In the Zhili Governor's Office in Baoding, a middle-aged man in his forties knelt on the ground, bowed down, and his forehead was almost on the ground. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info sat an old man in his seventies on the Taishi chair opposite the middle-aged man, his gray beard trembling slightly, obviously really angry.

The middle-aged man kneeling on the ground was Li Hongzhang's eldest son, Li Jingfang, and the old man sitting opposite him was Li Hongzhang, the current governor of Zhili and minister of Beiyang Commerce.

Looking at this scene, you can know that Lao Tzu has just finished training his son, and the reason why the adults in the middle hall are furious is that his "eldest son" kneeling under the hall recently blasted away the messenger of the Great Song Dynasty who came to submit a letter to negotiate.

Li Jingfang is not Li Hongzhang's biological son, in the first year of Tongzhi, Li Hongzhang, who was over forty years old, still had no children under his knees, but was succeeded by his brother Zhaoqing's eldest son Li Jingfang as his heir. Two years later, Li Hongzhang was pleased with his son-in-law Li Jingshu, but he still regarded Li Jingfang as his heir and called him "eldest son". After Li Jingfang joined the office, Li Hongzhang has always taken him with him to assist in office affairs.

At this time, there were actually two Zhili Governor's Yamen, one was the Zhili Governor's Office in Baoding since the Shunzhi period. In the ninth year of Tongzhi, the Qing court assigned the trade affairs of the three ports of Tianjin, Yingkou and Yantai to the Governor of Zhili, and awarded the title of Minister of Beiyang Trade to Li Hongzhang, the Governor of Zhili. Li Hongzhang is based in Tianjin, and according to the custom, he will only be stationed in Baoding during the off-season of trade in winter.

Ma San first sent a post to the Yamen, the governor of Zhili, Tianjin, but the Menzi was polite and told that Lord Zhongtang was not in the yamen and asked him to come back another day. In fact, there is nothing wrong with this, Lord Zhongtang was indeed not in Tianjin at the time, and the secret deed of letting the Great Song Dynasty bomb and sink the Japanese ship, the old fox is impossible for too many people to know, and it is bound to explain that the people who came to post will come back another day when they are not there.

Of course, Lord Zhongtang's whereabouts can't be known to outsiders casually, and the subordinates will definitely not tell Master Ma San Zhongtang's whereabouts. However, as a small person who grew up in the capital, Ma San certainly knew that the governor of Zhili had the practice of stationing in Baoding in winter, and after asking Tian Buzi, he rushed to the Zhili Governor's Office in Baoding to post it.

I never thought that Li Hongzhang would go to Beijing to face the saint at this time, and he was not in the Zhili Governor's Office in Baoding. Li Jingfang, the "eldest son" of Lord Zhongtang, of course, knew about this ship bombing incident, and this middle-aged man who was commented by Lord Zhongtang on his deathbed that "Wu'er Jingfang, I am overwhelmed by heavy responsibilities", suddenly had a convulsion in his brain, and felt that the honorarium of two million taels of silver had been promised too rashly. I feel that under my superb mediation methods, I will definitely be able to reduce the amount of extortion money from the other party.

At this time, Li Jingfang had already served as a counselor to the U.S. minister and had also served as a mission to Japan. He analyzed that the situation on the Liaodong Peninsula was that the interests of the three kingdoms of the Qing Dynasty and the Song Dynasty were entangled and restrained each other. Therefore, in the Baoding Zhili Governor's Office, he was in charge of the Zhongtang Lord, and he was tough like a convulsion, and let people blow away Ma San who came to post. Fortunately, he had done diplomacy, and he regarded Ma San, a renegade bannerman, as a diplomat of the Great Song Dynasty, and did not make much trouble.

When Ma San was deflated in Baoding, Lord Zhongtang was fighting a lawsuit with the imperial party in the capital to ask for military expenses. Of course, Lord Nakado counted the two Japanese warships that were sunk by the Crossing Crowd to the credit book of the Beiyang Naval Division, which was bought by his old man at a great price, and from this point of view, there is nothing wrong with counting the Beiyang.

The Japanese First Army's offensive in northeast China was blocked by the Qing army on the Haicheng line due to the long supply line and the fact that it was now a cold winter. The landing operation of the Second Army on the Liaodong Peninsula did not make any substantial progress due to the strong intervention of the Travers.

Since the beginning of the war, the situation in which the Qing army, from the navy to the army, has been beaten by the chickens in the footbasin has finally changed. Lord Nakado hurriedly took advantage of the opportunity of sinking two Japanese warships to go to Beijing to report the good news and ask for military expenses, and by the way, to reverse the trend of public opinion that had been unfavorable to him since the beginning of the war.

When Lord Zhongtang was still complacent about plucking a few hairs from the iron rooster Weng Tongshu's household, a diplomatic note from the Great Song Dynasty forwarded by the British made him fall into a fog.

The note informed the Qing government that a few torpedo boats belonging to the Qing Beiyang Fleet had openly carried weapons into the demarcated demilitarized sea area in disregard of the orders of His Majesty the Emperor of the Great Song Dynasty and the Parliament to set up a neutral port in Dalian Bay, and had now been seized by the Royal Marines of the Great Song Dynasty.

What's going on? When Nakado-sama received this note, he was confused. Zhao Huaiye, the defender of Dalian Bay, was placed under house arrest, and all the forts in his defense area fell under the control of the Great Song Dynasty.

Why did the torpedo boats that remained in Lushun attack Dalian Bay? said that they wanted to recover Dalian Bay, but Lord Zhongtang did not believe it. The battle has come to this point, and he can see clearly how many catties and taels of people under him are, and those scum scum in Lushun don't fight in a group by themselves, and Lord Zhongtang will burn high incense, where would they believe that they have the courage to provoke the Great Song Dynasty, who is the king and hegemon in the Liaodong Peninsula.

There must be something wrong with some link for this photo to appear, Zhongtang thought to himself. Soon the old fox guessed that there must be something wrong with him, and it stands to reason that the diplomatic note submitted to the Qing government should be sent to the Prime Minister's National Affairs Yamen, how could the British, who are old in foreign affairs, make such a low-level mistake?

Even if they knew that the diplomatic incident involving Beiyang affairs would eventually be handed over to me to deal with, the British would at most inform me in advance and would not directly send the diplomatic note to me.

Lord Zhongtang hurriedly asked his subordinates in Tianjin and Baoding to find out what special things had happened recently. The result really made the old fox guess correctly, and the problem was with himself, to be exact, with his own smart "eldest son".

Lord Zhongtang didn't care about fighting with the imperial party in the capital, so he hurried back to Baoding to extinguish the fire that Li Jingfang set for him in the backyard.

Lord Zhongtang feels that he has met a cheating father, has he met a fake son? Having said that, Li Jingfang is an adoptive, isn't this just a fake son cheating his father.