Chapter 26: Newly Promoted Lieutenant Colonel

  The successive explosions and gunfire frightened the residents living nearby. Many families immediately closed their doors tightly, hiding in the inner rooms, fearing a disaster. The bolder ones looked through the door cracks, nervously and excitedly checking out the situation, wondering who dared to be so reckless on the 51st Army's turf. As night fell, there were already few pedestrians on the road, and with the first explosion, everyone fled in all directions, soon disappearing from sight.

  Qiu Jian rode into the city from the military camp, hearing gunfire coming from near Caijia Garden. At first, he thought it was just a Japanese military exercise approaching the 51st Army headquarters and felt humiliated, thinking "Damn those Japanese devils, they're really bullying us too much! Are they trying to say that our 51st Army is nobody? He made up his mind that no matter what punishment he would receive, he had to give those little devils a show of strength. Casting aside his guards, he charged forward on horseback towards the East Main Street of the garden. In a rage, he rushed to the street corner, where he saw Ou Yang Yun behead Taigen Tada amidst the raging flames.

  When the explosion sounded, a guard company of the 51st Army in the Cai family garden immediately rushed out and sealed off all the exits in the garden. They also thought that the Japanese had come to provoke them, and for the safety of the military department, they were particularly cautious until the gunfire stopped, then sent a squad of guards to investigate the situation, only to see Qiu Team Leader and a young man with tattered clothes standing together, staring at each other with wide eyes.

  Qiu Jian held up his handgun and took a look at the miserable scene. He quickly judged their identities from the deceased's clothing and weapons, asking: "Japanese?"

  Ouyang Yun nodded, then looked at him coldly - Qiu Jian's arrival was too coincidental. Due to the dispute with Chen Shaohua at noon, Ouyang Yun no longer dared to believe any of them - who knew whether their whereabouts were leaked to the Japanese?

  His unfriendly gaze fell on Qiu Jian's eyes, and the latter was taken aback, then his eyes also widened. Everyone is a smart person, and Qiu Jian naturally understood the implication of this gaze. He was very angry and growled: "Do you suspect that I have a relationship with these Japanese people?"

  Ouyang Yun replied honestly: "I don't know."

  Qiu Jian burst out laughing and said: "You overestimate yourself and underestimate me!"

  A group of guards walked over, saw the two confronting each other, and naturally formed a fan shape surrounding Ouyang Yun. Those who knew Qiu Jian asked: "Commander Qiu, what happened?"

  Qiu Jian said, "Nothing, my younger brother was just attacked by the Japanese." Then he turned to Ouyang Yun and said, "It seems that your identity has been discovered by the Japanese. You can't enter Cai's garden anymore. Get on my horse and hurry up!" After finishing speaking, he jumped off the horse and handed over the reins to him.

  Ouyang Yun didn't take the reins and thought she might have misunderstood him. She felt a bit embarrassed and said, "Thanks, I don't know how to ride a horse."

  "Oh?" Qiu Jian burst out laughing and said with emotion: "I thought you knew everything, haha."

  Ouyang Yun shook his head and smiled bitterly, looking at the police appearing at the street corner. "Looks like I have to go," he said. "I don't know if Tiange is okay either." After that, he glanced at Qiu Jian and turned into a nearby alley, disappearing quickly.

  When he mentioned Chu Tian Ge, Qiu Jian let out a strange cry and rode his horse towards the Cai family's flower garden, and then what happened before happened again.

  The Japanese army's assassination operation against Ouyang Yun near Caijia Garden ended in a disastrous defeat, with only one of the four skilled agents, Sakurajima Shi, escaping with injuries. This news shocked and terrified the officers at the Japanese North China Garrison Command headquarters. Any one of these four men would be a formidable opponent in the military, but they had been outsmarted by a single Chinese youth who had been expecting their attack. The "Anti-Japanese Hero Duo" was proving to be quite a handful.

