There is both offense and defense, and now it is time to study and study intelligence work against Japan.

Soon, Xue Fucheng came in, and he still looked like a pot-bellied poop. Ding Yuntong put forward three requirements for him:

First, it is necessary to ascertain as soon as possible the details of the strength, weaponry, and reform of the military system of the Japanese army and navy.

The second is to organize Liliang, select a group of teenagers from China and send them to live in Japan, with Hu Zhen, an overseas Chinese living in Kobe, in charge of covering, familiar with the language, lifestyle, and cultural background of the Japanese, so as to prepare for future infiltration. This will be a long-term task.

These two tasks were easy for Xue Fucheng to understand, but the third task made him feel incredible. That is to investigate the condition of "beriberi" in the Japanese army, especially the research progress of the Japanese government on "beriberi".

Xue Fucheng felt that his head was about to become as big as two, and he really couldn't understand why the emperor was suddenly interested in Japan's medical and health care, and Weishenme wanted to waste valuable intelligence resources on such a boring aspect.

Looking at Xue Fucheng's incomprehensible appearance, Ding Yuntong smiled silently, he dared to guarantee that if China sends a letter to the Japanese government to express "condolences" for the Japanese army's beriberi situation, it will definitely make the Japanese military scared out of urine, because this is the current Japanese military secret, which involves a historical question.

In 1882, the Korean Peninsula fell into chaos when the Korean Peninsula was in turmoil, and both China and Japan sent their navies and armies to intervene. The Chinese Navy is composed of three warships, Chaoyong, Yangwei, and Weiyuan, while the Japanese Navy is divided into three groups, with a total of eight warships, including King Kong, Hiei, Amagi, Iwaki, Qinghui, Nisshin, Meng Chun, and Xun Whale, and the Fuso ironclad ship, which has the strongest combat effectiveness, is also preparing to arrive. Although China's Chaoyong and Yangwei were relatively advanced units at that time, the Japanese Fuso, Kongo, and Hiei were also powerful in combat, no worse than Chaoyong and Yangwei, and their overall naval strength also greatly surpassed China's.

But weishenme what about the Japanese who did not dare to do it? Is it unwilling? However, the Chinese and Japanese armies had already fought in Seoul, and the Japanese army was isolated and suffered heavy losses, and had to retreat, but the superior navy insisted on holding its ground, which puzzled many historians.

It was not until later that the declassified Japanese Navy archives revealed the mystery, which described in detail how the famous Japanese doctor Kanehiro Takagi eliminated beriberi for the Japanese Navy, including the following sentence: "Around 1882, the number of beriberi patients in the Navy reached 400 out of every 1,000 people, which became a major problem in national defense." ”

Beriberi here is not "athlete's foot", but a systemic disease that can lead to heart weakness, and it is a real beriberi. And what we usually call athlete's foot refers to athlete's foot.

In fact, in 1882, the Japanese fleet only stayed in Inchon for about 40 days, and beriberi spread on a large scale among the sailors, and the officers and men of the lower ranks completely lost their combat effectiveness, and even 195 of the 330 people on a warship fell ill with beriberi, and half of the officers and men of the Fuso anchored in Shinagawa Bay suffered from beriberi and had to go ashore for treatment, and the Japanese fleet was in fact unable to fight at all.

"Beriberi" is a common epidemic in Japan, known as the national disease, and many celebrities have died from it, including one emperor. However, due to the backward medical knowledge in the past, other diseases, such as syphilitic heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, etc., are often included in the scope of beriberi.

And "beriberi" in the Japanese army, mainly because of eating habits. At that time, the Japanese soldiers were treated very well, and ordinary soldiers ate refined white rice. The so-called refined white rice is rice that has been processed many times, and its impurities and shell skin have been completely removed, and the taste is better. However, white rice also loses vitamin B1 during processing. Chinese soldiers do not eat refined white rice as their staple food, so there are no beriberi patients.

It was not until the Japanese Navy, based on Takagi's research, ordered the Japanese Navy to switch to wheat rice as food, that beriberi gradually disappeared. However, due to the insistence of the Japanese army medical director Mori Ouwai that beriberi was contagious and had nothing to do with diet, the number of Japanese soldiers who died of beriberi during the First Sino-Japanese War was eight times that of the number of war deaths, and by the Russo-Japanese War, the vast majority of non-combat casualties were beriberi.

In other words, until Takagi Kanehiro's research progressed, the Japanese Navy would not be able to compete with China, so it would have the initiative diplomatically.

Ding Yuntong suddenly had an idea at this time: "In this case, can we take this opportunity to directly attack and destroy the Japanese Navy?" ＂

He couldn't help but feel excited.

However, Ding Yuntong still calmed down.

If taking advantage of the epidemic in the Japanese Navy, it is true that superiority at sea can be guaranteed, and it may even hit the Japanese fleet hard, but so what?

The main force of Japan's army is still intact and huddled at home, and Japan's national economy has not been damaged, and China's true strength and its own intentions will be immediately exposed. The Japanese can bury their heads in development and taste their courage, and ten years is not too late, then it will be bad.

So blockade the Japanese archipelago with the navy and force Japan to submit?

That's even more impossible, the current shijie situation is complicated, it's not a vacuum glass, the surrounding powers are eyeing each other, will they stand idly by? Is it good for them that Japan is subservient? It is very likely that Britain, Russia, and even the United States will come out to make trouble, and the Zuihou blockade will inevitably not be sustained.

