The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 947 In this era of great strife, one must seize the opportunity while it's hot!

Tianjing, the Prince of Wu's Palace.

The South China Sea chart on the sandalwood table still bore the ink from last night, which was not yet dry. Luo Yaoguo's brushstrokes traced the bend in the Strait of Malacca, adding a new, insurmountable red line there. Minister of the Navy Wang Yan and Chief of Staff Ding Ruchang stood with their hands at their sides, their faces alternating between pale and flushed, neither of them looking well.

"Teacher, the latest battle report has arrived," Wang Yan's voice was hoarse, sounding less like he was reporting a victory. "We sank two British Sovereign-class ships, one Majesty-class ship, and three Centurion-class ships; severely damaged one Majesty-class ship. Our side..." He took a deep breath, his nails digging into his palms, "The Tianjing is severely damaged, its bow armor belt is torn, and its conning tower has been hit; the engine rooms of the Guangdong and Guangxi ships are flooded; the rudder of the Jingyuan ship is damaged."

Luo Yaoguo also sensed something was wrong, and his gaze suddenly fixed on Ding Ruchang's pale face: "Yuting, is it Xinhua?"

Ding Ruchang abruptly closed his eyes, but Wang Yan had already taken a half-step forward: "Junior Brother Xinhua was pierced through the left shoulder by 254mm shrapnel, the shrapnel only three fingers' width from his heart! His skull was fractured, and the bruising compressed his optic nerve, slightly affecting his vision, but it's not a big problem, he shouldn't go blind." His speech became faster and faster, as if slowing down even a single word would be a desecration of his mentor, "But in this battle, he single-handedly fought against five ships, drawing all their firepower, creating an opportunity for our army to annihilate three centurions! And he commanded the 'Tianjing' to sink a 'Junquan'-class ship!"

The air freezes.

Luo Yaoguo recalled the scene at Wusong Naval Port twenty years ago—ten-year-old Luo Xinhua stood on tiptoe, touching the thick wooden shell of the old "Dingyuan-class" warship, and looked up to ask, "Dad, can this wooden armor withstand the iron bullets of the foreigners?" Now, he was using his own flesh and blood to break open the gates of Malacca for the Taiping Navy!
"The Tianjing was hit by 127 shells. The main armor belt was not penetrated, but the superstructure was severely damaged. The observation window of the command tower was destroyed, and shrapnel entered through the breach." Ding Ruchang presented the Navy's merit list, his voice suddenly becoming impassioned. "The South Sea Fleet unanimously agrees: Rear Admiral Luo Xinhua deserves the highest merit, a special-class merit! Please award him the 'Order of the Hero of Heaven' and promote him to Vice Admiral!" He knelt on one knee, his words earnest, "Brother Xinhua's merits are unparalleled in the Navy. No one in the Navy disagrees!"

Luo Yaoguo stroked the embossed characters "Luo Xinhua" on the booklet page, his fingertip lingering on the words "Lieutenant General." The Battle of Oahu saw him challenge a Constitution-class battleship with a Zhenhai-class armored cruiser; the Ten-Cross Strait incident saw him sink two battleships with a single battleship and an armored cruiser; and now, his performance in the Battle of Malacca—this boy's courage is a spitting image of his mother, Su Sanniang!

"Good," Luo Yaoguo nodded slightly. "He is capable of shouldering the responsibilities of his generation."

After dismissing everyone, Luo Yaoguo turned to the carved wooden door on the west side: "Third Sister, if you want to cry, then cry."

"Clang!" The celadon medicine bottle shattered, scattering fragments all over the floor. Su Sanniang staggered out, her hair disheveled, blood from the cuts on her palms mingling with her tears, dripping onto the sandalwood table: "My son, will you still be able to hold the helm in the future?"

"Yes!" Luo Yaoguo gripped her trembling hand tightly. "How could the future admiral of the Taiping Navy not be able to hold the helm?"

A sudden clap of thunder sounded outside the window, and a torrential downpour washed over the red flag flying outside the gates of the Wu King's Palace.

In the west wing of Xianliang Temple in Beijing, the aroma of fried dough rings mingled with the savory gravy of tofu pudding, floating in the pale sunlight filtering through the carved window lattices. Russian Rear Admiral Alekseyev, with a silver fork, cracked the crispy crust of a meat pie with door studs, golden juices seeping into the veins of the bone china plate; German envoy Ketteler scooped up a spoonful of trembling tofu pudding, the daylily buds floating in the gravy clinging to the rim, which he carefully removed with the tip of his knife.

“Singapore can hold out for at least a year.” Alexeyev forked a piece of minced meat, his French slurred with the smell of vodka. “With its bastions, 280 heavy artillery pieces, and the Johor Strait as a natural barrier, Sevastopol is no match for it!”

Ketteler scoffed, speaking in French laced with Prussian gunpowder: "If the Taiping Army can control the strait, three months will be enough. The British Indian mercenaries are no match for the Russian army—" Before he could finish, the cotton curtain ripped open with a "whoosh!" Yuan Shikai burst in, clutching a telegram, his boots splattered with mud: "Gentlemen! The situation in the Pacific has changed!"

"The weather has changed?"

"What do you mean?"

A German and a Russian simply couldn't understand Yuan Shikai's "Chinese-style French."

With a "smack," Yuan Shikai slammed the telegram onto the dining table, the oil stains instantly soaking into the ink: "The Taiping Army has captured Singapore! The British Far East Fleet has lost five battleships!"

The porcelain bowl clattered to the ground, spilling tofu pudding onto Ketteler's impeccably tailored trousers. Alekseev grabbed the telegram, his fingers trembling so much they nearly tore the paper: "The front lines don't lie. The Strait of Malacca has changed hands; the Pacific is practically the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's inland waters! The situation in the Pacific has completely reversed!"

