For Yang Shuoming, who had successfully launched bacteriological warfare against the Japanese army in Qingdao, the strain of the "Spanish flu" had a more important use for him.

At this time, neither Xi Xue nor the officers knew his true purpose for doing this.

When Duan Qirui, who was thousands of miles away in Yanjing, learned the news, it was already a few days later.

Yanjing, Shijingzi Hutong, Border Supervision Office.

"This Yang Hanzhi is really bold, he dared to go to the epidemic area to check the epidemic in person, and he was not afraid of getting the flu and returning to the west."

Duan Qirui put down the secret report in his hand, shook his head with a smile, "In the end, he is still a young man, he is still too reckless in doing things, and he is not thoughtful, even if he wants to buy people's hearts, it is not such a bribery method." ”

"From this point of view, although this Yang Hanzhi has the name of 'high-tech warlord', he is not afraid." Duan Hongye also said with a smile, "If he really contracted the flu this time and unfortunately passed away, it would save us the trouble in the future." ”

"No, he can't die now, I'm counting on him to pacify the south." Duan Qirui said, "If he goes now, the south will immediately become a mess, and with our current strength, if we want to re-settle, I don't know how many twists and turns." ”

"If you want to unify the whole country, you can't do it without money and soldiers." Duan Hongye said, "And the power of this money is even above the soldiers, like this time Gu Pinzhen raised troops to overthrow the Tang Dynasty, I heard that he was bought by Yang Hanzhi." ”

"He, Yang Hanzhi, has long realized the power of 'Brother Kong Fang', and the current navy has almost become his Yang Hanzhi's private army. The people in the Admiralty are now all looking up to him, and I still can't figure out how the Americans could have given him so much money so happily to buy new ships for the Navy. Duan Qirui sighed and said, "Actually, don't look at us as winning a game now, but at the moment, in terms of financial resources, we are still too far behind him Yang Hanzhi." ”

"As for money, it's not a problem for us now." Duan Hongye looked at his father and smiled confidently, "It won't be long before what he Yang Hanzhi can do with money, we can do the same." ”

"It is true that the Fu family has strong financial resources, but they may not be willing to spend the majority of their money on us. The money they give is not given for nothing, it is all purposeful, and it needs to be repaid with interest in the future. He Yang Hanzhi has his own treasury, which can be accessed at any time. Duan Qirui saw his son's confident appearance, and said with some disapproval, "How sure are you, dare to say that what he can do with money, we can also do it?" ”

"The money he Yang Hanzhi got back from overseas said that it was donations and trade income, but it was just a cover-up, as long as anyone with a discerning eye could see that it was money from an American consortium." Duan Hongye looked at his father's face and said, "If he Yang Hanzhi can do this, of course we can do it too." ”

"What did you say?" Duan Qirui immediately heard the subtext in his son's words, and couldn't help but be surprised.

"The money that the Americans gave to Yang Hanzhi is certainly not in vain. It's just that we still can't know what kind of deal he Yang Hanzhi reached with the Americans. Duan Hongye said, "If the Americans can find him Yang Hanzhi, then naturally there are others who take a fancy to us." ”

"Who is this 'other person' you are talking about?" Duan Qirui stared at his son's eyes tightly and asked loudly.

"Of course my father knows, so I don't need to say it." Duan Hongye met his father's gaze without the slightest fear, "A few days ago, didn't my father arrange for Uncle Cao and the elder to connect to the line?" ”

"How do you know that I asked Cao Rulin to talk to Yue himself, just to get Yue himself's support?" Duan Qirui's face turned blue, and his eyes widened, "What have you done?" ”

"My son just took his father's ongoing career a step forward."

Seeing his father's anger, Duan Hongye immediately knelt down in front of his father, but there was no fear in his words.

"The son knows that his father's intention is to show favor to Yue Ben and prevent Yu himself from causing chaos to us at this critical moment." Duan Hongye said.

