The fact that someone from the Navy, dominated by the Tōseiha (Control Faction), would defect to the Kōdōha (Imperial Way Faction) seemed somewhat unexpected. The Japanese Army had suffered repeated defeats, so in comparison, the Navy was doing relatively well. In his conversation with them, Kita Ikki discovered that these young naval officers defecting to the Kōdōha were actually motivated by war-weariness, which couldn't help but give rise to a sense of astonishment.

The young naval lieutenant who had explicitly expressed his war-weariness said with some embarrassment, "Mr. Kita, I have five brothers in my family. My parents passed away early, and my older brother died in battle in Korea a few years ago. His ashes returned to Japan with the retreating troops. I was still studying at the naval academy then, and I only found out when I went home to visit that when the remains of the war dead were sent back, my uncles fought over my brother's ashes at the gate of the barracks just to get the pension money!"

Hearing this, the expressions of these young soldiers turned ugly. This kind of thing hadn't happened just once or twice. Captain Suematsu Taihei, a member of Kita Ikki's organization, had mentioned such things when he was in the Aomori Regiment. Captain Suematsu Taihei had also told another story: "When the Korean War was tense, some parents in the Aomori Fifth Regiment wrote letters to their sons going off to war, saying that after they died in battle, they should use the money issued by the state to fulfill their filial piety."

The young naval lieutenant said seriously, "If it were to defend Japan, I would participate in any kind of war. But fighting China now is not to defend Japan; the high-ranking officials and dignitaries are only in it for themselves. The war is only making Japan weaker and weaker. It hasn't made Japan any richer at all. Not a single word of the propaganda in the army has come true."

"What if Japan is defeated by China?" Kita Ikki couldn't help but ask. War indeed could not bring benefits to Japan, but the People's Party was very likely to launch a war against Japan. This wasn't about how warlike the People's Party was, but that the situation would definitely develop in this direction. If the People's Party wanted to go to war against the Dutch East Indies in the south, they would absolutely not allow a Japan with a powerful navy to exist in the north.

"This..." The young soldiers looked at Kita Ikki with astonished eyes. For such a big shot to say something like this, they couldn't help but consider what exactly Kita Ikki was trying to say.

Kita Ikki, however, did not continue. For the past few years, he had been considering the future relationship between China and Japan. It was no longer possible for Japan to suppress China, so what would the future Sino-Japanese relationship be like? If China only restricted Japan to the Japanese archipelago, then Japan wouldn't have any future to speak of either. From the perspective of political cost, restoring the old Chinese tributary system and occasionally throwing some scraps to Japan to buy people's hearts might be more cost-effective for China. But such a future was not what Kita Ikki hoped to see. Even if Japan itself could undergo a complete revolution, Japan's future couldn't possibly be held in Japan's own hands. This was the matter Kita Ikki felt most uncertain about.

Seeing Kita Ikki remain silent, the young men plucked up their courage and tentatively said, "Mr. Kita, we want to support someone like you to become Japan's leader. The communes you've organized near Tokyo make us all look up to your character."

Hearing this, Kita Ikki smiled bitterly. After the earthquake, Kita Ikki had become somewhat famous. He had set up several rural communes in some areas on the outskirts of Tokyo. There was nothing strange about rural communes; to put it plainly, they were Soviet organizations. Following scientific and democratic organizational methods, the feudal system was abolished on several plots of land, and intensive management was implemented. Matters big and small were discussed and passed through Soviet meetings, equal pay for equal work was implemented for laborers, strict financial budgets and management strategies were enforced, and agricultural products were linked with several chain food enterprises for one-stop service.

In the process of implementing this, Kita Ikki encountered no small amount of difficulties. He relied on his own status to withstand the pressure. To put it bluntly, Kita Ikki was a feudal lord who merely implemented the Soviet system within his own "territory." Such an organizational method was not at all advanced internationally; only in a place like Japan could it present a competitive advantage against small and medium capital relying on economies of scale, and withstand the pressure of large conglomerates relying on its internal distribution system. Having witnessed the feedback of Chinese industry to agriculture, Kita Ikki felt that his few rural communes, which couldn't even compare to the scale of a Chinese production brigade, were really quite pitiful. Kita Ikki had also thought about expanding the scale of this land, trying to connect the land into one piece as much as possible. As a result, he met with resolute opposition from the surrounding landlords. The reasons were bizarre and varied, but in short, they had a great aversion to Kita Ikki's commune system.

