Hirohito personally shot at the rebel bandit who rushed in, partly out of panic—the agitated look of that young captain trying to pounce on him would be reassuring to no one when unseen—and partly out of anger. For so many years, his power had never been threatened like this, where even his life and safety were about to fall into someone else's hands. A surge of grief and indignation welled up, and he couldn't care about anything else. He fired a shot right at the leading rebel captain.

Captain Kono Hisashi's subordinates, seeing their commander wounded, instinctively raised their weapons to aim at Hirohito. But their hands just wouldn't obey. They were facing the Emperor, the living god of the present world. Everyone had seen many portraits of Hirohito and pictures of various badges, but seeing such a living, breathing human being with their own eyes—the sense of familiarity, strangeness, and all sorts of irreconcilable feelings—left these soldiers at a loss.

The shot Captain Kono Hisashi did not bear a grudge. On the contrary, seeing the soldiers in chaos, the captain hurriedly grabbed a nearby soldier to force himself to stand up. The captain gasped and said, "Do not be rude to the Emperor!" Because of the overexertion, the captain began to cough, and fresh blood flowed faster from the bullet hole.

"Arrest... arrest these people!" the captain ordered his subordinates.

The mutinous soldiers dared not be rude to the Emperor, but they wouldn't be polite at all to the subordinates beside the Emperor. Moreover, more and more soldiers poured in from behind. Part of them eyed the Emperor's guards covetously, while the other part dragged up those guys who were kneeling and sitting, dragging them away like dead pigs. Because they had been kneeling for a long time, many people couldn't move at all. Being dragged by the soldiers could be considered liberating them from the *seiza* posture. The feeling of blood circulating made this bunch of people ignore their fear, and their mood actually improved quite a bit.

Hirohito didn't care at all about those imperial relatives and dignitaries in front of him. He just watched them being taken out one by one. As the conference room became empty, he couldn't help but feel afraid in his heart. After firing that shot just now, Hirohito's anger had been vented, and now the feeling of unease was becoming stronger and stronger.

Captain Kono Hisashi was afraid that someone would lose control and harm Hirohito at this moment. Even though he was constantly losing blood, he did not leave the conference room. It was not until Lieutenant Colonel Ando Teruzo arrived with Colonel Atobe that he suddenly fainted due to blood loss and relief.

Ordering men to quickly send Captain Kono Hisashi to the "field hospital," Lieutenant Colonel Ando Teruzo then turned to salute Hirohito. "Your Majesty, greetings. I am Ando Teruzo."

Hirohito looked at the epaulets on Ando Teruzo's shoulder. He wasn't too sure if this man was the commander-in-chief of this operation, as there was also a colonel standing nearby. However, from their positions, Lieutenant Colonel Ando Teruzo was obviously in the leadership position. From the perspective of Japanese officialdom, this appeared somewhat nondescript.

"Your Majesty, we are not here to strip you of your power, nor are we here to harm you. We represent the Japanese people. Please, Your Majesty, listen to the voice of the bottom layer, and please truly take charge of Japan's political power." Lieutenant Colonel Ando Teruzo's voice was not agitated. It was more suitable for Hirohito to be alive than dead. If Hirohito died, he had brothers who could succeed the Emperor just the same. The uprising army did not control the entire military power of Japan.

Hirohito did not answer. Speaking as an equal with the mutineers was itself a sign of weakness. Although Hirohito did not yet have the simple and honest intention of looking up to the sky and howling, then perishing together with the mutineers, he knew that as a captive at this moment, he had reached the final bottom line. Making any further concessions would not do.

Ando Teruzo also knew at this moment that more arduous work was beginning. Just looking at Hirohito's performance, at least he really had the "style" of the ruling class. Not anxious, not shouting—as a negotiation opponent, he was very difficult to deal with. One can imagine the difficulty of trying to break through such an Emperor, who was like a stone in a latrine pit.

Colonel Atobe, who had always appeared quite relaxed, also looked grave. When Ando worked under Colonel Atobe, he rarely saw the Colonel with such an expression. It seemed Colonel Atobe also understood that the matter was very difficult to resolve.

