Since coming to Fengtai County, Ba Yougong felt this place was full of an atmosphere that made him unable to feel good no matter what. What disgusted Ba Yougong most was the daily soldiers' life meeting.

Since Chen Ke ended the land negotiation with landlords, he moved to the Brigade Headquarters of the Insurance Corps. The soldiers' life meetings also returned to normal. The officers and soldiers of the Anhui New Army were assigned to the Insurance Corps' engineer troops as instructors. The accommodation conditions in the disaster area were naturally not very good. The New Army officers and soldiers could understand but couldn't quite accept it. There were houses in Yuezhangji, but now they were occupied by women and children. Even the Brigade Headquarters of the Insurance Corps were straw shed houses. Whether it was Brigade Commander, Regiment Commander, Battalion Commander, Company Commander, Platoon Leader, or Squad Leader, the accommodation of these officers was no different from ordinary soldiers and common people. The Anhui New Army officers and soldiers had nothing else to say.

"Instructor Ba, I am clumsy, but I really want to learn your craft as soon as possible. If you want to scold me, just scold. But please don't stop teaching me after scolding. I beg you," soldier Zhu Cunrui said very seriously. In the Insurance Corps, officers were absolutely not allowed to beat or scold soldiers. But the soldiers of the Engineer Battalion had long been educated repeatedly in private that these people from the Anhui New Army came to be teachers; they were not Insurance Corps people, and the Insurance Corps' rules didn't suit these people.

Zhu Cunrui still remembered Hua Xiongmao's speech at that time, "If everyone feels unconvinced and wants to be scolded less, no problem. Hurry up and learn their stuff."

Ba Yougong didn't respond to Zhu Cunrui's question. He scolded people often, especially in the last two days. Knowing his own affairs, Ba Yougong was not wishing iron could turn into steel (expecting better from them); on the contrary, the eager learning attitude and enthusiasm of the Insurance Corps soldiers scared Ba Yougong. Engineers are a technical arm. Those who could be selected into the Engineer Battalion were all soldiers with top-notch cultural quality. This didn't just mean they all recognized five hundred characters, memorized the multiplication table, and could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of five-digit numbers. Many people even began to learn geometry and physics. Chen Ke's requirement for technical arms was, "Must have enthusiasm for science. Have a desire to explore knowledge."

The soldiers of the Engineer Battalion selected were able to master so much knowledge in more than half a year precisely because they had this quality and enthusiasm. Of course, compared with the systematic education Chen Ke had received, the knowledge mastered by these soldiers was inevitably seriously unbalanced. Moreover, the practical purpose of this knowledge was too strong. Chen Ke didn't intend to let these people become researchers at all, but merely hoped they could become users.

Even so, Ba Yougong was still shocked by the learning ability of these soldiers. Through observation, Ba Yougong found that soldiers especially liked holding meetings. In their spare time from work, everyone didn't gather to drink, brag, show off to each other, or secretly go out to play with women or gamble in groups like the New Army. When Insurance Corps soldiers were together, they rarely talked about other contents except discussing what they learned. How to better use the learned surveying skills, what problems encountered in learning needed to be solved. In the learning process, understanding knowledge that wasn't understood before. Soldiers loved exchanging these most.

Ba Yougong had made up his mind not to teach his knowledge to the Insurance Corps soldiers anymore. Originally, teaching the use of instruments was considered dealing with the task perfunctorily. He originally thought the teaching of these usage principles would take a long time, but he really didn't expect that the Insurance Corps actually had people specifically teaching these theoretical knowledge. What these country bumpkins needed was precisely the usage knowledge of existing instruments. Ba Yougong was heartbroken for failing to anticipate this.

For the old upper class, monopolizing knowledge was the trick for them to settle down and get on with their lives. Even if the New Army strengthened education, it was the same. The knowledge taught was only enough to make soldiers obey orders; comprehensive education was not the original intention of the New Army. An army like the Insurance Corps maximizing the popularization of knowledge was something Ba Yougong had never seen or heard of.

The Insurance Corps not only strengthened the popularization of knowledge education but was also rebellious in daily life.

Everyone has a daily life. In the Insurance Corps, these things all had to be brought out for public discussion. Food distribution problems, even including the issue of pay issuance. These things that should originally be decided by officers were now all decided by soldiers. Officers merely executed these resolutions and allocated personnel.

