Chapter 319 Suppression of bandits and speculation
After passing Xindian Port, we sailed along the Baihe River for more than thirty miles. Except for Xinye County, there happened to be a small wharf nearby. The wharf was next to a relatively prosperous town.
According to Li Mu's understanding, those ships transporting tobacco would often dock here overnight to have some fun with women.
This is opportunity.
Li Mu would never rob directly. As a security guard, he had also come here to suppress bandits. He knew that there was a group of ruthless bandits in this area who often robbed merchants and killed people.
He once led the security team to fight with them, and several brothers were sacrificed. Seven or eight of the other party were also killed, and the two sides were in a stalemate for a long time.
So I found someone to spread the word, saying that as long as the other party did not set foot in Xinye County, they would be ignored.
The other party also realized that the security team was not easy to mess with, and the number of robberies in Xinye County decreased.
Afterwards, Li Mu also conducted a special investigation on this group of gangsters, and found that there were seventy or eighty of them, all young and strong, very greedy, and sometimes even killed people to get goods worth more than ten yuan per car.
Finally, after Li Mu's analysis, the biggest weakness of this group of gangsters should be their lack of intelligence and their inability to find good robbery targets.
Now, toss a big pie to them. According to his estimation, those few ships of smoke and soil are worth almost 100,000 silver dollars.
They are jealous of goods worth more than ten silver dollars and don't want to let them go. If goods worth one hundred thousand silver dollars come under their noses, they won't be crazy.
No matter what, it's impossible to let it go.
So, a few days ago, Li Mu found someone to secretly tell the gangsters the news, where the ship was parked, how many people there were, how many weapons and equipment it had, and the value of the things being escorted...
Sure enough, last night, while many people on the boat were out having fun, their defenses were lax, and there was no leader, this group of gangsters attacked directly.
Although the people escorting the tobacco did not have a numerical advantage and were caught off guard, the firepower was fierce enough and the two groups fought hard.
Later, people who went to the town to have fun heard the noise and ran back with guns in hand. The scene became even more chaotic. In the nearby town, every door was closed and the lights were turned off. Only two groups of people were left fighting nearby.
Fight.
Of course, there is also someone who wants to take advantage of the situation.
At the end of the fight, the gangsters went to call for people again, and all the elite and young men came out. In the end, they won miserably. Only a dozen people were left, and they finally captured these several ships of smoke and soil.
When the gangsters took guns and went to the town to recruit some young men to help them transport smoke and soil to the bandits' stronghold, Li Mu had already come over with the security team to suppress the bandits.
According to the intelligence, there were only five or six bandits guarding the stronghold. Plus the remaining dozen, all of whom were injured, the total number did not exceed twenty.
Li Mu sent out the first and second battalions to surround the stronghold and attack in turns. He was not in a hurry and just used it as a training exercise.
As for him, how could he go into battle in person when it was so dangerous? So he took the guard company and waited at the foot of the mountain.
The tea seller, Old Man Sun, was a tea seller in a nearby town. He specially called him over and set up a tea shed here to supply tea.
Thinking about something in his mind, he asked casually: "How is the bandit camp going? When will it be taken down?"
Liu Peiming replied: "Commander, I asked you just now when you were asleep. It would be a bit expensive to attack by force now. The opponent only has a dozen or two people, and they can't defend it at all. If you waste the opponent's energy, you will definitely be able to do it before dark."
I can take it."
Li Mu nodded: "Tell them there is no need to worry, the food and wine are ready for them to celebrate."
Liu Peiming said: "Yes, commander." He turned around and hurried towards the bandit camp.
Li Mu got up and walked around to get used to the August weather, the sun was scorching, it was hot.
He briefly moved his legs and feet, then looked at himself. There was a gun holster in his waist, which contained a shell gun, commonly known as a box gun.
On the ground next to it, there is also a brand new Chinese-style rifle. This is a new model rifle produced by Gongxian Arsenal and just launched in 1935.
I thought about the time again, today is August 5, 1937, and the July 7th Incident was already a month ago.
On the 29th of last month, Peiping and Tianjin fell one after another. In eight days, the three-month "Battle of Songhu" will begin.
Currently, Japanese warships have blocked the sea and are on alert, and the whole country is in a state of panic.
