I'm Akiichi Ozaki, a samurai.

I'm from Edo, and my ancestor was Ozaki Morisa, who followed General Honda Tadakatsu on his expedition to Korea.

When Tokugawa Iemitsu-sama was determined to conquer the Nabeshima family, who were disobedient to orders and wantonly smuggling O-Song cigarettes, I was ordered by my father, Kozaburo Ozaki, to go to the army as a representative of the Ozaki family.

Toshimori Doi, who was in charge of the Middle Line Army, had some connections with my grandfather, so he took care of me, a descendant of old acquaintances who had been practicing martial arts since childhood.

After seeing my sword in the military competition, he beckoned me to come over and asked me cordially.

"Hey, the little ghost of the Ozaki family, your swordsmanship is very good, who did you learn it from?"

I bowed respectfully and replied, "I learned swordsmanship from His Excellency Yoshiki Ono, and I was once instructed by Ito Ichitosai-sama. ”

Toshimori Doi immediately laughed, waved me closer, and got up to pour me a cup of tea himself.

I looked flattered on my face, took a few small steps, and respectfully took the teacup with both hands, holding it in a humble grip without drinking it.

"Little ghost, you have such good swordsmanship, you shouldn't be an ordinary samurai." He said.

At that time, my heart moved, and I hurriedly lowered the angle of the bow further, and said in a loud voice: "Please also ask the old and middle adults to give me a lot of help." ”

Toshimori Doi smiled and helped me up, and asked me very gently, "Do you want to be a shogun of the Ashigaru Shogun?" ”

I hung my head humbly, didn't make eye contact with him, and kept my eyes fixed on his clog-clad feet to relieve the pressure of coming face to face with an old middleman.

At that time, I already had a basic understanding of Doi Toshimori's purpose. In the arena in full view of everyone, an old man who lived next to the shogun and a low-ranking samurai who was only the head of the ashigaru group ten minutes ago "had a good conversation" together, and personally asked this little-known samurai whether he would like to become a general in charge of more than 300 people, which was enough to show some intriguing political attitudes.

In particular, Lieutenant General Doi was going to the middle line battlefield, and he was working with Hirotaka Terazawa, the lord of the Karatsu domain, who had always been known for favoring Catholicism and disobeying the orders of the shogunate. At this juncture, I was raised as a middle- and lower-level officer with no foundation, perhaps to show the warlords on Kyushu Island.

No, maybe it's not acting. Before me, there had been more than a dozen samurai of high performance or noble birth who had been promoted to military rank by Doi. Considering that the affected army has already reached more than 4,000 people, Doi's plan may also be to purge the army's junior officers in order to achieve a high degree of organization and control.

Damn, now that both possibilities exist, and I don't have any further information to analyze, what can I do? After reading it, I can only report it all to the upline.

But I don't have that much time to think about that in front of Doi.

After a period of pretended consideration, I accepted Doi's kindness with a subtlety that is characteristic of Japanese culture, and immediately knelt down to express my highest respect and sincerest gratitude to him.

Doi laughed over my head. I am sure that this old man, who is over 50 years old, will feel that the newly appointed senior who is kneeling before him will be 100 percent grateful to him and will become his confidant in control of the army.

If I were just a samurai who had studied the swordsmanship with a disciple of Lord Kenhao, perhaps he was right.

It's a pity I'm not.

I am a spy, a spy with absolutely the concentration of Japanese blood in my veins, but I have the idea of Ao-Song in my head.

I don't know if my father was aware of my anomaly, but I'm sure he didn't, as I've always been in one-line contact with my upline, and I've been in a deep sleep before, never performing any tasks. Even though I had taken the initiative to submit a map of Edo Castle's defense in response to the visit of the black ships (Note 1), the news that I had received was severely reprimanded and asked me to continue to hide without instructions.

After the outbreak of the Kyushu Raid, I had a hunch that my mission was coming, and it was.

When my father asked me to go to the army as a representative of my family, I was overjoyed and the excitement on my face was palpable.

My father praised me with great satisfaction in front of my family, saying that I was much more useful than my unsuccessful brothers, and that I could rejoice in the opportunity to fight for my country, which was what a samurai should be.