  Ouyang Yun sneaked back to the Song Mansion overnight, and when Song Zheyuan and Guo Biao learned of this, they couldn't help but wipe away a cold sweat. At the same time, their confidence in him also grew stronger. Since Ouyang Yun was such an incredibly powerful existence, giving him a training battalion would undoubtedly be a good thing for the 29th Army's growth. With this thought, Song Zheyuan became even more enthusiastic about absorbing and training the new recruits. The next morning, he personally called General Guan Linzhen to discuss the matter, exchanging information and gossip. Guan Linzhen, who had already learned some inside information about the Sino-Japanese negotiations, knew that the disbandment of the training battalion was a done deal, and also wanted to find a good place for the new recruits, so he readily agreed to Song's request.

  Two officials settled the matter over the phone, and then left it to their subordinates to handle.

  As Chu Tian Ge had already spread the word among the student soldiers, and the 29th Army's reputation was not bad, the student soldiers did not resist too much. Except for instructors Lu Da Hong and Liang Da Wei who had some opinions, the handover went very smoothly.

  That afternoon, under Song Zheyuan's appointment letter, Ouyang Yun became the acting commander of the newly established 29th Army Cadet Corps, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. After lunch at Song's residence, he changed into his 29th Army uniform and set out alone to take up his post at the former training battalion of the 25th Division, now the garrison of the 29th Army Cadet Corps, following repeated instructions from Guo Biao.

  Song Zheyuan's intention was to arrange a few old qualified officers under Ou Yangyun, so as to help him suppress and discipline those student soldiers. Ou Yangyun considered that the safety of the factory in the future could only rely on the student army, so the purity of the student army must be guaranteed. Song, although open-minded, is after all a warlord. Once the factory is set up and profitable, if he sees money and becomes greedy, it will not be easy to deal with him if there is no reliable force in his own hands. Therefore, Ou Yangyun politely declined his kindness.

  Song Zheyuan indeed had the intention of pinning down the troops in the Training Corps, but after listening to Jiang Shuzhen's suggestion, he thought that at the beginning of cooperation, it was necessary to give the other party considerable trust in order to gain a good impression. Moreover, the Training Corps is just a regimental organization, and now there are only more than 200 people, so they don't think they can make too many waves, so they didn't delve deeper into this issue.

  Ouyang Yun, dressed in a school uniform, appeared before the students with his appointment letter and 5000 taels of silver, originally intending to show off his eloquence. After all, a new official has to make some remarks when taking office! Unfortunately, he had spent the whole morning preparing his speech, but didn't get a chance to express himself.

  It's his own fault, after all. He said something to Qiu Jian last night, which was passed on by Qiu Jian to Chu Kuaiji, and scared the deputy officer of Chu - Chu Tiange is the only male heir of the Chu family in this generation, if anything happens to him, not to mention how his elder brother will treat himself, the old master's hurdle can't be passed first. So, he took a few loyal subordinates and two dead parties with the attitude of "it's better to believe it than not" and launched a surprise attack on the training class overnight, capturing Chu Tiange in the name of arrest.

  The soldiers didn't know the truth, they all thought that the 51st army would hand over Chu Tian Ge to the Japanese. Now that Ou Yang Yun has arrived, since they knew about his relationship with Chu Tian Ge, they naturally couldn't wait to tell him first and let him think of a way to rescue her - perhaps in their opinion, if the "Anti-Japanese Heroes" could create a "tragedy" for the Japanese, then rescuing someone from the military camp shouldn't be a problem. But this made Ou Yang Yun laugh and cry at the same time. There were some things he couldn't say clearly, so he just said that he had already received news that Chu Tian Ge was very safe, and only then did he manage to placate everyone.

  He was worried that the students would have a resistant psychology to suddenly change their allegiance, so he prepared a series of excuses. Now with the Chu Tian Ge incident, the students' attention seems to have completely shifted to this aspect - he has been in training for nearly an hour and not one person has mentioned anything about the student army. He wanted to save trouble, so he didn't speak up, instead calling on Class Leader Chen Shichang to assemble all the students on the school grounds, first reading out the appointment notice, then following the roll call book, beginning to take attendance.

