After eighteen days of bloody fierce fighting, the Red Fourth Front Army was declared defeated in its southward march, and the four fronts, which had suffered heavy casualties, recrossed the Jiajin Mountain and retreated to the Ganzi Aba area, where they were to spend the cold winter.

The victorious Liu Xiang returned to Chengdu triumphantly, and he announced to the whole of Sichuan that the officers and men of the Sichuan army would continue to pursue and defeat the retreating Red Army until it was completely annihilated, and at the end of November, the rested Sichuan army began to advance into the Ganzi Aba area.

Sichuan's victory was highly praised by Nanjing, and Nanjing's propaganda media activated their propaganda machines, describing the Battle of Baizhangguan as the second great victory on the Xiangjiang River, and Yang Sen took photographs of the dozens of Red Army wounded captured and distributed them to major newspapers, but while Nanjing and Chengdu were still immersed in optimism. The battle of Zhiluo Town in northern Shaanxi began, the most well-equipped 109th Division of the Northeast Army was defeated, the division commander Niu Yuanfeng committed suicide, and most of the troops were annihilated.

At the beginning of November, the Nationalist Political Axe announced the issuance of legal tender and announced that the fiat currency was pegged to the British pound, and China's move was welcomed by Britain and the United States, but it angered Yue himself, who claimed that the issuance of legal tender was the embodiment of China's political axe's strategy of razing and destroying it, and was an expression of the spirit of resistance, and said that it would prevent the circulation of legal tender in North China and would not hesitate to use force to prevent the southern transportation of silver from North China.

On 4 November, the official release of the legal tender was announced, and the establishment of a state financial management was announced, and the Sichuan Development Bank in Yucheng announced that it would exchange the Sichuan currency issued by the Development Bank at a ratio of one to one, and that the use of the Sichuan currency would be stopped after one month. At the same time, the banking circles in Shanghai announced that all issued currencies would be withdrawn and that all interbank operations would be settled in legal tender. On the contrary, the Bank of Guangdong and the Bank of Yunnan only announced that they would accept fiat currency business, but did not give up their own currency, and Yan Xishan of Shanxi announced that they would gradually withdraw the Jin Notes and stop issuing new Jin Notes.

Seeing that the prevention failed, and the ban on the southern transportation of silver from North China was only a threat, Tohihara Kenji stepped up his plans for the autonomy of eastern Hebei and North China. Chiang Kai-shek, under pressure from the other side, announced the abolition of the Beiping Army Branch at the end of November, appointing Song Zheyuan as the director of the Jicha appeasement and He Yingqin as the chief of the Executive Yuan's office in Beiping.

On 26 November, Yin Rugeng, administrative inspector of Luanyu District, Hebei Province, issued a statement in Tong County announcing that 22 counties in eastern Hebei would secede from the central government and become autonomous, and that an autonomous committee for the defense of the Communist Party in eastern Hebei would be established immediately. The Central Political Axe then issued a statement saying that it did not recognize the Autonomous Committee of the Eastern Hebei Defense Communist Party, and two days later announced that Yin Rugeng was arrested.

For the first time, he thought that Zhuang Jihua's assertion that a full-scale war would break out within five years was likely to become a reality, and he began to issue a public warning to Chiang Kai-shek, the ambassador to China, to tell Prime Minister Keisuke Okada that China's patience with him was limited, and that when the bottom line of China's political axe was reached, China's political axe would not hesitate to fight to maintain the unity and reading power of the country. At the same time, Jiang Zuobin proposed to Yue Ben to adjust the relationship between China and China, but was rejected by Yu Ben's political axe.

At the press conference held after the meeting, a young reporter suddenly flashed out, shouted that he had hit the traitors, and fired several shots at Wang Jingwei, and then the guards shot him and died. It was found that his person was Sun Fengming, a dismissed officer of the 19th Route Army, and the organizer behind the scenes was Wang Yaqiao.

Sun Fengming's imitation of Jing Ke caused a national sensation, and enthusiastic young people followed suit. A month later, Tang Youren, the vice minister of foreign affairs, was assassinated, and the Chinese youth anti-Japanese special forces of the anti-Japanese group announced that the incident was their doing, and the reason for killing Tang Youren was that he had betrayed China many times when he was vice minister of foreign affairs, and to kill him was to warn all officials in the country that traitors would die!

Two successive assassinations made the pro-faction faction in Nanjing's political axe rumor, and they chose to shut up or resign, and the famous pro-faction Zhang Qun asked Chiang Kai-shek to resign from the post of foreign minister, but Chiang Kai-shek resolutely refused to allow it.

However, an even greater trouble occurred in Beiping, the birthplace of the May Fourth Movement, when the Fifth Standing Committee was convened, in order to protest against the establishment of the Eastern Hebei Autonomous Axe and to prevent the autonomy of North China, the students of Beiping sent a telegram to the Nanjing Central Committee on 6 December requesting that the Central Committee send troops to fight against Yin Rugeng, carry out a nationwide general mobilization, and earnestly prepare for the War of Resistance.

On December 9, the students who did not hear back from Peking University, led by Peking University students, and students from Yenching, Northeast, China University, and Peking Normal University, took to the streets and staged a huge demonstration, shouting: "North China is so big that there is no longer a quiet desk." "Petition to the Beiping Jicha Pacification Office, and submit a petition to He Yingqin, so that He Yingqin is holding a meeting in Nanjing, and the students then asked to meet with Song Zheyuan, the director of the appeasement, but Song Zheyuan avoided it.

