The Courtyard House: The Little Red Devil Returning from the Peninsula

The first piece of paper for 100,000 people was a grain ration form.

On May 3, 1944, Zhao Gang placed four ledgers on the long table.

There are 20,000 officially employed personnel. 25,000 are undergoing training and replenishment. 24,000 are local armed forces, transportation, and medical personnel. 31,700 are providing assistance to neighboring countries. The total for all four categories is 100,700.

The operations room fell silent for a moment.

The official roster increased from 17,000 to 20,000. New recruits were still transferred from the training system, and a signature could not be obtained without completing any of the required training, review, or on-the-job training. The remaining 80,000-plus personnel were assigned to different units; it was not permissible to rename drivers, stretcher bearers, county/district militia members, and neighboring units as independent regimental infantry.

Zhao Weiguo drew a red line under the total number.

"The unit designation is still Independent Regiment. The highest official unit designation among its subordinates is the battalion."

The original draft of the operations plan contained the words "Eastern Route Column," but the staff crossed them out and changed it to "Eastern Temporary Operational Group." The same applied to the West, South, and North. Once the mission was completed, the temporary groups were disbanded, and division/brigade numbers were not generated from the general ledger.

The 31,700 friendly units retain their own unit designations, personnel, and command chains. The regimental headquarters only unifies common objectives, timelines, firepower boundaries, overall reserves, and supply priorities.

Local transport of medical supplies covered 24,000 li (approximately 12,500 kilometers), involving county and district armed forces, bridge-building teams, cart drivers, militia, stretcher bearers, and medical personnel. They were capable of guarding roads, carrying people, repairing bridges, and transporting grain, but not all of them could go to the front lines armed with guns.

The monk stood by the door.

"Will we be able to copy one less ledger this time?"

Zhao Gang pushed the four ledgers towards him.

"First, make sure you understand and copy all four books."

The monk took the four ledgers, flipped through them, and then closed them.

"100,700. Are my 2,500 still the general reserve?"

"still."

"A total reserve force of 100,000 men sounds larger than a total reserve force of 70,000 men."

"Big what?" Zhao Gang didn't look up. "It's still about plugging the hole. The bigger the hole, the bigger the hole you plug."

The monk slammed the account book onto the table.

"Okay. A big hole is still a hole."

A general map of the six counties was hung on the wall.

The area stretches approximately 220 li horizontally, with two railway sections passing through it. The four industrial sites of Shiyao, Xigou, Yangquan, and Beishan are scattered in different directions. Each of the four temporary operational groups in the east, west, south, and north has a staff group, liaison station, supply depot, and medical line.

The general reserve was not placed at the entrance of the regimental department.

It is positioned behind the railway branch lines that can support both directions simultaneously. The reserve force will only move towards whichever side experiences a bridge collapse, telephone outage, or congestion due to wounded soldiers.

Get three metal boxes from each direction.

The main order, backup order, and withdrawal order are sealed separately. If the eastern front receives a red order, the western front cannot move immediately upon hearing gunfire; the northern front can only issue vehicle release orders and cannot deploy troops without authorization. Liaison officers of friendly forces only receive joint mission information and not the internal troop rotation schedule of the independent regiment.

The outside of the metal box only had the direction and opening conditions written on it. The orders inside were numbered separately, and both the staff officer and the communications officer had to sign for them before opening. After an order was invalidated, the old paper could not be burned casually; it was first returned to the regimental headquarters to verify whether it had actually been executed, and then sealed in the archives. This method was slow, but it allowed them to find out why a unit moved ahead of schedule or arrived late, and not just attribute everything to "battlefield changes" afterward.

The staff tables in the four directions are also different.

The eastern front, bordering mining areas and railways, was most vulnerable to bridge collapses and coal trucks blocking the roads. The western front had numerous artillery positions, requiring ammunition and casualty transport vehicles to be staggered. The southern front had the most neighboring countries, and the passwords, border regulations, and passage passes were more stringent than the independent regiment's internal orders. The northern front involved long mountain roads; if telephone lines were cut off, cavalry and mine railcars had to set off simultaneously.

"Is the main control room down?" Zhao Gang asked.

"Each direction will proceed according to the contingency plan for half a day."

"More than half a day?"

"Reply via radio, cavalry, and railway telephone. If all three routes are cut off, preserve the troops first; do not charge headlong into unknown directions."

A wire breakage drill was then conducted in all four directions.

The eastern route switched to a backup radio station. The western route used railway telephones. The southern route relayed messages via the 358th Regiment's liaison station. The northern route used both cavalry and mining railcars for delivery.

The task was confirmed one hour and forty-two minutes later in the farthest direction.

