The fact that hundreds of cadres asked to leave didn't seem to have any effect on Wu Xingchen, at least when he appeared in front of Chen Ke and Chen Tianhua, there was no regret or loss in his expression, and he said to Chen Ke: "Chairman Chen, Comrade Pang Zi wants to see you. He said that he knew that he was wrong, and he admitted that the organization would punish him. He only asked to see Chairman Chen, hoping that Chairman Chen would forgive him. ”

Chen Ke couldn't help but laugh out loud when he heard Wu Xingchen's words, "Commander Wu, I have never been angry with Comrade Pang Zi, this is not forgivable at all. Now he just needs to study seriously in the party school. ”

Wu Xingchen also smiled: "That's what I said, but Pang Zi is small-minded, if you don't tell him in person that the previous things are over, he will always be unable to let go of them in his heart." If you feel that it is not appropriate to see him alone, then meet with the comrades who are willing to stay in the party and talk to them collectively. I think it's necessary. ”

Chen Ke knew Wu Xingchen's thoughts, these punished comrades were worried that they would not be treated fairly in the future, if Chen Ke could talk to them once, the comrades would not continue to be afraid. Thinking of this, Chen Ke replied, "It's okay." ”

Listening to Wu Xingchen's words, Chen Tianhua sighed in his heart. Wu Xingchen's request was very similar to what Zhou Zhentao said, but what the two said was obviously not the same thing. As long as Wu Xingchen assured his comrades that they would not be treated unfairly, it was an excellent suggestion after the conflict over the line of rectification. Zhou Zhentao's request for Chen Ke to ensure that the positions of his comrades would not be affected was outrageously wrong. No wonder Wu Xingchen broke away from the organization for a while, and after he came back, he could still become the commander of the military region. Even if Zhou Zhentao always follows Chen Ke, he is only a division commander until now. This is by no means because Wu Xingchen joined the party a few days earlier than Zhou Zhentao. There is too much difference in the amount of heart and mind between the two. After such a comparison, Chen Tianhua felt a sense of sudden realization.

"In this winter conscription campaign, Huaihai Province has completed the conscription target of 50,000 people. Shall we start forming engineering troops and railway troops? Wu Xingchen then asked.

"The engineering corps and the railway corps are both technical arms, and in the current situation, they cannot be directly recruited from recruits. After the resumption of military training this time, we will mobilize some comrades who are not suitable for the field army to join the engineering and railway troops. At this stage, we should consider the work of recruiting outstanding comrades to become volunteers after military service. After the end of the military service, the backbone still tried to stay as much as possible. ”

Wu Xingchen smiled and nodded repeatedly, leaving the backbone behind is an extremely important matter for any army. Just happy for a moment, Wu Xingchen put away his smile and said, "Chairman Chen, I want to explain first of all, I don't mean to drive you away. But how long are you going to stay in Huaihai Province? ”

Chen Tianhua listened to Wu Xingchen's words and ideas, and he admired it in his heart. As far as the situation manifested in the rectification of the Huaihai Provincial Army, other provinces have taken their own initiative to rectify the work style, and they will absolutely make a mess that the local party committee cannot clean up. If he didn't want to make such a result, it would be necessary for Chen Ke to go to other provinces to dominate the situation as before.

"I have to rectify the situation in Huaihai Province and then talk about it, and I will leave the picks in the middle of the work and go to other provinces, and I don't feel at ease." Chen Ke replied.

Wu Xingchen had already asked a few major questions, and he hesitated for a while before asking: "If the comrades who left felt that they had made a mistake and asked to come back, what did Chairman Chen think?" ”

Chen Tianhua immediately cheered up and listened to Chen Ke's answer, but Chen Ke didn't care, "It's normal to be willing to come back, if you come back, you still have to continue to work, but you don't have to think about this kind of thing at all." If these comrades take the initiative, we have to make it clear to them. ”

Wu Xingchen and Chen Ke answered quickly, Chen Tianhua saw that they were already about to skip to the next topic, and hurriedly asked, "Will these comrades who left really choose to come back?" ”

Wu Xingchen smiled bitterly: "I am also a person who has gone out and come back, and I feel wronged in the army, but it is better to be in the army outside." These comrades all feel that they are a character, and even if they stay in the base area, they will not really work in the land honestly. After leaving the base area, how sad the days outside are, Comrade Tianhua, can you still know? There must be someone who can't get along and wants to come back. In fact, we have been together for so long, I hope they will suffer some hardships, realize that they think too highly of themselves, and come back honestly It is the best. It's hard to mix up the world outside. ”

Chen Tianhua felt a little awkward about Wu Xingchen's words, since he was going to leave with a clear banner, and then came back with a dead face, what is this? If it were Chen Tianhua himself, he would not choose to come back even if he died outside. But looking at Chen Ke and Wu Xingchen's wry smiles, there was no trace of ridicule in them, Chen Tianhua didn't know whether to praise the two of them for being open-minded, or whether to feel that the two were really a bit of "indiscriminate good people", at least Chen Ke, who had always emphasized the need to distinguish "who is a friend and who is an enemy", was too tolerant.

