"Unknown fleet ...... found in front of port side", "About forty-five nautical miles away!" ”

Guan Xuqing thought silently. Suddenly, a loud report came from the foremast of the Zhenyuan.

At this time, the fleet was sailing on the surface of the East China Sea. According to the Taiwan Strait, there are still more than 100 nautical miles. Since warships have much less coal than merchant ships, and the smoke is naturally much lighter, it is possible to judge whether it is a merchant ship or a warship based on the thickness of the smoke, and merchant ships generally act alone, and only fleets will travel together. However, this is still a considerable distance from the place where the Nanyang Naval Division came to rendezvous, and it is obvious that the fleet opposite is unlikely to be a Qing fleet.

Because the emperor was on his ship, Deng Shichang's nerves suddenly tensed. He sounded the buzzing alarm of all the staff, and suddenly, there were many people on the Dingyuan ship, and the sailors rushed out of the cabin to their posts. The footsteps made the steel deck "thump".

From a few wisps of light smoke at the beginning, to the thick smoke billowing later, it shows that the opposing side has at least five or six warships. An hour later, the mast of the incoming ship could already be seen from the Zhenyuan ship, and a military flag with a red sun shining in all directions was hung on it, which turned out to be a Japanese fleet.

The weather today is very sunny and the visibility on the sea is good. In a short time, the outline of the Japanese fleet was revealed in the southeast. There were five warships, four large and four small, and the five warships were in a column. The first one was painted with a very conspicuous white paint, and the volume was even stronger than the Zhenyuan, which is known as "Asia's first giant ship". It abandons the straight sides of previous warships, and the left and right sides of the ship bulge to the sides, which greatly increases the buoyancy of the ship and provides the conditions for its intricate above-ground structure.

To be honest, in Guan Xuqing's view, the ship was more like a luxury cruise ship than a warship, with two stout cylindrical armored mast towers towering above a cluttered superstructure, topped with a closed mast, and the inside of the mast tower was hollow. Equipped with cranes and a spiral staircase for people to go up and down, it is matched with the cabins, which resemble a baroque hotel-style building. No wonder in history the ship had the nickname "Hotel on the Sea".

This is the "Osh", which was originally abandoned by France on the slipway, but after being bought by Japan, it has now been renamed "Kyushu". Although historically, this warship has been shaped in addition to a unique shape. Nothing particularly outstanding. The excessively low freeboard and excessively high superstructure have affected the performance of its combat power. But really, such a large battleship of 10,820 tons was in front of him. The impact and deterrence are not to be overlooked.

Several commanders of the Japanese Provisional Fleet on the "Kyushu" could not help but become nervous when they saw the Qing fleet on the opposite side, which seemed to be coming straight towards them. Four large battleships built in France had already built the first "Kyushu", and this time the Japanese Navy was to take it home. As a result of the propaganda, Japan has already regarded the four giant ships as if they were baby bumps, and for this reason, four cruisers trained at the Kagoshima base, Naniwa, Takachiho, Tsukushi, and Takao, were specially dispatched to the South China Sea to meet the escort. Prior to this, the intelligence network that had been monitoring the Qing Navy in China had reported that the North and South Ocean Naval Divisions would hold an annual ocean-going training in the near future, but they had so coincidentally encountered themselves.

"Dingyuan, Zhenyuan, Jiyuan, Weiyuan, and the rise ......, the Beiyang Naval Division has poured out, and it seems that it can't win." Ito Yuhyung silently read that he had spent more than ten years studying the Chinese Navy, and he could say that every Chinese warship was like a treasure. Although judging from the ship's data, equipped with two 275 mm and two 340 mm 28 times the diameter main guns, and the speed of 16.5 knots, the "Kyushu" must suppress the Dingyuan-class ironclad ships equipped with four 305-mm 25-diameter main guns and a maximum speed of only 15.4 knots in any aspect, and the four 305-mm Krupp breech guns of the Dingyuan-class may not be able to penetrate the 457mm-thick armor of the "Kyushu", but it has been less than three months since the Navy received the "Kyushu" from the French Lorient shipyard. The integration training of ships and personnel has not yet been completed, and the performance of many ships still needs time to become familiar, and after a long voyage, some parts of the ship have inevitably worn out and malfunctioned, and they urgently need to be brought into port for maintenance, which is not the best state for a naval battle at all. On the other hand, the Qing fleet, although one-on-one, the Zhenyuan-class ironclad ship, known as the "largest giant ship in Asia", is far from being the opponent of the "Kyushu". Now the real largest ship in Asia is the "Kyushu". However, the Qing fleet on the opposite side had four Dingyuan-class subway ships, and the training between personnel and ships had been going on for four or five years. Almost skilled, with one against four. "Kyushu" had no chance of winning. Moreover, this is close to the Zhenhai Naval Base, which was built by the Qing State at great expense, and the Qing warships can flee there at any time to get repairs, and this is still more than 600 nautical miles away from the nearest Japanese military port.

