After a heavy rain, the sun hangs high.

Under the lush plane trees on both sides of Huanlong Road in the French Concession of Shanghai, the leaves are all over the ground, and the steaming hot air makes the cicadas on the trees cry bitterly, singing "hot death, hot death", and the noise is so noisy that there is no peace.

Adjacent to the Parc de France, Huanlong Road is lined with almost all French-style buildings, and this new road is named in honor of the French air show Huanlong. In May of the early years of the Republic of China, the French flying enthusiast Huanlong piloted the "Shanma" biplane, soaring in the sky of Shanghai, tens of thousands of Shanghainese looked at it from afar, sighed, but the plane unfortunately lost control when landing at the racecourse, the plane was destroyed and killed, the sad and romantic French, and then in the French Park to the Huanlong Tree Monument erected, and the new road adjacent to the park was named Huanlong Road, to commemorate.

More than three months ago, on 1 May, Sun Yat-sen, head of the Chinese Revolutionary Party, secretly returned to China with his newlywed wife, Soong Ching-ling, and has been living in this western-style building that occupies a small area and has a simple appearance.

It was not until Yuan Shikai died of illness that Sun Yat-sen's residence and whereabouts were made public, so the inside and outside of the deserted courtyard was soon full of traffic, and revolutionaries from all over the country who saw the hope of victory appeared frequently, and there was an endless stream of secret orders, and one after another secret orders were issued from here, and one statement after another and condemnation telegrams were drafted here, and more than half of the flames of war that had been rekindled in various parts of the country in the past few months were ignited here.

The death of Yuan Shikai was a great relief to the revolutionaries, and countless enthusiastic and optimistic revolutionaries, including Sun Yat-sen, were greatly boosted in confidence for a while, and cheered that the long dark wait was finally over, that most of the national power was under the control of the revolutionaries and the members of the old League, that the future of the revolution was very good, and that the great republic was about to be truly born.

However, the development of the situation once again caused the revolutionaries to be ruthlessly attacked, and Li Yuanhong, who was put on the throne of acting president, did not take long to fall to the decadent and stubborn Beiyang faction, and the old members of the League, who held military and political power in all provinces of the country, seemed to have completely forgotten the original intention of the revolution, and after ascending to the high positions one by one, they rushed to advance towards the secession of the warlords and the monoman regime, throwing aside all their promises.

Under the leadership of Duan Qirui, Feng Guozhang, Cao Kun, Xu Shichang, Wu Peifu and others, the reunited Beiyang Department began to launch a massive political counterattack, and the National Congress and the Government Council, which pinned the infinite hopes of the revolutionaries, were gradually overturned by the Presidential Office and the Beiyang Military Department, and even the most basic "First Year Covenant" that pinned the infinite ideals of the revolutionaries was completely abandoned.

In August, the division of the control power in the provinces of the country has been settled, and the top military governors of the provinces have been renamed the superintendent of the army by the military affairs supervisor and the governor, and the top civil affairs chief of the provinces has been renamed the provincial governor by the governor of the province; almost all of these changes are the result of the desperate pursuit of the Kuomintang, and the military and political chiefs of nearly half of the provinces in the country are all veteran league members with profound qualifications; however, after the old league members who have been rewarded for their great power have taken power, none of them are willing to follow the path originally planned by the revolutionaries. Some even abruptly changed their stance and became the vanguard and executioner of the suppression of the revolutionary movement.

To the greatest shock and pain of Sun Yat-sen and the revolutionaries, the Northeast Army of the Chinese Revolutionary Army, which occupied the Lunan and Jiaodong regions and attacked Jinan three times, had been in office for less than a month.

The various units of the Northeast Army of the Revolutionary Army, which had fought side by side under the banner of the revolution, quickly degenerated, and the revolutionary army with tens of thousands of troops became vassals of the Beiyang warlords.

The commander-in-chief Ju Zheng, the commander Xu Chongzhi, and the chief of staff Chiang Kai-shek, who were sent by Sun Yat-sen to lead the revolution in Shandong, also became the commanders of the light poles, and the remaining more than 1,000 revolutionary officers and soldiers composed of progressive students fell into pain and confusion.

Entering September, the situation is even more dire.

The Beiyang warlords completely controlled the three eastern provinces and the provinces of Zhili, Jin, Shaanxi, Hubei, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang; Xiao Yimin, the leader of the Sichuan warlords, with the strong support of Duan Qirui, the new leader of Beiyang, waved his army north, easily occupied the southern Shaanxi region of Hanzhong, and launched a "shameless and bloody massacre" against the dissident forces in the occupied area, which were claimed by some newspapers that feared that the world would not be chaotic; Guizhou warlord Lu Pingshan shook hands with Liu Xianqian, the leader of the Guizhou Revolutionary Army, and served as the overseer and governor of Guizhou respectively, and immediately began to "persuade the revolutionaries stationed in Guizhou from the headquarters of the Chinese Revolutionary Party"; Zhang Xun, a counterrevolutionary warlord entrenched in Jiangbei, finally couldn't help but raise his butcher's knife to the revolutionaries, and the groups of revolutionary troops that had just gathered quickly disappeared under the ruthless encirclement and suppression of Zhang Xun's troops.

Unconsciously, the revolutionaries around Sun Yat-sen left most of them under various pretexts, and the remaining dozens of staunch Kuomintang people could only sigh and sigh, arguing and blaming each other at regular meetings.

Sun Yat-sen, who was sitting on the terrace in front of the small building, looked at the blood-red sunset in the west, and listened to the briefing of Chiang Kai-shek, whose tired face was full of pain and solemnity.

“…… The students have been reflecting bitterly for the greatest reason why the Shandong Revolutionary Army has split rapidly is that the revolutionary ranks have no pure surnames to speak of, and speculators abound. After the students took office, they had to implement strict military law, from registering the roster of officers and soldiers to setting up officers on duty, from political education to severely punishing those who harassed the people and harmed the people...... Students live up to their expectations of teachers! ”

Sun Yat-sen sighed, turned to Chiang Kai-shek and pointed to the rattan chair, Liu Bingxian, who was standing on the side, hurriedly moved the chair quietly, and when Chiang Kai-shek sat down, he immediately sent a glass of cold boiled water with lemon slices.

Chiang Kai-shek took the cup, nodded slightly to Liu Bingxian, straightened his waist, and sat motionless on Sun Yat-sen's side.

"Let's drink water first."

Sun Yat-sen rubbed his sore temples, took the wet towel handed by his little wife, and wiped the sweat beads from his forehead:

"Kai-shek, you have done a good job, I received a telegram from Juesheng a week ago, and I knew that the general trend of Shandong had gone! The situation is so erosive, it seems that I was far from expecting it at the beginning, Ju Juesheng in Hubei, Xu Ruwei in Guangdong, including you, a Junjie in Zhejiang, have no way to suppress the head snake in Shandong! I didn't think about it, I still didn't think about it at the beginning. ”

Chiang Kai-shek and Liu Bingxian were silent and silent, and they were sad.

(To be continued)