  The training class had a total of 215 people, Chu Tian Ge "was arrested", Chao Hong Le and Pang Wen Ju, Zhang Cheng, Zhang Ze Jun asked for leave to go out, actually only 210 people. After the roll call, Ouyang Yun and several class cadres held an on-site meeting, directly changing the name of the training class to the 29th Army Student Battalion 1st Company 1st Platoon, with five platoons set up under it, each platoon having three classes, each class having 12 people. The remaining thirty or so people were set up as a reconnaissance platoon, also divided into three classes. Then, he, as the acting commander of the battalion, issued the first appointment order: appointing Chen Shichang, the original head of the training class, as the acting company commander; Huang Tao and political commissar Chang Jinghua as deputy company commanders; Chu Tian Ge as the acting reconnaissance platoon leader; other acting platoon leaders were also appointed by former class cadres. After announcing the appointments, he explained to the students: The reason why the military officer titles need to be prefixed with "acting" is that the student battalion is still in the process of formation, and the current appointment of officers is only a temporary measure. In the future, the appointment and promotion of officers and soldiers will be based on individual ability and military merit, and there will be detailed evaluation methods. The student battalion does not care about background or cultural level, as long as you can really fight and lead the team well, everyone has the opportunity to become an officer!

  These words are very encouraging, to put it bluntly, Ouyang Yun has placed a ladder for promotion and wealth in front of the masses, naturally leading to applause and cheers from the students.

  Ouyang Yun took advantage of the momentum to start arranging the personnel roster. Among them, the reconnaissance team was given priority. Since Chu Tiange was not there, he acted as a representative and selected 25 people who were physically strong and looked agile after watching the students' drills, confirming them as members of the reconnaissance team. Then, each class leader was asked to select one member from their own class at a time, in order to ensure that the strength difference between classes was not too great.

  The personnel formation was complete, and the officers of all levels were in place. Chen Shichang, as the commanding officer, gathered the troops, ordered everyone to rest for a while, and then asked "Tuanzuo" Ouyang Yun to give a speech.

  Ouyang Yun nodded, walked to the front of the team, stood at attention with a "crack", and gave a standard military salute of the People's Liberation Army. His expression was solemn, his eyes were deliberately wide open, looking spirited and full of energy, which invisibly gave the recruits confidence and hope, everyone involuntarily followed his example, standing at attention, with their chests straightened.

  Ouyang Yun was very satisfied with everyone's performance, and said in a low voice: "Take a short rest!" He adjusted his spirit, and his eyes scanned the faces of the student soldiers in the front row one by one. He began his inaugural speech: "Comrades, it is an honor to witness the establishment of the 29th Army Student Brigade together with everyone. From today on, you, me, everyone, all members of the student brigade will fight together to defend the dignity of our nation and the integrity of our country's territory, sharing life and death together. As for the current domestic and international situation, I'm sure everyone has some understanding - the three northeastern provinces have been lost early, and the Japanese are still sharpening their knives, eyeing North China. Our motherland has been weakened by years of civil war... Our government..." He shook his head and sighed: "No need to mention it - everyone knows the history of the 29th Army. Regardless of how its predecessor, the Northwestern Army, performed in the civil war, when the 29th Army was first established, Commander Song said that we would never fight another internal war again, our guns would be united against external enemies. Everyone saw that during the Battle of the Great Wall, at Xifengkou, our brave 29th Army taught the Japanese devils a profound lesson with their big knives! With such leaders and predecessors, although we are a newly established unit, I think that as long as everyone remembers that they are Chinese, we will never allow ourselves to lose an inch of our land. In the end, we will drive out the evil Japanese invaders..."

  In the end, Ouyang Yun racked his brains to prepare a speech for an entire morning and still managed to pull it off as he had hoped, although he omitted quite a bit in the middle. However, judging from the effect, it was still pretty good - not only did it ignite the passion of the student soldiers, but also indirectly boosted Song Zheyuan and the 29th Army. Later on, this speech spread to the ears of Song Zheyuan and the officers of the 29th Army, earning him quite a few impression points, and laying a good foundation for the relationship between the Student Army and friendly forces. From this perspective alone, the brain cells he sacrificed that morning were worth it.