However, at this time, he actually smiled slightly, the above inference is completely what may happen under normal circumstances, but when can the affairs of the Qing Kingdom be judged as normal, he does not believe that the Qing Dynasty, which has always prided itself as "a glorious kingdom and a state of etiquette", took the initiative to declare war on the Japanese fleet: "The warheads of the main guns immediately stop training. Covered with artillery jackets, the soldiers can move freely and rest for an hour...... Greeting the Qing fleet, ......" The Japanese soldiers on the Kyushu were suddenly in a hurry, covering up the two 275 mm M1884QFC breech guns at the stern of the ship and one 340 mm M1884QFC breech gun on each side of the ship, and as many as 18 140mm secondary guns equipped with the ship were also included in the gun frame, closing the gun door, and completely undefended.

"Your Excellency, Commander, are you too cowardly in this way, this is completely contrary to the samurai spirit of our Great Japanese Empire, and the people of the country have saved money to buy a huge ship like the Kyushu. It was to sink Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, not to clamp their tails in front of them......" The Japanese Navy's Osa, the captain of the Kaohsiung unprotected cruiser of the Temporary Fleet Cruiser Detachment, said with a flushed face, and he was promoted step by step by relying on military merits, and he was already dissatisfied with the naval officers who had returned from Ito Yuhei, Tsuboi Kozo, and other naval officers who had returned from overseas to press them everywhere, and he was even more unaccustomed to their actions at this time.

Ito Yuhyung squinted his eyes and swept Kokuri Motohachiro, who straightened his body in front of him: "You idiot, what the people need is a big victory, a big victory that can win living space and a lot of reparations for the empire." And not these false faces. The Qing State on the other side was immersed in the lies they had compiled themselves, thinking that they were still an invincible and glorious power, and that they would be left far behind by the Western countries, giving Japan a chance to rise up. Japan was too small for the Qing Kingdom. Our only advantage is that we wake up before they do. The people of the whole country are united, and in recent years. The Qing Dynasty already had a tendency to wake up gradually, and once the actions of the navy provoked them to buy giant ships again, the Japanese Empire would be plunged into an endless arms race, and then our fragile economy would be dragged down, and all the people would face bankruptcy, and the decades of hard work of the Great Japanese Empire would be in vain, and Japan would forever be reduced to a second-rate country, which I absolutely could not allow. ”

"Hai ......" Ito Youheng, who has always been known for his graceful demeanor in the Japanese Navy, was so fierce that the surrounding Japanese generals bent down and bowed their heads one after another.

Seeing that the Japanese fleet on the opposite side waved the friendly banner of "The road ahead is calm, I wish the voyage smooth sailing", Guan Xuqing also asked Deng Shichang to return the banner of good luck.

As for the "Jing Ke Operation" that he personally presided over, because it could not be publicized to the public, only a few people in charge of intelligence forces knew about it, even Kang Youwei, Deng Shichang, and Yan Fu, who were completely regarded as confidants of the imperial party. Guan Xuqing didn't know if he had done something wrong, the French Navy was once one of the world's best-in-class navies, even after experiencing such a fiasco as the Battle of Trafalga, it did not make them collapse, and the world's first ironclad ship was written by the French. But from the late nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War, the French navy was lackluster and almost in a forgotten corner. Due to the huge pressure on Germany on land, after the Franco-Prussian War, they devoted their main energies to the army, and the navy was neglected, and the shipbuilding technology was gradually left behind by the British, and later it lagged behind the emerging Germany and the United States. The poor realization of French warships in several wars, and the Russian fleet built under the guidance of French engineers were almost completely wiped out by Japan in the Battle of Tsushima, made Fang Huai, like many ship enthusiasts in later generations, habitually despise those French warships known as "coffins of the sea". That's why he decided on the strategy of dragging down the Japanese economy with four large battleships that Japan coveted. Because Dingyuan and Zhenyuan were hit by hundreds of bullets in the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the impression of not falling to the ground was too deep in his mind, if it were not for the Qing Dynasty government being too mediocre in history, it would not have built a new ship for the Beiyang Naval Division. With rapid-fire guns, the Beiyang naval division was not reequipped, and even the shells were not replenished. The Battle of the Yellow Sea could not have ended like that at all, after all, none of Japan's warships could have a way to deal with the two warships. At present, the North and South Ocean Naval Divisions are several times stronger than in history, and even if Japan has four giant ships, it must not be able to win the North and South Ocean Naval Division, which has undergone earth-shaking changes in strength.