Confirmation is not simply a matter of "received." The reply must include information such as troop deployment, road conditions, basic food and ammunition supplies, and the time of the next contact. If any of these items are missing, headquarters cannot register that direction as having received orders.

When the first batch of reports were compiled, the operations section discovered that the same bridge was being referred to by different names on the two forms. The local map called it Laohuai Bridge, while the railway map called it No. 3 Culvert Bridge. If the bridge had actually been reported broken over the phone, people in both directions might have assumed it was at two different locations. The staff officer wrote the village name, old name, and number side-by-side on the side of the map, and each liaison station along the railway line also made a copy.

Another receipt stated "Road passable," but didn't specify that only mule carts could pass. The transport department almost included an artillery vehicle in the list. From then on, road status was divided into four categories: infantry, mule carts, automobiles, and artillery vehicles, and the single "passable" designation was no longer allowed to be used for all categories.

Two neighboring units on the southern front used different passwords but shared a common nighttime route. During the exercise, they almost mistook each other for enemy troops. Sun Ming sent the password sheets from both sides to the shared outpost, keeping only the valid parts for that night and destroying them at dawn, without exchanging their full codes.

Chu Yunfei did not come to Baimaling to claim the seal on the general account.

The 358th Regiment set up a small station on the southern line to exchange three lists daily: train schedules, right-of-way, and lists of wounded soldiers from neighboring areas. The new boundary at Lijiapo continued to be enforced, and the fixed passage hours on Beishan Road were not abolished due to the 100,000-map general plan.

The grain ration table was thicker than the order.

The force numbers 100,700, with a daily food supply of approximately 155 tons. The fodder needed for mules, cavalry, and artillery is about 80 tons. The twelve-day baseline, considering only food and fodder, already exceeds 2,800 tons, not including ammunition, medicine, fuel, and bridge materials.

"If it's shipped from one warehouse, the road will be blocked first," the head of the transportation department said.

The warehouses in the six counties were divided into twelve nodes.

Carry three days' worth of provisions for each of the four directions, three days' worth for the direction's granary, and six days' worth for the rear granary. The largest single item should not exceed 20% of the total. If the railway is accessible, use it; if the railway is cut off, switch to mule carts and handcarts; if the mountain roads are also cut off, use the pre-stored provisions from the county or district.

A spot check was conducted at each of the twelve locations. Three grain sacks were found to be damp, one horse feed sack had gravel mixed in, and two carts had cracked axles. The warehouse staff spread out the damp grain separately, preventing it from being stuffed back into the good grain pile; the horse feed was re-sieved; and the broken carts had their axles replaced before departure, instead of waiting until they were fully loaded before being left stranded on the road.

Each granary must retain a reserve for civilian use. The spring famine grain for the county's residents, the hospital's rations, and the workers' rations will not be included in the twelve-day war preparedness base. If someone were to label all the grain in the county granaries as military rations, the numbers on paper would look good, but the villages would run out of food the next day.

The warehouse clerk couldn't get the complete operational plan, only the warehouse time, vehicle number, quantity, and transfer point. En route, a grain truck overturned into a ditch; they couldn't wait until the end of the month to check, so the amount had to be deducted from the next station's receipt.

Mountain gun shells, infantry gun shells, mortar shells, grenade launcher shells, and rifle shells were recorded separately.

Domestic production, reloading, and capture are also separated. Captured shells cannot be recorded as ordnance production capacity, and reloaded shells cannot be passed off as brand-new ammunition. Only by knowing who received which batch can the production process and warehouse be traced if problems arise.

The twenty-two small batches of gun barrels were also not overwhelmed by the number of 100,000.

Six rifles were mounted on training rifles, six were used for guard duties and in mining areas, and ten were for durability. The highest number of rounds fired was 800, and the lowest was 500. Two rifles had worn out quickly at the throat and were removed prematurely. The remaining twenty rifles will continue to be used according to their serial numbers.

Zhao Tieshan placed the two disassembled sample tubes on the table.

The rifling is still there, and there are no cracks on the surface. If you only consider whether they can fire, they are still usable. However, the throat size has deviated from the durability limit, and continuing to fire will falsify their lifespan.

"What about the second batch?" Zhao Weiguo asked.

"Let's wait for the test grinding of the lead screw and the calibration results of the cutting tools and measuring instruments. Twenty-two qualified pieces don't mean it's ready for production. What the hell are you in such a hurry for? Gun barrels aren't going to grow out of thin air."

A system of 100,000 people cannot be supported by 22 gun barrels.

Following the wire disconnection drill, the warehouses in the six counties began releasing grain as planned.