But in the eyes of these young men, and in the eyes of many people, the first thing about these communes was that no one went hungry. The commune prioritized meeting its own supply, and the surplus products were traded externally. The profits obtained were distributed and used after discussion by the commune assembly. Aside from the intense cultivation of the land in the summer, Japanese farmers had to go into the city to work in the winter. Even so, the annual income, after deducting rent and taxes, was often difficult to maintain a warm and full life for a family. That the rural communes didn't go hungry and even had surplus distribution was a very magical thing.

With this topic, Kita Ikki also found some discussion points he could cut into. He analyzed several problems encountered in the existence of the communes. Taxes didn't need to be mentioned; the sale of the commune's agricultural products was subject to layers of exploitation first. Japan's feudalism was no joke; to borrow a phrase from Zhou Shuren, "Moving a stool could get people killed."

Every street, every shop, and even every road was controlled or meddled in by their respective large and small, visible and invisible feudal lords. If the Great Kanto Earthquake hadn't broken many old things, the communes Kita Ikki established would probably have been wiped out long ago. Kita Ikki himself was also a figure with some power in Tokyo, and coupled with his effective disaster relief during the earthquake, everyone gave him face. Even so, Kita Ikki still felt extremely strained. And Kita Ikki knew that when the People's Party swept away these feudal remnants in their own country, they struck extremely hard. Once labeled with organized crime, one would basically be executed. In Japan, the yakuza operated completely openly because the Japanese government was even darker than the yakuza, and the people had to rely on the yakuza to protect themselves. The yakuza also used this to nominally protect the people on one hand, while colluding with the government to mark out territory and oppress the people on the other.

How could young people understand these deep-level things? Hearing the explanation Kita Ikki made using the commune as an example, they were dumbfounded. Recovering from their shock with great difficulty, someone asked, "If these bad people are removed, Japan will get better, right?"

Kita Ikki shook his head, "What we need to do is not to kill people, but to sweep away evil. The root of evil is absolutely not just those few bad people, but deeper things. The system, the atmosphere, the level of social development—these are the real reasons."

Kita Ikki's organization had no formal name. When the young men excitedly wanted to give this organization a resounding name, Kita Ikki stopped such a practice. Because such organizations were just individual small groups. The organization studied Marxism, but its program was mainly anti-feudal. Finally, forced by helplessness, Kita Ikki had to give it a name: the "Japan Anti-Feudal Alliance." The organization's program was to oppose all of Japan's feudal systems and strive to push Japan into a brand-new era.

Hearing Kita Ikki's account, the several young men from the Navy felt their eyes light up, as if they saw a new world. However, the Navy was even stricter than the Army. They just took a primary ideological book about the "Japan Anti-Feudal Alliance" from Captain Ando, agreed on a way to meet in the future, and left in a hurry. When everyone left, they also took a few fried chicken legs Kita Ikki gave them. For the appetites of young people, fried chicken legs coated in batter were truly a delight.

After they left, Captain Ando asked, "Mr. Kita, the Navy won't really go to war with China, will it?" Because of repeated defeats, the Army was temporarily not considering war with China; the impact of the war on the Army was very limited.

"What the Navy thinks is no longer important; just wait and see the Navy's outcome," Kita Ikki replied. Every time he talked about Japan's feudal system with Japanese people, Kita Ikki felt very depressed. Without destruction, there is no rebirth. The destruction of Japan's feudal system would inevitably lead to the complete end of Japan's upper class. A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another!

Kita Ikki's only worry was that if the revolutionaries were themselves a group of feudalists, and the action of new feudal rulers overthrowing old feudal rulers was crowned with the name of revolution, then it would be a farce of dog-eat-dog, a farce of taking turns at the dealer's seat. Apart from shedding countless blood in vain, the significance would be very limited.

With people like Kita Ikki, there would naturally also be people who staunchly maintained Japan's feudal rule. The Tōseiha in the Japanese Navy was basically such a group. What they wanted to maintain was the current system, just like their program: under the control of the military headquarters, without using force, but through top-down legal channels, to carry out stable and gradual national reform.

