As soon as Xiao Yimin and his entourage returned from the Zhanjiang Military Port to the Guangzhou Military Governor's Mansion, they received two urgent reports from Wu Peifu and Zeng Chaoran from the Nanjing General Headquarters -- A fierce clash broke out between the guard brigade of Wu Peifu's unit and the Jinan army at the Jinan railway station, and more than 10 officers and men on patrol on both sides were killed or wounded.

The urgent report said: The two infantry brigades of the Yue Army have completely blocked the Yue Qiao District and the surrounding neighborhoods in Jinan City, and have begun to build fortifications, set up roadblocks, and put on a posture of street fighting.

After repeatedly analyzing the situation, Xiao Yimin breathed a sigh of relief, at this time Wu Peifu's three divisions had steadily occupied most of the urban area of Jinan and the important places in the north and south outside the city, completely controlled the north-south transportation hubs including the Yellow River Iron Bridge and Tai'an, and gained the initiative on the battlefield with eight times the strength of the Yue Army, plus the three main divisions of the Wang Jian Group Army had been stationed on the front line of Dezhou and Yanzhou, and the two ace divisions of Chen Lanting and Xiao Fei, who had been commanded by Chaoran, controlled the strategic places of Zhucheng and Jiaoxian on the periphery of Qingdao with a tough attitude. The Qingdao army has formed a clamping trend, so Xiao Yimin is not worried that the deteriorating domestic situation will dare to provoke a full-scale war.

Xiao Yimin didn't have to think too much about it, he knew that the conflict at the Jinan Railway Station was definitely a planned conspiracy and provocation by the army, and it was a temptation for Wu Peifu.

Therefore, Xiao Yimin did not continue to stay in Guangzhou, and secretly took the train north that night.

Since the railway company jointly established by the three provinces of Hunan, Guangdong, and Hubei had not yet completed the construction of the railway from Shaoguan to Yizhang in Hunan, Xiao Yimin and his entourage took a bus in Shaoguan, an important town in northern Guangdong, and rushed to Nanchang via Zhangzhou and Ji'an, and then returned to the Nanjing headquarters by boat from Nanchang.

At 6 p.m. on 26 July, Xiao Yimin rushed to Nanchang at night, and another piece of incomparably infuriating news came from Nanjing: At 4:20 p.m., the warship that had returned to Shanghai from Hankou deliberately deviated from the course in the waters of Yanziji in Nanjing, and savagely overturned the No. 3 ferry of the Jiangsu Shipping Company, and more than 200 civilians on the ferry all fell into the water.

In the face of the barbaric atrocities of the Yue army, the generals under Xiao Yimin's command and the generals of various departments of the Jiangxi Governor's Office were all furious, and strongly demanded that Xiao Yimin order revenge against the "Penghu" that caused the accident and quickly fled eastward, and that the Yue Kou, whose hands were stained with the blood of the people, must not be allowed to escape to Shanghai.

Xiao Yimin did not lose his mind because of this, he analyzed in detail the motive of the ship for ramming our civilian ferry, and then linked this vicious provocation incident with the situation in Shandong and North China, and finally let the generals see clearly a series of conspiracy of the Yue Kou.

After appeasing the generals under his command, Xiao Yimin immediately recruited Wang Lingji, Ma Gang, and the fellow German military attache in China, Sharpler, into the small conference room, so that everyone could evaluate the major decision he was about to make:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that the vicious incident in the waters from North China to Shandong and then from Shandong to Nanjing is completely a deliberate provocation by the Chinese military, and its purpose is nothing more than to test the military forces and political positions of all parties in the north and south of our country, and once again provoke political disputes and contradictions in economic interests between China and China, and it cannot be ruled out that the Chinese military hopes to disrupt China's order and deter the interests of European and American countries in China through a series of provocative actions."

Sharpler, who has become Xiao Yimin's private military adviser, was the first to speak, and now the Shandong region is not only the strategic core area that Xiao Yimin's group is aiming to win, but also a place where Germany must fight for to safeguard its existing interests and defend the dignity of the Germanic nation.

"Xiao, I agree with you! Previously, the three generals Wu Peifu, Zeng Chaoran and Wang Jian had done a good job in Shandong, and they used a series of ingenious and resolute countermeasures to force the Yue army not to dare to expand the armed conflict in Shandong, laying a solid foundation for completely driving out Yue himself and then recovering the whole of Shandong.

"Therefore, I myself believe that we must not take lightly the armed provocation of the Navy's actions in the waters of Nanjing, and once it is merely a political axe protest and a popular swim as before. Lines. Cowardly means such as cowardice will certainly boost the ambitions of this army. I very much agree with Hsiao's analysis, this is definitely not an isolated incident, but a branch of a series of huge plans of the Yue army, and how to respond to the brutal provocation of the Yue Ben navy will be a great test for the political axe of Nanjing, and at the same time affect the situation in the whole of North China. ”

Wang Lingji and Ma Gang understood one after another, and they all looked at Xiao Yimin who was contemplative, knowing that Xiao Yimin might have already thought of a countermeasure.

Xiao Yimin raised his head, told the three of them his thoughts, and then asked everyone to weigh and improve together.

Two hours later, one after another orders flew from Nanchang in all directions, and Yang Du and others, who remained in the Nanjing base camp, immediately issued a series of action orders to the Yangtze River Defense Command, Jiangyin Fortress Troops, and Wusong Fortress Troops in the name of the Nanjing Camp General Headquarters.

