In Beijing, the wind is gentle and the climate is pleasant. Zhongnanhai Huairentang has changed its owner, and the troops that went south from Beijing to suppress it have returned to Beijing one after another. After all, the financial situation makes it difficult to pay the double salary for sending troops for a long time. Compared with the harmonious atmosphere of the Nationalist Government in the south, the central government on Beijing's side is very contradictory.

At present, Duan Qirui, the army commander-in-chief, also has eight field divisions, including the first, third, fifth, sixth, tenth, eleventh, fifteenth, and sixteenth divisions, plus the Dingwu Army and the Anwu Army, which have been transferred to Henan, with a total number of about 200,000. According to the calculation of each soldier's salary of eight yuan per month, so many troops would spend at least more than 6 million oceans a month if they did not fight, or 72 million a year. And the central government's finances went bankrupt as early as the time of Lao Yuan, and all the transportation tickets were turned into waste paper, and the treasury was empty. However, the establishment of a national government in the south had little impact on the central finances, and in the southern provinces, Lao Yuan did not pay taxes when he was not dead. What really hurts is that the customs of the nine southern provinces have been taken back by the Nationalist Government, and the central government has lost 20 million yuan of customs surplus every year (and the Nationalist Government has an additional 600 million yuan of customs surplus after the tax increase), and the annual debt to be repaid remains unchanged, which will cost the government its old life.

There is no way, the central government's own monthly expenditure is almost more than 2 million oceans, and the projects that come to the money, such as local taxes and transportation funds from the Ministry of Communications, are all in Duan Qirui's hands. Xiong Xiling will be a bachelor after he comes back, and with a stroke of the pen, he authorized the War Department to raise military funds from the railway and the local government, so angry that Duan Qirui secretly scolded Xiong Xiling for being an old fox. If it weren't for Xu Shuzheng's dissuasion of the so-called international influence and southern attitude, Duan Qirui would have asked the soldiers who couldn't get their salaries to go to the prime minister's office to ask for money.

After such a round of reversal, Duan Qirui, who still had to buy arms, could only pay forty percent of the salary to the army, which also made the lower head very resentful.

In the front door building, Yutai Teahouse, Wang Lifa, the shopkeeper, is knocking on the abacus to count the money!

Since the Republic of China, the business of the teahouse has been getting worse and worse, and after the death of President Yuan Da, the bannermen in Beijing have been left unattended, and the princes of the prince's mansion have been unable to make ends meet, and they have dismissed domestic slaves and pawned the palace. This has made the largest source of customers in the teahouse fall into a situation of bankruptcy, since they are all bankrupt, naturally they can't come to the teahouse to drink tea.

So the large and small teahouses, teahouses, and tea houses in Beijing immediately poured a large piece. Only this Yutai Teahouse, because Wang Lifa managed it properly, renovated and rented out the backyard early. Although no one lives in this backyard now, the monthly payment for the house is given on time, so the drought and flood are guaranteed, although there are fewer tea customers in front, but the business can still be maintained.

I didn't know that the magpie on the branch was calling, and as soon as the door was opened, five or six young people pushed the door in and asked for a private room. Wang Lifa immediately asked the guy to clean up the private room, made a pot of hot tea and withdrew, Wang Lifa is also an old gangster in the capital, and he can see at a glance that these people have something to talk about, so don't look at it.

These seven or eight people were actually officers of the Beiyang Army, and then they were faintly headed by the person in the middle. If there were officers of the Youth Army, they would find that the person at the head of the group still looked a little similar to their commander Wang Zhenyu. Yes, this person is Wang Zhenyu's younger brother Wang Zhenpeng, who is on vacation in Beijing.

This is also the fault of the Beiyang army not paying much attention to file management, in the whole Beiyang, except for the people in this room, no one knows that Wang Zhenpeng, the captain and company commander of the 15th Beiyang Division, is Wang Zhenyu's younger brother.

The people in the room are all Wang Zhenpeng's classmates in the first phase of Baoding, and most of them are currently serving as company commanders or deputy battalion commanders in the 15th Division. Sun Zhen, Sun Chu, Wang Tianpei and others, and Wang Zhenpeng's classmates at the same time as Tang Shengzhi, Yan Daogang defected to the Youth Army, and now the lowest is the deputy teacher. And everyone knows the fact that Tang Shengzhi and Yan Daogang went south with Wang Zhenpeng's family letter, and now Beiyang is already in the twilight, so everyone decided to come to Wang Zhenpeng to see if they went south together.

"If you want to say that the Beiyang army was defeated this time, it is not actually how powerful the youth army is, but the Beiyang has rotted to the roots, and it has come to this point, and I am still thinking about my own little abacus." Wang Tianpei has a straight personality and has something to say.

"Our fifteenth division, the sixteenth division is in Xuzhou, Commander-in-Chief Xu only needs an order, we don't need two days to get to Nanjing, but you see that we have been in Xuzhou for more than a month, just look at the troops in front of us and let the youth army break through. This battle is a fool! ”

"Hehe, what is this, I know the military salary, we have a brother in the quartermaster department of the division headquarters in the first period, hey, the senior generals are stunned that there is no less, and the so-called forty percent of the salary is all our lower-level officers and big soldiers."