The Tōseiha bigwigs were extremely satisfied with the encirclement net against China that had already begun to take shape. Since they couldn't contend with China on land, they would contain China's power at sea. This time, China sent a fleet to the Netherlands to demonstrate, which made the Tōseiha celebrate with clapping hands. The alliance relationship needed to be maintained. Once Britain and the Netherlands both stepped onto the anti-China path, coupled with China's tough attitude, this alliance would only become more and more stable. Of course, Japan also had its own plans. What Japan had to do was to cleverly play tricks and divert the anger of the Chinese people towards the Netherlands, which had the weakest naval strength. Since they couldn't cross the vast ocean, what China could do was direct its anger towards Britain, which bordered it on land. At that time, Japan's importance would become prominent. As for China crossing the Tsushima Strait to attack the Japanese mainland, the Japanese side believed they could hold this strait. Although they had been sold out by the British once, the Japanese side still believed that the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was what guaranteed the Japanese mainland would not suffer a Chinese attack.

Japan had its own ideas, but China had no reason to dance to Japan's baton. After the naval formation returned from the demonstration in the Netherlands, the discussion of many new pieces of equipment came onto the agenda. Overly precise experimental equipment had its advantages, but it wasn't practical. Equipment like lasers was excluded from the finalized warships. Chen Ke did not feel it was a pity; after all, laser and transistor technology were only fully applied more than twenty years later, and radar technology had also undergone countless innovations.

Warships of World War II levels were not the Type 054 warships of 21st-century China. The so-called "dumping dumplings" referred to being able to manufacture in large quantities. Having radar, having sonar—this made for a good warship. The remaining key was the naval aviation's torpedo bombers. No warship could withstand being hit by twenty-odd torpedoes; even a monstrosity like the Yamato built by Japan was the same.

Although Italy's industrial level was not high, its level in ship design was very outstanding. The Great Depression made it so the Italians couldn't hold out either. They finally lowered their noble heads and provided China with a lot of shipbuilding technology and ship design ideas. Compared with the ship design ideas provided by the Germans, the Chinese engineering side felt that the Italian designs were more scientific and reasonable. Although the Italians themselves couldn't produce the materials needed for many designs, this didn't stop the Italians' imagination from exerting its effect. A 1:1 scale model of a 25,000-ton aircraft carrier jointly designed by Italy and China had already begun construction in Wuhan and Shanghai simultaneously. These warships would appear in the dry docks in the near future.

Before this, China was not prepared to just stand by foolishly and watch Japan showing off its strength. The battle to liberate Taiwan had already been put on the schedule.

"The key to liberating Taiwan is being able to transport troops onto Taiwan and transport supplies to sustain the troops in combat. The core of everything is the supply line," Navy Commissar Qin Shou explained the design of the Taiwan campaign at the Military Commission meeting.

Theoretically, establishing a supply line from Fujian to the Taiwan Strait would complete the mission. After wiping out the Japanese forces on Taiwan Island, the war would be basically over. Unless Japan could completely cut off this supply line and then leisurely transport over a hundred thousand troops to Taiwan to strangle the Chinese troops on Taiwan Island.

"The key now is the coordination of naval aviation, naval surface forces, and underwater forces." Qin Shou spoke very simply. He didn't want to brag. In fact, the Navy's research result was that if the Japanese army carelessly ran over to Taiwan thinking they could win by relying on the tonnage and volume of their warships, they would definitely suffer a big loss.

"During the day, the Air Force will coordinate with the Navy's surface forces. At night, the underwater forces will coordinate with the surface forces. The fighting on land will depend on whether the comrades in the Army can successfully complete their mission. If the Army completes the mission a day early, the pressure on the Navy can be much lighter." Qin Shou spoke very politely.

With the Navy's grand parade to the Netherlands this time, the naval forces had great confidence in sonar and radar. The width of the Taiwan Strait was limited, and the naval aviation's torpedo bomber units were even more full of confidence. Air Force Commander Chu Fengge stood up immediately after Qin Shou finished speaking, "Comrades, as long as a stable base is built in Taiwan, we can rely on the bases in Taiwan and Fujian to attack at any time under good weather conditions."

Engineering Corps Commander Gu Lu spoke last, "We already have practical experience in the construction of radar stations. We have combat experience in the rapid construction of runways during the Lüda Campaign. Our engineering corps is confident in completing this mission."

The military preparations were already very sufficient; the Political Bureau's considerations on the political side were the final hurdle. However, in this regard, the Political Bureau had not reached a completely unanimous attitude. The Political Bureau all had a question: "After crossing the sea to liberate Taiwan, what will the world's attitude be towards China?"