London. Buckingham Palace.

This year's winter in London is particularly long, especially the recent yellow and black smog in London has become more and more serious, so that many residents living in London have respiratory diseases, especially coughing, countless, and Queen Victoria, who has been not in good health recently, has unfortunately become one of the members of the cough, especially at night in the past few days, perhaps the smog in the air is getting more and more serious, so that her cough almost all night long, even sleeping, extremely uncomfortable.

The queen became increasingly pessimistic. She felt that if it were not for the skill of her personal physician, she feared that she would have gone with her late husband, Prince Albert, to see God.

The cough all night, coupled with the fact that she barely slept much, exhausted her whole body's energy, and her chest and throat were pulled by the cough and hurt violently, not to mention, last night's heart-rending cough actually coughed up some scarlet blood, which made Victoria, who has always cherished her body, even more flustered and depressed.

It is no wonder that on her bedside table, there is still a Reuters report from half a month ago, about the invasion of Tsarist Russia by the Chinese Imperial Army.

She had read the report more than ten times and had memorized every letter on it.

"The Chinese Empire's westward expeditionary army, led by a prince named Shi Dakai, together with the servant army of the coercive state from the east, totaled nearly 400,000, divided into three routes to the west to conquer Tsarist Russia, and within a few months, conquered almost all the territories bordering Asia of Tsarist Russia: Orenburg and Yekaterinburg, the military towns of Orenburg and Yekaterinburg on the first line of the Ural Mountains in the north, were all captured; The lowlands along the northern coast of the Caspian Sea and the lower Volga basin were all occupied in the middle of the Lesser Yuz Khanate and other places, and even the cities of Astrakhan and Tsaritsyn on the Volga River were captured; On the southern route, the army of the Chinese Empire took hundreds of hastily made ships to transport the army across the Caspian Sea to the west coast, first captured the hot town of Baku, which was closely watched by European merchants, and then united with those local forces in the Caucasus to occupy almost the entire Caucasus, and also joined the Chinese Imperial army in the middle of the road, all the way west, advancing to the Gulf of Azov in the Black Sea.

At the same time, the Ottoman Turkish army also came out with a large army of sea and land, brazenly tearing up the "Paris Peace Treaty" signed shortly after the Crimean War, not only tearing up the process of neutralization of the Black Sea, violating the agreement on the prohibition of warships navigation in the Black Sea, but also directly occupying the Crimean Peninsula, where Tsarist Russia did not have many troops according to the contract!

We have reason to suspect that the Ottoman Empire, the great power of Europe, has colluded with the Eastern Empire to carve up the southern regions of Tsarist Russia and try to turn the Black Sea into an internal lake of the Ottoman Empire! ”

In addition to coughing, Victoria couldn't help but have a headache. In the face of this Eastern power, which has only suddenly emerged in the past two years, the aggressive posture is displayed in front of the European powers, which makes people helpless. She couldn't help but feel sorry for her kingdom of Great Britain.

A few days ago, she had received news that most of the colonies and trading strews of the Kingdom of Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, including the most important port of Aden, had been captured by the naval fleet of the Eastern Empire, and that the huge naval fleet seemed to continue its attack in the direction of Europe, heading straight for the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Town. Victoria could not have imagined that it would also be occupied there, that it was the bridgehead and the most important transit point of the Kingdom of Great Britain to the Eastern world, and that if it was lost, the entire sea route to the Eastern world would be completely cut off, and there was no other way than to open the Suez Canal.

Most importantly, the American continent is now being eaten away by the Chinese Empire, and the interests of the Kingdom of Great Britain are seriously damaged. If this continues, I am afraid that the whole world will no longer have the overseas territories of the Kingdom of Great Britain. In the end, Britain's status as an empire on which the sun never sets, will not only plummet as it does now, but will also be completely lost or even replaced by the Chinese Empire. The ultimate consequence is that the British Empire will become like the Holland, the historical coachman at sea, or Spain, the first empire on which the sun never sets, and eventually become an ordinary second-rate country in Europe.

Victoria was thinking about the international situation with a headache, and Prime Minister Gladstone rushed over, led by the maid.

It has been almost half a year since Gladstone became prime minister, and although the cabinet has been formed, because all the previous cabinets were impeached and removed, the prestige of the cabinet has plummeted and the reputation has been discredited. So there are a lot of things that Gladstone does with his own hands, with his prestige among the people and parliamentarians.

He hadn't been to see Queen Victoria for a while, and this time he had come in a hurry because he had something urgent to report. But the moment he saw the queen, he was stunned: is this still the queen of the infinite charm of the British kingdom before?

Dry and sallow skin, eyes are not bloodshot, puffy, hair is like withered grass, the whole body wafts a smell of decay and no sunshine, just like an old woman in her sixties in the countryside, where is there still a shadow of the queen of the Kingdom of Great Britain?

Gladstone rubbed his eyes, he wondered if he was wrong, but from the contours and appearance of his face, and the crown of the world's largest diamond, he knew that the old woman in front of him was his Queen Victoria. So much so that he didn't even know how to speak.

Or the old woman, who seemed to be Queen Victoria, asked him, "It's the Earl of Gladstone, ahem, ahem, is there any bad news to tell this king?" ”

Gladstone's face turned gloomy: "Your Majesty, you, how did you become like this?" Take care of yourself. Now that Great Britain is in a critical period of turmoil, you must not fall, and the subjects of the whole country are counting on you. ”

Victoria waved her hand: "This king is fine, just a little cough, the old problem." What's going on? ”

Gladstone's face turned red, indeed, he is not much different from other prime ministers, every time he looks for the queen, he has bad news to tell her, I have to say that the queen is so far today, it has something to do with their prime ministers.

"I'm sorry, Her Majesty, but I have to tell you two more things. One is bad news and the other is ..... I don't know if it's good news or bad news, I don't know. That is, the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Chinese Empire marched all the way west, not only capturing East London, Port Elizabeth, the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Town, but also chasing the South African Fleet that we were preparing to build, causing us to lose more than 3 small and medium-sized warships, more than 800 British soldiers killed and captured, and nearly 300 naval soldiers killed in battle. Gladstone tried to make his tone as heavy as he could, "The other important news is that Sir Bao Ling has arrived in the Holy Capital in the East, has signed the Sino-British Armistice Memorandum with the Chinese Empire, and, in response to the request of the other side, is ready to sign a formal peace treaty with our Kingdom of Great Britain in London on their behalf. ”