the news. After paying the price of thousands of people, the bandits attacked the camp on their own. The Pingkou Army had to give up the front-line position and retreat to the second-line position. On the way, soldiers were hit by the bandits' bird guns and fell to the ground. Some of them were surrounded by the enemy who did not escape in time. Dozens of weapons instantly cut the soldiers into minced meat.

However, after a period of fighting, the bandits' physical strength decreased, which allowed most of the soldiers of the Pingko Army to escape to the second front smoothly. The bandits who were pursuing rashly were quickly driven back to the first front because of their unrivaled number. Both sides were secretly accumulating strength. Half an hour later, the powerful bandit army played the same tactics again, and tens of thousands of people rushed towards the Pingko Army like a tsunami.

Three hundred meters, the Pingko Army did not respond at all this time. Some bandits took the captured rifles and fired at the Pingko Army.

Two hundred meters, but there was no response. A leading bandit shouted loudly: "Brothers, get up quickly, the officers and soldiers have no bullets."

The encouraged bandits rushed to speed up their pace. A hundred meters away arrived in a flash, and several big black guys were placed on the Pingkou Army's position. Although the bandits saw it, they did not stop at all. The nearest bandits were less than 60 meters away from the Pingkou Army.

Zhao Gang watched the bandits approaching step by step nervously, and finally gave the order to "fight". With this order, five Gatlin heavy machine guns roared, and hundreds of grenades flew out of the trenches, and the morale that had accumulated for a long time was released to the maximum extent.

The concentrated explosion of the grenade and the heavy shooting of heavy machine guns filled the camp for a moment. Although Zhao Gang was far away, he was shocked.

The bandits obviously did not expect that the attack of Pingko Army would be so fierce. The grenades formed a death zone, and the area 50 to 80 meters away from the position was completely emptied. Fortunately, the undead were shot into a sieve by a heavy machine gun. The firepower of the heavy machine gun extended, and rows of bandits were knocked to the ground, forming a huge irreparable gap.

Zhao Gang was also shocked by this terrifying scene. He was a layman in the war, but he admired * very much. He was especially impressed by the concentrated use of *'s firepower. He tried it in the battle, but he didn't expect it to have such an effect. Looking at his stunned subordinate, Zhao Gang shouted loudly: "Blow the trumpet, attack with one hand."

At this time, most of the bandits had suffered casualties, and the rest were dizzy by the loud noise just now. Seeing that the Pingko Army picked up the bayonet and killed them, most of them surrendered obediently. Some of them didn't understand the situation and wanted to resist stubbornly, but they were all treated by the Pingko Army. It seemed that this time, the bandits would definitely be captured in one net.

At this time, a few muffled sounds came from afar, and the noisy battlefield covered up these sounds, and no one heard them. So when more than a dozen 75mm caliber shells exploded in the crowd, Zhao Gang's first reaction was to find the location of the artillery based on the ballistics.

Following the ballistic, more than a dozen Krupp artillery were neatly placed 1,000 meters north of the Pingko Army camp, and the smoke from the muzzle blocked Zhao Gang's sight. Obviously, these shells were fired by these cannons just now. These shells were originally aimed at the Pingko Army camp. Because Zhao Gang led the army to charge, it did not cause any personnel losses, but more than a dozen heavy machine guns were blown into the sky. Zhao Gang was a little scared. If he didn't charge, those shells could knock down at least a few hundred Pingko Army soldiers. He was not far away, and he might be hit by shrapnel.

Although he was angry, Zhao Gang still asked the adjutant to negotiate with the official seal. After all, if he still shelled friendly troops under the clarity, the charge would be too serious and the chief officer would be sentenced to death. Zhao Gang expected that these people would not dare to do anything randomly. Seeing the adjutant riding a horse to the other party's military camp, and the cannon had not yet started, Zhao Gang breathed a sigh of relief.

Just as Zhao Gang was breathing, the horseman riding by the adjutant in the distance stood up and fell down to the sky. Zhao Gang hurriedly took out his telescope and looked at it. The horse in the mirror had been shot many times, and the adjutant was pressed under the horse and was unaware of his life and death. Looking forward, teams of clear soldiers came out one after another, ejecting the attacking formation, and the smoke after the firecrackers could be seen later.

Another shell fell down, with poor accuracy. Only one fell into the crowd and dozens of people were blown away. This was nothing, but most of Zhao Gang's troops were recruits, and there was no problem with winning the battle. Once the situation was not good, the morale of the army was immediately unstable, and some people simply threw away their guns and ran away. Zhao Gang killed several deserters in a row, but could not stop them. Instead, he was held back by the deserters. However, he was blocked again and was blocked by the troops of the inspectors of the three routes. He fired his gun as soon as he met, obviously trying to kill and silence him.
Chapter completed!