Just then, a messenger ran in and whispered a few words in Lieutenant Colonel Ando's ear. Lieutenant Colonel Ando's face finally showed some relief. The news brought by the messenger was that Kita Ikki had been found and had arrived at the Imperial Palace. Being able to push these matters to professional people to handle, Lieutenant Colonel Ando Teruzo felt the sensation of a large stone pressing on his chest lighten a bit.

The news of the mutiny in Tokyo spread very quickly. Open battles with real swords and guns couldn't be hidden from anyone. Not to mention the explosions at the Imperial Palace and the intense gunfire that sounded like popping beans. This news quickly reached the Chinese Embassy, including Kita Ikki's secret request, which was sent to the Chinese side together.

On April 4th, the Chinese side received a relatively detailed report. The success of the mutiny did not have any special repercussions within the Politburo Standing Committee. As Chen Ke listened to the report, he wore a smile, a smile that was quite sympathetic. This largely eased the atmosphere among the Standing Committee members. It seemed Chen Ke did not prepare to take military action to make the already chaotic Japanese situation even more chaotic.

After the reports from Li Runshi and others came to a temporary pause, he asked, "Have the Japanese Army and Navy expressed clear support for the mutiny now?"

"We haven't received news in that regard for the time being," Gu Weijun answered. After speaking, he asked Chen Ke, "Chairman Chen, how do we deal with such a situation now?"

Chen Ke replied, "Prepare on two fronts. On one hand, prepare materials to aid Japan. On the other hand, prepare troops to recover North Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands."

Gu Weijun had become completely accustomed to this extremely realistic way of handling things. One of the characteristics of the People's Party high command was that unless they absolutely had to talk about good or bad, they never used "good or bad" to evaluate. Good and bad were personal viewpoints; everyone was different. Seeking truth from facts meant only talking about what happened and what impact it had. It had nothing to do with good, evil, good, or bad.

"How do we judge whether this mutiny has succeeded?" Gu Weijun asked.

"If the leaders of the Japanese mutiny can apply to us for aid, and can transport the aid back to Japan, then that shows the mutiny is thoroughly successful." Chen Ke gave the answer.

This standard was slightly strange. Gu Weijun thought for a moment before understanding. Being able to get China's aid back to Japan naturally showed that the mutiny side already controlled the situation. And Chen Ke's attitude towards the mutiny was also revealed: he did not want to intervene in this matter.

Chen Ke replied, "No one is willing to give up power. So, how these Japanese revolutionaries combine the people's needs with the current situation is a very critical question. If there is any disjointedness, any action that fails to grasp the main point, this revolution will be directly counter-attacked. Of course, assuming they succeed temporarily, whose hands the fruits of the revolution will ultimately fall into is still an open question. We have had so many peasant uprisings in Chinese history where the people finally rose up to shake the old dynasty, temporarily displaying the power of the people. But in the end, they still didn't reach the height of a true revolution. The old system was not overthrown."

Gu Weijun listened to Chen Ke calmly analyzing the Japanese revolution, and surprisingly felt a bit emotional in his heart. The revolution led by the People's Party was different from any revolution in the old era. Revolutions in other eras had to maximize the use of the power of landlords and gentry. The revolution led by the People's Party roughly pushed the landlords and gentry aside. Only then was comprehensive victory finally achieved. So what trajectory would the Japanese revolution have? This gave Gu Weijun a feeling of expectation. Toward this tough opponent of China in Asia, Gu Weijun harbored some malicious thoughts.

"Do we just wait like this?" Li Shouxian asked. Among the Politburo Standing Committee members, Li Shouxian's seniority was only slightly longer than Li Runshi's. He had always thought that meetings at the Politburo level would be more intense and more aggressive. After participating in person, he found that the Politburo Standing Committee often had an attitude of "waiting for opportunities." This was indeed a very brilliant method; being able to make strategic judgments about the future required a very powerful strategic vision. However, Li Shouxian was also very clear that he did not have the ability to provide ideas for this. So he wanted to confirm Chen Ke's thoughts even more.

