Expanding the territory was Lin Ziran's established plan, but Lin Ziran didn't want to prematurely stimulate others, especially the third division Feng Haozhong, the Cheng family and the Jian family.

Before he has enough strength to protect himself, Lin Ziran still needs to maintain a certain low profile.

This kind of low-key does not mean that it is low-voiced, and it has nothing to do with being arrogant or anything like that.

The big guys don't care much about these things.

Whether you Lin Ziran is low-voiced or arrogant and high-profile, if it is just a personal performance, then there is no problem, and those bigwigs basically don't care.

What do they really care about?

It is Lin Ziran's real strength, the ambition and threat to them reflected in Lin Ziran's actual actions.

If Lin Ziran lowered his voice and shouted at the Cheng family and the Jian family, but if his strength swelled to a certain extent and continued to expand, it posed an actual threat to their rule.

Then they don't care whether Lin Ziran calls them dad or not, they will restrict it, if it is feasible, they will not hesitate to send troops to kill Lin Ziran's supplementary brigade and completely cut off future troubles.

Similarly, if Lin Ziran has only a thousand people under his hands all the time, and he is unable to continue to expand, even if Lin Ziran shouts loudly every day, he is even very arrogant.

However, feudal towns like the Cheng family and the Jian family will not pay too much attention to Lin Ziran, and will even win over Lin Ziran.

Therefore, whether to be low-key or not does not lie in Lin Ziran's personal performance, but in the development of the Qingshan Patrol Battalion, the current supplementary brigade and the expansion ambitions that are reflected.

Today, although there are some strengths shown by the supplementary brigade, they have not reached the point of being very strong.

Although it is enough to attract the attention of Feng Haozhong, the Cheng family, and the Jian family, this attention is still mainly solicited.

They all wanted to recruit Lin Ziran to act as their own thugs.

But!

If Lin Ziran directly expanded on a large scale, he directly took over the civil affairs of each town, incorporated the town militia groups, and incorporated all towns into his rule.

Then everyone will be wary of it!

Because this model is different from other feudal towns!

The Jian family is awesome enough, but why has the Jian family been able to survive for so many years, until they have accumulated enough strength to set off today's rebellion.

That's because the Jian family does not say that it directly rules a certain county and completely controls the military and political affairs of a certain county, and the development model of the Jian family is to develop within the military and political system in Luo'an County.

They took advantage of their huge influence in the military to install officers of their faction, such as the children of their families, relatives and friends, into various units of the Luo'an Army, and used these officers to expand their influence and even actual control in the army.

At the same time, they also installed people from their factions to serve in various yamen, county guard offices and yamen, and almost all of them were in the yamen of each county.

These are the development paths of the Jian family and the source of their huge influence.

Similarly, Feng Haozhong is the same, he is the real power faction of the military, and can actually control most of the main forces of the Third Division, and the Seventh Brigade and the Eighth Brigade of the Third Division are all his descendants of Feng Haozhong, from the battalion commander to the regiment commander to the brigade commander, all of them are Feng Haozhong's descendants.

However, Feng Haozhong's power is still limited to the army, he, like the Jian family, does not actually have full control over a certain place, and even his military expenses need to be drawn by the county guard, and the ordnance and equipment also need to be drawn by the county guard.

The same is true for most of the other powerful factions in the military!

To put it bluntly, like the Jian family, they are fighting for power and profit within the official system of Luo'an County, but they have never jumped out of this system and tried to control a certain territory on their own.

It is not uncommon for people to try to do this, that is, several military generals stationed in Guang'an a few years ago, they directly rebelled with their troops, and then directly controlled the entire Guang'an County.

This led to a war between the two counties that lasted for several years.

However, if they can do this, it does not mean that the Jian family, let alone Lin Ziran, can also do this.

They were able to do this back then, provided that they actually controlled all the troops stationed in Guang'an County back then, and the number of troops under their control was 50,000 or 60,000.

Today's Jane family can't reach this level.

Not to mention Lin Ziran.

Therefore, it is impossible for Lin Ziran to openly take over the government affairs of various localities in a short period of time, especially before he has the ability to protect himself.

Because once he takes over the government affairs of various places and collects taxes on his own, even if he does not shout the slogan of rebellion, it is actually no different from rebellion.

Now the methods he adopts in Qingshan Town, Sanyang Town, and Xinmu Town are much more secretive.

He just planted his troops in the towns, and then used them to help him raise his army.

In this mode of operation, there is not even any actual change on the surface of the towns.

When Lin Ziran left Xinmu Town to 'suppress bandits', Xinmu Town was still the original Xinmu Town, and the defense was also taken care of by the town's guards, and the town guard was still the original town guard Shi Jinhao, and there was no change in even an ordinary official.

Normal taxes will also continue to be paid upwards.

New Wood Town, there are no changes on the surface!

The only change is that the guards in Shinki Town have been completely replaced.

From officers to soldiers, even ordinary guys have been completely replaced.

It turned out that the people of the escort team were taken away by Lin Ziran in the name of suppressing bandits, and then they would be incorporated into the recruit camp, and after they were dispersed, they would be trained with other recruits, and those officers would also be selected, and those who were qualified would be sent to the camp school, and if they were not qualified, they would be ordinary soldiers, and if they were unwilling, they would be directly transferred to the labor team for free labor.

Now there are quite a few labor teams under Lin Ziran, there are hundreds of old bandits who don't want to train and don't want to be soldiers, and some of them are bandits who stayed behind by Wang Jinqian and are also unwilling to be soldiers, and some are criminals from the past period of time, who were sent here to serve their sentences after being sentenced.

In addition, there are some very stubborn prisoners of war of the Guang'an Army who are unwilling to surrender to life.

Among the previous prisoners of war of the Guang'an Army, so far, most of the ordinary soldiers have chosen to surrender and have been incorporated into the units of the supplementary brigade.

These ordinary soldiers among the prisoners of war in Guang'an have actually become the key to improving the combat effectiveness of the supplementary brigade in the past few months.

These people are all veterans, and they are also elite veterans in the Guang'an Army, and they are just soldiers, so they can't have too much loyalty to the Guang'an Army.

They just eat as soldiers.

Therefore, Lin Ziran scattered these Guang'an veterans into various units, so as to improve the combat effectiveness of various units with the old and the new.

As for a few officers, up to now, they have basically chosen to defect to Chengcheng, and most of them have been assigned to posts in directly subordinate organs, some in the General Staff Office, and some in the Supervision and Training Office.

However, Lin Ziran did not let them directly serve as company commanders, battalion commanders and other actual command positions, if they want to become the chief officer in the army, it will take time, and they need to show enough loyalty to gain Lin Ziran's trust.