"Kill them!"

"Kill these bastards!"

The sun was vicious. Cao Yifeng lowered his head, the roar of hundreds of people becoming distant in his ears. The Public Trial Rally was being held on a flat piece of ground, attended by several hundred people from the entire village. First, the Beiyang Army captives and the tax collectors from the county tearfully confessed their deeds. When they heard that Cao Cuishan had actually colluded with the government to "suppress the unruly people" in order to try and keep his family's land, everyone roared in anger.

The common people were afraid of the government, and even more afraid of the Beiyang Army. After the Beiyang Army entered the village, those true "unruly people" had all been scared away. With the People's Party, which had annihilated the Beiyang Army, backing them up, this fear rebounded even more violently. If not for the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army blocking the surging commoners, these people, driven by their lingering fear, would have beaten the Cao family members to death with their own hands. In fact, even though they were blocked, the masses started looking for clods of earth and such to throw at the Cao family.

Cao Yifeng no longer cared about this. When the Beiyang soldiers and the tax collectors pushed all the responsibility onto the Cao family, Cao Yifeng knew the Cao family was finished. The Beiyang Army's conduct meant they would absolutely massacre the common people. In Yuan Shikai's era, killing "unruly people" in Hebei was already notorious. The nickname "Butcher of the People" was not undeserved. The tax collectors and the captured Beiyang soldiers all publicly admitted that the government had ordered the "unruly people" to be killed. For these commoners, who had managed to "escape from the jaws of death" with great difficulty, a strong impulse to kill was boiling in their chests. Whether it was the Beiyang Army in front of them, the tax collectors, or Cao Cuishan's family, they had all once been people high above them. Now they were tied up tightly, no longer having their former glory. Even though their actions were blocked and the masses couldn't do it themselves, the shouts of "Kill them!" "Kill them!" rose wave after wave.

Throughout this entire operation, Cao Yifeng had suffered the most and experienced the most ups and downs. Betrayed by the government, betrayed by the Beiyang Army, and now spat upon by the whole village, Cao Yifeng felt nothing anymore. Since death was directly connected to eternal sleep, his already empty mind actually felt that this result wasn't bad. With no distracting thoughts in his heart, Cao Yifeng turned a deaf ear to the pleading and explanations of his father, the Beiyang soldiers, and the tax collectors. Closing his eyes under the vicious sun, Cao Yifeng felt a breeze blow against his face, and his skin immediately felt a coolness. This wave of comfort made Cao Yifeng feel calm, even giving him a very happy feeling. He couldn't help but smile.

"What are you smiling at?" A deep and powerful voice came from the side.

It didn't matter who asked; Cao Yifeng didn't even think to answer the question. Since it had come to this, why not enjoy the last coolness brought by the summer breeze before death?

Seeing Cao Yifeng so composed, the questioner became interested. He laughed, "It looks like you've admitted your guilt? Are you not afraid of death?"

"I'll die if I'm afraid, and I'll die if I'm not afraid. What's the difference?" Cao Yifeng said, still with his eyes closed. "The Beiyang Army says our Cao family is the chief culprit, and the People's Party also says our crimes are unpardonable. Falling into the hands of the villagers is also death. The handle of the knife is in other people's hands; what else can I say?"

The speaker couldn't help but laugh after hearing this. After laughing a few times, he said, "Hehe, I remember your name is Cao Yifeng, right?"

The other party was neither overbearing nor cynical. Cao Yifeng opened his eyes and looked over. The person in front of him was a high-ranking officer in the People's Party command whom he had seen before. At least those People's Party soldiers were very obedient to him.

"I am Cao Yifeng." Cao Yifeng didn't waste words.

"Did you go to the county seat to invite the Beiyang Army?" the man continued to ask.

"Yes." Cao Yifeng answered concisely and briskly.

This kind of answer, neither begging for mercy nor shirking responsibility, interested the questioner very much. He asked the initial question again, "Then what were you smiling at?"