However, military science is a rigorous science, and if there are many aspects of the army that are a contest of spiritual will, and the air force can also rely on a bloody courage to die with the enemy like a Japanese kamikaze, then the naval ship duel is the one with the highest requirements for technical equipment in military science, and it is also the one that is least subject to human will.

After the Japanese Navy possessed the "Kyushu", it was fully equipped with the capital to sink Zhenyuan, and the Zhenyuan-class ironclad ships, which were previously relied on by Fang Huai as the Great Wall of the Sea, were no longer so impregnable. Although even if Japan has four giant ships in Kyushu, Yamato, Musashi, and Katsuragi, the tonnage of ships is less than 100,000 tons. Through the development of the Qing Dynasty in recent years, the total tonnage of the navy has exceeded 200,000 tons. But the shadow and deterrence created by the four giant ships will not be able to dissipate if China does not have battleships of the same class.

For an island nation surrounded by the sea, there is no way to defeat him without defeating his navy. With Japan's small and stoic character, Britain and France paid for him, and sooner or later he would make a comeback.

In recent years, because China has changed the balance of power in East Asia, under the influence of the Sino-French Vietnam War and the Sino-British Burma War. Historically, it was not until after the Sino-Japanese War that Britain and France fell to Japan, and the situation was directly advanced. A part of the excess capital in Britain and France flowed to Japan at the behest of the government, and in addition, stimulated by the domestic arms war, Japan's economy has grown rapidly, which is much better than the historical struggle, and even if it swallows the four giant ships, it does not suffer from indigestion. Britain and France supported some key technologies. It also makes Japan truly strong. As you can imagine. In the future Sino-Japanese War, Britain and France, which already regard China as a thorn in their side and a thorn in the flesh, will still spare no effort to support Japan. And once Japan, which has Britain and France paying for its military spending, fully displays its wolf nature, the Chinese nation will inevitably face a severe challenge.

When he returned to this era, Guan Xuqing did not want to stand with the British, who still maintained their position as the boss at this time, but between Russia and Britain, he chose the former, and then his foreign policy towards Germany and the United States was a derivative of this choice. The reason is simple, maybe Russia really hates China, but Russia will definitely not help Japan. Geopolitically, there is a natural conflict between the two, with Russia's ports on the Pacific coast all under the shadow of the Japanese archipelago, and the Russian Pacific Fleet stationed on Jeju Island and Vladivostok threatening the Japanese coastal region at any time, and neither can be assured of the other. As for China and Russia, Russia's economic center of gravity is in Europe, and there is no need to say much about the situation in Central Asia and Siberia bordering China, while China's economically developed areas are located south of the Great Wall, and the Chinese territory bordering Russia has never been an elite area that cannot be discarded, where it is sparsely populated and has weak rule, and most of the time it is a place where Chinese prisoners and ethnic minorities live in exile, and Russia has ceded more than 1.5 million square kilometers from China without firing a single shot. China was able to cede nearly 2 million square kilometers from Alexander III, who valued land more than life, and the extent to which the land was cut off was unimportant.

But this is not the case with Britain, where the diplomatic gentlemen who wear stiff-collared gowns are naturally inclined to favor Japan. Between China and Japan, they will only choose Japan. Because Japan is small enough, no matter how strong it is, it can be controlled in their eyes, and it is a good Doberman Pinscher that can be held in the hand to the polar bear barking in the Pacific Ocean. And China............ His history is longer than all the current civilizations combined! The population is the population of the whole of Europe combined, and there is a huge land. With such a big block, if it is raised, it will be very difficult to control. And if it is not controlled, the domination of the British colonial empire in India and Southeast Asia will be a disaster............ Britain will never support China's rise, what they need is balance, Japan's strength can help them to be optimistic about the door of East Asia, and the rise of China will only break this door.

The two fleets passed by at a friendly distance of twenty nautical miles, each rushing to its destination.

Although they missed, both sides were convinced that one day, these two fleets, which represent the most powerful fleets in East Asia, would collide together, and victory or defeat would directly determine the luck of the two peoples. We lost in the past, but what about tomorrow? Guan Xuqing looked into the distance, and the sound of the waves on the sea was still there.