Black Flag Army

On April 28, 1915, at 8 o'clock in the morning, Di Xiong walked into the Beihai Company office on time and saw the Director of Intelligence Tian Mengxue already sitting on the sofa in the office, obviously waiting for him.

Tian Mengxue saw him coming in, and quickly handed him the intelligence in her hand, saying, "Urgent report from the Kulun Intelligence Group: The Mongolian army has received weapons, ammunition, and military pay from the Japanese, and even 20 planes, and Japanese instructors are helping them train. They are preparing to attack us again on the first of next month. This time, the troops may dispatch six cavalry brigades, and there will be air force support."

Di Xiong took the intelligence and read it carefully, frowning and said, "According to the intelligence, the Japanese flew the planes here at the end of February. How come we only found out about it now? The Mongolian Air Force has been training with aluminum planes for nearly two months. Once the battle starts, it will cause us heavy losses. How could this Sun Xiaotie make such a serious mistake?"

Tian Mengxue said, "Wu Chunfeng's original proposal to rescue Bian Zhimei was completely wrong. Without Bian Zhimei passing on information in the Prime Minister's Office, how could Sun Xiaotie and his team, who only had a pot repair shop and a medicine shop, collect information? This information was only given to them by the people of Da Kuisheng after they accidentally discovered the plane."

Di Xiong said, "You can't say that. If we hadn't rescued Bian Zhimei, she would have been killed by Hang Daduo's sons. A dead person can't pass on information. Now there are only three days before they send out their troops. It's too late to destroy the airport. We have to prepare for battle. Send two more intelligence teams, one to Orkhon City and the other to Darkhan City. If the Kulun Army wants to attack us, they must pass through one of these two places. Let the intelligence team go in early to collect intelligence, and then send it to us quickly by radio."

Tian Mengxue said: "I understand. I will arrange people to go to these two places for reconnaissance now. However, the situation is quite urgent now, and it is unknown how much intelligence we can obtain."

After saying that, Tian Mengxue hurriedly left the office, and Di Xiong immediately sent a telegram to Zhang Zhenyang, Liu Chengliang and Gu Yuan, asking them to mobilize the army and air force to prepare to participate in the battle with the Mongolian army.

In Mongolia, the Kulun government still did not find the bandit Enqin, but the government's own pressure was getting bigger and bigger, so they had to bite the bullet and prepare to go to war with the Black Flag Army of Northern Tang City. Now, the financial and political problems of the whole Mongolia are getting more and more serious. After signing the treaty with Japan, Japanese trading companies entered the Kulun government-controlled area of ​​Outer Mongolia. Brothels, casinos, and opium dens under the name of the trading companies opened one after another. The Japanese made a lot of money, but the Kulun government did not increase much tax revenue. Wutai was ready to go to the Beiyang government for negotiations. According to the decision made at their meeting, if necessary, the title of Mongolia could be nominally revoked in exchange for a large amount of money and food provided by the Beiyang. After all, they have now lost the protection of the Tsarist Russians, and it is already quite difficult to fight against the Beiyang government. In addition, the Beiyang government has recently often sent officials to put pressure on them, which forced them to bow to the other side. However, through this series of political contacts, the Kulun government discovered that they had made a mistake. They had always thought that Di Congmo and his gang were the running dogs of the Beiyang government, but now they know that the other side is actually not much different from the horse bandits. This made them a little bolder. This time, the troops were also supported by the Japanese, and they vowed to eliminate Erdenet's forces in Mongolia in one fell swoop.

It was Xiangyue who came to assist the Kulun government. She arranged for airplanes to airlift a lot of weapons to the Kulun government, and even fighter jets. However, she was not naive enough to think that the Mongolian army alone could defeat Di Congmo. This war was to make the other side focus all their energy on Kulun, so that she could send people to sneak into Erdenet again and wait for an opportunity to continue to assassinate Di Congmo, Leng Hanbing and others. In order to gain the trust of the Mongols, she did not hesitate to take herself as a hostage, allowing Wutai to take her back to the mansion and possess her body. She also used the charm she learned in the special agent school to fascinate Wutai.

