In addition to the four historical celebrities, Lai Changzuo, Zhong Desheng, Peng Shengbiao, Hu Rongjia, and so on who joined the team in Ruijin are also good talents, coupled with the training of military schools and combat experience, the quality of the grassroots officers and soldiers of the Red 15th Army has improved rapidly, and Hu Weidong can finally be the shopkeeper for a while and spare more time to care about the school and the arsenal. At the same time, taking advantage of the heavy losses suffered by the national army, Hu Weidong ordered the three main brigades to act separately to capture the core counties of the former Soviet area that are still in the hands of the enemy, and the special service regiment also got the opportunity to fight under Mao Zetan's repeated requests for battle. During this period, the Red 15th Army wiped out more than 30,000 miscellaneous troops of the national army, including the militia groups, and the total strength quickly exceeded the 100,000 mark.

During this period, the planes of the Nationalist army began to frequent the Soviet area, and even the troops of the Red 15th Army on the march were subjected to many air raids and suffered certain losses. However, Lao Chiang did not understand that airplanes alone could not destroy a large army, and that this kind of air raid isolated from the army not only had limited effect, but on the contrary, it gave the commanders and fighters of the 15 th Red Army a lesson in actual combat in air defense, and the effect of air raids became worse and worse every time, and planes began to be shot down, so that the pilots who cherished their lives and hated the civil war once boycotted, and Lao Chiang had no choice but to suspend this kind of outrage, which was extremely costly and of no practical significance

In this series of battles, Tan Zhenlin performed the best among the four soldiers, followed by Mao Zetan, and although the other two were slightly worse, at least it was no problem to fight the militias, Hu Weidong had to admit that the war was really the best way to train people, even if they were engaged in political work or even economic work (except for those who took up their posts directly from their student days), they were forced to become commanders one by one. Hu Weidong immediately promoted him to the commander and political commissar of the newly built independent second division and reported to the Central Committee for approval, but the fastest promotion was none other than Mao Zetan, who was suddenly promoted from the head of the special service regiment to the chief of staff of the army

The victory of the Red 15th Army was undoubted, but Hu Weidong's long-standing fears finally became a reality, and the Red 15th Army's ammunition began to run short. Although the enemy army eliminated garbage and suffered fewer casualties, it also captured much less, especially this time the regular troops of the national army took the initiative to retreat, and most of the materials were basically swept away by them, and the Red 15th Army only picked up a little leftovers. In addition, now that the size of the army is getting bigger and bigger, I originally thought that a lot of captures are now a drop in the bucket, for example, the Red 15th Army still has more than 5 million rounds of ammunition, which seems like a lot, right? In fact, when evenly distributed to each soldier, there are only about 50 rounds, which is not enough even a base number, and if you count the consumption of machine guns, it is even more stretched. The biggest problem is still the pistol bullets, which are now less than 300,000 rounds, and the average is that of the more than 1,200 submachine guns and nearly 4,000 20 rounds equipped by the 15th Red Army, and each bullet can be evenly distributed less than 60 rounds, that is, two or three magazines.

In addition, other military supplies and even daily necessities are also facing serious shortages, because Lao Jiang lost militarily, he naturally sacrificed the magic weapon of economic blockade, and the salt problem alone is enough to make Hu Weidong anxious, after all, it is not as good as it was at the beginning, with a population of more than one million in the Soviet area, the problem cannot be solved by robbing alone, unless he can break the enemy's encirclement and rush to the place where salt is produced in one breath to grab enough at a time, but that is tantamount to a fool's dream, and the Soviet area is now in short supply, It's not just a necessity like salt...,

Just when Hu Weidong could hardly bear the fatigue of his soldiers and was about to launch a military adventure regardless of the fatigue of his soldiers and eat the enemy outside the scope of the former central Soviet area to relieve the tension of supplies in the Soviet area, Mao Zetan, who had just led a special task force to make a surprise attack on Dapu County, Guangdong, sent back a piece of good news

It turned out that long before the Long March of the Central Red Army, the Soviet district government had a large number of economic contacts with the warlord Chen Jitang in Guangdong, the most important of which was that the Red Army sold the tungsten sand produced in the Soviet area to Chen Jitang, and Chen Jitang then became a second-way dealer to export it abroad to earn huge profits. On the other hand, under the long-term blockade of Lao Chiang, Guangdong Province controlled by Chen Jitang was almost the only window for the Soviet government to import large quantities of materials from the outside world, and after Wang Ming's line gained momentum, it was basically impossible for the Red Army, which had given up fighting on the outside line, to obtain supplies from the enemy, and the tug-of-war in the position had greatly increased the consumption of ammunition, and the transaction volume between the Soviet government and Chen Jitang was even higher.

At that time, it was Mao Zetan's second brother who was in charge of this matter -- Mao Zemin, president of the "State Bank of China" and director of the "State Administration of Foreign Trade", so after Mao Zetan captured Dapu County, he immediately thought of this line, and it was precisely Chen Jitang who now saw that the old Jiang Shili was getting bigger and bigger, especially after annexing a number of local warlords in the process of pursuing and suppressing the Red Army of the Long March, and he was feeling uneasy in his heart, and the strong rise of the Red 15th Army undoubtedly became a life-saving straw that he subconsciously and eagerly wanted to grasp. In addition, the Red 15th Army did indeed have a lot of goods on hand that Chen Jitang coveted, so the smell of gunpowder in Dapu County had not completely dissipated, and the two warring sides started doing business there

After fierce but friendly negotiations, Mao Zetan sold the unused materials accumulated by the Red 15th Army (such as antiques, jewelry, and other traditional commodities that are not easy to realize in large quantities) in Guangdong than it was to find a private dealer in Jiangxi to sell them, although Chen Jitang was not very generous. Almost all of them were emptied, and almost all the hard currency (with a total value of more than 1 million oceans) accumulated by the Red 15th Army since the beginning of the army was paid, which was exchanged for more than 50,000 tons of grain, more than 3,000 tons of salt and other civilian and military materials, as well as some equipment, instruments and raw materials necessary for the development of Hu Weidong's military industry. Among them, the most significant is the 15 million rounds of rifle machine gun ammunition (all Mauser 79 pointed bullets) and 2 million pistol rounds that the Red 15 th Army urgently needs now, so that together with the ammunition reloaded by the arsenal, the Red 15 th Army is enough to use at least in terms of guns and ammunition for a long time.