At a time when the international situation in East Asia and even the entire world was undergoing drastic changes because of the "Vladivostok Incident" and the "Nenjiang Victory". The Beiyang group, which still occupies the position of the legitimate government of China, but is not favored by anyone, is still making the last struggle!

At this time in Beijing, another meeting of the Overseers in Beiyang finally came to an end. This Overseer meeting is almost the wartime mobilization of the Beiyang system! The meeting passed a resolution and decided to set up an organization called the "Wartime Base Camp" to command the entire Beiyang system's army, and all war-related departments in the ruling government, such as the War Department, the Navy Department, the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of the Interior, and so on, were also temporarily placed under the jurisdiction of the base camp. The supreme commander of the base camp during the war was the consul Xu Shuzheng, but it was Wu Peifu, the chief of staff of the base camp, who actually supported and commanded the operation. As a result, the army of the entire Beiyang system had a unified command in the true sense for the first time after Yuan Shikai's death.

The day after the establishment of the wartime base camp, Chief of Staff Wu Peifu convened a military meeting attended by generals above the brigade commander level of the Beiyang System in Sizhaotang, Zhongnanhai.

In the hall of the Sishodo Hall, there was a sound of standing up, as well as the sound of leather boots and command knives clashing. The three leaders of the Beijing ruling government, General Xu Shuzheng, the supreme consul of the Beiyang ruling government and commander-in-chief during the war, General Wu Peifu, chief of staff of the wartime base camp and commander-in-chief of the southern front, and General Feng Yuxiang, commander-in-chief of the Beijing-Tianjin garrison and commander-in-chief of the northern front, who was almost on a par with Chang Ruiqing, walked into the venue side by side. Everyone stood there straight and waited for them. Even Wu Peifu and Feng Yuxiang's former superiors, Cao Kun and Lu Jianzhang, are no exception. It's just that Lu Jianzhang's expression was a little absent-minded, and his brows were furrowed tightly. It's as if I'm thinking about something.

Xu Shuzheng's expression was stern, and he raised his hand to return the salute to the Beiyang generals who saluted, and then raised his hand to invite them to sit down. Wu Peifu and Feng Yuxiang sat on his left and right. Xu Shuzheng nodded slightly towards Wu Peifu's 228th Winning Nine Monthly Pass Subscription Request, and then glanced at the audience with sharp eyes. This one is quite talented. But he was a little cautious, and Duan Qirui's henchman, who was not very likable, stepped forward when Beiyang was in the most danger and took up the important task of saving the Beiyang system, and thus won the temporary support of most of the Beiyang generals.

However, just when he was trying his best to reorganize the Beiyang group, the situation at home and abroad once again underwent an earth-shattering upheaval -- Japan actually took advantage of the Russian civil war and the emptiness of the Far East to brazenly launch the "Vladivostok Incident." Seized two provinces of the Russian Far East, almost 400,000 square kilometers of land! At the same time, Jiang Jshi, commander-in-chief of the Northeast Anti-Russian Army on the side of the Nationalist Government, also seized the opportunity of panic in the White Russian army. launched a snowy night raid, knocked the retreating Russian army to a beating, and annihilated tens of thousands of invincible White Russian troops in less than 24 hours! It also made the confidence that the Beiyang system had just picked up suffer a heavy blow again.

Since the Qing Dynasty, the Beiyang Group has been defeated in foreign wars repeatedly. The fear of foreigners is deep in the bone marrow. And now the terrible foreigners have been completely wiped out by the army of the Nationalist Government! What a terrible way this army must be! How is Beiyang their opponent? However, such thoughts can only be buried deep in my heart now, as Xu Shuzheng has seen. It's all confident faces.