Although the Anhui New Army had strict management, it was still an old army after all. Although striving to eliminate old army maladies, officers could always find other ways to solve them indirectly. For example, pay issuance naturally couldn't be deducted openly, but officers dragged soldiers out to drink and buy sex. Naturally, "smart" soldiers would show filial respect. Sensible soldiers could get easy and lucrative jobs, while insensible soldiers had to endure harsh treatment. As for those "thorns" who dared to resist, officers just used them to "enforce military law." As for gambling, that was the only way to make money. There were even cases of officers acting as bankers to open gambling.

In the eyes of officers, power was the biggest source of seeking benefits. And the officers and soldiers of the New Army took it for granted that being able to undertake less work was current success, and if one could obtain power to oppress others, that was success in life.

But in the Insurance Corps, this world taken for granted was turned upside down. Power was merely for completing work, and the work completed with hard labor was not to seek benefits for the Insurance Corps itself. On the contrary, these heavy jobs were to seek benefits for the common people.

These days Ba Yougong had known that the work of the Engineer Battalion was surveying, preparing for the future large-scale water conservancy construction in Fengtai County. The Insurance Corps would certainly get its own farm, but the troops had issued an order that what would be surveyed and built first would be water conservancy projects provided for ordinary common people. This practice of putting the cart before the horse made Ba Yougong very puzzled. Work was already hard to this degree, but the Insurance Corps wanted to work for the common people first. what was this for?

The common people only paid thirty percent rent, and in this disaster year, rent wasn't collected in the first year. This meant that besides feeding themselves, the Insurance Corps had to work for the common people completely without income. Even if the families of these soldiers could get benefits, the soldiers of the Engineer Battalion were only a thousand people at most. According to the overestimated data of ten people per family, it was only ten thousand people. Now there were more than sixty thousand common people in Fengtai County. Working in vain for those fifty thousand people, Ba Yougong himself would absolutely not do it.

He originally thought the soldiers of the Engineer Battalion hadn't considered this problem. As a result, asking privately, the soldiers' attitude was simple. "We surveyed the land, and others still have to open the land and plow the land. Everyone is working; what's the difference?"

"What's the point of being a soldier if it's like this, damn it (*Ni Ma*)." Ba Yougong spent a lot of effort to swallow this angry curse back into his throat. Being a soldier is to eat grain (to make a living). If not to stop facing the loess and back to the sky, stop working with sweat beads falling into eight pieces, who would be a soldier?

Ba Yougong's anger broke the chart directly. He couldn't stand this group of greenhorns anymore. He didn't consider why he was so dissatisfied with the Insurance Corps soldiers; his chest boiled with extreme dissatisfaction. His attitude towards the soldiers became worse day by day.

These situations were actually reported to Chen Ke by He Zudao, who was responsible for political work, and he asked for Chen Ke's attitude. Chen Ke rarely made a joke, "Zudao, if someone firmly believes the sun is triangular, will you make friends with this person?"

"Of course not," He Zudao answered without hesitation.

"If you can make friends, then one side must completely change their stance. Either you change, or the other party changes. Now we must strengthen our own stance. Absolutely no relaxation is allowed. Since we firmly believe we are correct, we must insist on ourselves."

He Zudao pondered for a while before asking Chen Ke: "Brigade Commander Chen, do you mean you want us to influence the New Army soldiers?"

Chen Ke's original intention was to strengthen the ideological construction of the troops and not let the corrupt thoughts of the New Army contaminate the Insurance Corps. Unexpectedly, He Zudao actually thought of influencing the New Army soldiers. In Chen Ke's plan, large-scale influence on the New Army would only begin after those New Army soldiers returned to Fengtai County with their families.

However, since He Zudao had such consciousness, Chen Ke didn't think it was necessary to pour cold water on He Zudao. Anyway, it had to be done sooner or later. Now Chen Ke's attitude towards the Party and the troops was to let everyone do it freely. He used to protect everyone too tightly; it was time to let everyone exert their own subjective initiative.

"Comrade Zudao, go ahead and do it. I'll bear any responsibility." Chen Ke finally gave such a reply.

