Just in Joseph. While Johnston was busy recruiting troops in Memphis, Li Yongji was not idle, and he continued to prepare for the withdrawal of troops step by step.

Although on the surface, the Chinese Expeditionary Force in Memphis was only more than 50,000 people, but that was only the main mobile corps, not all of them.

In fact, as the Chinese Expeditionary Force controlled the cities of the lower Mississippi River for too long, more and more Chinese were in the cities along the Mississippi River, especially Memphis, one of the major cities, and the number of Chinese who came here to pan for gold was the second largest of all the coastal cities, second only to New Orleans.

Due to the special situation in the lower reaches of the Mississippi River, the Chinese here have a relatively single occupation, the most are soldiers, followed by officials and businessmen, and among them, the most are soldiers.

Although the total number of private police forces that suppressed the local area was small, there were more than 20,000 people, plus 50,000 expeditionary forces, the total strength of the Chinese in the lower Mississippi River region instantly exceeded 80,000, such a scale, coupled with advanced weapons, was enough to suppress everything.

In fact, since most of the Chinese who came to the Southern Union carried weapons, basically every Chinese who came to North America could be treated as armed personnel.

In this way, if you count those officials and all kinds of businessmen, the entire lower Mississippi River can reach 130,000 Chinese.

And because most of the businessmen and officials were very young, with an average age of no more than 40 years old, and more than 90 percent were men, 90 percent carried guns, and had some shooting skills, so this group of people could also be regarded as paramilitaries, at least better than the local American militia.

It was these 130,000 Chinese that kept several important cities in the lower Mississippi River firmly in the hands of the Chinese, otherwise, simply relying on the 50,000 indefinite expeditionary forces. That's not enough.

This is the so-called truth that it is easy to defeat an enemy, but it is difficult to control an area.

Li Yongji's expeditionary force is indeed awesome, and can easily defeat any modern army of the time and space head-on, but defeating an army is not the same concept as capturing a city.

In any case, the Chinese are also outsiders, and even if they are recovering the places that the Union once lost, it is impossible to fully control them.

Therefore, the occupation concept of the expeditionary force was to take a city and then the army would be stationed alone. The administrative officials who do not live with the local citizens, but the whole city is self-governing and specifically manages the affairs of the city, are elected by the local citizens, and above the administrative officials, it is the chief executive who is auctioned out.

That is, after the army conquered the city, it handed over control of the city, and the supreme head of the city was the chief executive. As for the chief executive, he is not responsible for the specific management of the city, he is only responsible for recruiting a group of armed police, using it to secure tax collection and trade routes, and to show off his presence. It means that the city is under the jurisdiction of the Chinese.

However, the power of the chief executive is only that, and the specific management of the city is the responsibility of the administrative officials elected by the locals.

To put it simply. A city's local police, judges, etc., are still locals. They still listen to the elected political officials of the locals, and as for this administrative officer, as long as he does not rebel and pays taxes on time, he can ignore the chief executive in other matters.

The only thing the Chief Executive can do is to come and show his presence, collect taxes from the magistrate on time, protect the city's trade points, and help maintain law and order in the city if necessary.

For example, the chief executive is the chairman of the board of directors of an occupied city, has the highest ownership of the city, and is a representative figure, but he is not directly responsible for the management of the city, and the management of the city is entrusted to the administrative officer.

As for the administrative officer, he is a bit like the CEO of the occupied city, who is responsible for the affairs of the city, but he is only a steward, and the master of the city is not him, even if the master is very kind and kind, and does not like to take care of things.

In this way, although these cities conquered by the expeditionary force are essentially owned by the Chinese, on the surface, they are in a state of autonomy, and the local citizens have little contact with the upper class Chinese, which has little impact on their lives and can also reduce the resistance of the local people to the Chinese.

Of course, the administrative officer must choose those who are obedient, if he is not obedient, even if the local voters support it, the chief executive above will not agree to it, so don't look at the chief executive who is not specifically in charge of things, but he only needs to be able to manage the administrative officer.

After using this highly paralyzing Huairou policy, American cities controlled by Chinese such as New Orleans and Memphis are very calm, even if there are more Chinese in the city, but because these Chinese communicate with some merchants except for trade, usually those Chinese gather alone and do not contact outsiders, so the conflict is not large.

On the contrary, because of the stationing of the Chinese army and the allied army, the local security is much better, and the continuous influx of Chinese businessmen has brought many business opportunities, and also improved the lives of the local people, plus the Chinese who come here are relatively humble, and everyone's hostility towards the Chinese is not so great, which also makes these cities safe and sound, and does not drag the expeditionary force back.

However, Huairou's policies are only appearances, and in the final analysis, the reason why those Chinese-controlled American cities have been peaceful and has not made a big fuss is because Li Yongji's golden finger is too strong, in addition to the great martial arts of the expeditionary force.

