"Just how many people did they kill here?" For soldiers who kept company with war and death at all times, it was not an easy thing to make their voices tremble. A search team of the 15th Army Group of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army stood on a rocky beach by a small river, staring blankly at patches of black stones.

This was an ordinary small river in the Western Zhejiang water system, not even having a proper name. According to the information provided by Fan Ainong, a member of the Western Zhejiang Branch, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's search team indeed found this relatively hidden site of a massacre. After the reorganization of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, most units had combat experience. It was easy to distinguish whether something was bloodstains. The mottled black presented by the stones before their eyes was not their original color, but left by a large amount of fresh blood soaking in and drying up on the rocks. Zhejiang was rainy; seeing this black color clearly after more than a year of wind and rain showed just how much blood had flowed back then.

The search team couldn't just look a few times and be done with it. The comrades first scraped the surface of the black stones a few times with military daggers. Sure enough, the cyan stone texture was immediately revealed under the black surface layer. The recorders recorded these data one by one.

"Just how many people did they kill here?" Even though they had said it once, the comrades said it again in a doubtful tone. The search team didn't just look and touch simply to finish the job, and the tragic massacre left a large number of traces even after more than a year of wind and rain. Besides the stones soaked by a large amount of fresh blood, the search even found quite a few broken bone fragments, and even shattered skull caps.

Controlling major cities, ports, and transportation lines, and then implementing suppression of counter-revolutionaries region by region. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's plan to attack the three southeastern provinces was not bizarre; it was completely a cliché pattern. After liberating Hangzhou, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army ensured control over northern Zhejiang. The 5th Army Group split its forces to go south and east, and the 15th Army Group took over the already liberated areas.

The comrades had all heard of the miserable state of Western Zhejiang. After truly entering Western Zhejiang and searching carefully in those places of collective killing, tragic traces could still be found. After more than a year of wind and rain, mottled bloodstains could still be faintly seen on city walls, and countless evidence was searched out in places of massacres.

Such search operations were naturally not to find survivors, but to confirm the monstrous crimes committed by the counter-revolutionaries. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was never afraid of battle and showed no mercy when fighting enemies. But this did not mean that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army liked to kill people, nor did it mean the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army wanted to treat human life like grass. To suppress counter-revolutionaries required reliable evidence. There were no soldiers from Zhejiang in the various units, and the troops had not operated in Zhejiang before. If such searches were not conducted, it would be difficult for the troops to understand to what extent the enemy could be ferocious.

Looking at the collected intelligence, Heidao Ren, Political Commissar of the 15th Army Group, turned green in the face. As a Japanese, Heidao Ren could understand such a thing as brutality. Driven by fear, humans would always do some things that normal people found incredible. During the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan had carried out quite a few massacres. But that was against the nationals of another country. To carry out such brutal massacres against one's own nationals was something that challenged human imagination.

Heidao Ren naturally wouldn't declare to the comrades the results of his thinking based on different ethnicities. Instead, He Jinwu, Commander of the 15th Army Group, and Lu Zhengping, the Chief of Staff, couldn't help but sigh: "Back then we thought we were ruthless enough when killing landlords in the base area. Now looking at it, that was true compassion."

If the landlords heard this, they would definitely think the People's Party cadres were talking nonsense. But Heidao Ren was extremely approving of this statement. It wasn't that he was now on the killing side. Looking at the overall situation, the People's Party had killed no more than 600,000 reactionaries in the liberated areas of eight provinces over several years. Those people all had blood cases on their hands or were killed in open warfare. Adding the Chinese and Japanese soldiers killed in the revolutionary war, the total number was still less than one million.

Now, judging solely by the incomplete data temporarily collected, the number of Restoration Society members and Peasant Association members killed in Zhejiang Province alone would exceed 100,000. After the upcoming counter-revolutionary suppression operation was completed, it was expected that another 200,000 to 300,000 would be killed from beginning to end. This was just the territory of one province. In the entire three southeastern provinces, during this counter-revolutionary massacre and the suppression of counter-revolutionaries targeting the massacre, the total number of people who had died and would die would probably not be less than one million.

If the People's Party had relied on military force to conquer the three southeastern provinces from the beginning, even if they adopted sufficiently ruthless disposal methods, the number of people dying in the revolutionary war and the actions to suppress landlords would absolutely not have exceeded 100,000. Compared to the cruelty of the reactionaries' counter-attack, the severity of the People's Party knocking down reactionaries simply felt like a spring breeze brushing the face.

Chen Ke once said that revolution is the greatest humanitarianism. Heidao Ren finally understood the heaviest part of those words now. Revolution would cause a large number of deaths in a very short time, but compared to the number of people dying from being involved in long-term chaos, not only would the number of dead be greatly reduced, but the fresh blood and life of every deceased person would leave their own value in history. Heidao Ren couldn't help but recall another remark Chen Ke had made: the history of human progress is like the formation of coal; at first it is a large lump, and in the end, there is only a small bit. And it is not enough for the fresh blood offered to be of sufficient quantity; the quality must also be sufficient. What must be offered on the altar is the blood of truly determined revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries.

Heidao Ren once felt Chen Ke's words were a bit too much groaning without illness. Seeing the true situation of the April 12th counter-revolutionary massacre with his own eyes, he suddenly understood what Chen Ke was talking about. Understanding everything Chen Ke referred to, Heidao Ren couldn't help but have another doubt pop up. With what kind of perspective did Chen Ke gain insight into history and revolution? How much willpower did it take to admit that the revolution must cross a sea of blood with no bottom in sight to continue forward, to possibly approach the shore of victory?