After Hioki Masu was killed, Lin Yishui personally published an article on the front page of the "Justice Daily" titled "The Action of Justice", detailing the assassination process, and sent the newspaper to all parts of the country through the black market. After reading the newspaper, the people of the country cheered, and celebration ceremonies were held in Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Changsha. The people of Beijing and Tianjin did not celebrate under the close surveillance of the military police and detectives, but they were secretly telling each other and applauding. After the Beiyang government was severely protested by Japan, it had to spend a lot of money to buy peace. Yuan Shikai was furious and vomited blood on the spot. He announced a reward of 50,000 silver dollars for the assassination of Di Xiong. Leng Hanbing, Liu Zhendong, and Li Fei tied for second place, all 40,000 silver dollars. Such a high reward has exceeded Bai Lang's 30,000 silver dollars bounty that year. The Japanese garrison and the Black Dragon Society offered a reward of 100,000 yen for the assassination of Di Xiong, and Leng Hanbing and the other three offered 80,000 yen. Wu Zhong, Lan Jinping, Zhang Zhenyang, Bai Xiuling and other Mohists were also on the list.

Kawashima Naniwa, who was already the vice president of the Black Dragon Society, was very anxious about the growing strength of the Black Flag Army. After discussing with the president Uchida Ryohei, he ordered the removal of Yoshida Ryozo from the position of president of the Beijing Black Dragon Society and replaced him with Kenji Doihara, a professional agent, as the new president. He allocated 3 million yen in funds specifically to deal with the Justice Party and the Black Flag Army.

Xiang Yue's intelligence capability was far stronger than that of the Mongols. Through the deaths of Handado's two sons, she deduced that there must be Erdenet's spies lurking in Kulun. Under her instructions, Handado arranged for the police station's patrol team and security forces to conduct a large-scale search of Kulun. Several other nearby cities also began martial law. However, the Mongols were greedy. The search was called robbery. The whole city of Kulun fell into panic. The police searched house to house for Han spies. Some people with ulterior motives wanted to take this opportunity to make a fortune, and some Mongols were naturally repulsive to the Han people. As a result, they joined the ranks of informers. In a short period of time, a large number of Han "spies" were arrested, many shops and entertainment venues were looted and then set on fire, and some houses inhabited by Han people were directly occupied by Mongols. Sun Xiaotie's pot-mending shop did not escape and was directly sealed off by the Mongols. However, Sun Xiaotie and his companions still managed to escape with their lives, because there was a bribed informant in the police station who tipped them off, which allowed them to move their base in advance. The drugstore escaped because the new owner of the drugstore was a Mongolian, a grassroots informant developed by Sun Xiaotie, so the Mongolian police did not make things difficult for him. On the contrary, the situation of Da Kuisheng was quite bad. Since most of the caravans were Han people, they were robbed by the Mongolian police. A large number of goods were directly snatched away by the Mongolians, and several general managers and deputy general managers of the trading companies, including Wang Baichuan, were also directly captured by the other side. From the perspective of Kulun, it really cannot be said that they arrested the wrong person, because the news of the Mongolian preparations for war was leaked to the intelligence team by Da Kuisheng.

Fortunately, the commander, Prince Wutai, had been well-fed by Wang Baichuan before, and this time he extorted a sum of money and secretly released them. Of course, the goods and funds in the shops were gone. After Wang Baichuan returned to Beitang City, he said to Zhang Wentang, who was in charge of Da Kuisheng Beitang Bank, "We have been robbed time and time again, and a lot of hard-earned money has been robbed in vain. The reason we suffer is that we have no weapons. I heard that General Manager Duan was also robbed by warlords in Baotou. We must establish our own armed guard this time. Mr. Di promised to sell us weapons."

Zhang Wentang agreed and took money from Beitang Bank to buy 3,000 rifles, 60,000 rounds of ammunition, 30 machine guns and 30 boxes of ammunition from Beihai Gun Factory. Beihai Gun Factory had entered a period of rapid development, and the guns and ammunition produced filled the warehouse. After asking Di Xiong for instructions, the factory director Guo Zhiliang sold the guns and ammunition to Da Kuisheng Trading Company.

On April 30, the Mongolian cavalry and the scouts of the Black Flag Army had a conflict on the banks of the Orkhon River. After several Mongolian cavalrymen were killed, both sides chose to retreat. In a village outside Orkhon City, the Mongolian army ambushed more than a dozen scouts of the Justice Army, and both sides suffered casualties. Recently, the Black Flag Army has a large number of new recruits, and the degree of training is also quite different. In addition, the previous successive victories against the Mongolian army have led to a lot of underestimation of the enemy, resulting in the recent reconnaissance being repeatedly discovered by the Mongolian army. In Darkhan, several Japanese agents led the Mongolian police to suddenly attack a hotel and captured several Han people in a room. It turned out that there were Japanese agents mixed in with the guards guarding the door today. They saw through the intelligence personnel planted by the Justice Party, which led to their arrest.

