During the Yue-Gui Wars, Li Zongren had accompanied Lin Hu and Lu Rongting into Guangdong and led the rear guard when the Old Guangxi Clique forces retreated before Chen Jiongming's attack. During the campaign Li Zongren's battalion, was reduced to about one thousand men and "sank into the grasses." But Li, intending to become more than a bandit, began building a personal military machine of professional units of soldiers. These were to be the equal of any force in China and more than a match for any number of bandits or Zhuang irregulars that Lu Rongting drew on in his war to re-establish his power in Guangxi. Li joined the Kuomintang in 1923, when he already controlled a considerable numbers of troops in northern Guangxi and wiped out the local bandits, warlords, and remnant forces of the Old Guangxi clique in the north.