Nanyang, which is located inland, still seems a little calm at this time. The smoke of gunpowder in the distance has not blown over, but it will not be long. The next step is the national resistance war.
Li Mu sighed for a while, picked up his formal rifle, called the guard company, and strode towards the bandit camp.
The guard company reacted very quickly, immediately lined up and followed quickly.
Arriving near the bandit camp, he observed it with a telescope for a while. Li Mu quickly climbed up a nearby slope, took a closer look, raised his rifle and banged, three hundred meters away, a bandit who had just exposed his head fell down.
.
Marksmanship, except for some talents, is mostly fed by bullets.
Li Mu fed a lot of bullets, especially in the last world. Since he participated in many competitions in the police system, he had specialized training in pistols and rifles, so he fed a lot of bullets.
This is a condition that many people in this era do not have.
Coupled with Li Mu's strong physique and extremely fine control over all aspects of his body, his marksmanship has naturally improved to a higher level. During the Republic of China, calling him a sharpshooter would not be considered modest.
In the next half hour, Li Mu fired six times, and five more gangsters fell down. The eyes of the surrounding security companies were widened. They didn't expect that the regiment commander who rarely touched guns or went to the front line would be so playful.
He is so good at shooting. He is worthy of having studied in a foreign military academy.
At this time, the gangsters were completely suppressed, and no one dared to show their head anymore. The first battalion, looking for an opportunity, pushed directly to the bottom of the bandits' stronghold, and was about to break the stronghold. One gangster had the courage to show his head, and just now
Want to shoot.
With a bang, Li Mu's gun fired again, and the gangster fell down in response.
Now, no one dared to show their head anymore.
Half an hour later, the bandit stronghold was captured and all the bandits were beheaded.
The bandit village was quite poor. In addition to the cigarettes, gold and silver jewelry, silver dollars, and French currency they had just robbed, they only cost less than 2,000 yuan each.
Such a big village, such a group of ruthless bandits, and such a small amount of possessions are quite pitiful.
It is precisely because of this that the garrison did not actively suppress the bandits. Such a bandit stronghold would not be able to be defeated unless dozens of people were killed and a large amount of ammunition was consumed. And the gains from taking down the bandit stronghold were not even large losses.
Who would want to do such a thankless job!
In addition to Li Mu, you can next train your troops by suppressing bandits.
The security team is stationed in a fairly large farm. Except for the small courtyard with two entrances where Li Mu lives, which looks relatively elegant and stylish, the rest are basically barracks.
In Li Mu's residence, in addition to himself, there are two old women who are responsible for his food and daily life. There is no such thing as eating and sleeping with soldiers.
I drank a lot of wine in the evening, and with a slight hint of drunkenness, I drank a bowl of hangover soup, took a shower, and then rested.
The next day, Li Mu still got up early and had just run five kilometers when soldiers from the security regiment began to do morning exercises one after another.
Seeing that everyone had arrived, Li Mu shouted directly: "Take a break, stand at attention, turn right, and run after me."
Everyone subconsciously completed the action and started running after Li Mu. Several battalion commanders and company commanders looked at each other and started running without saying a word.
Li Mu slowed down and ran in a circle for five kilometers before returning to the school grounds. Everyone performed well. Although they were sweating profusely and panting from exhaustion, there were only about 20 laggards.
Among them, three others suffered from heatstroke.
Li Mu did not expect this. Running five kilometers in the summer, even in the morning, the temperature is not low, and some people are indeed prone to heatstroke.
After initially understanding everyone's physical abilities, Li Mu signaled to several battalion commanders.
"You guys continue training."
Several battalion commanders and company commanders each led their people and began training.
Li Mu watched for a while. The training was still what he had been taught before. There was no way he could do it. He was the only one who knew something about it before. For this purpose, he also consulted a lot of military information and teaching materials.
Not to mention the Caotai team, they are almost the same. There are only a few dozen people in a company and more than a hundred people in a battalion.
It is said to be a security group, and in terms of size, it is only the size of a battalion.
After breakfast, he walked around the area casually, and called Liu Peiming over to give some instructions. Li Mu began to look through the military books and materials he had bought before. He was also a military novice, and he also wanted to become familiar with traditional Chinese characters again.