"Everyone!" Xu Shuzheng nodded with satisfaction: "I believe everyone has already understood the current situation at home and abroad. That's right. What our Beiyang group is now facing is an unprecedentedly strong enemy! But let's not forget that this strong enemy has risen rapidly in less than two years. Their foundation is not solid, and it is far inferior to the old foundation that our Beiyang group has been operating for decades. Their victory over the Russians this time had quite a lot of tricks, and it was not a reflection of their real strength. Moreover, the million-strong army they are relying on now is either the children of peasants forcibly recruited from Fujian and Guangdong provinces, or the powerful factions in the southwest that have been recruited, and they dare not speak out against the tyranny of Sun Yat-sen and Chang Ruiqing, but they are only forced to fight, not sincerely loyal! It's okay to fight a tailwind battle, but once you encounter a big setback, it will definitely fall apart! The final victory must belong to our Beiyang! ”

After saying these morale-boosting words, Xu Shuzheng turned around and bowed slightly to Wu Peifu, and said loudly: "Now ask General Wu Ziyu, chief of staff of the base camp, to arrange combat missions!" ”

Wu Peifu snapped and gave a military salute to Xu Shuzheng, even if he took over the task. At this time, the two staff officers, who had been waiting for this moment for a long time, opened the curtain of a military map hanging on the wall of the Shishodo Hall. Wu Peifu left his seat, walked to the map, which was full of various arrows, military symbols, and troop numbers, picked up a baton, dotted it, and said loudly: "In this decisive battle between the north and the south, our side's general operational idea is to concentrate troops, move on the inner line, and break through each one!" For this reason, our army must first concentrate its forces and abandon all the territory south of the Huaihe-Qinling line, so as to achieve the goal of shrinking its forces.

After the completion of the shrinkage of troops, the main force of our Beiyang Army will form a three-front army-level combat group. They were the First Front Army, which was responsible for operations in the Central Plains Battlefield; the Second Front Army, which was responsible for guarding Guanzhong and blocking the northward advance of the enemy in Sichuan; Defending the Beijing-Tianjin area, monitoring the enemy in the northeast, and concurrently serving as the Third Front Army of the General Reserve of the whole army.

Among them, the First Front Army will be the main combat group in this battle, which will be composed of the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 12th, 17th, 19th, and 20th Divisions of the Central Army; the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Divisions of the participating armies; The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 13th, 47th, and 75th Mixed Brigades of the Army. The commander of the First Front Army will be General Cao Zhongshan.

The Second Front Army is composed of the Seventh Division of the Central Army, the Anwu Army, the Dingwu Army, the Yi Army, and the Zhensong Army, the 15th and 16th Mixed Brigades, as well as the local armies of Shaanxi and Gansu. The commander of the front army will be General Ni Danchen (Ni Sichong).

The Third Front Army is composed of the 1st, 11th, 13th, 15th, and 16th Divisions of the Central Army, and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Mixed Brigades of the participating armies. The commander of the front army will be concurrently held by General Feng Huanzhang.

I am here today only to announce the sequence of battles, and the detailed troop movement plan will be sent to the brigade level troop commander. All units must be transferred to their designated positions before the end of January of the eighth year of the Republic of China, and complete the supplementary training before the war. The Department of Transportation will fully cooperate with your actions****??"

Wu Peifu has just finished reading out the deployment plan. Feng Yuxiang took the lead in a standing ovation, and then the generals below also began to applaud. The atmosphere at the scene seemed to rise all at once. In the entire Sizhao Hall, only Xu Shuzheng still sat still, as if he didn't notice the applause at all, his eyes were just staring at Lu Jianzhang, the chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who was sitting in the corner.

****??

With a bang, in Kaifeng City, Henan, the door of a prison belonging to the Henan Provincial Police Department was opened.

A woman curled up in the cell was suddenly alarmed, and the light in the corridor of the cell shone through the doorway. This woman is not very beautiful. But the skin is very white, and the figure under a thin prison uniform with some blood stains is also quite hot.

She is the "heroine" white peony that Lu Jianzhang mentioned to Xu Shuzheng! The woman squinted and glanced towards the doorway. I saw a middle-aged man in a black police uniform and a robe and a coat wearing a melon skin hat. It looks like an old man with braids.

