People are not cute because they are beautiful, but they are beautiful because they are cute.

- Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (one of the most outstanding writers in the history of world literature)

The appearance of the Date family and the Uesugi family are inseparable, the repeated persecution of the Date family's army by Uesugi Keitor, and the secret hiding of Ming Jin after Katakura Kojuro and Goto Nobuyasu sent troops, have no practical significance for Shiramine, who is still sailing at sea.

The spies and ninjas sent by Hakumine to Mutsu in advance, under the command of Naoki Yoshikawa and with the assistance of Hanzo Hattori, have spread all over Dewa, Echigo, Echichu, Ueno, Shimono, Hitachi, and other countries, and information about these countries is being sent back to Hakumine in a steady stream.

As for the seemingly stable alliance between the Date family and the Uesugi family, Bai Feng never paid attention to it from beginning to end, because the alliance between the weak and the strong is the least trustworthy of all alliances, and it is impossible for the Uesugi family to let the Date family rise again!

Not to mention the rest, it was Ueno Province, which originally belonged to the Ida family's sphere of influence, and of the fourteen counties that belonged to Ueno Province, six of the prefectures were controlled by the Uesugi family, and the remaining eight counties were mostly controlled by small families subordinate to the Uesugi family.

Although Uesugi Kenshin personally painted a seemingly bright future for Date Masamune before the formal alliance, is the promise of the strong to the weak really worth believing? No one can guarantee that what Uesugi Keiho did was not secretly instructed by Uesugi Kenshin behind it?

The declining Date family needed a strong ally like the Uesugi family, which was the only reason Date Masamune agreed to an alliance with the Uesugi family;

Otherwise, Date Masamune would not have left the coalition army and returned to Shimono Province without the slightest hesitation after noticing that something was wrong with Uesugi Keitor, and as the head of the Date family, he had enough reason to believe that Uesugi Keitor's actions were definitely not spontaneous!

Not to mention the Uesugi family, which has extremely strict laws, even the Date family, where most of the important ministers in the family are the elders of the family governor, there is no retainer who dares to go against the will of the family governor and do something excessive; not to mention that Uesugi Jinghu is still the adopted son of Uesugi Kenshin's henchman!

After this incident, the alliance of Uesugi Date, which was not strong, almost announced its parting of ways, but it was also necessary to rely on the Uesugi family, the big banner of the fox and the fake tiger of Date Masamune, in order to maintain this fragile alliance, he could only sacrifice his family's 50,000 soldiers.

Hakumine, who still doesn't know that the alliance between the Date family and the Uesugi family is close to falling apart, has never faced up to the alliance of the two families when analyzing the chaos around Mutsu Province, and even Hakumine is ready to share the Date family with the Uesugi family!

The three sub-kingdoms of Sado Province, Hitachi Province of Tokaido, and Shimono Province of Higashiyama Province were the territories that the Yanhuang family had to occupy and control, and the Izuwa Province, which directly determined the relationship between the Yanhuang family and the Uesugi family, had been listed by Hakumine as an area not to attack for the time being.

Only the Shimono Country, which is nominally independent, but is actually controlled by the Uesugi family, how the Yanhuang family will deal with it, Bai Feng himself does not have a definite decision, because the Yanhuang family, which has limited strength, is simply unable to annex too much territory at one time.

The two Roman legions and the two Lucy legions on the way to the Mutsu Kingdom, plus the two banner legions and the two Essini legions that will arrive later, these more than 200,000 troops can indeed help the Yanhuang family conquer the city, but what about the absorption and governance after the occupation?

The quantity and quality of the armed forces are indeed the most effective guarantee for resolving the territorial issue; however, after the end of the war, construction and development are no longer a matter that the armed forces can solve, and the overall strength of the Yan and Huang families is still not strong, and at present they do not have the strength to annex the three sub-states in one fell swoop.

Of course, an island country like Sado, which has a stone height of only 20,000 koku, does not need to be governed by the Yanhuang family at all, and the Sado country, which takes the naval base as the direction of development, will be quickly built and formed with the direct assistance of the city of Rome.

Hakumine, who was thinking about various affairs in his head, didn't fall into deep thought for too long, and after the clan commanders in the conference room said that they had figured out the situation in Shimono and Hitachi, Maxi and Darnell began to introduce them to the chaotic situation in Dewa Country.

The Dewa Province that stood between the Yanhuang family and the Uesugi family Echigo Province was the same as the Mutsu Province of the Five Kingdoms, but in contrast to the Five Kingdoms of the Mutsu Kingdom, the Dewa Kingdom was formed by the merger of two countries.

The northern part of the country was originally the country of Hago with eight counties, and the southern area was originally the country of Hazen with the land of six counties, and after the merger of the two countries of Hago and Hazen, there was now a state with a stone height of 870,000 stones!

Hitachi Province, which has a high number of 756,000 stones, has three powerful families, and there are naturally no fewer Dewa countries with higher stone heights, and the Ando family and the Daihoji family of Hago, and the Tozawa family and the Onodera family in Hazen are all overlord families in Dewa Province.

After the merger, the Hazen Province and the Hago Province were still distinct, and the ties between the various families were also bounded by the old borders, forming two forces that did not interact with each other, among them, the Tozawa family and the Onodera family of the Hazen Province have always been vassal families of the Uesugi family!

After several generations of efforts by the Uesugi family, the Tozawa family, which owns Kakunodate Castle, an important town in Hazen Province, and the Onodera family, which owns Yokote Castle, an important town in Hazen Province, have become vassal families under the de facto control of the Uesugi family, and their nominal independence is only their last fig leaf.

The current governor of the Tozawa family of Kakunodate Castle, Tozawa Moriyasu, and the current governor of the Onodera family of Yokote Castle, Onodera Terumi, both served beside the previous governor of the Uesugi family when they were young, and it was not until the death of their respective family governors that the Uesugi family supported them to ascend to the throne.

With such a relationship, the Uesugi family's control of the Tozawa and Onodera families was unavoidable, but it was the Daihoji family and the Ando family in Hago Province that maintained their family's independence through a close alliance.

In particular, the Andong family, which sits on the three important towns of Hinoyama Castle, Ducobalt Castle, and Minato Castle, is much stronger than the Tozawa family and the Onodera family combined.

Nanbu Jixian, who was born with a gentle appearance, is not only the imperial envoy of the Ando family, but also the most important close friend of the current Emperor Shokincho, so whenever the Uesugi family intends to infiltrate the country of Hago, they will be severely reprimanded by the Emperor Masakimachi!

The previous generations of Uesugi family governors were out-and-out heroes who did not care about the emperor who existed in name only and was far away in Kyoto, but it just so happened that the current governor Uesugi Kenshin was extremely loyal to the emperor, so he naturally would not do anything to displease the emperor.

As a result, the Anton family, which is becoming more and more powerful and almost dominates the country of Yugo, exists unharmed under the noses of the Uesugi family; fortunately, the governor of the Anton family, Anton Aiji, is also self-aware and has not expanded his family's power to the south.