What He Zudao learned these days was his own thinking ability. He convened the Party Committee in the troops. The members of the Party Committee initially thought He Zudao had received some orders from Chen Ke. Commissar He was Brigade Commander Chen's trusted aide; this was a recognized fact. When the scale of the Insurance Corps was still small, Chen Ke did almost everything himself, and He Zudao followed him constantly, very much meaning an orderly. So when He Zudao held a meeting, everyone thought Chen Ke issued some instructions.

Hearing He Zudao asking everyone to propose political work plans, many people almost had the impulse to dismiss the meeting. It wasn't that everyone hadn't tried proposing plans themselves. The result was that after these plans were handed to Chen Ke, they were either rejected or changed beyond recognition. After trying a few times, no one was willing to lose face anymore. Since Secretary Chen Ke could always come up with effective solutions, why did they have to find unhappiness for themselves?

He Zudao could understand everyone's attitude. To be honest, his plans were refuted the most. But when He Zudao encountered setbacks initially, there was an ideal supporting him. He hoped to become a man standing equally beside You Gou. He also hoped to repay Chen Ke's kindness. These two people saved He Zudao from shameful death. And He Zudao somehow couldn't get rid of shame in front of the two of them. Precisely because of this, the frustration of failure didn't matter to He Zudao anymore. He had already made such a big mistake as contracting syphilis; other mistakes couldn't make He Zudao feel more ashamed anyway.

Actually, it was precisely this attitude of not being afraid of making mistakes, daring to admit mistakes and trying hard to correct them, that promoted He Zudao's progress. Admitting one's own deficiencies and learning with a modest attitude is the smooth path to truly mastering laws. Every time he learned something, He Zudao felt he was one step closer to Chen Ke and one step closer to You Gou.

Other comrades hoped they could succeed, so the blow of setbacks appeared very serious to them. He Zudao knew that no matter what he did to any extent, he wouldn't succeed in front of Chen Ke. To stand aligned with Sister You Gou, He Zudao must move forward. To achieve this goal, He Zudao could only work selflessly.

From the psychology of later generations, this could be said to be a morbid state. He Zudao's selflessness was largely to forget past mistakes. completely severing his ties with the past and standing in front of You Gou as a brand new person. If He Zudao met someone else, this mentality would only make him fall into a more miserable situation.

But He Zudao met Chen Ke, who was completely different from this era. The more selfless He Zudao was, the more he could learn things that shouldn't have appeared in this era from Chen Ke, who didn't belong to this era originally. This might be He Zudao's luck, and this was definitely Chen Ke's luck.

Facing the comrades' performance of fearing difficulties, He Zudao didn't care. "Comrades, the Central Committee has planned the strategy. Secretary Chen is very busy now. With such a big stall of ours, asking him to formulate plans again is unrealistic."

This was Chen Ke's own explanation. The comrades actually didn't believe it much originally. But people are just like this; although they don't believe it themselves, seeing others firmly believe it, those with weaker wills tend to believe it instead. Sometimes mass sentiment doesn't depend on the number of people, but on which side's will is firmer. Moreover, everyone didn't really abandon themselves. Plans might not pass with Chen Ke, but put with He Zudao, they might not necessarily fail. Under He Zudao's hosting, the meeting finally began to proceed normally.

The topic was ideological mobilization.

"I have an idea this time and want to talk to comrades properly. What kind of new regime do we want to build exactly? What is the core of this new regime exactly?" He Zudao started.

"The new regime is the people being masters of their own affairs?" Someone began to recite quotations.

"Do the people know they should be masters of their own affairs now?" He Zudao asked.

Hearing this, the comrades of the political work department smiled bitterly. Yes, what is called being masters of their own affairs? To be honest, in this era, having accepted Chen Ke's leadership for so long, these comrades finally understood a little bit of the meaning of being masters of their own affairs. For the mainstream thought of this era, being masters of their own affairs meant commanding others and obtaining privileges. It was more about obtaining.

And the People's Party's being masters of their own affairs meant being responsible for oneself and being responsible for others. It was more about giving.

Between the two, it was not a gap, but completely opposite things. The cadres who could engage in political ideological work were all personally selected by Chen Ke. This consciousness was not ordinary. Compared with other comrades, they were considered conscious. Even these people still felt this kind of ideological work was very tricky. As for other comrades, being a bit more conscious than ordinary people was already not bad.

"What is the purpose of the people wanting to be masters of their own affairs now?" He Zudao continued to ask.

"For fairness. Not being bullied." Someone answered.

"Then let's start from this angle." He Zudao said.