On July 17, 1931, the results of the shocking Battle of Mataugtu were made public by the news media of various countries, which caused an uproar in the whole country and pushed the two countries into the quagmire of a protracted all-out war.

In particular, in China, which had been invaded by Japanese imperialism, the people in various localities reacted strongly and applauded the annihilation of the Japanese navy.

"Sell newspapers! Sell newspapers!"

"Big news! I don't regret it! On the first day of the Tang-Japanese war, the Japanese Combined Fleet was completely annihilated, tens of thousands of people died, and the Royal Navy of the Tang Empire won a complete victory unscathed! ”

A passer-by in the Northeast: "Isn't the little devil quite capable?" This group of deflated calves has finally let people do it, I have to see this! ”

A passer-by in North China: "Little BK's devil let someone give it to Delong?" ”

A passer-by in East China C: "The little devil of Niang B is also watt?" ”

A passer-by in South China: "Satha is Kakao's devil K gasai!" ”

A passer-by in the southwest: "Fuck it, kill these turtle sons!" ”

A passer-by in the northwest: "Little Japan is a group of two-ball goods, and the Japanese immortal is a drip!" ”

……

Tiannan Haibei, streets and alleys, tea shops and restaurants, men, women and children, almost all talked about the news of the defeat of the Japanese Navy in their spare time.

Although many newspapers exaggerated for gimmicks, it was an ironclad fact that the Japanese Navy suffered defeat, and this alone was already deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in the land of China.

After all, the blood of each other is the blood of the Chinese family, and the victory of the Tang Empire is the victory of China.

For Zhang Meng, he will not miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Because Jihua couldn't catch up with the changes, he originally planned to take refuge in the Commonwealth and develop slowly, but unexpectedly, the Japanese devils were greedy and took the initiative to provoke trouble.

Now that the Tang and Japan are at war, and little Japan has suffered a big loss, they will definitely retaliate frantically, and a full-scale war will inevitably break out between the Tang and Japan.

In Zhang Meng's view, this will be a protracted war, and the current population of the Tang Empire cannot be consumed with Japan for a long time, so it is necessary to take advantage of the current victory of the Tang Army to import population from China on a large scale.

This time, Zhang Meng needed not labor, nor a simple jishu worker, but a high-level intellectual who could master airplane piloting and submarine operation in a short period of time.

Zhang Cheng has been responsible for recruiting talents for the Tang Empire in China, and this time Zhang Meng gave him the task of targeting China's intellectual class, for which the Ministry of Finance of the Tang Empire urgently allocated 120 million Tang Yuan to establish the Army, Navy and Air Force Reserve Liliang Reserve Foundation, which specially recruited personnel with a certain level of knowledge and physical fitness from Shijie to enrich the army, navy and air force of the Tang Empire and improve the overall quality of the Tang Army.

Among them, the China part that Zhang Cheng is responsible for is a key area, and priority is given to recruiting Chinese intellectuals as much as possible. There is really a lack of them, so they will turn to European and American countries, and specially select a group of foreigners with no political background as temporary mercenaries, after all, the comprehensive cultural quality of European and American countries is still far beyond that of Chinese mainland.

According to Zhang Meng's huge military jihua, in order to win the Pacific War in the future, the army, navy and air force of the Tang Empire need at least 1.2 million talents in all aspects to maintain and operate in order to effectively defend the security of the Tang Empire. The navy is the largest, with a total of 600,000 combat and non-combatants, including 200,000 marines, 400,000 in the air force, and at least 200,000 in the army.

In fact, with the current land area of the Tang Empire, the army only needs 30,000 people to defend the iron wall.

Obviously, Zhang Meng is not satisfied with the existing land area, and he has always had a huge expansion in his heart.

Three hundred years ago, the Americans formed the current large land area of the United States through expansion, annexation, purchase, war, etc., and three hundred years later, Zhang Meng was also not to be outdone, and he also had a good idea of the Tang Empire's next expansion, annexation, forcible occupation, purchase and other territorial expansion methods, and even now that there is a war with Japan, he originally planned to use the war to expand the territory in advance.