Therefore, Ding Yuntong felt that it was necessary to adhere to the original strategy: to lure the essence and main force of the Japanese army to the Korean Peninsula, let Japan bet its national economy on the war, and let Japan shed its blood in Korea. After its vitality is greatly damaged, it will turn back and slowly deal with its homeland.

After thinking about it in this way, Ding Yuntong ordered Xue Fucheng to resolutely implement the three requirements. Historically, the Japanese Navy did not propose the idea until 1884, and in 1885, through the experiment of the Tsukuba, the problem of beriberi was completely solved.

Therefore, accurately grasping the changes in this regard will have a significant impact on China's diplomatic judgment.

At the same time, Ding Yuntong had a flash of inspiration in his mind, and suddenly remembered another question: Since he is keeping his head and hiding his strength, will Japan be doing the same thing? For example, also secretly building a fleet? Knowing that the situation in this life is very different from that in previous lives, you should not look at Japan with old memories.

Thinking about it this way, Ding Yuntong feels that it is becoming more and more likely. He was determined to take a good look at Japan's shipbuilding in Europe. According to the memories of previous lives, Japan's early warships were basically built in Britain and France, especially the British companies such as Milford Herwin and Armstrong. At this time, Japan already had two old warships equipped with ironclad "Kotetsu" and "Ryusho", two ironclad ships "Hiei" and "Kongo", ironclad ships "Fuso", plus two larger cruisers "Tsukuba" and "Nisshin", as well as gunboats such as "Mt. Fuji", "Chiyodagata", and "Kiyoki", its overall strength is not weaker than China, but if there are some hidden strength, it will be very different.

Thinking about it this way, Ding Yuntong ordered a report to be sent to the British embassy in France, asking Wei Han, Wu Tingfang, Rong Hong, Chen Zhaoao, Zheng Qinglian and others to go and find out the shipbuilding records of the major British and French shipyards, including reading some machine-building newspapers. Sometimes there is some information on this, and in the previous life, Li Hongzhang and others found the data of the Fusang from the British mechanical newspaper.

A few days later, on April 23, the report came back, there were no clues, nothing, nothing about Japan!

There are many shipbuilding records recorded in the report, which are orders from various countries to the United Kingdom, such as Turkey, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, etc., the most bullish is Portugal, a former maritime power, and now it has completely fallen, but a few years ago, four fast cruisers were ordered in one go, and the Jishu data was absolutely confidential, which once caused a commotion in the European naval circles, and everyone thought Portugal was crazy.

But Ding Yuntong knew that these four cruisers were China's "Zhiyuan" class warships, and Ding Yuntong asked Portugal to order them at the cost of leasing Macao for 15 years, so as to hide people's eyes.

Ding Yuntong looked at the report back and forth, and felt that these orders were all real, and there was nothing boring. Is it true that Japan did not secretly build ships?

He carefully recalled the history of his previous life, read the report again, and suddenly a country jumped into his eyes, Chile!

That's right, it's here!

Ding Yuntong remembered one thing, in his previous life, the Beiyang Navy Division purchased two ramming cruisers Chaoyong and Yangwei from the British Armstrong Company. The two battleships were designed by the famous designer George 61 Rendall, that is, the designer of the mosquito ship.

Of course, Rendall's original design was not a ramming cruiser, but the design idea of this kind of battleship was very novel at the time, and people couldn't find the right adjective for a while, and when they saw that its bow had a ramming angle, they called it a ramming cruiser.

In fact, Rendall's design philosophy was to deal with ironclads with a low-cost solution. He equipped the battleship with the most powerful power plant of the time, so that it could easily exceed 16 knots, which could surpass almost all cruisers of its time, not to mention those ironclads with a speed of only 11 or 12 knots. At the same time, the ship's two 254mm caliber guns can shoot through 14-inch thick steel plates at a distance of 3,000 meters, which is very powerful.

Rendall believed that such ships could use high speeds and maneuvers quickly, and Zuihou used heavy artillery to penetrate the ironclads.

Of course, its shortcomings are also obvious, such as: poor seaworthiness, compared to the large number of guns it has, especially two heavy guns, the tonnage of the warship is insufficient, so that when fighting in the ocean, the wind and waves are turbulent, which greatly affects the hit rate.

And its protection is very weak and cannot withstand artillery bombardment. The so-called "once there is a storm and waves, it is difficult to get the cannon accurate, and the ship has been pierced by the occasional small cannon".

But at that time, these two battleships were quite good in terms of speed and firepower, and they were quite advanced warships.

At that time, in addition to the two ships sold to the Beiyang Naval Division, another one was sold to Chile, and somehow it was in the hands of Japan, and it was renamed Tsukushi. It can be seen from this that there is some kind of secret relationship between Japan and Chile, and although the history books of the previous life do not explicitly say it, there is one thing that can be testified. After the First Sino-Japanese War began, Li Hongzhang wanted to buy several Chilean warships, and the two sides began to bargain, but as soon as Japan intervened, Chile immediately said that it would not sell any money. In the years that followed, Japan and Chile had a special relationship.

Ding Yuntong has every reason to believe that since China can use Portugal to disguise itself, then Japan will not use Chile to disguise it.