Reforming the Military System

As Dongfang Mao's orders were gradually implemented, within less than five days, over a thousand people had arrived to register and receive their bamboo identity tags.

As for the elderly, the weak, the women, and the children who followed, they were beyond counting.

The swelling of the ranks not only made the once-spacious Desolate Village feel cramped, but most of the newly recruited soldiers could only sleep on the ground in the village square, using the sky as their blanket.

At the same time, this made Dongfang Mao realize that the system he had used to manage the less than 300 people in his mountain stronghold was becoming inadequate for the current situation.

After some deliberation, Dongfang Mao decided to reorganize the military structure.

He divided them into groups of 10, selecting those among the refugees who were literate or held in high regard to serve as squad leaders.

Ten squads formed a platoon, with one captain and one vice-captain appointed, both roles filled by his old comrades from the mountain stronghold.

Five platoons formed a battalion of 500 men. For now, there were two battalions, with the positions of commander held by Yasuke and Kyuzo, another veteran from the stronghold, each assigned a left and right deputy.

Additionally, he established a staff group composed of the older men from the stronghold who had suffered lingering injuries and could no longer fight on the front lines, led by Luzhen.

They were primarily responsible for the distribution of rations and ordnance, as well as supervising discipline and recording merits and demerits.

Rewards and punishments were based on a system of collective responsibility.

If a squad performed well in training, the entire squad was rewarded; if anyone slacked off, the entire squad was punished.

The squad leader bore the brunt of this responsibility.

However, an appeals mechanism was added to prevent the abuse of power.

As for the newly formed Night Patrol Bureau, it had been bolstered to 100 men over these days, led by Inumaru, reporting directly to Dongfang Mao, just like Yasuke, Kyuzo, and Luzhen.

Furthermore, Dongfang Mao renamed the entire force the New Martial Army and styled himself as the Grand Commander of the New Martial Army, signifying his total command over all New Martial forces.

He also ordered the creation of a black flag with red characters reading "New Martial," which looked truly imposing.

With this series of changes, the village, which had become somewhat chaotic due to the surge in population, finally calmed down and gradually became orderly.

In the morning, each captain led their respective teams in separate drills at the training ground.

In the afternoon, the teams gathered for joint drills led by the two commanders, Yasuke and Kyuzo.

After dinner, a group would head to the temporarily constructed Propaganda Department to participate in the grievance-airing sessions organized by Tokichiro.

This fellow did not disappoint Dongfang Mao's expectations; relying on the art of language, he continuously amplified the new recruits' awareness of their own suffering.

This caused heart-wrenching wails to echo incessantly over the Desolate Village from dusk until late at night, which, combined with the village's remote location, terrified passing merchants.

After the crying, Tokichiro would not forget to interject his own agenda, painting the noble officials as hideous and linking their actions to the people's suffering to stoke their hatred and anger.

At the same time, he emphasized Dongfang Mao's kindness and importance to them.

These people, whose willpower had already been weakened by a day of high-intensity training, were easily swayed by Tokichiro's agitation.

In their hearts, the image of Dongfang Mao instantly became even more majestic, as if he had transformed into the great sun, draped in ten thousand rays of light, illuminating their once dark and cold world!

Of course, while these grievance-airing sessions were highly effective, they could not be held every day, or else they would become counterproductive.

They were generally held once on the day a new recruit joined, and then once a week thereafter; this way, it would not become tiresome due to over-frequency, while ensuring their "loyalty" remained stable and untainted.

After the grievance-airing sessions ended, these people still could not rest.

They had to go to Luzhen to learn basic literacy to ensure they could understand military orders and not be easily deceived.

Moreover, when making this decision, Dongfang Mao had a flash of inspiration.

Since these people barely knew any characters anyway, he might as well have them learn the script from his previous life. After all, a large portion of the characters in this world were identical to the new ones, so they wouldn't feel too unfamiliar.

Thus, Dongfang Mao compiled a dictionary of commonly used daily characters, annotated them with pinyin, and dumped the whole thing on Luzhen.

He believed that with Luzhen's brain, he would master it easily.

As for whether Luzhen would be too busy managing the staff group, learning new characters and pronunciations, and teaching classes to have time to learn ninjutsu, that was not something Dongfang Mao needed to worry about.

While the entire New Martial Army began to thrive, he himself was not idle.

He was now fully capable of controlling chakra; the technique of adhering it to his feet was second nature, and he could travel by leaping and bounding just like an ordinary ninja.

The 10-plus miles from the Desolate Village to Tsukimiura weren't even enough for a warm-up; he could reach it in 10 minutes.

Therefore, he spent every morning heading to Tsukimiura to build his relationship with Tsunade and learn ninjutsu.

In the afternoon, he would rush back to the Desolate Village to inspect the training grounds.

After all, he had put in so much effort; naturally, he had to make sure everyone knew who their boss was and deepen that impression.

At night, he would stay in the open space outside the village, listening to the melodious wailing coming from the Propaganda Department while practicing his own ninjutsu.

After about two months, Dongfang Mao's strength had improved significantly.

First was his chakra; if Dongfang Mao's chakra had previously been a bottle of water, it was now overflowing to the point where it required a basin to hold.

Furthermore, he had mastered the standard introductory ninja skills: the Three Body Technique, the taijutsu Konoha Whirlwind, and the genjutsu Hell Viewing Technique.

He also possessed most of the basic Fire and Earth style techniques.

Dongfang Mao felt that if he went to Konoha now to take the Chunin Exams, he might be able to crush the competition all the way through.

Of course, that was on the condition that no Jinchuriki or Cursed Seal users appeared in the exams.

Beyond Dongfang Mao's own improvement, the New Martial Army had also grown to about 2,000 men during this period.

He expanded the force by another ten squads, totaling two battalions.

Such numbers already far exceeded what Dongfang Mao had originally anticipated.

While provisions were sufficient, the armaments were beginning to look woefully inadequate.

With no other choice, Dongfang Mao had to seek out Yoshikawa once more, who was still lingering in Tsukimiura.

He spent another 3.2 million taels to purchase 400 long sabers.

Now, he had only 300,000 left to his name, his coffers nearly bottoming out.

At the same time, the training of the new recruits was beginning to show results, and they were gradually starting to form an effective fighting force.

Furthermore, the large-scale decrease in refugees seemed to have caught the attention of certain people.

Everything seemed to be reaching the moment of truth.

At this moment, walking on the road back to Desolate Village, Dongfang Mao looked back at the city, now blurred into nothing more than a silhouette, a sharp glint erupting in the depths of his eyes.