Bai Peony recognized the man in the police uniform as a small leader in Zhengzhou Prison, surnamed Li, known as Li Peeling. The henchman Lu Jianzhang said was him. This Lu Jianzhang has a very strange habit, he likes to deal with some people with very low status in person, so he knows a lot of people with three religions and nine ranks. This plum peel is one of them. His real name is Li Boping, and he used to be an errand boy in Lu Jianzhang's guard army, but he was just a very small official. As for being a person, it's not too bad, and being called skinning is just because of the homonym of the name.

Li peeled his skin and looked at the graceful figure of the white peony in a daze. Such a woman may be mediocre in the eyes of big names like Lu Jianzhang, Xu Shuzheng, and Chang Ruiqing. But for the head of a prison guard, it is the best! If it weren't for this woman's murderous name. He's probably ruined her reputation a long time ago, right?

"White Peony, this is the Gonggong Zhao of Prince Gong's Mansion I mentioned to you, it was he who bought your life with his money!" Li Peel pointed to the old man with braided hair and introduced: "Father-in-law Zhao can also redeem your family with money, as long as you promise to help Father-in-law Zhao kill an opponent!" Of course, this mission is lifeless! Do you do it or don't you do it? ”

The woman chuckled and glanced at Li Peel and the so-called Zhao Gonggong. She's a woman who is used to running the rivers and lakes, of course she's not so easy to deceive****?? The other party seems to want to kill a very powerful opponent by himself, it is estimated that he is either a warlord or a high-ranking official, and the possibility of being captured alive is very high! When the time comes, the ten tortures will be tortured in turn, and they won't say everything? The other party didn't think about these at all, and reported to his family when he came up, saying that he was the father-in-law of Prince Gong's mansion, if this is true, this Manchu Qing Dynasty is not unjust at all.

But what does this have to do with her? She is a death, and now she can exchange her own death for the lives of people back home. As for what consequences someone would bring to those Manchu widows, old and young, in the name of Prince Gong, what would it do to her?

Thinking of this, she gently flicked the shackles on her wrists and asked in a low voice, "Who to kill?" ”

That Zhao Gonggong pinched his throat and replied, "His name is Chang Ruiqing!" At present, he is the vice chairman of the Military Commission of the National Government, the chief of the army, and the commander-in-chief of the anti-Russian army! White peony, do you dare to kill it? ”

Bai Peony snorted lightly, and said in his heart: "If you don't dare to die, you can live for a while if you promise to come down, right?" She nodded and made a look of indifference: "What don't you dare!" But I have a condition, I will kill this surnamed Chang, but there is no guarantee of success, if it fails, you have to release my family, so that I will be cut by the surname Chang It is worth a thousand cuts. ”

"That's natural, as soon as we confirm the news of the assassination, whether it is successful or not, we will release the person immediately! And also give a settling-in allowance of 5,000 yuan. Father-in-law Zhao patted his chest and said, "And the possibility of a successful assassination is still very high." Because we've prepared a perfect plan, as long as you follow it! ”

****??

Chang Ruiqing and Chen Duxiu talked with Sun Yat-sen in the living room of the Nationalist Government's "Lord" Mansion in Shimin Clay Factory this night. Chang Ruiqing and Chen Duxiu had just arrived from the Whampoa Military Academy, where they had spent an entire afternoon talking with US Special Envoy Harrison. Presumably out of concern about the possibility of an alliance treaty between China and Japan. During the talks, the Americans expressed considerable goodwill, expressed their understanding and support for China's demands for the resumption of tariffs and concessions, and agreed to do their best to establish diplomatic relations with the Nationalist Government, and also promised to send instructors to the Whampoa Naval Academy and to sell a batch of World War I surplus materials, including destroyers, submarines, artillery, and so on, to China.

As for the conditions, Harrison made two points. First, the Nationalist Government must guarantee not to conclude any form of treaty of alliance with Japan; Second, after the reunification of China, the national government must remove the gold tax cards in various localities within two years.

The former is to avoid the need for Japan to have worries after the Sino-Japanese alliance, and to concentrate financial and material resources to develop its navy and compete with the United States for hegemony in the Pacific Ocean??? This idea would seem ridiculous to people on another plane. But right now it's one of the biggest worries of the U.S. Naval Operations Department! They are even already working out a plan for a major war in the Pacific Ocean with China and Japan at the same time.