Finally, I took out my pen and ink and became familiar with the structure and writing of traditional Chinese characters, which I will inevitably use in the future.
The next morning, Liu Peiming came over and reported: "The person invited has arrived."
Li Mu walked outside the door. When seven or eight businessmen saw him, they immediately clasped their fists and said, "Captain Li!"
Li Mu smiled: "Everyone, without further ado, please..."
With that said, Li Mu led these birthdays to the nearby warehouse and motioned to the two soldiers standing guard to open the door.
"Everyone, the goods are all inside, come in and take a look..."
Several businessmen filed in, checked it carefully, and nodded: "The goods are good, good foreign goods from Shanghai."
A businessman hesitated and said: "The origin of these goods..."
Li Mu smiled and said: "You are selling this, what are you afraid of?"
Then he continued: "But I won't hide it from you, this is the trophy of the bandits, and the origin is very innocent!"
Several businessmen looked at each other in confusion. In the past two days, word had spread nearby that a trading house from Shanghai was targeted and robbed by a group of well-known gangsters nearby, leaving few survivors.
The gangsters then forced young men from nearby towns to help them escort the goods to the bandits' stronghold. Many people can attest to this.
Then I heard that the security group, which had become very famous in the past year and was suppressing bandits everywhere in the neighborhood, heard the news and rushed over and wiped out this group of ruthless bandits.
Looking at the so-called trophies in front of me, in a sense, the origin is indeed quite innocent.
These merchants discussed it, wrapped the cigarettes in a round shape, and gave them a pretty good price, one hundred thousand French currency.
Yesterday, Li Mu asked someone to find out. Since the July 7th Incident, legal currency has fallen sharply. Currently, 100,000 legal currency is equivalent to about 85,000 silver dollars.
Li Mu also asked someone to appraise the price of these cigarette pictures. They were worth about one hundred thousand silver dollars, and the price of one hundred thousand French dollars was quite reasonable. When people came over, they would always leave some soup for them.
In the next two days, Li Mu found someone to apply for a new identity certificate. It had nothing to do with his current security team leader, whose name was Li Mu.
In the future, if he flies too frequently, he will easily attract attention, so he just needs to change his identity and name. For him, it is quite simple to apply for several different identity certificates in this three-thirds of an acre of land.
After arranging everything here, Li Mu took a platoon of more than 20 people from the guard company and took a boat along the Han River, passing through Xiangyang, and sailed towards Wuhan.
Two days later, I got off the boat and arrived in Wuhan. The whole city was noisy, there were people everywhere, and many students were parading on the streets. Li Mu bought a newspaper, and then he learned that fighting had started in Shanghai, and Songhu
The battle has officially begun.
Li Mu was not in the mood to lament this, because he knew that this was just the beginning, and the war would be more cruel in the future, and half of China would fall in just one year.
As the only variable in this world, he can only flap his little wings vigorously to see if he can change the future.
As an important port city on the Yangtze River waterway, Wuhan has access to the river and the sea. There are many businesses and warehouses on the docks, and there is an endless stream of merchants coming and going.
Li Mu came to Wuhan this time, firstly to take a flight from here, and secondly to buy some goods and bring them to Singapore to sell.
There are many transfers along the way, so it would be a waste of time to just bring things from Singapore.
Li Mu had already selected the specific goods.
During the Republic of China, there were not many goods that had a monopoly position in the world, but one item was a Chinese characteristic: "bristle", that is, pig hair.
Pig bristles have natural advantages, including wear resistance, corrosion resistance, heat resistance, acid and alkali resistance, not easily deformed, moderate hardness, and good toughness. They are the main raw material for brushes in the chemical and military industries.
For example, bristle brushes are indispensable for painting warships, aircraft, various tanks, and military vehicles, and cleaning various gun barrels.
Whether it is daily life, industrial production, or weapons maintenance, scraps from pigs play a key role in war.
Before the invention of plastic nylon, pig bristles were the only material for brushes. Pig bristles were China's traditional export product, ranking first in the world. During World War II, the United States classified pig bristles as a Class A strategic material, which was as precious as arms and was the key to determining the outcome of the war.
Materials.