If Chen Tianhua could hear Zhou Zhentao's voice at this time, he might think that Chen Ke and Wu Xingchen were prescient. Zhou Zhentao carried a simple luggage and walked on the way back to Shaanxi. Although he restrained himself from looking back, he really felt a wave of loss in his heart. Zhou Zhentao is 27 years old this year, and although his six years in the People's Party are less than a quarter of his life, Zhou Zhentao feels as if he has spent his entire life in this organization.

If it was a group march, Zhou Zhentao would not have to think about luggage and accommodation at all, the staff would make a march and battle plan as early as before departure, and the vanguard would also prepare a garrison point on the road. Zhou Zhentao only needs to complete the command work according to the plan. Despite the hard work, everything is purposeful and well-planned. In such a powerful organization, Zhou Zhentao felt that he was extraordinarily powerful.

Now that he is alone, there is naturally no need to mention the matter of commanding thousands of troops and horses, and it is extremely difficult to return to his hometown in Shaanxi just by walking. What path to take, how far to go each day, and whether there is a place to rest. It is easier to take a division of more than 20,000 troops to Shaanxi than for Zhou Zhentao to return to Shaanxi alone.

At the beginning, it was because he was holding his breath and felt that he had been greatly wronged, so Zhou Zhentao could still hold on. In the face of the party committee of the military region, Zhou Zhentao can also show no weakness. Now that no one is "oppressing" Zhou Zhentao is free, so he was able to suppress himself with great willpower, so he didn't let "Do you go back and admit your mistake to your comrades?" This thought directly became an option in my mind.

It's just that the subconscious of human beings is not so easy to suppress, and this idea of wanting to go back is active in Zhou Zhentao's mind in another situation, "If they catch up with me halfway and ask me to go back, I will definitely not go back!" ”

Until the fifth day of leaving, Zhou Zhentao still thought that the people who came to chase him would set off. To this end, Zhou Zhentao even accelerated his pace. After all, he received a fairly formal education in the army, and it was indeed very convenient to get along with the liberation shoes. This is already out of the boundary of Huaihai Province, and it is almost Kaifeng. The "chasing soldiers" chasing Zhou Zhentao have not yet appeared.

However, reality always exists objectively. Zhou Zhentao also had to face the reality of the situation first. When he was in the base area of Huaihai Province, he had nothing to fear. The bandits and robbers have long been swept away, and the base areas have always taken a thorough attitude towards these gangs that disrupt the production order. The border of the three provinces has always been a "three-regardless" area, with chaos and banditry. The People's Party, on the other hand, has taken full advantage of the chaotic order in these three areas and has continuously sent troops to crack down on bandits. Of course, it was not in vain that the blow was completed, and the BJP officially "existed" in these areas. Starting with the maintenance of order, the next step is to seize the power to collect taxes, and then the next step is land reform and the establishment of grassroots organizations. At the junction with the base areas, such as Lankao and other places, except for a few officials in the county seat, who are still native to Henan, most of Lankao County pays taxes to the People's Party, not to the Henan government in Beiyang.

One of the great characteristics of the People's Party is that there is finally investment in public affairs. Even if the roads are not repaired, they are at least signposted at all intersections. There are public facilities such as state-run hotels, post offices, schools, and health clinics in the towns along the route. You can even see newspapers, which are quite popular inside the base areas, but only appear in big cities outside the base areas.

It's spring, and the leveled land on the roadside is neatly divided, and the farmers are working in the fields with the tools they have made in the field. There are rows of trees every few hundred meters between the fields, and two rows of trees are neatly planted on both sides of the road. The orderly landscape, though somewhat monotonous, proves that this is the territory of the BJP. After leaving the territory of the People's Party, or to put it more bluntly, when he walked out of the roadside and the two rows of trees suddenly stopped continuing on the road, the scenery that unfolded in front of Zhou Zhentao's eyes was very different.