The latter is to allow U.S. industrial products to enter the domestic market unimpeded. At present, although the tariffs of China are extremely low, the gold tax cards all over China have created great obstacles to the circulation of goods, especially in the United States, which has no colonial power in China, and is firmly blocked from the huge domestic market by a large number of tax cards.

Of course, Chang Ruiqing and Chen Duxiu strongly agreed with these demands put forward by the Americans. It's not that the two of them are pro-American. Rather, he himself is now supporting their political opponent, Jiang Jshi. Once the Sino-Japanese alliance was formed, it would obviously be very beneficial to Chiang J-shi and the pro-Japanese faction within the Nationalist Government.

After Chang Ruiqing and Chen Duxiu publicly expressed their opinions, Sun Yat-sen fell into a long silence. They Kuomintang this system, in diplomacy. Pro-Soviet Russia or something, it's all in disguise. There is a little bit of pro-Japan. However, there are many fears of the sun. And the pro-American plot comes from the heart, and now it is in this core group of the Kuomintang (the Cantonese group). There are also many comrades who simply have American passports, or who have lived and studied in the United States for a long time, and what these people can most expect is actually the support of US imperialism! In a sense, the Kuomintang is really a real cent party!

Now that the United States has finally made clear its support for the Nationalist Government, Sun Yat-sen and the group of pro-American elements around him naturally want to accept it immediately. However, while expressing its support, the United States has also raised objections to the Sino-Japanese relations, which are getting closer and closer, and this has the intention of allowing China to choose a side between the United States and Japan. This put Sun Yat-sen, who also wanted to establish a special relationship between China and Japan, and they were in a dilemma.

Of course, Sun Yat-sen's current desire to establish a "special relationship between China and Japan" is actually related to the current situation in Northeast Asia. After the Japanese acquired more than 300,000 square kilometers of land in the Russian Far East, it seems that their China policy has undergone a very big change. Japan has now formed a mortal enmity with the Russians (including Soviet Russia), and the international powers have expressed strong antipathy and hostility to Japan's treacherous attack on White Russia. Under such circumstances, of course, they will not be able to invade China as blatantly as they did in the past, at least not until they have digested the big cake of the Far East.

At the same time as the special envoys of the United States and Britain visited Guangzhou, the Japanese government also proposed a series of support and cooperation plans to Sun Yat-sen through Jiang Jshi. Among them is a draft of the "Triple Alliance of China, Japan, and the Far Eastern Republic." The initial idea of Japan was for China and Japan to jointly contribute to the independence of several provinces in eastern eastern Russia, and to establish an "independent" Far Eastern Republic that was completely controlled by China and Japan politically, economically, and militarily!

In addition, they will also support China in recovering its tariff autonomy and recovering all the concessions in China's territory, except for Kwantung Prefecture, the South Manchurian Railway, and Hong Kong.

"Brother Yaoru, what do you think of recruiting them in the name of the Beiyang Zhilu Yu Patrol Envoy and the Commander-in-Chief of the Northwest Frontier?" Sun Yat-sen suddenly broke the silence and asked in a low voice.

Chang Ruiqing didn't know the plans proposed by the [Day] himself, he was stunned for a moment and replied: "There is no need to give the Zhilu Yu patrol envoy, a commander-in-chief of the Northwest Frontier should be able to make that person backwards, if it is not enough, give some military salaries, right****??" Even if it is a subsidy of tens of millions a year, it is more cost-effective than giving him the three provinces of Zhilu and Henan. ”

The person in his mouth was Feng Yuxiang, Sun Yat-sen's secret envoy had already arrived at Feng Yuxiang's side, and was bargaining with him to discuss the defection!

Sun Yat-sen smiled and shook his head: "The Zhilu Yu Patrol Envoy is not for him, but for your mentor, a Zhilu Yu Patrol Envoy to resolve a big battle with a million troops participating, Yao Rudi, do you think it's worth it?" ”！！！