"Since you understand this layer, don't you know that it is impossible for us to get too close to Yue himself?" Duan Qirui looked at his son with some annoyance, jumped to his feet and shouted, "You're pushing me into the fire pit, you know?" Once the news gets out, we're all going to be finished! ”

"My son understands his father's worries." Duan Hongye looked at his thunderous father and said word by word, "But I thought that from the moment my father asked Uncle Cao to negotiate with him, he was already in the fire pit. ”

"What did you say?" Duan Qirui couldn't help but be stunned for a moment when he heard his son's words, he seemed to understand something, and immediately calmed down.

"Has my father forgotten the phrase 'a traitor is a traitor?'" Duan Hongye replied loudly.

This sentence "the negotiator is a traitor" was like a basin of cold water poured from head to toe, making Duan Qirui stand there for a while, unable to make a sound.

"Back then, it was said that the 'Twenty-one Articles' were forced to sign, and then invaded my China, my father was the most powerful person in the main battle at that time, and then the war against the Japanese was successful, and my father presided over the great contribution of prevention, which was admired by the world after the war. Hongxian Emperor was prosperous, and his father was bent on resisting, although there were scoundrels who wanted to harm his father, but with his father's achievements in resisting the Japanese in the past, he did not dare to move. Duan Hongye said, "Everyone in the world sees my father as the mortal enemy of Yuben and the pillar of China, and once I know that my father has negotiated with Yuren, my father will of course understand what the consequences will be." ”

"Yes, the phrase 'the negotiator is a traitor' has already been made very clear." Duan Qirui sighed, waved his hand, and motioned for Duan Hongye to stand up and speak, "Duke Li Wenzhong is a famous minister in Tongguang, and he will inevitably be ruined because of the Maguan Covenant, let alone me?" ”

"Therefore, I think that if there is really such a day, it is better to let my son bear such an eternal infamy." Duan Hongye said.

Hearing his son's words, Duan Qirui couldn't help but be shocked, he looked at his son who slowly got up from the ground, and a trace of confusion flashed in his eyes, as if he didn't know him anymore.

"What the hell did you do?" Duan Qirui asked in a muttered voice, a hint of hoarseness in his voice.

"As I just said, if my father wants to truly complete the great cause of reunification and revitalize China, this money and soldiers are indispensable." Duan Hongye said, "What I did was to get enough funds for my father to achieve great things." ”

"So you let Cao Rulin go to borrow it from you?" Duan Qirui sighed and asked again.

"At this time and that time, I was my mortal enemy in the past, and I know that I can't help me now?" Duan Hongye said, "Now that the belligerent Okuma cabinet has fallen, the newly appointed prime minister wants to make friends with our country, and he is quite sincere with him. It would be a shame if I didn't take this opportunity to ask me to pay for us. ”

"Although your idea is good, I have always been shrewd, and they will never spend money in vain." Duan Qirui said, "Borrowing money is not for nothing, it needs to be mortgaged, what else can we use as collateral in our hands now?" If you want to sell the interests of the state in exchange for a loan, you are very wrong. ”

"Of course I know what's at stake." Duan Hongye smiled and said, "So it's better for your son to come forward in this matter, and once something goes wrong, my father will have to get out of it." ”

"Although the method is good, it is too ......" Duan Qirui glanced at his son in his prime, sighed and shook his head, "This is playing with fire!" ”

"It's the son who is playing with fire, not the father, in case something happens, the father will all push it all on the son." Duan Hongye said nonchalantly, "What's more, I'm afraid that when the time comes, no one may dare to put the 'traitor' hat on my head." ”

"Who did you ask Cao Rulin to borrow from?" Duan Qirui gasped and asked.

"It's not me who asked Uncle Cao to find it, it's me who took the initiative to find it." Duan Hongye said.

"Oh?" Duan Qirui was stunned again, "I took the initiative to come to the door?" ”

"Nishihara Kamezo, has your father heard of it?" Duan Hongye looked at his father's face cautiously and said his own name.