"No one country would be willing to suffer interference and aggression from another country. Since Japan particularly wants to invade China, they will be exceptionally sensitive to China's intervention. We make preparations for aid, and at the same time being able to say nothing is the greatest help to the Japanese revolutionaries," Chen Ke answered. As someone from downstream in history, Chen Ke was extremely decisive when determining the direction of China's development. Similarly, when he needed to wait, he was also extremely patient. If for other comrades the future was an unknowable haze, for Chen Ke, there was no concept of the future; all Chen Ke had to do was merely "approach the past."

Right now, there was a "past" that Chen Ke felt needed to be resolved immediately. After letting Gu Weijun go back to make preparations, and only the 5+2 members were left in the conference room, Chen Ke said, "Comrades have all seen the development budget for nuclear weapons. Once the arrow is on the string, there is no turning back. We must make up our minds to finish this work."

Japan was very important to China, but as the line in that movie about China's nuclear weapons development Chen Ke had seen went, "It's better to have it yourself than to have your father or mother have it." Relying on a favorable external environment was never as good as finding a solution oneself. It was now 1937, and the Little Mustache in Germany was implementing economic policies similar to history. Chen Ke knew very well what those policies meant. The seemingly vibrant German economic policy led to "economic prosperity" caused by forcibly gathering Germany's economic power to invest in military construction.

This prosperity was bound to have its end. When Chen Ke was very young, he had believed the saying, "If Hitler had died in 1939, he would have been the greatest person in German history." Chen Ke had actually believed this nonsense back then. Looking at it now, when the German economy reached 1939 and couldn't hold on and was about to collapse, even if the Little Mustache died then, he would only leave behind the laughingstock of an "incompetent person."

Regardless of how the Little Mustache prepared to invest in the war, or what kind of European war the Little Mustache thought would happen under the current situation, China's potential enemy was still the United States.

The theoretical framework and mathematical models for nuclear weapons had already been preliminarily completed. What lay before China was a process requiring thousands of factories, hundreds of thousands of scientific and technical personnel, millions of various parts, and heaven knows how many risky experiments. This was not a matter of a few months, or even a few years. This was a comprehensive test of China's industrial capability.

After New China built nuclear weapons, it did not continue to research desperately like the United States and the Soviet Union. By American standards, in the thirty years after China possessed nuclear weapons, it did not have many intercontinental nuclear missiles capable of hitting the US mainland. But the United States still considered China a powerful country. Because being able to manufacture nuclear weapons itself meant a country's industrial strength. A country with such industrial strength was very difficult to shake. Of course, the hugeness of the investment required for this industrial strength was also beyond imagination.

The Standing Committee members had all seen the budget. Compared to this budget, Japan's little matters were nothing at all. China's industrial scale was already more than ten times that of Japan, and at the current rate of development, it wouldn't take long to reach twenty times that of Japan. Even with such industrial capability, this budget made China feel it couldn't take it. Countless things were content verified in theory; whether they could be completed as planned once large sums of investment were actually made in practice was an unknown.

This was not just a brand-new construction process; the existing Chinese industrial system also needed adjustment. Some had to be split, some merged. This was a brand-new field that would drive major changes in the entire Chinese aspect. For example, in the plan, what needed to be built first was not nuclear weapons research, but mine-mouth power generation centered in Shanxi, and high-voltage power transmission lines transmitting electricity from Shanxi to provinces like Hebei, Henan, and Huaihai.

Not only that, the power grid construction within each province was not yet fully completed. There were no power grids between many cities; they all relied on transporting coal to power stations in each city. Railway transport became the bottleneck for everything. Fortunately, the People's Party had buried its head in working desperately to build railways these years, and passenger and freight lines had gradually begun to separate, which barely met the demand. But compared to these investments and the new power grid investments, it seemed like nothing.