"Commissar Heidao, we must hurry up with our mobilization meeting this time," said Lu Zhengping, Chief of Staff of the Army Group and Deputy Secretary of the Army Group Party Committee. "The soldiers feel they came to fight a war, not to kill people like cutting rice like this. Or should we hand this work over completely to the comrades of the People's Internal Affairs Committee?"

The People's Party had quite a few foreign party members, or more accurately, Japanese party members. The original default rule in the army was that Japanese party members could not become party committee secretaries. With the sharp increase in the number of troops, this defaulted to foreign party members not being able to become commanders above the corps level. Anyway, army group political commissars and army group commanders participated in all high-level military meetings and party committee meetings. This adjustment was less a precaution than a protection. With the troops spread so large, often it wasn't that a certain individual would cause irreparable loss to the troops, but that one had to guard against a not-small number of people with ulterior motives gaining opportunities to spread rumors and slanders. Heidao Ren had risen all the way from company commander and political commissar and had never cared about this. It wasn't that the Japanese side hadn't sent spies attempting to contact Heidao Ren, so rumors and slanders were actually more terrible than assassination.

Everyone knew this point, and Heidao Ren really couldn't take these things to heart. He answered: "First wipe out the militias attempting to resist; knocking them out is the root. Suppression of counter-revolutionaries has never been a matter of one or two days."

In order to be able to kill fewer people while trying not to let off counter-revolutionaries, the counter-revolutionary suppression plan for the entire three southeastern provinces would take more than a year or even longer. The primary step was not to disrupt the three southeastern provinces, but to stabilize them and immediately establish a household registration system. Counter-revolutionaries would also flee; the problem of the masses fleeing their native land during times of war was common. The liberated areas had ample experience with this. After the strict household registration system was established, those displaced persons from other places underwent containment, screening, and repatriation. Added to the circulation of intelligence, many guys who owed blood debts in their hometowns and fled were arrested and brought to justice.

After proving to the masses in the localities that those criminals would be caught and executed even if they fled to the ends of the earth, the prestige of the People's Party was established along with it. This suppression operation in Jiangsu and Zhejiang adopted the same train of thought and model.

"It would be great if there were no wars sometime!" Army Group Commander He Jinwu sighed. He was also an old soldier with ten years of military service and had participated in almost every battle in Jiangnan. Long-term war, and the slaughter and destruction brought by war, made these soldiers desire peace more than anyone else. In the military education of the People's Party, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army stepped onto the battlefield without hesitation precisely for the sake of peace. Because of this, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army could always maintain high morale.

"That also depends on to what extent the militias resist in cornered struggles!" Lu Zhengping was not blindly optimistic about the bloody storm to be experienced on the road to peace. Just as he thought, ever since the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army entered Zhejiang, battles had been going on every day. Breaking the Beiyang Army, destroying or capturing the Beiyang Army did not mean the end of the war. In the various villages of Zhejiang, the war was proceeding even more cruelly.

In a valley, twenty or so people wearing various colored clothes were sweating profusely and fleeing with stumbling steps. They were the militia of Wujialing in Western Zhejiang. During April 12th, this militia had killed quite a few members of the Peasant Association in Western Zhejiang. Before the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army fought over, they knew they had forged a deep blood feud with the People's Party, so they tried their best to contact the Beiyang Army for support. When the Beiyang Army set up defense lines in Western Zhejiang, these people tried their best to communicate with the Beiyang Army. So after the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army broke the Beiyang Army's defense line, this militia received the news immediately. When the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army attacked Wujialing, they did put up a cornered resistance.

But with the difference of heaven and earth between the two sides' weapons and equipment, military training, and tactical level, the militia soon found themselves half-surrounded. The firepower strike point of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was right on the soft underbelly of the militia's defense line. Under dense and accurate firepower attacks, the guys in the militia attempting to resist were knocked down one by one. These people had all slaughtered local Peasant Association members; they knew the result if the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army won. So when the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army cut into the soft underbelly of the militia's defense system, split the militia's defense line in two, and began a pincer attack from two sides, the militia leader made a prompt decision to take people and run.

He couldn't care about his family and wealth, nor could he care about so many brothers. At this moment, what these people could do was save themselves first.

Along the way, the pursuing team of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army fired shots continuously. The guys lagging at the end were either knocked down or simply knelt and surrendered after they couldn't run anymore. The militia leader Wen Side was also a local "hero"; he gritted his teeth and led the team running for their lives, maintaining the team somehow. Such a small team used their advantage of familiarity with the terrain to flee desperately. Guns were thrown away, weapons were thrown away, everything hindering escape was thrown away. Running to the point where they were almost foaming at the mouth, the pursuers from the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army behind them still bit on deathly tight without letting go.

Stumbling and staggering into the valley, the pursuers behind seemed tired too, and the distance between the two sides did not shorten. Wen Side, taking the lead, finally slowed his pace a bit. As a result, with him taking the lead, people behind him simply collapsed on the ground, unable to move.

Wen Side shouted anxiously: "Get up quickly! You can't rest; once you rest, you can never move again."

But no matter how Wen Side shouted, the militia members who had sat down or fallen down still couldn't move.

"Sigh!" Wen Side knew these brothers really couldn't run anymore. He shouted fiercely and continued to walk forward.

Seeing Wen Side wanting to go without taking them, the brothers behind struggled to stand up. But they saw Wen Side hadn't gone too far when a snow-white flower popped up on his head. This familiar scene reminded the militia members of the look they would see when shooting at the heads of Peasant Association members with rifles more than a year ago. Only then did they hear a clear gunshot from the mountain. The gunshot was like a signal; Wen Side was still standing relatively straight, and then he fell straight backward.