There were no long lines of 100,000 people on the mountain road. Only a line of grain carts heading east, a convoy of artillery carts heading west, stretcher-bearers moving along the northern route, and a communications unit passing through the village from the south. The different directions were arranged at staggered times to avoid crowding in front of the same bridge.

After a grain cart arrived at the southern route, it discovered that the neighboring temporary camp was short of food.

The trucks carried three days' worth of supplies. The transport department neither transferred the supplies directly to neighboring trucks nor ordered the entire convoy to detour back to Baimaling. The liaison officer produced a dispatch order signed by both parties, prioritizing the allocation of half the supplies according to the shared operational direction, while the remaining supplies were sealed in the trucks and continued to be sent forward.

The battalion commander from the neighboring company signed the form without saying thank you.

When the grain trucks continued their journey, the seal was replaced. The original quantity, the amount allocated, and the remaining quantity were all signed by all three parties. If the quantities were incorrect at the next stage, the phrase "supporting friendly forces" could not be used as a blank document.

Another medical station received wounded soldiers from another region. The wounded were from neighboring areas, and they were treated according to their injuries, with the roster remaining with their original units. The consumption of medicines was recorded in the joint mission ledger; if the soldiers could not be treated, they were reclassified as wounded soldiers of the independent regiment.

The medical line drill deliberately closed off a shortcut. What should have been a 40-minute transfer took over an hour, requiring two stretcher changes and a mule cart trip along the way. The medical station discovered that the second transfer point lacked hot water, and the spare medicine kit was missing a tourniquet. These issues were added to the twelve-point checklist that same day.

No shots were fired during this general layout exercise.

The entire process was completed, covering all twelve storage nodes, four directions, three sets of backup communication lines, and the rules for the movement of the wounded. The furthest delivery took one hour and forty-two minutes, during which two instances of insufficient bridge materials, a conflicting nighttime travel password with a neighboring facility, and three instances of overlapping train schedules were discovered.

After the drill, the seals at each of the twelve nodes were retrieved one by one. The issued grain, horse feed, medicine, and bridge materials were settled according to three categories: actual consumption, losses en route, and original quantity returned to the warehouse. Unused withdrawal orders were also returned unopened; those with damaged seals but no execution record were checked separately. The ability to mobilize 100,000 people was made possible by these seemingly insignificant return slips, ensuring that not a single one was missing.

Zhao Gang did not write "the 100,000 system is mature".

He pinned the problem next to the master plan.

The system interface also displayed a notification on the same day.

Our existing industrial, advisory, transportation, and prototyping capabilities have reached the threshold for independent iteration.

The proactive push notification feature is about to end.

Assist mode is being prepared.

No new guns, cannons, or new achievements were made.

The interface did not remove any issues from the master plan. Two instances of insufficient bridge materials, three instances of overlapping train routes, and conflicting passwords between neighboring units remained on the wall and had to be resolved by engineers, transport, and liaison personnel.

Zhao Weiguo looked at it for a while, then closed the interface.

"Settle your own accounts first."

The operations team spread out a map of the outskirts of Taiyuan onto another table.

Someone suggested writing "100,000 counterattacks".

Zhao Weiguo shook his head.

"The 100,000 is the internal master ledger. First, draw the routes the enemy can take, the bridges we can defend, the 12-day food and ammunition rations, and the wounded soldier line."

The first red circle is located on the outer transportation line of Taiyuan.

Six counties, two railway sections, four industrial sites, and provisions for 100,700 people are all waiting outside the designated area for the next map.

Zhao Weiguo traced the red circle, pausing his pencil on the characters for "Taiyuan." The system's proactive push was about to end; from now on, he would have to walk his own path.

He put down his pencil and said something to Zhao Gang.

"Starting tomorrow, every account will be calculated as if there were no system."

Zhao Gang looked up at him.

"Without a system, how can you even do accounting?"

"Yes," Zhao Weiguo said. "The system taught me how to calculate it. The system is gone, but the accounts are still there."

Zhao Gang handed him the pencil.

"Then you settle this score in Taiyuan."

Zhao Weiguo took the pencil and drew a second red circle around Taiyuan.

"First, calculate the route," he said. "Only when the road is clear can people travel. Only when people are traveling can battles be fought."

Zhao Gang folded the master plan neatly and put it in his pocket.

The map shows 100,000 people, starting with the grain table and ending with the red circle.

There were twelve storage nodes, four line break drills, two shortages of bridge materials, three overlapping train routes, and one conflicting password between neighboring stations.

There are still twenty-two gun barrels, two of which were dismantled, and twenty that are still in use.

A system with 100,000 people cannot be built in a day.

But once it's built, it won't collapse again.

The premise is that every single account is calculated correctly.