As if a spell had been cast, the neat square fields were immediately replaced by crooked ridges. The large thatched huts that appear every once in a while during the farm break have been transformed into various small shacks. In some places, there are even no shacks, so the peasant couple goes down to the field together, rolls the covers into a roll, and the children who are brought out by the adults play on the side of the covers. The big children and the little ones were all dressed in tatters and dirty.

If you are in the base area, the children are sent to kindergarten, and the older children are in school. Of course, adults are happy to be free from these chores. Not to mention that children go to school, adults also learn culture and technology. Each big grass hut has a blackboard when the farmer is busy and resting, and the farmers will write down the words they want to learn every day on a piece of paper when they are working, and paste one on each person's back. You can see it when you look up and catch your breath. There will certainly be comrades of the rural technical work team who work together with the peasants and ask the peasants about agricultural issues during their breaks, and also explain agricultural technical issues to the peasants.

Several years of work experience made Zhou Zhentao think that this was a matter of course. But as soon as he left the base area, Zhou Zhentao realized that only in the base area could this kind of society be justified. One mile away from the base area, this kind of society disappears.

Even if you look back, you can see the cooperative's large livestock dragging the iron plough from a distance, and the farmers push hard behind the plow, plowing the field together. But in close proximity, farmers are busy with farm work with very low efficiency, waving wooden farm tools.

Unlike the BJP's almost all-adult workforce, the number of workers outside the base is even greater than that of the BJP. The elderly, the middle-aged, the young, the teenagers, and the children, mixed together, worked hard for a year's livelihood in the spring fields, but the tools, the production organization was so poor that there was no need to even look at it, Zhou Zhentao, who had participated in the construction of the farm, knew that when the work in the base area was completed in two days, the farmers outside the base area would not be able to finish the urgent farm work.

As for the implementation of the policy of centralizing living facilities in each village in the base areas, one of the major advantages is that it is very convenient to collect all kinds of manure and then concentrate on the production of farm manure. Outside the base areas, peasants have to sprinkle urine on their own fields, and there is no concept of large-scale fertilizer accumulation. Spring ploughing is to compete with God for time, plough the land one day earlier, and sow the seeds one day earlier. Sow the seeds one day earlier, and the crops will grow one more day before harvesting. This long day is likely to be able to thetch a few catties of grain, so that the family can eat a few more days before the next planting.

Zhou Zhentao understood this simple truth very well when he was at home, but when he was in the base area, because the base area turned individual household production into the entire socialized production, much of the work originally undertaken by the family was undertaken by the agricultural department, the cooperatives, and even the construction of basic water conservancy projects with the participation of the troops. For example, the irrigation network built by the army has turned a large amount of dry land that was originally harvested from the sky into irrigated land, and large-scale fertilizer has been accumulated, although it is actually not much per mu of land. But having is always better than nothing, and countless jobs are condensed into not only those projects that look like huge scales, or neat farmland with monotonous scenery. Everything the BJP has done over the past few years has been to turn as much land as possible into high-quality fertile land that could be watered during droughts and drained when flooded, which only existed in a few places before.

The countryside is still rural, but the new countryside is completely different.

Zhou Zhentao finally stopped his pace, and at this time, Zhou Zhentao had to admit that if he continued to walk like this, he would really break away from the base area and the People's Party. At this time, those arrogance, those intense unhappiness were overwhelmed by what reality saw. Without seeing it with his own eyes, Zhou Zhentao could think that his hometown in Shaanxi was definitely the same as when Zhou Zhentao left.

The revolutionaries could overthrow the Manchus and even kill all the Manchus, but without the hard work of millions of people, this vast countryside would not have been able to become the base of the People's Party. Without a comprehensive land reform, it would have been impossible to gather millions of workers to do such hard work.

Standing in place, Zhou Zhentao felt a strong fear for the first time. If he doesn't look back at this time, he will have to go back to the old world. And that world was once what Zhou Zhentao tried to get rid of.

Just when Zhou Zhentao was nervous, a team of people appeared in the distance. Look at the clothes that are actually the Beiyang Army. Zhou Zhentao almost subconsciously became vigilant, all soldiers who left the army must hand over their guns, even if Zhou Zhentao is the division commander. However, Wu Xingchen, the commander of the military region, sent a base imitation Mauser 20 rounds of fast and slow machine pistol to Zhou Zhentao. Zhou Zhentao's hand had reached into his arms and held the handle of the gun.