The various feasibility reports up to now added up to hundreds of tons. As for the paper spent writing these feasibility reports, the total probably reached the level calculated in tens of thousands of tons. It is said that the Hegemon-King of Western Chu, Xiang Yu, could lift a cauldron weighing a thousand *jin*. Even if the seven members of the 5+2 Politburo Standing Committee had the strength of the Hegemon-King of Western Chu, they could only lift 3.5 tons combined. The content they had to decide on would determine the jobs of tens of millions of people and money in the tens or hundreds of billions. One can imagine the magnitude of the pressure.

Japan's little matters really counted for nothing in the face of such investment and pressure.

No one wanted to refute Chen Ke, and no one wanted to support Chen Ke. Because no one had any certainty in their hearts. The comrades immediately used their respective ways of relieving pressure. Li Runshi and a few others immediately lit cigarettes, while Xu Dian sat even straighter.

Finally, Li Shouxian said, "Should we discuss this again in the Politburo?"

"Discussing it again will have the same result. No one dares to take this responsibility. Since that is the case, I will take this responsibility," Chen Ke replied. Every time he made a major decision, Chen Ke would feel just how powerful the founders of New China were. Even for someone like Chen Ke, a "person with only a past and no future," when walking through history again, he felt immense pressure. How much courage and determination did those explorers and pioneers have?

Within the Party, only Chen Ke dared to say this. His one sentence could be worth hundreds of billions. There was no helping it. Chen Ke himself hoped to be more "scientific and democratic," but for most people, or for the vast majority of people, mastering existing things was relatively easy. For unknown things, everyone instinctively held a "more cautious" view. The strict supervision of these years had brought quite a few "side effects," one of which was that the ideology of seeking stability had gained the upper hand in many fields. For things that were ninety percent sure, everyone was willing to do them; for risks, they tried their best to "avoid" them.

Of course, Party construction still had results. At least everyone was "avoiding" rather than escaping. This was already a very progressive situation.

After the meeting adjourned, Chen Ke and You Gou talked about this matter again. You Gou said somewhat awkwardly, "Chairman Chen, are we just going to deal with those comrades in the research department like that?"

Regarding the nuclear weapons plan, it wasn't that there were no opponents. The first to jump out were not comrades within the Party, because comrades within the Party didn't understand nuclear weapons. It was a small group of "scientists" who jumped out. This made Chen Ke quite surprised at the time. Most of this bunch of scientists were cultivated by the People's Party itself and were now in their forties. Many were among the batch sent to study abroad at public expense. Chen Ke had also been away from the technology industry for ten years, so these new generations didn't have much interaction with Chen Ke.

The reason these people rose up in opposition was "insufficient preparation, unclear research direction." It was impossible for Chen Ke to clearly analyze what purpose this bunch of people's reaction was driven by. Was it to prove their own scientific nature? Or did they want to challenge Chen Ke, this authority? Or was it because the "everyone must have a voice" campaign Chen Ke promoted in research units touched upon the "authoritative status" of this bunch of people?

In short, they clearly and unequivocally opposed the nuclear weapons plan and various related plans. They believed that this package of plans needed to obtain the approval of these authoritative figures in various fields before it could continue to be implemented.

Against such a group of people, Chen Ke adopted extremely high-pressure tactics for the first time: "Exclude them all from the development plan." This was using higher authority to suppress lower-level authority. Chen Ke never thought that one day he would actually do such a thing. But Chen Ke had no choice. If China's industrial level hadn't reached the current step, if China's industry hadn't reached the critical juncture where it was just one kick away from kicking open the door to truly possessing the ability to contend for world supremacy, Chen Ke would absolutely not have adopted this approach. The situation was stronger than people; Chen Ke could only adopt this last resort now.

"I really have no choice. I can't split myself into so many pieces," Chen Ke replied. "By the way, Comrade You Gou, I originally wanted Li Runshi to go to Lanfang Province. Now I feel I'm afraid I can't let him go. I want to let him take over Comrade Chen Tianhua's work and let Comrade Ren Peiguo go to Lanfang Province instead of Comrade Li Runshi. What do you think?"