After a week of meetings, the Nanjing camp was even busier, and various agencies and departments quickly adjusted the direction of their work.

In his capacity as chief of the Military and Political Liaison Office and special commissioner of the Nanjing Military Battalion, Zhang Qun led a military inspection group composed of more than 30 generals and colonels to inspect Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, and Zhejiang.

Based in Shanghai, Sun Baoqi continues to be responsible for external liaison, Nanjing's foreign office in Shanghai, economic and trade cooperation, and foreign investment.

The day after Wang Lingji returned to Nanchang, he immediately issued an order, and the 80,000 officers and men stationed in various parts of Jiangxi immediately stopped training and rushed to their respective areas of responsibility to assist the people in repairing water conservancy in winter.

Under the leadership of army commander Wang Zhanxu and the special task force of the General Headquarters, the Chaoshan garrison in Guangdong was transferred to the expansion of wharves and highways.

Lin Baishui adjusted his propaganda plan and launched a huge political propaganda, and the "China Times" distributed nationwide, the "Yanjing Morning Post", "Tianjin Business Daily", "Yangcheng Evening News" and the three newspapers in Shanghai that were successively acquired and reorganized have been firmly controlled by Lin Baishui, showing more and more vitality and influence.

What is ironic is that after returning to Yanjing, Foreign Minister Wang Zhengting immediately presented Xiao Yimin's secret letter and the conclusions of the relevant meetings in Nanjing to Premier Duan Qirui, who after three days of repeated consideration, convened two think tank meetings in succession, and stuffed three henchmen into Wang Zhengting's list of deputies, before ordering Wang Zhengting to be the head of the Chinese political axe delegation and lead the Chinese delegation to Paris to fight for the country's rights and interests.

However, the incompetent central government has already squandered the annual funds, and the Ministry of Finance, which is heavily in debt, could not come up with the 100,000 yuan for the delegation to go to Europe, and finally the angry Duan Qirui squeezed out 100,000 yuan from his private account, which covered up the scandal.

In order to win over the wavering generals of the Beiyang armies and effectively maintain the control of the Beijing-Tianjin, Rehe, Suiyuan, Shandong, and Anhui provinces under his henchmen, Duan Qirui spent more than 80 million yuan in just half a year, of which 50 million yuan was spent on military spending in the Ming Division, and in order to expand the military strength of the nine divisions under his command, he spent 12 million yuan to purchase two batches of high-quality and low-cost artillery, heavy machine guns, rifles, and other weapons and ammunition from Sichuan. Duan Qirui was already shy and had little money left, so he had to call Nanjing again and ask Xiao Yimin to pay the 80 million yuan tax payable by the central government in the provinces south of the Yangtze River in advance.

Last year, the provincial tax received by the Sichuan Provincial Government exceeded this figure, and this has not included the huge profits of the two major military industrial enterprises directly under the Nanjing industry in various parts of Sichuan.

Thanks to the huge investment and rapid development in the past five years, as well as the official taxation of a large number of industrial and commercial enterprises after the end of the tax period, in the first 10 months of this year, the Sichuan Provincial Government has already exceeded the annual tax collection task, so Sichuan Province alone will be able to pay 50 million yuan in taxes to Nanjing this year, and the rest will be invested in infrastructure construction in various parts of Sichuan.

However, the two-year tax holidays in the seven provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, and Henan have not yet passed halfway, and Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou are all under the control of local warlords Lu Rongting, Mo Rongxin, Lu Pingshan, and Tang Jiyao.

Annoyed that since October, Xiao Yimin has often called on Fujian's local political axe to conform to the will of the people and be determined to carry out reforms, but secretly he has adopted a plan of covert encirclement and encroachment on Fujian, with the result that dozens of counties in the north and south of Fujian, including the entire territory of Zhangzhou, have separated from the camp of Fujian Province's political axe and thrown themselves into Xiao Yimin's camp.

Therefore, the Fujian Provincial Political Axe not only did not pay a penny of taxes, but pleaded with the central government and all sectors of society for relief in three days, but under the ruthless suppression of the Xiao Yimin clique, the time for the collapse of Li Houji and others and the return of Fujian Province to Nanjing is just around the corner.

Originally, the central government had a wealthy source of taxes, Shanghai, but since the Nanjing camp handed over 40 million yuan in taxes to the central government half a year ahead of schedule, the whole of Shanghai was formally included in the jurisdiction of the Nanjing camp through a decision made at a special meeting of the central government, and from January 1, 1919, Shanghai was only paid 40 million yuan in taxes to the central government every year through the Nanjing camp, and the central government had lost the power to dictate Shanghai.

In the end, the salt tax of the two Huai and Zhejiang is left, but the salt tax of the two Huai has been handed over to the central government half a year in advance, and the salt industry in Zhejiang has just completed industrial rectification, and a large number of advanced production equipment and nearly ten times the expansion of the salt fields have been put into operation one after another, and it is impossible to generate huge profits in a short period of time.

Duan Qirui and his henchmen are living more and more embarrassed, in contrast, Xiao Yimin, who nominally basically unified southern China, can now be described as infinitely prosperous and rich; not only has the two powerful banks of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Blue Flag Bank of the United States as the backing, but also controls 60 percent of China's arms production and 80 percent of the arms trade. Xiao Yimin Group has obtained no less than 10 million derivative taxes from it.