" The wind blowing is very cool." Cao Yifeng answered frankly.

"Haha, interesting." The speaker said this, then turned his head and paid no more attention to Cao Yifeng.

Cao Yifeng originally thought the man would say something more, but he didn't expect the man to stop speaking completely and instead focus on watching the Public Trial Rally. Being interrupted like this, the mood of enjoyment just now could not continue. Sorrow suddenly rose from within Cao Yifeng. He refused to cry loudly in public, forcefully holding back the sound of crying, but tears gushed out of his eyes.

When the Public Trial Rally ended, the People's Party announced that Caojiapu would come under the rule of the People's Party, and at the same time, Land Reform would be implemented in Caojiapu. As an active counter-revolutionary, Cao Cuishan was sentenced to death, and punished with the confiscation of the Cao family's property. Regarding the decision for the rest of the Cao family, the People's Party members did not mention it. And when the masses learned the news that tax collection would be waived this year and that every household would be distributed land, coupled with the fact that Cao Cuishan had already paid with his life for his counter-revolutionary acts, thunderous cheers erupted. Everyone didn't care about the fate of the rest of the Cao family.

The People's Party followed the instructions of the Party Central Committee: all execution actions during the Land Reform must be carried out by the People's Party. This was also something Chen Ke had specially emphasized. While mobilizing the masses, the masses must be organized. The boiling vengeful emotions of the masses were understandable, but administrative and judicial power must be firmly held in the hands of the People's Party. This is the most basic power of a government, and a power that absolutely cannot be delegated to others. Throwing criminals among the people and letting the people hack them to pieces might seem very satisfying and reasonable, but from a management perspective, this is a completely irresponsible approach.

This clear regulation began during the People's Party's earliest revolution in Anhui. Xiong Mingyang, the current political commissar of the Henan Military Region, had once personally beheaded a landlord's daughter when attacking a fortified village. Some comrades felt that Xiong Mingyang's action was a bit too ruthless. Coupled with some internal contradictions within the Party, some people suggested whether the people should decide the life and death of these fellows from the old era.

Chen Ke originally made no comment on Xiong Mingyang's approach, but when he heard someone take the opportunity to suggest that the people decide the life and death of landlords, he immediately expressed his opposition clearly. "Our revolution is not just a carnival. It's not that everyone can kill whoever they want just because they are happy at the moment! Revolution is an action to establish a brand-new social system. While destroying, we must begin to build. All judicial powers, including execution, must be held in the hands of our People's Party." Since Chen Ke set the tone, this judicial clause was clearly stipulated in the Land Reform implementation measures.

Cao Yifeng naturally didn't know these things. He discovered that he wasn't dead for the time being, but he didn't feel the joy of surviving a disaster. Since the Cao family had been abandoned by all their former backers and the villagers, Cao Yifeng was completely unoptimistic about what fate awaited them after falling into the hands of the People's Party.

Caojiapu was very close to Henan, so the sayings and old adages were about the same. There was a saying: "It's easy for those who die first, hard for those who die later!" Cao Yifeng's father, Cao Cuishan, died for his choice, which was clean and neat. When storytellers spoke of how high officials dealt with people in the past, they loved to say, " The death penalty can be avoided, but living punishment cannot be escaped." In the stories continued by this sentence, a considerable number of characters in the books were "unable to live, unable to die." If it was this kind of "dying later" method, it would be better to let someone kill him cleanly with one slash.

The People's Party did not keep the Cao family members, the Beiyang Army soldiers, and the tax collectors in Caojiapu. The large troop contingent took them south. They spent a day traveling into Henan in the sweltering heat. All the women among the dozen or so members of the Cao family were riding a train for the first time. Under the escort of soldiers with live ammunition, the train traveled for more than half a day and transported these people to Anyang. A concentration camp was built on a large piece of land outside Anyang City. Wooden fences, barbed wire, tall watchtowers, searchlights, and guards patrolling with big dogs. This grand scale and stern style, modeled after later German architecture, made this group of people dare not resist in the slightest. After being screened, the Cao family and the Beiyang Army were separated by gender and sent into the concentration camp.