Klind suddenly burst into maniacal laughter: "No, not just the Pacific, but the whole world!" His grey-blue eyes blazed with a chilling flame. "The era of the British Empire's dominance over the world is coming to an end!"

Alekseev also burst into laughter: "That's right, the era of the British reigning supreme is over, and the time for the Third Rome to restore Constantinople is just around the corner!"

Yuan Shikai squinted, taking in the two foreigners' madness. He knew that the clause in the secret treaty between the three countries that "they could only join the war after capturing Malacca and Port Moresby" was now worthless!
If the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had spent a year and a half of arduous effort just to capture Singapore, Germany and Russia would probably have waited for Port Moresby to change hands. But now the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has won too quickly and too much! And the British Empire appears utterly vulnerable!
Would Germany and Russia, those two hungry wolves, sit idly by and watch the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom monopolize the British legacy? If they waited any longer, the opportunity would be lost—in this age of great strife, one must seize the moment!
How could the Tang Dynasty in Central Asia just sit idly by and do nothing?

As the lamplight flickered, Yuan Shikai pressed his finger heavily on the Fergana Basin, where the three small vermilion characters "New Chang'an" were marked. Duan Qirui leaned closer to examine it closely, and the light from the bamboo-filament electric lamp illuminated the dense Russian markings on the map—this was the latest "Hydrogeological Map of Central Asia" drawn by the St. Petersburg Military Academy.

"The Emperor is still dreaming of a 'Great Tang Dynasty in the Western Regions'," Yuan Shikai sneered, his fingertips tracing the Tianshan Mountains. "With this little bit of wealth in the newly established Guanzhong Plain, does he really think the Russian Cossack cavalry and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's steam tanks are pushovers?" He took out a copy of his own compilation, "The True Record of the Taiping Navy's Reform," with a yellowed photograph tucked between the pages—a picture of Yuan Shikai standing beneath the armored cruiser "Jingyuan," a 12000-ton vessel as large as a city!
Duan Qirui narrowed his triangular eyes: "Brother Weiting, do you really want to emulate the Taiping Army? But we don't even have a port."

"If they don't have it, we'll just rob it!" Yuan Shikai flipped open a map of the Persian Gulf. "The Taiping Army can cross the strait by bicycle, can't we do the same?" He took out a pen and drew a circle on the Caspian coast. "We'll copy the 'Iron Ox' armored vehicles and transport them to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea using the Caspian Navy's wooden boats! As long as we have a railway connecting us with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, transporting the 'Iron Ox' armored vehicles into the Tang Dynasty won't be too difficult!"

Suddenly, the sounds of horses neighing and wheels turning came from outside the window. Duan Qirui lifted the curtain and looked out. Under the moonlight, more than ten members of Yuan Shikai's Huai Army were carrying leather suitcases into a four-wheeled carriage.

"Brother Weiting, are we leaving Beijing?" Duan Qirui asked in a low voice.

“We have to go,” Yuan Shikai said with a smile. “The military academy in Xintongguan, the Imperial Academy in Xinchang’an, and the noble children scattered throughout Xinguanzhong, as well as those who have been to Russia and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, are all eager to try and just waiting for a reform and a new policy! Zhiquan, let’s leave tomorrow!”

At the Berlin Imperial Palace, during a military conference, the 84-year-old Wilhelm I rose shakily, his withered hand resting on a map of France. "Fourteen years," the old emperor's voice, like a rusty gear, said, "Now it's time to let the French taste the bitterness of iron and blood once more."

Chief of the General Staff Moltke immediately unfurled a battle map, which had two thick arrows on it: "Army Group North will advance into northern France via Belgium and Luxembourg, using our newly formed armored divisions as the vanguard, along with our most elite infantry and powerful artillery. We will surely sweep through northern France and march straight to Paris!"

"That's not enough!" Navy Minister Leo von Kaprivé warned. "We must simultaneously land in the south of France and use the navy to send our puppet Empress Mathilde, whom we've placed on Corsica, to the south of France. This will surely tie down some of the Red French army!"

The old emperor's cloudy eyes turned to Chancellor Bismarck: "Prime Minister, what do you think?"

Bismarck said, "Your Majesty, I have only one question. Are the German army and navy truly ready?"

Moltke nodded: "We're ready! We can strike at any time!"

Caprivi said, "Although our 'iron fortress at sea' is not yet completed, we already have four 12000-ton 'Teutonic Knight'-class armored cruisers, and four more under construction." Bismarck, the "Saxon," nodded and said to the Emperor, "Your Majesty, now that the army and navy are ready, please make the decision to go to war!"

The modernization of the armored cruisers has also been completed—while our strength may not be enough to deal with Britain, it's more than sufficient to handle the navy of Red France!

The Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

Alexander III slammed a glass of vodka onto the desk: "Constantinople! I only want Constantinople!"

Army Minister Vanovsky hurriedly dissuaded him: "Your Majesty, the Taiping army has not yet captured Port Moresby, according to the secret treaty between the three countries..."

"What a load of rubbish!" the Tsar slammed his fist on the table. "The British have lost everything in the Strait of Malacca!" He panted and ordered, "Black Sea Fleet, move out immediately!"

Navy Minister Shestakov cautioned, “Your Majesty, our Black Sea Fleet is not yet ready. We currently only have two ‘Emperor’-class ships in service, which is insufficient to breach the Turkish straits.”

The Tsar grinned and turned to Foreign Minister Giles, saying, "Go tell the Turks—say that the Black Sea Fleet is going to the Indian Ocean to support the British, and that they should open the straits immediately, or they'd better prepare to be hit by 305mm shells!"

(End of this chapter)