"Of course I did." Duan Qirui took a deep breath and nodded.

Akaben, Tokyo, Ministry of Finance.

At this time, in a small but very private room, the three of them seemed to be chatting, but the content of their conversation was not leisurely.

These three people, the bald one, is the prime minister Terauchi Masatsuki, and the other two are the Minister of Finance, Katsuta, and the "uncrowned minister" Nishihara Kamezo.

"If my judgment is correct, China's civil war will soon be over."

Nishihara Kamezo handed a new report to Prime Minister Masaki Terauchi, who took it and read it carefully and nodded.

"Nishihara-kun has worked hard again this time." Terauchi Masashi said approvingly, "These situations are very important, and we may be able to take advantage of them." ”

Hearing Terauchi Masatsuki's words, Nishihara Kamezo nodded, but there was still a hint of worry in his eyes.

He understood that his report was likely to help Terauchi Masaki, who was overwhelmed by the "rice scratching", get out of the current predicament.

But he also knows that the current situation in China has become quite unfavorable for Yueben.

Since the outbreak of the First World War, he has been eyeing China with a fierce eye, believing that this war is a "God-blessed opportunity" for him to swallow China, but Prime Minister Shigenobu Okuma's ambition to swallow China in one bite has encountered extremely strong obstacles, and his military invasion of China has suffered a shameful failure, and the Western powers have also expressed extreme dissatisfaction with his behavior of taking advantage of the fire to loot. Because Okuma Shigenobu's overly tough China policy not only aroused strong resistance among the Chinese, but even the original pro-Yue faction did not seem to be very pro-party. Especially after the failure of the invasion of China, the relationship between the United States and the United States deteriorated sharply, and the alliance between the United Kingdom and Britain also appeared in the shadows, and the veterans who had great influence in the political arena of Okuma were very dissatisfied with Okuma Shigenobu, and after seeing this opportunity, Terauchi Masashi (then the governor of Korea), who had already been in charge of the government, sent his close friend Nishihara Kamezo to China to collect a large number of "black materials" from the Okuma cabinet, and wrote a "Investigation of the Facts of the Revolutionary Disturbances". As a result, there was a great deal of uproar, and the various political parties and factions of the Honhonto sent people to China to investigate on the spot and report to the elders and the Imperial Court, and eventually the Okuma Shigenobu Cabinet collapsed because of the failure of the China policy.

After Shigenobu Okuma, who was known as the "Vulgar Thing of Higo", announced his resignation, he recommended the former Foreign Minister Takaaki Kato to take over as prime minister. Aritomo Yamayama, who did not want Kato to form a cabinet, succeeded in getting the emperor to issue a decree appointing a soldier Terauchi Masayi as prime minister after consulting with another patriarch, Saionji Konozo.

Only six days after Shigenobu Okuma's resignation, Masaki Terauchi completed the formation of the cabinet. The members of the Terauchi cabinet are all very distinctive; Terauchi Masahiro himself is a well-known Shomei Shoyo, the Minister of the Interior is Goto Shinpei, who was the governor of Taiwan and president of the Manchurian Railway; the Minister of Finance is the president of the Bank of Korea; Terauchi Masatsuki's close friend Katsuda is the chief planner; the foreign minister is the ambassador to Russia; Honno Ichiro, the advocate of the Russian alliance; most of his cabinet members are warlords and politicians who are directly or side branches of the Yama Shan faction, and most of them are members of the House of Nobles. This shows that he began to plan for the formation of a cabinet very early. It is conceivable from this that Yamayama Aritomo exerted a strong influence on both the timing and the substance of the formation of the Terauchi Shotoki. The Shoyukai expressed its attitude toward the policies of the Cabinet of the Temple. As for the other political parties, the Comrades of the First Largest Party opposed the entry of Goto Shinhei into the Cabinet, but they were unsuccessful, so on the second day after the Cabinet was formed, they formed a Constitutional Council with the Chung Kai and the Public Friends Club, becoming the largest opposition party with a majority of seats in the Diet. This means that although Terauchi Masatomo wanted to establish a unified cabinet for the whole country, he actually became a baseless and unconstitutional government that did not have even a few ruling parties. Because of this, the Terauchi Cabinet is known as the "Cabinet of the Feudal Lords", "the Cabinet of Private Discussions", "Bureaucracy", and "Yokai".