The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army didn't care much about this group of local moneybags from the Cao family, and cared even less about the former bandits who had been captured. Regarding the current war of unprecedented scale, the Party Central Committee also felt somewhat troubled about the captives internally. For Chen Ke, the current Beiyang Army was not the Kuomintang Army during the War of Liberation. The Kuomintang Army at that time was filled with terrible cruel oppression, so many "liberated soldiers" could be captured in the morning, reformed at noon, and become revolutionary soldiers joining the battle in the afternoon. That was the result of the great "Speak Bitterness" meetings.

The Kuomintang back then conscripted men, treating soldiers like slaves. Profound class oppression brought about extreme resistance from the soldiers of the Kuomintang troops. For those liberated soldiers, they fundamentally didn't regard the People's Party as an enemy; their own superiors were the biggest enemies. The Beiyang Army of 1915 also had oppression, but the Beiyang Army was still a mercenary army after all. Yuan Shikai gave pay to this army, and theoretically, there were tax exemption measures for the families of soldiers from the Hebei region. Compared with Baldy Chiang's army, the Beiyang Army the People's Party faced could be called happy.

Historically, when the Beiyang Army expanded greatly, they frantically recruited bandits from all over. The Beiyang Army Chen Ke faced was also like this. Because the casualty rate in Baldy's army during the war against Japan was too high, by the time of the War of Liberation, the soldiers were basically ordinary commoners who had been press-ganged. What ordinary commoners sought was to live a stable life after the war ended, so "Speak Bitterness" meetings were useful for them. But what bitterness did these bandits have to speak of? Especially the habitual bandits of many years. Historically, during the Red Army era, it wasn't that they hadn't used this bunch. The Red Army generals didn't have a high evaluation of these people. Later, they would rather spend several times more time training good commoners who had never touched a gun than easily absorb these people.

Chen Ke didn't quite understand why these things were so before, but after personally engaging in revolution, he understood. Bandits were not peasant uprising armies; they belonged to the "lumpenproletariat" class. They proved by participating in bandit activities that they were unwilling to work. Moreover, after becoming bandits and separating from productive labor, relying on looting to eat and drink well, it was not an easy task to make them get used to labor again. Trying to rely on "Speak Bitterness" meetings to reform their thinking was even more difficult. The pain of bandits in their bandit careers was basically that they didn't rob enough or ruthlessly enough. The bandit chiefs fought fiercely among themselves, one singing after another left the stage. It was also hard to link their cajoling and oppression of the bandits underneath to class oppression. Back when He Zudao was suppressing bandits in Jiangxi, there were quite a few bandit members in the troops. During the Rectification Movement, Jiangxi was rectified the most ruthlessly. It wasn't until almost all cadres and soldiers of bandit origin were discharged that the ethos of the Jiangxi troops was thoroughly turned around.

In the current war, the possibility of release didn't exist either. The Beiyang Army was destined to be captured on a large scale. If released, even if the captives didn't return to the Beiyang Army, they would drift among the people and harm various places. After discussion, the People's Party Central Committee finally decided to handle the POW issue by establishing large-scale concentration camps and labor reform detachments. The POW camp in Anyang was a transit station used for containment, screening, and further transfer.

The current stalemate also ended with the conclusion of the summer harvest in Henan. The Beiyang Army's will to fight was too weak. The Henan Provincial Committee of the People's Party hadn't expected the Beiyang Army to hesitate and not dare to advance, actually allowing Henan to successfully complete the summer harvest in the area north of the Yellow River. Since Beiyang gave the People's Party a chance, the People's Party wouldn't waste it. Now that the food supply was fully guaranteed, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's offensive also began.

On June 18, 1915, Chai Qingguo, commander of the Henan Military Region, formally signed his name on the *Handan Campaign Offensive Order*. The first target was Linzhang County, which was close at hand to Anyang, Henan.