However, Xiang Yuefangzi was worried in the Mongolian army's flight base at this time. She found that the Mongolians were learning to fly airplanes very slowly. The flight training had lasted for two or three months, but most Mongolians could only fly the plane into the sky. The operation was quite clumsy. Seeing this, she said to the Japanese flight instructor Matsushima Naoto: "These Mongolians look so stupid. Can they really fight an air battle with Di Congmo's Air Force tomorrow? I can hardly have expectations for these people's flying skills."

Naoto Matsushima seemed quite optimistic. He said, "Tomorrow I will arrange seven people from the Empire of Japan to fly planes to guide the Mongolian planes. If they really can't hit the target, they can just crash into the enemy planes. During this period, I have not only trained their flying skills, but also their courage. For this reason, I even used stimulants to numb their nerves in order to carry out this kind of suicide attack. As for these seven imperial soldiers, they are all excellent pilots who retired due to crimes. Don't worry." Matsushima said it lightly, as if he didn't take other people's lives seriously.

However, Xiang Yuefangzi was quite uneasy. She also knew the recent situation of the Kulun government. Due to the changes in the political situation in Kulun, she did not plan to stay here for long regardless of the success or failure of this operation. But for this war, the Japanese military has invested so much money. She did not want the Mongols to be defeated too quickly and hoped to cause as much damage to the Black Flag Army as possible.

The next morning, the Black Flag Army took the lead in launching an attack, contrary to normal practice. Zhu Anbang led a cavalry regiment to raid Orhun City, and the insider quickly opened the city gate. The local Mongolian garrison had only a few hundred people, and most of them were a mob. The battle lasted less than an hour, and Orhun City was captured by the Justice Army. More than 300 Mongolian soldiers were killed, and the rest basically surrendered.

This time, the Justice Army acted very quickly, and Kulun had not yet reacted. After capturing Orkhon, Zhu Anbang arranged for several disguised Mongolian soldiers to go to Kulun to report the news, falsely claiming that Orkhon City was still in Mongolian hands, hoping that Kulun would quickly send a large army to rescue it. He also asked hundreds of soldiers from the First Brigade to wear Orkhon Army uniforms, and the two troops began to play a play in the city to mislead the Mongolian army's scouts. Zhang Zhenyang had led the other two regiments to ambush in Motianling, east of Orkhon. Liu Zhendong did not return to the team due to injury, and the second regiment was represented by the deputy head Wu Guozhu.

Soon, the Kulun side really got the news, and Danbijian was immediately in a panic, because Orkhon was his direct territory. As a result, he immediately sent his eldest son Wuge to lead two brigades to rescue Orkhon, with a total of about 6,000 people, all of whom were cavalry. At the same time, he ordered the air force to rush out to cover their attack. In front of the furious Danbijian, Hangdaduo didn't say much, agreed to his request, and ordered the air force to be dispatched. However, Xiangyue Fangzi noticed that something was wrong, because Orkhon's Mongolian army seemed too stubborn, which was probably a trap. Although she didn't care about the life and death of the Mongolians, she couldn't tolerate causing heavy casualties to the Black Flag Army. Xiangyue hurried to Prince Wutai's mansion. The guards of the prince's mansion knew that she was Prince Wutai's mistress. No one stopped her, and there was no need to report. She went straight through the mansion gate and the yard and entered the living room.

There were several exquisite bird cages in the living room. Prince Wutai was playing with birds. When he saw Xiangyue coming in, he was very happy. He came up to her, hugged her tightly, and went straight into the bedroom.

Xiang Yue said angrily: "The war has already started. The two brigades of the Air Force and the Minister of Defense have already been dispatched. You are still thinking about playing with birds and women. What about the four brigades you promised to dispatch? If you don't set off immediately, the two brigades led by Wu Ge will become isolated and will be defeated by the Black Flag Army one by one."

Wu Tai put Xiang Yue on the bed and took off her clothes while laughing: "Danbijian is my mortal enemy. He has only two brigades under his command. If he is defeated, he will have to step down and I can serve as the Minister of Defense."

Xiang Yue said: "At this time, you Mongols must unite. After two brigades are eaten, the remaining four brigades may not be able to defeat the other three brigades. If Kulun is captured by the Black Flag Army, what is the use of you becoming the Minister of Defense?"

Although Xiangyue was very anxious, she did not stop Wutai from further attacking her. She knew that it would be difficult to convince him if she did not feed him. After the clouds and rain cleared, Wutai was finally convinced and called the division commander Haishan, ordering him to lead four brigades to attack Erdenet, taking the Darkhan route and avoiding Orkhon.