Propaganda Minister Lin Baishui also immediately took action, holding an emergency meeting with the governor of Jiangsu Province, the mayor of Nanjing, and other political officials to formulate a huge political propaganda plan.

At ten o'clock in the evening, the Shanghai Garrison Command received an urgent order issued by Xiao Yimin, and after being shocked, it did not have time to think about it, and quickly gathered 8,000 officers and soldiers of its headquarters to impose martial law on the entire surrounding area of Shanghai, and sent heavy troops to block all exits of the public concession; The 3rd Military Police Regiment stationed in Zhabei and 2,000 police officers from the Shanghai Police Department rushed out to start the long-planned campaign of "cracking down on criminal offenses and opium smuggling" ahead of schedule.

At 5 o'clock in the morning, the gunboat "Penghu" of the Yue Army, which was advancing at high speed, was intercepted by four fast patrol boats of the Jiangyin Detachment of the Yangtze River Defense Command that had been waiting for a long time in the waters of Renhe Harbor upstream of the Jiangyin Fortress.

At 5:42 a.m., the gunboat "Penghu" left the main channel of the Yangtze River five kilometers upstream of the Jiangyin Fortress and chose an upward route close to the north bank to move quickly.

Three minutes later, another round of earth-shattering salvo guns rang out, and several shells suddenly exploded around the "Penghu," which had just resumed its forward attitude, and the huge waves set off by the huge explosive force struck with a bang, and the "Penghu," which rushed to the bottom of the waves and was about to float, had not yet stabilized its posture, and a whistling shell accurately landed on the gunboat's amidships, and the flames that rose into the sky accompanied by violent explosions rang out, pressing the 800-ton gunboat under the water, and the more than 20 Japanese soldiers who were carrying out a counterattack on the deck disappeared without a trace in an instant.

Round after round of shells kept flying, two of which crashed into the starboard side of the "Penghu," which had already flipped sideways, and the violent explosion red light rose into the sky, and the torn hull suddenly flipped over, and soon sank under the raging river.

At 9 a.m. on 27 July, the Jiangsu No. 1 Garrison Division stationed in Longtan, Nanjing, blocked all railways and highways and carried out strict inspections of vehicles and personnel. 8,000 soldiers of the Zhejiang Second Garrison Division entered the north bank of the Songjiang River, five kilometers west of Minhang, and then blocked all roads and docks, and stopped traffic on the roads from Shanghai to Hangzhou and Huzhou.

Starting at 10 o'clock in the morning, more than 20 cities such as Nanjing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, and Nanchang have taken place large-scale tours. During the protests, millions of young students and people from all walks of life poured into the streets holding newspapers that had just been issued, solemnly protesting and denouncing the atrocities of the warship "Penghu" in the waters of the Nanjing section of the Yangtze River. Slogans such as "return me to Shandong and Qingdao", and "Boycott the goods and punish the Han annihilation" resounded in the skies over China.

In the face of the sudden anti-anti-tourism that gradually spread to the whole of China. The protest movement was unprepared for such serious consequences.

Although they were extremely angry at the sinking of the ship "Penghu" by the Chinese [***] team in the Jiangyin fortress, they did not wait for the envoy in China to protest and threaten the central political axe of Yanjing, and the European and American envoys in China acted quickly for the sake of their own interests, hurriedly formed the "Legation of Eleven Countries", and then crossed more than 100,000 tours with difficulty. The party came to Duan Qirui's presidential palace and strongly demanded that the Chinese [***] team stop all mobilization and war preparations, and settle the dispute between China and China through peaceful negotiations.

On the morning of 28 July, Xiao Yimin, minister of military affairs of the CPC Central Committee, who had returned to Nanjing, held a news conference to inform more than 100 Chinese and foreign journalists and more than 30 specially invited envoys stationed in China of the truth, strongly condemned the atrocities of the Yue army on behalf of the innocent Chinese civilians who had been killed, announced that the 14 officers and men of the "Penghu" who had been captured would be tried justly, and said that they would consider recovering all the concessions and consulates along the Yangtze River and in the inland provinces.

At one o'clock in the afternoon, it was called Tokyo.

The General Staff and the Cabinet were extremely angry and bitter in the face of the constant stream of urgent reports and the strong pressure exerted by the political axes of various countries in Europe and the United States.

Prior to this, the military and political circles had reached a consensus to concentrate their limited forces on strengthening political influence and economic penetration in Northeast China, and to prevent the Yanjing political axe from passing the important proposal of "opening up the Northeast Special Economic Zone to the world" through a series of means, to use force and coercion to obtain as much compensation as possible for the interests of Shandong, and to delay the implementation of the resolution of the Paris Peace Conference on returning Shandong to China's political axe as much as possible.

In order to squeeze out China's huge commodity market and investment market and expand their own interests and political influence in China, the European and American countries have completely ignored the traditional relations with China and China, explicitly opposed the armed conflict between China and China, and demanded that the political axe of China and China must settle the dispute through peaceful negotiations.

What is even more infuriating is that the French political axe, which has always held prejudices against Yueben, and the US political axe, which is controlled by the predators of capital, have gone so far as to demand that Yueben withdraw from Shandong as soon as possible in accordance with the resolution of the Paris Peace Conference, and threatened that if the Chinese side does not comply, it will join other countries to impose political and economic sanctions on Yueben.

(To be continued)