In addition, Xiao Yimin has won God's favor, and the Yangtze River basin and the southern region have had smooth weather and bumper agricultural harvests for two consecutive years, which not only greatly alleviated the survival pressure of more than 200 million people, but also brought Xiao Yimin great reputation and benefits.

What makes people even more eye-catching is that Xiao Yimin not only pushed the central government to exempt the people of the seven provinces from taxes for two years through various means, but also built three major grain storage warehouses in Yichang, Nanchang, and Pukou, and spent huge sums of money to purchase a large amount of surplus grain from the peasants in the southern provinces, so that every year he had to buy hundreds of thousands of tons of cheap rice from the provinces south of the Yangtze River and transport them back to China.

The New Year is approaching, and the situation in front of Duan Qirui Group is becoming more and more severe, Duan Qirui and more than ten henchmen have discussed hard, and finally had to make the decision to reach out to Xiao Yimin for help again.

The generals of the Guangdong army, Deng Benyin, Chen Jitang, Li Jishen, Zhang Fakui, and others, who were unwilling to succumb to the Gui warlords, joined forces to launch a surprise attack on the various units of the Gui army that brutally oppressed the people of Guangdong, and the flames of war instantly burned all over the land of western Guangdong.

The mediation of Cen Chunxuan, the governor of Guangdong Province, who had long been overhead, was ineffective, and in a fit of anger, he sent a telegram to the Central Political Axe and Premier Duan Qirui to resign, and then without waiting for Duan Qirui to make any decision, he took his family and left Guangzhou and returned to his Shanghai apartment on a British passenger ship.

At this time, Duan Qirui's group still had the energy to manage Guangdong, which was thousands of miles away, but it could not shirk the responsibility of the central government, so it had to hurriedly issue a statement to denounce it, and strictly ordered the two armies of Guizhou and Guangdong to obey the leadership of the central government to stop the war.

Lu Rongting and Mo Rongxin sent a telegram to the whole country, vigorously defending themselves, accusing the central government of completely ignoring the fundamental interests of the people in Guangdong and Guangzhou, calling the large-scale war in Guangdong a riot, and pointing out Chen Jiongming, the director of the Guangdong Military Affairs Commission, as the mastermind behind the scenes.

Chen Jiongming not only flatly denied this, but also ruthlessly exposed the perverse behavior and tyranny of the Gui army, pointed the spearhead of the war at Guangzhou, where the Gui army was entrenched, and ordered the three divisions under his command to assemble on the front line of Dongguan and put on an offensive to wait for them.

More than 40 generals of the Guangdong army, including Deng Benyin and Chen Jitang, who had already occupied most of the Leizhou Peninsula, Li Jishen and Zhang Fakui, who occupied the six counties of Luoding, and Xu Chongzhi and Cai Tingkai, who had returned to Guangdong from Hong Kong to re-recruit their old troops, jointly issued a telegram exposing the ruthless oppression and cruel plundering of the people of Guangdong by the Gui warlords, accusing the central government of ignoring the interests of the people of Guangdong, and calling on the military and people of the whole province to unite to drive out the brutal Gui army and establish a new Guangdong policy with independent reading power.

In the face of the uncontrollable situation between Guangxi and Guangzhou, Duan Qirui's political axe was helpless, and Xiao Yimin's Nanjing camp followed the established policy, calling for a truce between the two armies, and at the same time, urgently mobilized the two main divisions in Hunan, the third infantry division in Guizhou, the local garrison in Jiangxi, and the two armies directly under it, to slowly oppress Guangdong and Guangxi.

This move really frightened Lu Rongting and Mo Rongxin, the leaders of the Gui faction, and all the 50,000 troops urgently mobilized by Guangxi stopped their eastward advance, turned around, and rushed to the front line in northern Guizhou to strictly defend and prevent the various armies under the command of the Nanjing camp from taking the opportunity to march into Guangxi.

As a result, the situation in Guangdong suddenly changed, and the 80,000 Gui troops scattered in the Guangzhou area and various counties in western Guangdong were besieged by a Cantonese army several times their size, and within a week they fled with their deaths and escapes, losing nearly half of them, and successively losing the six wealthy counties in western Guangdong and the entire Qinlian region.

The 50,000 Cantonese troops commanded by Chen Jiongming and the 20,000 allied troops commanded by Cai Tingkai and Xu Chongzhi made rapid progress, breaking through Mo Rongxin's new triple defense line outside Guangzhou in only seven days, and the troops were directed at the city of Guangzhou, where Mo Rongxin's heavy troops were concentrated.

At this time, the army led by Deng Benyin, Li Jishen and others had already entered the territory of Guangxi, and after capturing the border town of Rong County, they continued to press Wuzhou.

Just when Duan Qirui's central government decree was ineffective and helpless against the civil war between Guangxi and Guangzhou, a large-scale war between Chen Shufan, Deng Xihou and Jing Yuexiu and other old Beiyang generals suddenly broke out in Shaanxi.

The 60,000 officers and soldiers led by Jing Yuexiu defeated the Fifth Army of Deng Xihou of the Sichuan Army stationed in the northern and western suburbs of Xi'an in a surprise attack, attracting nearly 100,000 long-dormant remnants of the Beiyang Army and the Green Forest People's Army to swarm and annex, and Deng Xihou and Chen Shufan, the overseer of Shaanxi, who suffered heavy losses and were shocked, could only abandon Xi'an and flee to the front line of Hanzhong in embarrassment.

(To be continued)