"Is it Zhou Zhentao, the commander of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army?" The speed of the cavalry was not too fast, the road was so bad that the horses could not run. The cavalry led by Zhou Zhentao saw that he had the intention of pulling out his gun, and hurriedly shouted loudly.

Knowing that this group of Beiyang troops was really coming at him, Zhou Zhentao felt nervous.

The cavalry did not draw their guns, nor did they draw their swords, and they did not even speed up, and the cavalry led by them even slowed down and shouted loudly: "Master Zhou, don't misunderstand, we have no evil intentions." I just heard that Master Zhou was going back to Shaanxi, and we were ordered by the Governor of Henan to meet Master Zhou and escort Master Zhou to Kaifeng. ”

Although he didn't know what this group of Beiyang troops meant, Zhou Zhentao was not too nervous. If you are out of the base area, you can only be under the rule of Beiyang. Zhou Zhentao also has a certain psychological preparation for this. Now that Beiyang has actually reached a pro-fire agreement with the People's Party, it may not be impossible to kill wantonly, but it is not that big. What's more, now as long as Zhou Zhentao runs back less than a mile, he will return to the territory of the base area.

Zhou Zhentao pulled his hand out of his arms, and he smiled: "Don't bother." ”

The cavalry of the Beiyang Army had already arrived in front of Zhou Zhentao at this time, and the man led by him jumped off his horse. First raised his hand to Zhou Zhentao and saluted, and then said: "Master Zhou, before we came, the governor of Henan repeatedly explained. This time, I came to greet Master Zhou just to fulfill our landlord friendship, not to detain Master Zhou, let alone to disadvantage Master Zhou. You are also a well-known figure at the moment, and now Henan is not very peaceful, and there are many bandits on the road. Although Master Zhou is a hero, the little horse bandit is not under Master Zhou's words. However, this also delayed Master Zhou's trip. And if someone talks nonsense and fabricates the news that Master Zhou was killed in our Henan. There is nowhere to go for the face of our Beiyang Army. So Master Zhou, if you don't worry about us, we will send you a horse, and you can go back to Xuzhou. If you must go, let us have you company. I don't know what Master Zhou wants? ”

Zhou Zhentao was quite proud in his heart, this guy from the Beiyang Army said such a call, the core point is still afraid of the People's Party, if something happens to Zhou Zhentao, the People's Party will use this as an excuse, just the Beiyang Second Town and other local troops stationed in Henan at the moment, and one division of Zhou Zhentao can sweep them all away.

But the pride lasted for a moment. At that time, the base arranged for someone to accompany Zhou Zhentao back to his hometown, but Zhou Zhentao sternly refused. Now as long as he leaves with this group of Beiyang Army, he will also fall into the hands of others. Don't look at what the Beiyang Army is saying at the moment, it is also because this is only less than a mile away from the territory of the People's Party. As long as Zhou Zhentao goes with these people, God knows what will happen.

Seeing that Zhou Zhentao was hesitant, the leader said in a low voice with a smile: "We have also heard some things, and Master Zhou seems to have left the People's Party. This time, we all said that Mr. Zhou's talents cannot be tolerated by the People's Party, but we in Beiyang are thirsty for talents. Now that the People's Party is strong and our Beiyang is weak, if Division Commander Zhou is willing to give us this face, it will be too late for us to rejoice, where will it be unfavorable to Division Commander Zhou? ”

The words of this Beiyang army are very reasonable, and from the perspective of Beiyang's interests, it is the best policy to be respectful to Zhou Zhentao now. Zhou Zhentao also took this into account before taking the land route. Of course, take a train from Kaifeng to Luoyang via Zhengzhou. Then take Sanmenxia from Luoyang, cross Tongguan into Shaanxi, which is also the nearest road.

Zhou Zhentao turned around and looked at the base area, and no one came to chase Zhou Zhentao. Sighing, Zhou Zhentao turned his head and said, "Then thank you." ”

"Master Zhou is willing to appreciate his face, that's great. I don't know if Master Zhou is riding a horse or sitting in a sedan chair? If you are sitting in a sedan chair, wait a while, the sedan chair is walking slowly, and it has not yet come from behind. ”

Beiyang was so attentive, Zhou Zhentao also felt a lot less hostility in his heart, and he smiled: "We are soldiers, what kind of sedan chair do we sit on." Just ride a horse. ”

Taking the reins from the Beiyang Army, Zhou Zhentao turned over his horse and glanced in the direction of the People's Party base again, and then urged the horses to go in the direction of Kaifeng.

I didn't feel a strong melancholy in my heart.