After Terauchi Masatsuki came to power, he changed his China policy in order to get rid of the unfavorable situation caused by the wrong China policy of the Okuma cabinet, and at the suggestion of Nishihara Kamezo, he changed the previous policy of military expansion and changed to economic penetration.

Nishihara Kamezo's suggestion is actually a concrete embodiment of his own thinking habits: after the rigid hand encountered an obstacle, he quickly turned to the soft side. The specific content of this "Huairou policy" is to lend money to China.

Nishihara Kamezo is a shrewd businessman, during the period when Terauchi Masashi served as the governor of Korea, he and Katsuta co-manager to preside over the Bank of Korea, Nishihara Kamezo ran a spinning industry in North Korea, and when the Bank of Korea was in trouble, he relied on the help of Nishihara Kamezo, not only to solve the difficulties, but also to have a great development. Nishihara Kamezo thus became close friends with Katsuda and Terauchi Masatsu.

After the temple and Katsuda jointly formed a cabinet, in the Ministry of Finance, where Katsuda served as the Minister of Finance, Nishihara Kamezo did not have any name, but he could come and go at will, command the secretary, and drink back and forth, just like the master, comparable to Xu Shuzhengzhi and Duan Qirui, which shows the depth of his trust.

In a sense, it was Nishihara Kamezo who decided the change in Saimoto's China policy. He changed the previous strategy of Shigenobu Okuma's cabinet of supporting the enemy's opponent of China's legitimate political axe, specializing in internal sabotage, and intensifying China's domestic contradictions and civil strife, and chose to support China's central political axe, support the pro-pro-faction forces in this political axe, and use the policy of softness to "cut off the head with a soft knife" and realize everything he wanted from China. This policy change is concretely implemented in a series of loans to China.

Nishihara Kamezo's plan is to "lay a good and common economic foundation for Sino-Chinese relations" by means of loans, that is, to inject a large amount of yuan loans into China's national banks, such as the Bank of Communications, to help China straighten out its finances, reform the currency system, and gradually realize the "mixing of Chinese currencies," and even to provide ordnance to China and help China train its troops (these are the contents of No. 5 of the "21 Articles") in the name of "helping China's political axes to quell rebellions." Fundamentally control China's finances, and then control the entire national lifeline of China.

"You think Duan Qirui is the only military strongman who can unify China after Yuan Shikai, but I can't see it now." Terauchi Masayi read the report again and said, "And what I'm more worried about is the young general who once defeated the Imperial Navy and Army in Qingdao. ”

"This young man should be an agent supported by the United States in China." Nishihara Kamezo sneered and said, "He has a lot of dollars in his hands that the American consortium has provided him, so he can repeatedly win military operations in southern China." Although he has won many battles, he is a rising star after all, and compared with Duan Qirui of China's Beiyang Department, he is still too far behind. ”

"The Americans have already built six large battleships for China, and I heard that the Americans are still building for China a 'super crossbow' type battle cruiser as powerful as ours" King Kong ". Minister of Finance Katsuda said worriedly, "It is impossible for the Chinese government to come up with such a large amount of money to build such a large warship, and it can only be achieved through the capital of the Americans, which shows that a large amount of dollars has been injected into China's financial system, and our actions are not only smaller than the Americans, but also very late, and I am worried that we may not achieve the desired effect." ”

"It's not too late for us to act, and exporting capital to the outside world is also a demand for our economy itself," said Nishihara, "and we have a large surplus of domestic funds, and increasing investment in China at this time can not only relieve our own pressure, but also get what we have not been able to obtain with strong measures before." ”

(To be continued)