At the suggestion of Zhang Shenfu, a political instructor at the Huangpu Military Academy and a professor at Tsinghua University, the angry students immediately turned their actions into demonstrations, and in the course of the procession, students from various schools continued to join the procession, and the number of students increased to more than 6,000. During the march they clashed with the military and police, and hundreds of students were arrested.

The next day, the principals of the major schools came forward to be arrested and released on bail, but the students did not give up, and the major and middle schools in Peiping issued a joint declaration announcing that the strike would start immediately, and announced the goal of the strike: "1. Swear to the death against the puppet organization that divides China's territorial sovereignty; 2. Opposition to surrender diplomacy; 3. Demand the mobilization of the whole country to resist the protests; Fourth, strive for the freedom to save the country. ”

As the manifesto spread over the country, demonstrations in support of the Peiping students broke out throughout the country on 11 December, and students from Nanjing, Wuhan, Shanghai, Jinan, and Tianjin took to the streets one after another, and well-known figures of society made speeches one after another expressing their support for the students' patriotic activities.

The students of Beiping still did not stop, they organized a propaganda team and a petition group to go south, and the propaganda team was divided into three routes, west to Taiyuan and Xi'an, east along the Jinpu line south to Shanghai and Hangzhou, and the other along the Jinghan Railway south to Wuhan, Changsha, and Guangzhou; The petition group went straight to Nanjing and submitted a petition to Chiang Kai-shek.

Chiang Kai-shek's report from Peiping surprised him, and he immediately ordered martial law at the Zhengzhou railway station, detained all the students who had gone south in Zhengzhou, and then notified the principals of the schools to collect them.

But Chiang Kai-shek's movements were still slow, although the students in Beiping blocked it, but the students in Shanghai and Hangzhou did not block it, they braved the snow to walk to the city of Nanjing, but the gate of Nanjing was closed, the military and police at the head of the city were waiting for them, and the students couldn't help crying when they looked at the closed city gate, and the sky was painful!

"The principal still lacks skills, how can he use dodge or dodge to deal with this kind of movement that has swept the country!" Zhuang Jihua muttered to himself, couldn't help but shook his head again, the newspaper reported on the student tide in various places, but Zhuang Jihua saw a familiar name on it, a familiar woman's photo, she was Min Yaru, the secretary of the former base secretariat, which made Zhuang Jihua smell something strange.

While officials everywhere were anxious, Yucheng was silent, and the students only marched in the streets once, and after sending a telegram, they all returned to school. All this is thanks to Li Zhilong's vigilance, he found Zhuang Jihua when the Peking students were just out of the telegram, and decided that the matter could never be stopped, and that there was a bigger storm ahead, and that Yucheng must be prevented from falling into this storm.

Zhuang Jihua agreed with his judgment, and then published an article in the "Yuzhou Evening News" with the title "The protest has passed, now is the time to act!" In this article, he analyzed the various actions of the book in North China during the year, and pointed out that the purpose of the book was to gradually encroach on the territory of China, and their appetite was gradually increasing, last year it was Rehe, this year it was the five provinces of North China, and next year it was East China or Northwest China, and we have no time to protest, and the actions of the imperialists have already told us what to do, work hard, and always be ready to take up arms.

Li Zhilong is not willing to be lonely, he published a signed article in the Central Newspaper, counting the great achievements made in the development of the southwest in the past three years, especially the rent reduction and interest reduction implemented this year, believing that such work will definitely be able to mobilize the people to participate in the anti-Japanese war, and believes that instead of marching on the streets or petitioning in Nanjing, it is better to work hard, "Steel is needed to make guns and cannons, copper is needed to make bullets, aluminum is needed to build airplanes, and sulfur nitrate is needed to make gunpowder, these things can be produced in Yucheng, and the national defense industrial system conceived three years ago, this baby, is growing, he is about to give birth, and his birth will be the guarantee of our victory in the War of Resistance! Let's work hard, this baby still needs nutrients, he is growing, let's raise him together! ”

Li Zhilong's article made Teng Jie call back, thinking that he revealed the secret of the southwest development in the article, which would cause unnecessary trouble, but Zhuang Jihua supported Li Zhilong, thinking that in the past three years, especially in the past year, even if he is blind, he should know what they are doing in the southwest.

After these two articles appeared in the newspaper, Teng Jie immediately ordered the party department and the Three Youth League to organize study and discussion, and it was necessary to stabilize the students and prevent them from leaving Chongqing.

This instruction was immediately implemented, and Yang Yongtai subsequently issued an order instructing all party departments to conscientiously study the spirit of these two articles. As a result, the streets, factories, and rural areas began to study the two texts, and the purpose of the development of the southwest was thus fully revealed.

The trade union of the 106 factory took the lead in issuing a call to extend the working hours for the anti-Japanese obligation, which was responded to by the city's trade unions, and the workers automatically extended their working hours by three hours a day; People from all walks of life were not willing to be lonely, and launched a campaign to donate weapons and ammunition, and within a few days, hundreds of thousands of fiat money were donated.

"If you don't die in silence, it will explode in silence," Zhuang Jihua said to Li Zhilong and seriously with emotion: "I always believe that our nation will not perish, our people will not be insensitive, and when the country and the nation need them, they will come forward. ”

(To be continued)