Because Li Yongji was not idle during his stay in Memphis, he exchanged materials with modern society every day, and exchanged the goods of modern society for wood, gold, grain and other items in this time and space.

Although it is said that the golden finger of time and space trading follows Li Yongji, wherever Li Yongji goes, the golden finger will go, but no matter where Li Yongji goes, if he wants to trade with this world, he can't do it alone, but must get the services of a group of businessmen.

That is to say, Li Yongji's actions in North America have never been simple military operations, and every place he goes, he relies on the army to open the way, and then various domestic and foreign franchisees follow the trend, provide various materials for the army, and obtain various modern materials from the occupied areas, such as some special drugs that the Chinese Empire cannot produce itself, or some advanced spare parts that the Empire cannot produce itself.

In order to keep it secret, Li Yongji has always had a special unit to escort him in the supply of modern materials, and this escort unit is nothing else. It's the Hidden Dragon Special Forces around him.

For example, when Sun Xiangbing returned to Memphis before the seven-day bloody battle, he was escorted by the Qianlong Special Forces, and the reason why the Qianlong Special Forces took him back so easily, and they were not afraid of getting lost at all, was because they were familiar with the road and had secretly gone back many times before.

In other words, the number is unknown, and the Qianlong Special Forces, who are considered to be personal bodyguards by the outside world, are actually the biggest task is to escort the space-time trading goods, and what about this group of people. He was also the first to get in touch with space-time trading products.

The reason is very simple, the time-space trading goods are too sensitive, and Li Yongji cannot directly trade these materials from another time and space locally and directly to the outside world, but must first secretly escort them to a designated place, and then trade with those foreign franchised dealers in these designated places.

In doing so, it can protect Li Yongji's secret to the greatest extent and reduce unnecessary trouble, and at the same time, it can also increase the sense of mystery and make those who spy on his secret even more confused.

Otherwise. When Li Yongji arrives at a place, he openly trades in this place, and after a long time, he will definitely be discovered by someone with a heart. At that point, that's the real big problem.

Instead, use this method of figuring out the real and the real to designate a stable trade point. Others will think that there is really some secret organization smuggling goods over, and they will concentrate their efforts around the trade points.

At the same time, this kind of secret escort mission has been carried out for a long time. It can also exercise the Qianlong Special Forces, after all, the Qianlong Special Forces are Li Yongji's real henchmen carefully built, if you take them with you all day long, it will be too wasteful, only by letting them out, and then taking them back, and constantly moving like flowing water, can you accumulate actual combat experience and truly achieve the purpose of training.

From the beginning of his arrival in New Orleans, Li Yongji then led a large army to march continuously, capturing one city after another, but there were only two that he really regarded as a trading point that could trade with the outside world.

The first point is naturally the city of New Orleans, which is the mouth of the Mississippi River, and has unique transportation advantages, so all Chinese merchants must first enter New Orleans if they want to come to the United States.

Because New Orleans was the first place for the expeditionary force to attack, and it had a great geographical advantage, it was natural that it was the first place to be regarded as a foreign trade point, and it was also the place that Li Yongji planned at the beginning of his intervention in the American Civil War.

The second point is that Li Yongji is now in Memphis City.

In fact, at the beginning, Li Yongji only wanted the trade point of New Orleans, and did not want to open up a second trade point, but later after he took Memphis, Zhang Xinda of modern society told him a fact, that is, Zhang Xinda of modern society also had insufficient funds.

During that period, because of Li Yongji's long-term campaign, he had always unilaterally asked for military supplies from modern times, but he did not transmit much trade goods from this time and space to modern society, resulting in Zhang Xinda's group in modern society only entering and leaving, which has seriously affected the normal operation of Zhang's group.

Therefore, Zhang Xinda persuaded Li Yongji, asking him not to think about fighting all day long, but also to consider economic problems, and let him pay attention to collecting local special products and giving them to him, so as not to be unable to enter and exit the modern society.

You must know that Li Yongji's 50,000 expeditionary force is not a large number, and the real motorized force is only 30,000, which is at most the size of a division.

However, the daily consumption of this motorized division is an astonishing figure, not to mention weapons and ammunition, not to mention food and clothing, just talking about the daily fuel consumption, it is not something that ordinary people can afford.

Don't look at those small African countries in modern society, there are also a lot of motorized troops, but they don't usually train much, and they consume very little, and Li Yongji's motorized division, since landing in New Orleans, has been constantly fighting, even if they don't fight, they are constantly training, and the materials consumed are not ordinary.

At the beginning, Zhang Xinda could still support it, but because Zhang Xinda also had business expansion in modern society, he didn't simply serve Li Yongji, so after a long time, he couldn't support it a little, and began to ask Li Yongji to slow down, don't always ask for it unilaterally, and get some materials from your own time and space, so that he can make some money.

