The snipers displayed tremendous power in the encirclement and suppression battle. Whether it was dealing with the stubborn resistance of the militia in cornered positions or driving the fleeing militia into the encirclement for annihilation, their precise strike capabilities inflicted fatal casualties on the enemy. The war mode constructed by modern warfare concepts was simply beyond the comprehension of a militia that still believed collective volley fire could greatly intimidate the opponent. When modernization suddenly occurred before their eyes, the reaction of the militia was exactly the same as Cai Yuanpei's; they understood neither the objective of the People's Party's actions nor the process of the People's Party's actions. The only thing the militia could do was fight a battle that was chaotic for them, and then confusedly accept the fate of being killed or captured.

The backbone of the forty-some militia groups in Western Zhejiang numbered more than nine hundred men. Including various hanger-ons or cannon fodder making up the numbers, there were more than three thousand people. Under the fierce attack of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, they were completely wiped out very quickly. The price paid by the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was five dead and seventy-eight wounded.

The troops were not at all ecstatic because of such a "victory." The subsequent work was not easy at all. The troops separately interrogated all the captured personnel about every massacre operation they had participated in. The confessors led the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army to find massacre sites one by one. Through investigation and excavation, collective massacre sites and corpse burial grounds were discovered one after another.

After class struggle turned into class war, its tragic state could only be described as hair-raising. Skulls were shattered, or heads were chopped off, or breastbones were completely pierced by bullets from front to back; in the remains of some masses, broken spear tips could even be seen. Different weapons created different injuries. Every burial site signified a massacre, and some large burial pits actually contained several kinds of masses who died from different injuries, which proved that the slaughter carried out in these places happened not just once, but multiple times.

As combat experts, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army could very clearly distinguish these differences. Through the excavation of the burial sites, some massacres that the participants dared not speak of were also discovered. But these people knew that once their crimes were exposed, they would definitely die. No matter how the comrades of the troops interrogated, many people absolutely would not talk about their own evil deeds and flatly denied the exposure of others.

The perpetrators refused to admit it, so they could only ask others. However, mass work encountered great trouble. The majority of the common people still surviving in Western Zhejiang now were not Peasant Association activists. More accurately speaking, the Peasant Association activists and even the common people who joined the Peasant Association had been killed cleanly. For these people, their relationship with the landlords, gentry, and militia was actually somewhat closer. They refused to stand up and reveal what had actually happened at the time no matter what.

The help that the comrades in Western Zhejiang could offer was actually limited. The grassroots comrades of the Guangfu Society Western Zhejiang Branch suffered heavy casualties, and the members in quite a few areas were all killed off. The local situation they provided was very effective, but in terms of details, more accurately in terms of household registration statistics, it was much worse. This problem was only resolved after the comrades who conquered Hangzhou confiscated a large batch of Western Zhejiang household registration documents that the Hangzhou side had seized from Western Zhejiang.

Those were the local situation files produced by the Western Zhejiang Branch, including population and detailed household registration and identity of each village. In these files, almost more than half of the names were ticked off with a vermilion pen. The annotation below was "Executed"!

Seeing the files they had worked so hard to produce with their own eyes, as well as the shocking execution instructions on them, the comrades of Western Zhejiang wailed loudly. There were not many Zhejiang people among the cadres of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, but even so, after seeing such files, everyone's eyes turned red. Whole families upon whole families had their names ticked off; men, women, old, and young, none were spared. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army would never take their participation in the public trial and execution of landlords as their own achievement to brag about; that was killing people after all. Even if they did not feel in the wrong when killing those wicked people, they would absolutely not feel happy in their hearts. Now, all the guilt in the comrades' hearts was swept away, and incomparable hatred for the enemy filled their chests.

However, what was truly of great help to the specific work were the files regarding land records. After cross-referencing, the troops discovered the true reason why those common people who had not joined the militia kept their mouths shut. Every one of these families possessed land that originally did not belong to them. After the landlords and gentry commanded the militia to massacre the common people who joined the Peasant Association, they hypocritically gave a portion of the land of the original Peasant Association members to those "relatively honest" common people. Even if they had no human lives on their hands, in order to keep their own land, the common people could not expose others. Once the local order was restored to the situation before April 12th, it primarily meant that these peasants who obtained land would lose this land.

"This bunch of bastards!" The cadres of the troops became angry because of this very reasonable explanation. The object of this anger was those common people who maintained silence. "Do they think that if they don't say anything, we can't find out?"

Seeing the situation was not right, the political commissars hurriedly persuaded the agitated cadres, "No matter what situation arises, we of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army cannot treat the people as our own enemies."

"The people? We treat them as the people, but they don't feel that we are their own! With this behavior of theirs, how do they look like the people?" The cadres almost started shouting abuse.

Political commissars were political commissars after all; they had to talk politics at all times, especially at such a critical moment. "No investigation, no right to speak. At any rate, let us clarify the problem first!"

