Wang Lingji, who thought he had discovered the big secret, immediately found his nephew Tang Yongwei after Huang Haoran left Chaotianmen Wharf by car and asked him to rush to Yibin to find ways to infiltrate Huang Haoran's group. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

"You have to remember that now is the best chance to get close to Huang Haoran...... Although he took over the five counties of Yibin, he was an outsider after all, and he didn't understand the rules of Sichuan at all. Huang Haoran will soon find out that if he wants to gain a foothold here, he must rely on the characters of Sichuan. At this time, you take the troops to the door, even if you find out the relationship between you and me, you are a horse bone that he can't afford to lose, in order not to chill the hearts of the follow-up defectors, he can only reuse your ......"

The complicated situation in Sichuan Province is the confidence of Wang Lingji to do so. In his opinion, without a Sichuan native to guide the way, it is impossible for anyone to see the true face of the land of abundance.

After Liu Xiang's death, the fragile military and political system in Sichuan Province was already crumbling, and the warlords privately began to restart the "defense zone system".

And the "defense zone system" is precisely the cause of the 20-year scuffle between the Sichuan warlords.

In the early days of the Republic of China, there were many warlords in Sichuan, the time of separation, the frequency of melee battles, and the great harm caused can be said to be very rare. However, I am afraid that almost no one would have imagined that this unconscionable and sinful warlord melee turned out to be "legitimate"!

This "law" is the "defense zone system" of Sichuan warlords, which began in 1918 when Xiong Kewu, who was in charge of Sichuan's military and civilian administration, and ended until 1934, when Liu Xiang unified the Sichuan military and government.

"Defense area" originally referred to the garrison area of each army. However, the "defense zone" of the Sichuan warlords goes far beyond the military significance, and is like a large and small military dictatorship. In 1918, Xiong Kewu decided to allocate local taxes according to the garrison areas of each army, and each army would withdraw it from the county collection bureau on its own as the need for food and salary. The Sichuan warlord defense system was thus formed.

Under the defense zone system, the garrison, administrative, and financial powers of the counties and cities were all controlled by the garrison, and the garrison could appoint its own officials, collect its own taxes, and expand its troops in the region, which the provincial government regarded as legitimate. Although the "defense zone system" was a kind of decree, it was originally a "rule of the game" and "gentlemen's agreement" that the Sichuan warlords coordinated and compromised to avoid annexing and fighting with each other and ensuring their respective territories and forces. Since each has its own "defense zone", then if another one comes to "invade", I counterattack or even pursue, it seems that I am "acting according to law". Therefore, driven by endless greed and brutality, the warlords continued to engage in melee battles in order to expand or seize more prosperous defense areas, and during the defense zone system, they either fought alone or in groups, and fought more than 400 small battles, and the people of Sichuan were innocently killed, injured and wounded, and suffered huge losses.

On the other hand, the warlords who have obtained the defense zone are also afraid that the defense zone they have just obtained will be taken away by others if they are not careful, so they try their best to squeeze a large amount of money from the defense zone for their own expansion and enjoyment, and even the strange phenomenon that the tax collection in the 24th year of the Republic of China has been received by the Republic of China for 100 years.

The period of the defense zone system was actually the darkest period in Sichuan's modern history, and it was also the period when tobacco and poison were most rampant. At that time, in order to amass wealth, the Sichuan warlords made the most thrilling "feat" that was to force the peasants to abandon grain and grow tobacco. At that time, the farmers who planted tobacco had tobacco donations, and this tobacco donation was calculated according to the number of nests. The garrisons in Sichuan forced the peasants to grow tobacco, and when it was time to harvest, they bought it at a cheap price, or even forcibly robbed it, and then transferred it to various places and sold it openly.

The Sichuan warlords tried all kinds of ways to persuade the peasants to grow tobacco, such as when the peasants lacked tobacco seeds, they shipped them from other places and distributed them to the peasants; If there is a shortage of funds for growing tobacco, they provide loans to the peasants, and the principal and interest are converted into opium cigarettes, and although the warlords in various localities try every means to persuade the peasants to grow opium poppies, there are still many peasants who are unwilling to grow opium poppies, which are both highly taxed and extremely destructive. When the warlords failed to persuade them to plant opium poppies, they resorted to the methods of extorting and forcing the peasants to grow tobacco, and even used force to suppress the peasants who refused to grow opium poppies or to pay high taxes. If the peasants do not want to grow tobacco, they are said to be lazy, and the taxes that are paid by punishment are called lazy taxes. In Yazhou (present-day Ya'an), the warlord government stipulated that 3 acres of 10 acres of land must be planted with opium poppies, otherwise they would be fined and detained. In addition, if a farmer grows grain but not tobacco, the tax will be paid for three years in the first year; In the second year, grain will be planted again, and the tax will be paid for five years; In the third year, grain is planted and the tax is paid for seven years, while tobacco is planted for only one year of the current year. This is how the warlord government used it to force the peasants to grow tobacco.

In every corner of every county and township in Sichuan under the control of the warlords, even if there are no hotels or restaurants, there are also tobacco houses, and in a small village about three miles from Chongqing, there are only 125 inhabitants, and 22 tobacco houses have been set up. It can be said that "there must be a smoke house in a ten-room city; If you are a threesome, there will be addicts". Anyone who arrives at a house will set up a lamp plate and greet guests with smoke. During this period, the Sichuan warlords continued to fight viciously, and in order to raise military salaries, they even monopolized opium or set up bureaus to collect taxes in order to obtain greater profits. Those who sell opium and tobacco have to pay "mud donations"; those who open opium tobacco houses have to pay "lamp donations" of 4 yuan per month according to a red light, and those who open brothels have to pay "flower donations," and there are also miscellaneous donations in a mess...... to the point where "now there is only fart and no donation". The most ridiculous thing is that the government, on the one hand, encourages the production of opium, forcibly levies "lazy donations" from peasants who do not grow baby millet, and also collects "mud donations" to allow opium to be bought and sold freely, and also collects "lamp donations," "permitted donations," and "donations from addicts" to openly allow smokers to take drugs, but it also raises the banner of "anti-narcotics" and forcibly levies "special donations for smoking cessation" from the people. The establishment of various taxes gave a legal veneer to the cultivation, transportation, sale, and absorption of opium.

At that time, Sichuan was the province with the largest tobacco production, the largest tobacco market, and the largest number of drug addicts in the country. In addition to the cultivation of opium poppies and the public sale of opium, armed protectors, and the transportation and trafficking of tobacco are another effective way for warlords to find financial resources from opium tobacco. Due to the many wars at that time, bandits were rampant, and the production areas of tobacco were relatively remote, tobacco merchants invested huge sums of money in trafficking tobacco and soil, for fear of accidents or interception of various checkpoints on the way, so most of them sought military escort in order to reach their destinations smoothly. At that time, opium produced in nearby provinces, such as Yunnan, Guizhou, and Shanxi, also gathered in Sichuan and traveled down the river through Chongqing, Wanxian and other places, and was sold to central and southern provinces and east China.

The army was involved in transporting cigarettes and evading taxes; Traders befriended bandits and smuggled opium to make huge profits. The opium epidemic continued to devour Sichuan's wealth. In the early thirties, Dazhu County in Dazhou alone smoked more than 125,000 yuan, Neijiang 100,000 yuan, and Fuling 300,000 yuan. It can be seen that opium has truly become a cash cow for the warlords, and not only has it become the economic basis on which the warlord regime depends. It has also pushed the lives of the people of Sichuan into the abyss...... (To be continued.) )