Looking at Bao Ling and the others brushing their sleeves away, the corners of Xiao Yungui's mouth hooked up a sneer, and he recalled in his mind the scene when he met with the Japanese mission Chuan Lu Shengmo and his party in Suzhou more than ten days ago.

Earlier, after Xiao Yungui received the news of Tan Shaoguang's accidental contact with the Japanese on Sakhalin, he discussed with Hong Yun'er, Zuo Zongtang, Wang Minyun, and others about Japan's diplomacy.

It is undeniable that Xiao Yungui and Hong Yuner have a very strong hostility towards the Japanese, and can even be said to be hostile, and they are very disgusted with the transaction between Tan Shaoguang and Japan, but Zuo Zongtang and Wang Minyun persuaded them.

Japan's Hokkaido is adjacent to Sakhalin, and although Japan has been closed off from the rest of the world, the port of Nagasaki has always been open to merchants from China, the Netherlands, Korea and other countries, and Japan is not a subject country of the Qing Dynasty like Korea, it is a country that can be traded, used and wooed.

After listening to Zuo Zongtang and Wang Minyun's analysis, Xiao Yungui and Hong Yun'er discussed secretly behind closed doors for a long time, and Zuihou came to the unanimous conclusion that Japan needs to be used for the time being at this stage, so it is necessary to maintain good relations with Japan first.

Xiao Yungui and Hong Yun'er are no longer the stunned and angry young people they were at the beginning, whether it is national hatred or family hatred, they keep it in their hearts, but when acting, they must first consider the issue of gains and losses, which is what an excellent politician should do, rather than blindly clamoring to destroy Little Japan. Besides, in Xiao Yungui's words, there are many ways to destroy Japan, and you can play yang or yin.

After the tone was set, Tan Shaoguang received a secret order from the king of the west, ordering him to handle relations with the Japanese, but he could not relax his vigilance, and at the same time secretly survey the topography and landform of South Sakhalin Island.

The location of Sakhalin Island and Temple Street is important, and Xiao Yungui has been undecided on the issue of whether to defend or withdraw. Evacuate these two places. The Russians have made a comeback, and due to the defeat in the Crimean War, they have lost the opportunity to expand westward, and then the Russian polar bear, an expansive behemoth, will actively expand eastward. Xiao Yungui wanted to establish a stronghold on Temple Street and Sakhalin Island in advance, as a deterrent and a nail to be driven in advance, he did not want to see the overthrow of the Manchu Qing in the future, and most of the land outside the Guanxi was occupied by Russia.

Moreover, Xiao Yungui also made a bad move, Dalian, Miaojie and Sakhalin Island and other places were nailed to the land outside the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and looked at the land of Longxing outside the Guan, where there were few people and few people, and the three Manchu military towns of the Manchu Dynasty, General Shengjing, General Heilongjiang, and General Jilin, were bound to not dare to take it lightly. Perhaps they will also organize regimental training or transfer troops and reinforcements outside the Guan, so that Russia may not be able to easily annex a large area of land when the Qing army outside the Guanxi is transferred internally, as it has done in history. The situation outside the border will become a three-legged alliance between the Manchus, the Taiping army and Russia because of the intervention of the Taiping army.

Some people may think that Xiao Yungui is too ambitious, but as the king of the West of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Xiao Yungui must have this kind of ambition and how big his heart is. How big the land will be in the future, if you don't even dare to think about it. Then even God won't know what you really want.

But after all, there is a difference between thinking and doing. Dalian, Miaojie and Sakhalin are all too far away from Shanghai, and the sea supply transportation is a heavy burden, and if Xidian wants to defend Dalian, Miaojie and Sakhalin, he must consider how to solve the supply problem. Bao Ling was right, the navy of the Taiping Army was not very suitable for ocean voyages now, and the cost of simple military supply operations was too great, but fortunately, the arrival of the Japanese mission allowed Xiao Yungui to see the dawn of solving the problem.

With a huge hatred. Xiao Yungui "cordially" met with the Japanese delegation of Kawaro Shengmo in the Xiwangfu. After talking, Xiao Yungui learned the identity of Kawaro Shengmo, who was an important shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate and played an extremely important role in the negotiation and signing of diplomatic treaties between Japan and the United States and Japan and Russia. At the same time, Chuanlu Shengmo was a reformer. There were still illusions about the shogunate, and they clung to the rotten shogunate system. He was thinking of "shogunate reform" rather than "shogunate dissolution", and that the Tokugawa shogunate should be reformed to keep it alive.

Xiao Yungui smiled even brighter, it was good that Kawaro Shengmo was a reformist and not the radical shogunate, and he was now very happy to help the Tokugawa shogunate maintain the rule of Japan, and at the same time make some reforms, these reforms will not make Japan strong as quickly as the Meiji Restoration in history, but it will not lead to the loss of domestic support and accelerate the fall of the shogunate like the conservative school in history. What Xiao Yungui is most happy to see is that Japan takes the road of improvement like the Manchu Qing Dynasty, but in fact, nothing has changed at all in his bones.

The purpose of Chuanlu Shengmo's visit to China this time was twofold, one was to contact the Taiping army and understand the strength of the Taiping army. The Japanese have always respected the strong, and they were forced to negotiate treaties with Russia and the United States, and the whole country felt extremely humiliated, but they did not expect that not long ago, the mercenary group of the Taiping Army and the British and French fleets went north and beat the Russians fiercely.