With the land and household registration situation, investigations were launched all over Western Zhejiang. For example, in Wujialing, the troops questioned four families of common people who occupied the good land of the killed masses.

Seeing the comrades of the troops state the detailed situation and knowing that they could not muddle through by pretending to be deaf and dumb, those common people who had been using "can't remember clearly" and "was so scared at the time I hid at home and didn't dare go out" as excuses finally opened their mouths in fear, "Officer, you don't understand, this land wasn't snatched by me, I bought it!"

It turned out that the landlords and gentry did not give the land to the common people for free. After they slaughtered the local masses, they seized the masses' land and then sold this land to other common people at varying prices. For the common people who had money to buy, they collected money. The common people who had no money to buy land also wanted to buy land, so they let the common people write IOUs.

The local common people were firstly afraid of the armed force of these counter-revolutionaries, and secondly, they themselves also had a guilty conscience and dared not admit to obtaining others' land. The common people even more did not want to lose their own land because of an unnecessary admission. The money to purchase this land was accumulated by them through much hard work. As for the money for buying land borrowed from the landlords and gentry, it might not be paid off in several years or even more than a decade.

After understanding the facts, the troops began to discuss solutions.

Towards these bystanders, a considerable number of comrades had great anger, "There is no need to be polite to these people either! Just confiscate their illegally obtained land directly!"

The comrades holding such an attitude exceeded seventy percent of the Party Committee. Letting the counter-revolutionary landlords and gentry pay their blood debt with blood naturally needed no further discussion. The indifference of the bystanders was admittedly not a capital crime, but the comrades did not want to let them off lightly at all.

The opinion formed by this kind of thinking was handed up, and soon the Central Committee transferred Anhui Governor Li Shouxian to assume the post of Zhejiang Provincial Party Secretary and concurrently Governor of Zhejiang Province. The first thing Li Shouxian did after taking office was to reject such a handling opinion.

At the Party Committee meeting, Li Shouxian calmly said to the indignant comrades: "Comrades, do you consider the land trading that occurred in Western Zhejiang after the April 12th massacre to be a revolutionary problem or a legal problem?"

"This is of course a revolutionary problem!" He Jinwu, Commander of the 15th Army, immediately said indignantly.

"Can you tell me the reason?" Li Shouxian asked calmly.

"Those people occupied the Peasant Association's land, how can it be a legal problem?" He Jinwu said angrily.

Li Shouxian remained calm. He asked: "Then how do you prove that these people seized this land from the hands of the Peasant Association?"

He Jinwu fell silent; this matter indeed could not be proved.

Li Shouxian said: "In the summary situation I have seen, the masses who bought land basically all have land deeds and documents. At that time, the political power in Western Zhejiang had already been overthrown, and the counter-revolutionaries had already grasped the political power in Western Zhejiang. The action of the masses purchasing land from their hands, no matter how I look at it, is a legal problem."

As soon as Li Shouxian's voice fell, He Jinwu slammed the table and stood up. He said angrily: "Bullshit legal problem! Aren't these people just wanting to take advantage? Could the land price they bought the land at buy that much land in normal times? I'm afraid they couldn't even buy one-third of the land! Not labeling them as counter-revolutionary accomplices is already letting them off cheap, and this is still a legal problem? Is what they did reasonable then?"

Not only He Jinwu, but most of the comrades of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee, or rather the comrades of the Party Committee of the troops, glared at Li Shouxian. Even the comrades whose attitudes were not so intense mostly had blame in their gazes when looking at Li Shouxian.

Li Shouxian could completely understand the comrades' emotions. He himself also did not have any good feelings towards this bunch of masses who took advantage. But Li Shouxian had already understood very clearly in his long-term work that reason and emotion appeared to run in opposite directions most of the time. Things that conformed to reason might not necessarily conform to feelings. Looking at the indignant comrades around him, Li Shouxian did not get angry. He suddenly remembered a passage Shang Yuan had once said to him.

How to treat the darkness, cruelty, and shamelessness in society, how to break free from these darknesses, cruelties, and shamelessnesses, and eliminate all injustice with a firm attitude, is a very severe test for revolutionaries participating in the people's revolution. A person who throws themselves into the people's revolution, their initial motivation may come from hatred and the passion to pursue justice, but the ultimate attitude should transcend hatred and also transcend justice. Justice is a sentiment on the social level, while the most fundamental spiritual power engaged in the people's revolution must come from communist ideals, specifically, it must conform to the basic principles of materialism and communism.

After pausing slightly for a moment to alleviate the excited opposing emotions in the conference room, Li Shouxian stood up. Because he was in the center position of the conference table, behind Li Shouxian was the Party flag hanging on the wall. He said with a clear and bright voice: "Comrades, I now want to ask everyone a question. Is the view that the masses' behavior of purchasing land is not a legal problem, seeking truth from facts?"