However, the overseas colonies controlled by the Japanese were not easy to occupy. Since the Japanese were authorized by the League of Nations to host the Marshall Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Nauru, and the Caroline Islands that originally belonged to Germany after World War I, these were authorized by the League of Nations, and Zhang Meng did not dare to easily seize these places.

Of course, the Japanese were cunning, they emigrated tens of thousands of people to these places and built strong fortifications on the islands, which took a lot of effort.

At present, these islands controlled by the Japanese are beyond the combat radius of the Royal Navy of the Tang Empire, and Zhang Meng also knows that the navy in his hands is still very weak for the time being, so he is not in a hurry to seize these islands controlled by the Japanese, but in order to prevent the subsequent large-scale military retaliation of the Japanese against the Tang Empire, he also has to work hard to expand the air force.

Zhang Meng knew that the Japanese still had three large aircraft carriers, and he did not rule out the possibility that the Japanese would use the main force of the United Fleet and send aircraft carriers to expedition to the Tang Empire again.

Zhang Meng knew that the current navy of the Tang Empire was too weak, and it would definitely be surrounded by the Japanese combined fleet at that time, and it would rely entirely on the air force to attack the enemy fleet. He didn't like the feeling of being surrounded by the enemy, so he decided to deploy one or several air forces on the periphery of the Tang Empire from a strategic perspective to form a horn with the Tang Empire itself.

Zhang Meng is a man who does what he says, and he immediately set his sights on Fiji, because Fiji is the closest to the Tang Empire, and if a few air forces are deployed in Fiji, they can form a situation with the Tang Empire to attack the Japanese navy inside and outside.

However, Fiji is currently a British colony, so Zhang Meng had to convince the British High Commissioner for the Central Pacific, Bain.

While Zhang Meng was flying to Fiji to try to convince Bain, an emergency meeting was being held in Tokyo, Japan, thousands of miles away, attended by both the military and the government.

It was not until the two I-13 submarines returned to Japan that the Japanese navy confirmed that Ono Sannori and his fleet were all destroyed, and as for how they were completely annihilated, because the speed of the two submarines was too slow, the battle had already ended after they arrived at the area where the accident occurred, and they only saw the wreckage of the battleship and the corpses of the Japanese naval officers and men floating everywhere on the sea.

On the one hand, the Japanese Admiralty ordered a thorough investigation of the matter, and on the other hand, submitted a report to the War Department, and Jihua dispatched the main force of the combined fleet to make another expedition to the Tang Empire.

As Zhang Meng expected. This time, the Japanese navy thinks that it has been thrown to Mars, since the day the Japanese modern navy was established, it has not tasted defeat, and now the myth of the Japanese navy being undefeated has been broken, but it is still defeated by a small island country that has just been established for only a few years, and it is also a complete defeat of the whole army.

Vice Admiral Kobayashi Takuzo, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, also thought that he had been thrown to Mars in shame, so he directly proposed to personally lead the main force of the Combined Fleet to expedition to the Tang Empire again, and he must avenge Ono Sannori and tens of thousands of Japanese naval officers and soldiers who died in battle, and he vowed to bloody the Tang Empire.

Hamaguchi Yuyuki's cabinet had been subjected to huge international political pressure from Britain and the United States before, and he thought that he would retreat after quickly taking the Tang Empire and plundering it, so Hamaguchi Yuyuki was willing to be a turtle grandson for a few days, trying to wagging his tail to curry favor with Britain and the United States and appease international public opinion.

As a result, the news of the naval defeat came back, and such a huge loss made Hamaguchi Yuyuki very sad. In the face of the strong pressure of the Japanese military, Hamaguchi's regretful bowels were blue, because the total annihilation of Ono Samurai Misanori's fleet allowed the Japanese military to seize the full support of all sectors of domestic society. In this way, the Japanese military will have enough excuses to ask the government for money.

The last thing Hamaguchi wanted was to allocate funds to the Japanese military, because he knew that the crazy Japanese military, once it received enough funds, would be an uncontrolled beast that would drag Japan into the abyss of war.

The original wishful thinking was wrong, and Hamaguchi Yuyuki was pushed to the forefront, and he had to agree to the request of the Japanese military at the meeting to send the main force of the combined fleet on a second expedition to the Tang Empire.