For this reason, Zhang Xinda told a small lie and said to Li Yongji that the company has insufficient funds, especially gold and jewelry, so it can't continue to unilaterally provide you with military supplies as before, and you have to get me something.

Li Yongji also trusts him. In addition, I didn't know much about the jewelry and gold markets in modern society, so I listened to Zhang Xinda's words, temporarily reduced some high-intensity military operations, and then increased the purchase of a batch of materials from locals that can be easily sold in modern society.

In fact, if Li Yongji understands a little bit of the market, he can know a truth, the jewelry industry in modern society may have a limited market, but gold is different, the market is quite large, not as small as the jewelry market.

Although the gold market in modern society is also regulated by the giants of various countries, the supervision is very weak. It's like oil, as long as someone is willing to sell it, and they don't listen to those organizations, they will definitely find a buyer.

The same goes for gold, although there are also some oligarchs who control the gold market, but because of the global human cognition of gold for thousands of years, even if gold is withdrawn from the currency market, it is still an absolute hard currency, and its value is no less than oil!

Therefore. As long as you are willing to release gold at a low price, you are not afraid of no buyers!

In the modern world, it is true that many countries reject illegal diamonds such as blood diamonds, but I have never heard of anyone rejecting illegal black gold. The reason is that the market for jewelry such as diamonds is quite narrow, but the market for gold is theoretically infinite.

Therefore, Zhang Xinda said at the time that gold was restricted. If you're being targeted, you can't sell it casually, and you can't say it's wrong. But what he said was only for himself, because his backer was China, and some people had to listen to what he said.

If Zhang Xinda is really willing to put down his body and keep releasing gold, then there will definitely be no shortage of money, and there will be no shortage of weapons, but it will offend some people.

In the final analysis, Zhang Xinda's family in modern society has a big business, and his courage is getting smaller and smaller, not like he was at the beginning, he is not afraid of heaven and earth, he just wants to seek stability, so even if he still has a lot of gold in his hands, he doesn't dare to go out unscrupulously anymore, because it is too eye-catching and will attract big sharks.

After all, it is very difficult to keep secrets in modern society, and there are so many gold mined in the world every year, if he can keep releasing a large amount of unplanned gold to the outside world, it will definitely cause others to covet it, which is not the result that Zhang Xinda wants to see.

On the contrary, it is the safest to release gold in small batches and make money without affecting the entire market.

In addition, Zhang Xinda didn't want Li Yongji to continue to settle the bill with gold, but wanted Li Yongji to send something that was not eye-catching in modern society and was equally easy to make money.

So what is there in modern society that is not eye-catching, easy to sell for, and existed in abundance on the earth in the nineteenth century? The answer is raw materials and mineral resources!

Mineral resources are too difficult for the time being, but raw materials, especially grain and timber, are not difficult.

Therefore, as soon as Zhang Xinda told Li Yongji about this matter, Li Yongji also thought it was good, so he began to buy grain in Memphis and then sent it to Zhang Xinda to sell it in the name of organic food.

Everything is good, but the organic food market is so big, the output here is so much, can not be unlimited, after all, the harvest of more grain, the price will go up, when the price rises to a certain point, the profit will be small.

Therefore, in the later period, especially after entering the winter, Li Yongji no longer buys local grain, but buys logs, because in modern society, the price of timber with enough years, especially logs, has been good, after all, modern society pursues environmental protection, and the number of logs is very small.

So, in order to facilitate the purchase of logs, and Li Yongji went too deep, he urgently needed a transit station, so he opened a second trade point in Memphis.

To put it simply, Memphis, a trading point, is a transit station, which was originally a secondary station serving New Orleans, but with the extension of Li Yongji's stay, coupled with his in-depth understanding, and Memphis is the acquisition point of various logs in North America, Memphis has gradually prospered by relying on timber trade, and the total trade volume has even exceeded that of New Orleans.

In short, there are quite a few Chinese who come here to do business or speculate in Memphis today, and since Li Yongji intends to abandon this place, he must not only take the army with him, but also those Chinese businessmen, private mercenaries and administrative officials who have settled in the local area.

In this way, it is not a simple military operation, but a civilian operation, which naturally takes a long time.

Fortunately, those Chinese who came to Memphis to pan for gold were originally dependent on the expeditionary force to survive, so when they heard that the expeditionary force was going to withdraw, they did not have any nostalgia, and they packed up and prepared to leave.

In this way, after more than half a month, among the Chinese in Memphis, the non-military personnel basically retreated. Johnston's weapons handover is almost done, and all that's left is to officially hand over control of the city of Memphis and then take his troops to New Orleans.

But on the eve of this seemingly peaceful withdrawal, they had been so calm that the 500,000 Federation captives who had been ignored by everyone for a long time suddenly rioted. (To be continued......)