The most recent was the loss of an important military port on the Kamchatka Peninsula by the Russians, which shook the Japanese a lot. In the eyes of the Japanese, China under the Manchus was not a Zhengshuo dynasty, and they always believed that there was no China after the fall of the Song Dynasty, and that China under the Manchus was the enemy of Japan. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Tokugawa shogunate held an essay contest across the country entitled How to conquer the Qing Kingdom. As a result, many Japanese strategists splashed ink, pointed out the country, stirred up words, and talked about the strategy of conquering the Qing Dynasty. After the event, all the articles were compiled into a book, called "The Secret Strategy of Unai Mixing". At that time, the original intention of the Tokugawa shogunate was how to overthrow the Manchus, but this thing later turned the Japanese into something more ambitious. But it is undeniable that Japan did not treat the Manchus well.

After the Japanese Black Ship Incident, the Tokugawa shogunate changed its mentality of closing off the country, and the first thing they thought of was how China would respond to the invasion of the Western Shili. As a result, a large number of Japanese translators translated Chinese Wence in an attempt to understand the current situation in China, and it is said that all the materials were compiled into the "Qing Customs Chronicle". But the results of the investigation left the Japanese translators, who had fanatical illusions about Chinese civilization since the Tang Dynasty, and found that the Manchus were now a backward, stale, lifeless country, and as humiliated as Japan by Western powers. Their dreams were shattered, leading to a serious psychological crisis, with some Japanese translators and Chinese businessmen committing suicide in despair after the report was completed, turning into a cultural tragedy.

However, the Japanese despair did not last long, and the Taipings, a new rebel army, gave hope to the Japanese, and they were able to join forces with the powerful British and French fleets to fight the Russians and achieve victory, which was unbelievable to the Japanese. At the same time, this rebel army was also fighting with the Manchu official army, and the scale of the battle was tens of thousands or even more than 100,000 people, which was not at all imaginable by the Japanese. They had the impression that Japan had not experienced such a large-scale war for a long time, except for the Battle of Korea, led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi Monkey, and the Battle of Sekigahara, which may have reached the scale of more than 100,000 people. And I heard that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was fighting three major battles with the Manchu Qing Dynasty in three directions in the southwest, north and south, and was still in the midst of victory, what is this concept?

At the same time, what makes the Japanese feel new is that the concept of this rebel army is to restore the Han family and revive the Han and Tang dynasties, which makes the Japanese feel as if they have found the backbone at once, and they have been studying Han culture and Zhu Cheng science for a long time, so they are impatient to send a mission to contact the Taiping Army and understand the Taiping Army.

When he landed in Shanghai, they saw a thriving trade, a steady stream of seagoing ships, and a large number of factories under construction. With the consent of the King of the West, they were even able to visit the Shanghai Martial Arts School, Xiao Yungui knew the temper of the Japanese, and he wanted to use strong force to deter these dwarves.

In the martial arts school, Kawaro Shomo saw a military drill with a scale of tens of thousands of people, and also saw the powerful and crazy fighting faith of the Taiping Army, so Kawaji Shomo automatically opened the second goal of the mission, that is, to seek cooperation opportunities with the Taiping Army, so that the Tokugawa Shogunate could get rid of the ravages of foreign powers.

Xiao Yungui naturally would not offend the Western powers for the sake of Japan, and after listening to the desire for cooperation with the Sichuan Road Shengmo, he first affirmed Japan's contribution as a perennial student of China, thanked the Japanese for their role in spreading Han culture, and secondly thanked Japan for taking in many Han people who crossed east during the death of the Ming Dynasty.

Then the West King changed his words, he analyzed the invasion of the West Shili, and proposed to the Sichuan Road Shengmo that the East is the East of the Orientals, which greatly lifted the spirit of the Sichuan Road Shengmo, and at the same time admired the West King's insight and bearing.

King Xi duly analyzed Russia, the United States, and other countries that were most eager to invade Japan, and he told Kawaji that Russia was close to Japan, which was a great threat to Japan's territory, and was the common enemy of the Taiping Army and Japan. The United States, Britain, France and other countries have more needs for trade, and the demand for territorial occupation is not strong, so it is suggested that Japan can win over these countries, but the most important thing is that Japan itself must be able to protect itself by force, otherwise it may still become someone else's colony.

Kawaji then humbly consulted on the way to a strong country, and Xiao Yungui was very much in favor of the Tokugawa shogunate's rule over Japan, but he felt that the Tokugawa shogunate needed to make necessary reforms. Xiao Yungui told Chuanlu Shengmo about Wei Yuan's idea of mastering the art of Yi to control the country, and told him that the Taiping army was learning from the West and would use it to deal with the Western powers after learning.

Xiao Yungui naturally knew that no matter how he learned Westernization, if a decadent and backward political system was still unchanged in his bones, this kind of power was just a gorgeous appearance, just like the Manchu Qing after Tongzhi Zhongxing in history. The Tokugawa shogunate learned from the West, and even with Western military technology, his first thought was to maintain the shogunate's rule over Japan first, just as the Manchus guarded against the Han Chinese. Although there is a big difference between the Manchu and the shogunate, Xiao Yungui does not mind letting the Japanese shogunate follow the road of the Manchu Dynasty's Westernization movement, even if the Zuihou Tokugawa shogunate will still be overthrown by the shogunate, but at least it can delay the pace of the Japanese Restoration. Chuan Lu Shengmo unconsciously regarded the words of the King of the West as the truth, after all, everything he saw in the Taiping Army was learning from the West. (To be continued......)