"Hey, what are you, brother, I was assigned to the 16th Division, and the troops were stationed in Langfang, not to mention the rotten things about eating empty quotas, the commander arranged for us to escort the goods every day. We didn't know what to say, but once the car overturned, and when I looked at it, I realized that the escort was all fucking opium. It's not a thing to even ask us soldiers to escort this nasty thing. ”

Sun Zhen thought for a while and said: "I have received a letter from Tang Shengzhi, the youth army of the people from top to bottom eat and live together, and I haven't heard that the regiment commander does not live in the barracks at night." Moreover, military pay is paid in full and without delay. This time, the people took back the customs, and now the people in the south see the youth army as if they are relatives, so like us, they can't hide when they see it. ”

Sun Chu waved his hand and said something else: "I heard a fellow villager who works in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs mention a matter, as if our Chief Duan is going behind the back of the president and the prime minister, and they are drumming for something to participate in the war, saying that they want to get a sum of money from the Japanese and form a war army, but in fact, they are going south to fight the national government." ”

Wang Tianpei slapped the table and said: "Damn, little Japan is easy to provoke, eat people and don't spit out bones, President Yuan just let their 21 stinks." How could Mr. Duan do this? ”

Wang Zhenpeng has not spoken since he came in, and he knows that the meaning of the brothers saying these words in front of him is that he doesn't want to work in Beiyang anymore, and he wants to let himself lead the way south.

Why don't I want to, when I took the first phase of Baoding, I just wanted to be more productive than my brother, but after a few years, the gap is getting bigger and bigger. The third brother has already mixed into the marshal of the nine southern provinces, but he has only been a captain and company commander in Beiyang, and he is getting more and more hopeless. There have been more than a dozen letters from the family, and the seals are all to persuade them to go home, among which the third brother also has a few, and the most recent one also mentions that he should go home as soon as possible, and Beiyang has no future at all.

In fact, Wang Zhenpeng has long since lost the mind of competing with the third brother back then, but now that he is leaving, it is difficult for him to go, weishenme? Because Wang Zhenpeng fell in love with a girl, and this girl was not simple, it was actually Yuan Shikai's third daughter Yuan Shuzhen, now known as Yuan Jingxue.

To say that this Yuan Shuzhen is also a well-known existence in the history of the Republic of China.

During the preparation of the Hongxian Empire, Yuan Shikai had been living in Jurentang, and he mainly relied on a Chinese newspaper run by the Japanese, "Shuntian Times", to understand the outside world, and who knew that the "Shuntian Times" he read was all fake newspapers forged by Yuan Keding in collusion with Yuan Naikuan and others, and this secret was first pierced by Yuan Shuzhen. One day, one of Shuzhen's girls wanted to go home to see her father (this girl was the daughter of an old mother, and she was free, so she was allowed to go home to visit once every other time), Shuzhen liked to eat black-skinned five-spice crispy broad beans, so he asked her to buy some to go home. The next day, this girl bought a big bag, which was wrapped in the whole "Shuntian Times" and brought back to Yuan's house, when Shuzhen ate broad beans, she accidentally saw that this newspaper was different from the "Shuntian Times" she usually read, and quickly found the newspaper on the same day to check, but the date was the same and the content was different, obviously someone faked. That night, she showed the real version of "Shuntian Times" to Yuan Shikai, Yuan frowned, didn't say anything, only said "You go play". Early the next morning, Shuzhen was woken up by a burst of scolding, and when he got up, he saw that in the eldest brother's kneeling and begging for mercy, Yuan Shikai was carrying a leather whip to teach people, and scolded Yuan Keding for "bullying his father and misleading the country" while beating.

When Yuan Shikai was the president of the Republic of China, probably out of consideration for alleviating the conflict with the Qing imperial family, he wanted to marry one of the daughters of the Yuan family to the last emperor Puyi, and the third daughter Shuzhen was chosen. One day, Yuan Kexiang revealed the news to Shuzhen half-jokingly and half-seriously: "Third sister, is it okay to send you to the palace to be a mother?" Yuan Shuzhen immediately started crying, and in front of his father Yuan Shikai, Lao Yuan was also very interesting, and threatened her: "If you cry again, you must be given a gift." Shuzhen was even more reluctant when he heard this, and said: "I'm not a snuffbox at home, I will give it to whoever I like." Lao Yuan listened to hahadaxiao, and praised repeatedly: "Our third daughter has a personality, high intelligence, and strong fighting spirit, if only she were a boy." The fifth aunt on the side saw that Lao Yuan was so happy, and said sourly: "You see that she is so disobedient, whoever marries in the future will be unlucky." Lao Yuan retorted with a smile: "That's not likely." This marriage was not successful later, probably because the Qing royal family refused to "bow down".

According to the original history, Yuan Jingxue should marry Yang Shiqi, the nephew of Yuan Shikai's henchman Yang Shiqi, Yang Yuxun, who served as the puppet governor of Shandong during the Anti-Japanese War. Then, according to the trend of history, this traitor husband was shot dead by Dai Li, and Yuan Jingxue began to live alone and write memoirs about her father. However, history obviously made a big deviation here, when Wang Zhenpeng was ordered to be transferred back to Beijing with the 15th Division to garrison this time, he suddenly wanted to go to Beihai for a walk, so he met a few colleagues, changed into civilian clothes and went.

As a result, when rowing here, because there were too many people, I was crammed into a boat with two strange girls. I didn't think it at the time, but later everyone remembered what it means to be in the same boat for a hundred years.

And one of the two girls knows Wang Geng, the younger brother of Wang Zhenpeng's classmate, named Lu Xiaoman, and her father Lu Ding is the director of the tax department of the Ministry of Finance. The other girl didn't know who it was, but her aggrieved appearance deeply inspired Wang Zhenpeng's strong desire to protect. Although Wang Geng, who was studying at West Point, was on vacation and was not familiar with Wang Zhenpeng on a short-term vacation, he volunteered to go to Miss Lu to inquire about the news. Only then did I know that this girl was actually the second lady of Yuan Shikai's family, Yuan Jingxue, who was sixteen years old. At this time, Yuan Shikai had been dead for less than a month, and the entire Yuan family was already crumbling.