At present, 95% of the global demand for 650,000 boxes of bristle comes from China. Even big capitalist countries such as the United States, Britain, and Germany rely on China for their brush manufacturing industries.
During the Anti-Japanese War, due to traffic congestion, China's bristle exports decreased, which also led to a serious shortage of bristle around the world, and global bristle prices soared. As World War II expanded, more weapons were needed, and China's bristle became a scarce military supply.
During World War II, the United States, as the "arsenal" of its allies, had the greatest demand for bristle brushes. At that time, almost all the raw material bristle for all brush factories in the United States came from China. The bristle was also used to repay loans from the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States to China.
.
In 1939, the U.S. government ordered the embassy in China to formally request the Chinese government to ship all the bristles exported from Chongqing to the United States, and the government agreed. However, at that time, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom were all in urgent need of bristles. In order to distribute the bristles, the three countries were still in Washington.
A distribution agency was established, attended by delegations from the three countries, responsible for negotiating how to obtain bristles from China and how to distribute them, and then the matter was settled.
From 1937 to 1945, pig bristles alone earned the country US$30 million in foreign exchange, equivalent to 75 million yuan.
I planned the supplies I wanted to buy, found a knowledgeable agent, and started looking at the goods immediately.
At this time, Li Mu learned that due to the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Japan blocked the sea, blocked roads, and things could not be sold. Many materials that needed to be exported were backlogged in the hands of merchants.
For example, pig bristles are shipped in large quantities every year, and many businessmen are also interested in this business and buy them everywhere.
However, now it is in hand, especially after the Battle of Songhu broke out and the war entered the stage of all-out resistance. There were wars everywhere. Many merchants were in panic all day long and wanted to get rid of the goods quickly and put them in their pockets.
There was a lot of backlog of pig bristles in the warehouses of major commercial banks. Under the guidance of an intermediary, Li Mu met many merchants in this field. Finally, a merchant from Hebei was worried about the situation at home and sold pig bristles at a 50% discount on the usual price.
Li Mu spent 95,000 French coins to take down the bristles from several warehouses.
After quietly putting the bristles into the space, Li Mu exchanged French currency for some U.S. dollars and pounds, then bought a plane ticket at a foreign bank and boarded a plane from Hankou to Kunming.
When he arrived in Kunming, Li Mu didn't stop. He even bought a plane ticket that day. After asking around, he learned that as China's only international route, many people chose to fly out of the country after the Songhu Battle broke out.
Therefore, airlines have also increased the number of flights, sometimes three or four flights a day.
When we arrived in Hanoi, it was almost evening. Li Mu bought a ticket to fly to Bangkok tomorrow and found a hotel nearby to stay.
Today, Vietnam is still a French colony. Compared with the raging war in the country, it still maintains a sense of tranquility.
Without stopping here, Li Mu boarded a flight to Bangkok the next morning. When he arrived in Bangkok, there happened to be a passenger flight to Singapore in the afternoon, so he bought a ticket and flew there immediately without stopping.
We arrived in Singapore at around 7 p.m. that day. The journey from Wuhan only took two days, which is considered a miracle in this era.
That night, he found a low-end hotel to stay in. Early the next morning, after completing his exercise, Li Mu started to visit the market here, mainly to understand the current market situation of bristles.
For those who don’t know, due to the outbreak of the war, trade routes were blocked, and pig bristles are now scarce on the market. Coupled with a group of speculators, China, which almost monopolizes global pig bristles exports, has been plunged into a war with no sign of ending in a short period of time.
Everyone got involved and started to hype.
The price of bristle has tripled in just one month, and it is still very affordable.
Li Mu clicked his tongue when he heard this. He bought bristles at half the market price in China and sold them here at three times the usual price. He made six times the profit just by traveling from Wuhan to Singapore.
It really makes people crazy.
After walking around Singapore for two days, I chose a reliable foreign bank and sold all the bristles I had, and got almost US$200,000.
Li Mu understood that in domestic banks and foreign banks, the exchange rate between silver dollars and U.S. dollars was about 2.4, and one U.S. dollar was equal to 2.4 silver dollars.
Two hundred thousand U.S. dollars, equivalent to 480,000 silver dollars.
Just one trip abroad, the money in his hand doubled so much that Li Mu couldn't help but sigh.