Only knowledge is power, only knowledge can enable us to love people honestly, respect human labor, and sincerely appreciate the beautiful results of uninterrupted great labor; only knowledge can make us strong spirited, honest and rational people.

- Gorky (proletarian writer of the former Soviet Union, founder of socialist realist literature)

The alliance between the Oda family and the Yanhuang family may be a secret to outsiders, but to the Tokugawa family, the Tokugawa family's close relationship with the Oda family determined that Oda Nobunaga would not hide the Oda family's strategic layout from the Tokugawa family.

The significance of the Yanhuang family to the Oda family is not that the Oda family has one more ally in the north of the empire, nor that the Tokugawa family has one more competitor, but that there are potential overlords in the empire who are willing to support Oda Nobunaga to ascend to the position of shogun.

Before the Yanhuang clan invaded the territory of Ueno Province, neither Oda Nobunaga nor the other family governors in the northern part of the empire regarded the Yanhuang family as a new family with the potential to become the overlord family, otherwise, the Uesugi family would not choose to go to war.

The reason why he united with the Date family to wage war against the Yanhuang family was not because Uesugi Kenshin wanted to destroy the Yanhuang family, but because he planned to destroy the Yanhuang family's potential as much as possible with a heavy blow, so as to maintain the balance between the forces in the north of the empire.

The land, population, and resources in the northern part of the empire are all limited, and the existence of the five overlord families such as Uesugi, Hojo, Date, Takeda, and Tokugawa has made the living environment in the northern part of the empire worse and worse;

However, the Tokugawa family, the Hojo family, and the Takeda family were not very nervous because they were far away from Oshu, where the Yanhuang family was located, and there were several regions in between, but the Uesugi family and the Date family had to take measures to suppress the rise of the Yanhuang family.

When the precautionary suppression turned into a terrible rout, the Uesugi family, the Date family, and the Mogami family could only pay the price for their defeat, and whether they did their best to form a large army and rush to the battlefield, whether it was a counterattack before the end of the destruction, or a shameful salvation before the snow, it depended on the change of the situation of the war, anyway, it was a war that did not have a huge impact on the Oda family and the Tokugawa family.

After learning of the Yanhuang clan's victory, Tokugawa Ieyasu had no time to report the matter to Oda Nobunaga when a letter from the Mogami family was delivered to him, so he sent the information he knew about the front line and the letter to Kyoto.

Normally, Oda Nobunaga, who was already planning to become the shogun in Kyoto, should not interfere in this melee in the north, because this is a war that has nothing to do with the Oda family; if the Yanhuang family wins, the Oda family will gain a strong ally out of thin air, and if the Yanhuang family loses, the Oda family will lose an illusory ally.

But Oda Nobunaga has never been a normal person, has he? On the afternoon of the day he received the information from Tokugawa Ieyasu, Oda Nobunaga was in his mansion in Kyoto and gave orders to the generals of the Oda family to reorganize their arms for war.

Sugatani Nagayori, Hasegawa Shuichi, Fukutomi Hidekatsu, Hori Hidemasa, and Yabe Ieta, who are known as the Oda Five Commissioners, were jointly responsible for recruiting 300,000 Ashigaru within three months; the Oda family's original 200,000 standing ashigaru and 300,000 semi-standing ashigaru were divided into six armies, which were commanded by the family generals Shibata Katsuie, Niwa Nagahide, Sakuma Nobumori, Takigawa Kazuyoshi, Akechi Mitsuhide, and Hashiba Hideyoshi.

Among them, four people, including Shibata Katsuie, Niwa Nagahide, Sakuma Nobumori, and Takigawa Kazuyoshi, who were both famous and prestigious, each led an army of 100,000 troops to the border area between the Oda family and the Maori family, preparing to resist the invasion of the Maori family or to invade the Maori family.

Akechi Mitsuhide, who had just defected to the Oda family, and Hideyoshi Hashiba, who had recently been promoted, each commanded an army of 50,000 men, and Akechi Mitsuhide's mission was to join forces with the Tokugawa family's army, directly occupy Shinano Province, and expel the forces of the Uesugi and Takeda clans from Shinano Province.

This time, Oda Nobunaga did not give Hashiba Hideyoshi any mandatory task, but only promised that half of the Uesugi family's territory captured by Hashiba Hideyoshi would belong to the Oda family, and half would become the fiefdom of Hashiba Hideyoshi!

So far, Hideyoshi Hashiba, who has only a fiefdom of 1,000 stones, hears the promise that the governor has made to him privately, and something called ambition appears in his eyes for the first time: Hideyoshi Hashiba, who once dreamed of becoming a samurai, has a new dream of becoming a daimyo!

The Oda family, whose war machine was running at full strength, burst out with amazing vitality, and even the Kuki Yoshitaka, who was supposed to lead the naval army under his command to guard the family's coastline, sent people to Kyoto to ask the governor for war, he wanted to win the reputation of the empire's number one navy for his family!

Oda Nobunaga, who had already dispatched 500,000 troops and was still recruiting 300,000 troops, did not hesitate to agree to his initiative to fight as a beloved general.

In addition to his own family's internal arrangements, Oda Nobunaga also sent four groups of messengers to the Tokugawa family, the Yanhuang family, the Ryuzoji family, and Sado Island, and a chaotic war that affected the entire empire was about to begin at the hands of Oda Nobunaga.

Regardless of the reaction of the Yanhuang family, the Ryuzoji family, and Sado Island, just because the Oda family's 400,000 troops were on the border of his family, it was impossible for the Mori family's governor, Mori Moto, to ignore it, and the army of the Mori family immediately took action.

The Mori family, whose standing army was inferior to the Oda family, actually had no less population than the Oda family, and compared with the Oda family, which paid more attention to the formation of a standing army, the Mori family was undoubtedly superior in the use of agricultural troops.

Whether the Maori family can form their own army before the Oda family takes the initiative to attack, and whether the Maori family and the Oda family will break out into a big war, these are not things that Bai Feng needs to consider;

In fact, Oda Nobunaga personally wrote to Bai Feng in a letter that did not have much empty words to waste pen and ink, and Oda Nobunaga, who did not like hypocrisy and wrongdoing, told Bai Feng bluntly that the purpose of his sending troops to attack the Uesugi family was not only to help the Yanhuang family, but also to consider the overall interests of the Oda family, and he needed the Yanhuang family to attract more attention to the Oda family in the north of the empire.

Oda Nobunaga gave the Yanhuang family a condition that as long as the Yanhuang family had the strength to occupy the territory of the northern part of the empire, except for the territories of the Tokugawa family and the Oda family, then these territories would belong to the Yanhuang family, and the emperor would appoint someone designated by Hakumine to guard the local area.