He Changying sat on a thick wooden plank with her knees crossed, her back to the burning bonfire, looking up at the bright moonlight in the sky.

"Crunch, squeak—"

There was a trail of snowy footsteps behind him, and then he stopped, as if fiddling with something.

He Changying didn't bother to look back at who was doing what, since his guards didn't move, it meant that there was no problem.

"Bang!"

A bright light flashed behind him.

"John, are you a parting souvenir, and what can this shine on? I can't even wait for tomorrow morning. ”

Although He Changying said it in a joking tone, the resentment in it was self-evident.

"I think it's very good, the snow, the starry sky, the bright night, the bonfire, and a man with tens of thousands of elite soldiers, the most powerful in the Qing Dynasty today, the only general who can compete with the emerging forces in the Far East, and also a great poet, writer, thinker, on this night when he ordered the massacre, he was by the campfire, that lonely figure,—— what was he thinking?"

John walked up to He Changying's side and sat down, and said with an apologetic face, "He Changying, I'm sorry. ”

He Changying shook his head in annoyance, habitually touched his pocket, there was nothing, he had been forced to quit smoking for several days, and he could understand the mood of Liu Kun's violent subordinate Goshha who lost his temper day by day.

"This time I went back to Jinmen with the sailor to Shanhaiguan, but I never went to see Audrey, I missed her a little; And now that there is a military disaster in the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese army is so animalistic, I don't worry about her. ”

"I met Xue Yingchun and told her that I was fine; The salaries of the four of you, including Lieutenant Colonel Reinhard's pension, I will approve you to go to the Dagu recruitment office to receive it. ”

John nodded, this Qing Dynasty had come thousands of miles with countless hopes, and when he was poor, he was fortunate to meet this general, gave him a job, and let him see the blood and ruthlessness in the jungle world.

In a word, when he was thinking about Audrey, he also began to miss the gentle blue river of Budapest.

"He, I can understand your massacre, but as a Christian, I can't agree with it, like Angus;"

John said with a gloomy face: "I feel that in this war, both the Japanese army and your anti-Japanese army have already fought out of anger and began to have a cruel out-of-control situation; Since we can't stop it, we can only run away. ”

"Cruel? Huh-"

He Changying listened to John's words, as if he had heard a big joke, and saw a group of torches coming out of the distant village.

"John, can I interpret your words as your European understanding of this Qing-Japanese war?"

He Changying didn't look at whether John next to him nodded or shook his head, and continued to talk to himself: "Have you ever heard of crocodile tears? This Qing-Japanese war clearly said that the East wanted to get the springboard of North Korea, and then obtained the qualification to compete for hegemony in Northeast Asia, and Guangxu was trying to use the East to engage Li Hongzhang's Beiyang, in fact——"

He Changying saw Liu Gangzhi, Lu Zhaomei, Huang Bojie, Lu Wenjie, Luo Huafei, Xiao Ligang, Xiang Shaolong, Liu Yufu, Yang Guang, Li Xiang, Xu Weijie, Ye Chuansong, You Dajiang, Li Yuanyang,——

A large group of twenty or so young officers strode over.

"Commander-in-chief, look what good stuff I've got for you!"

Lu Zhaomei looked happy and carefully opened a cloth pocket full of patches, revealing a large number of golden tobacco leaves.

"So many of you are gathered together just to find tobacco leaves?"

He Changying was not only happy, but also unbelievable.

"No, we had a meeting just in time to see ——,"

When Lu Zhaomei saw Liu Gangzhi's eyes, she immediately stopped her mouth, and then muttered unconvinced: "Yes, I didn't say it; - It's not unsightly? It's mysterious, sneaky. ”

He Changying didn't ask any further, Chen Shijie was under the guidance of that Tang Feng, and he also knew about this thing in private, but this thing was too sensitive, and it was far from the time when he could get it on the table.

This time, the 27 people who came from Lushun, except for Wang Shizhen, escorted a large amount of grain, cotton, medicinal materials, cloth, and millions of taels of silver, and returned to Lushun with the sailor.

Among the remaining twenty-six people, seventeen belong to that association, and now those seventeen people are obviously all in it, and new officers such as Huang Bojie, Lu Wenjie, Luo Huafei, Liu Yufu, You Dajiang, and Li Yuanyang have been added.

"Sit down."

He Changying saw that these officers' eyes were full of heat, and it was estimated that they were not sleepy now, so they let them roast around the bonfire.

Qi Jiacai, Liu Pingyun hugged a large pile of dry wood and burned the bonfire vigorously.

A group of young officers gathered around the fire, Liu Gangzhi, Lu Zhaomei, and Qi Jiacai were in charge of rolling paper cigarettes.

He Changying picked up a piece of wood to blow out the flames, lit a cigarette, and took a long puff.

Then he continued: "The emperor wanted Beiyang Dongyang to fight and lose both, and the fisherman benefited, but he couldn't do it, so he broke his thigh by moving a stone, and set fire to roast others, and as a result, he burned his own house, and now he knows that it hurts and he is in a hurry; - But that's just the appearance! ”

"The deep reason is that Britain began to support the East in order to resist Russia's eastward invasion, and the Qing Dynasty, the fat pig in the eyes of Britain, Russia, Japan, and other powers, is the food and nourishment given by Britain to the rise of the East."

He Changying's old tune is no secret in the upper echelons of various countries and even in the upper echelons of the anti-Japanese army, but these middle-level officers have rarely heard it, and their eyes were only limited to the bloody battle between the battalion and the Japanese wing brigade before, and they did not think about these deep things at all.

A group of officers of the anti-Japanese army all showed a contemplative look.

"Britain wants to use the entanglement between Qing, Russia and Japan to consume each other; Russia wanted to swallow the Qing Dynasty, and when it was full, it would turn back to Europe to compete for hegemony, while Germany, France, the United States, and Italy wanted to occupy more market share in the Qing Dynasty, and even good ports, territories, and even partition colonization. ”

He Changying looked around at the officers of the anti-Japanese army around him, and said in a deep voice: "However, there is a deeper reason! ”

"What is the reason?"

If John what He Changying said before knew more or less, this 'there is a deeper reason' made him unable to figure it out, so he was also very curious.

"It's fear, it's the great fear that the Western world is born with for my great Chinese nation!"

He Changying said categorically: "Because of fear, they are sparing no effort to use their own means and according to their own stupid understanding to fight the rise of China!" ”

Seeing the surprise on John's face under the reflection of the firelight, He Changying said with a cold smile: "From Marco Polo's description of China's richness, to the East India Company's smuggling and importing a large amount of opium into China, and then to launching two opium wars,—— it is the process in which Western countries have changed from admiration and yearning for China to contempt and disdain, which is called barbarism. ”

This is easy to understand, John nodded, but still didn't understand.