Of course I'm going to be happy. Even if my father didn't give me this assignment, I would ask to go to the army myself. Otherwise, with my unworthy position, I really wouldn't have been able to get any valuable information in the war.

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Soon, the time came half a month after I became a general.

In the past six months, my soldiers and I have never had the opportunity to go to the front line, and have been stationed in the valley near the Starr River to do some logistical work.

However, to my surprise, the night owl who was in charge of connecting with me on the battlefield of the center line was very interested in the information of how much rice the center line army ate every day, how much water it drank, how many military uniforms it had obtained, and how much gunpowder it stored, even more so than what kind of strategy the center line was.

"No matter how they fight, we can win." Knowing my doubts, the Night Stalker said to me, "The difference is just how many of our lads will die. ”

Under the guidance of the night owls, I successively passed on the information I saw during the patrol, including the fact that the large amount of grain stored in Linhou Village was decreasing.

From this information, the Central Line Headquarters of Higashi-Biki Castle judged that Hirotaka Terasawa and Toshimori Doi might withdraw the Central Line Army, and instead transferred the living forces of nearly 10,000 people to the Tara Line and attacked Nagasaki from the east.

In order to continue to contain these Japanese troops in the mountainous areas where supplies were inconvenient, the Japanese command decided to abandon some of the outer fortresses and guerrilla areas, and at the same time reduce the number of troops, so as to give the shogunate army a little sweetness and lure them to continue to maintain a military presence in the middle line.

The plan worked. This was partly due to the shogunate's reluctance to give up their immediate gains, and partly due to the intensifying power struggle between Hirotaka Terazawa and Toshimori Doi.

During his post-war conversation with the Night Stalker, he inadvertently reveals that there is also a spy suspected to be codenamed "Kuroko" lurking in the upper echelons of the Central Line Legion, which sends him a message about the increasingly sharp confrontation between Terasawa and Doi.

As the lord of the Karatsu domain and the patriarch of the Terazawa family, as well as a devout Catholic, Terasawa Hirotaka had always had a negative attitude towards attacking Nagasaki. Toshimori, who was personally appointed by Tokugawa Iemitsu to serve as the overseer of the Central Line Army, maintained the greatest passion for breaking through the northern gate of Nagasaki, Higashibiki Castle, and destroying the port of the Saga Domain's naval division in the North Nagasaki Sea.

During the tug-of-war that lasted for half a month, the peasants and soldiers mobilized by the Tangjin Domain were unable to return to their hometowns for spring ploughing, which brought great pressure to the peasants and soldiers who were indiscriminately armed with rudimentary weapons. At the same time, the dissatisfaction from the bottom up also gradually exhausted Hirotaka Terasawa's patience.

Last week's assault on the hard soil fortress was a sign of Terazawa's slow loss of cool.

After suffering a crushing defeat under the fortress, Toshimori Doi compromised. Desperate for fame and fame, he reluctantly agreed to the request to withdraw from the army on the central front and transfer to the eastern front for repair.

And the sudden retreat of the Saga clan on the other side gave Doi a reason to take a risk. So he forcibly subdued Terasawa as the old man of the shogunate, pressed all his forces to the front line, and tried to finish his work in one battle, completely solving the hard earth fortress blocked in front of his face.

"What nonsense." "Doi's head is already filled with the garbage of military adventurism, and he has lost his knowledge as a military strategist and has become a complete gambler. ”

But I didn't know what happened after that.

I still vividly remember that it was early in the morning of April 6th, and when I was having breakfast in the camp, a guard from Doi Junior High School came to call me: "Ozaki-kun, please come with me, Your Excellency Junior High School wants to see you." ”

Noticing that he used the word "you", I put down the dishes and chopsticks and let the soldiers eat the boiled multigrain porridge by themselves, and left with the man in mind.

"Hey, Bei-kun, do you know what Your Excellency Doi is looking for me?" On the way, I walked a few steps faster, walked side by side with Kitajiro, took out a piece of broken silver from the pocket of my waist and stuffed it into him: "You are a popular person next to the old man, you have to take care of me." ”

Kitajiro smiled and measured the weight of the silver with his hand, and the smile on his face became sincere. He carefully put the silver in the hidden pocket on his chest and whispered to me, "Don't worry, Ozaki-kun, Your Excellency wants to uproot the rebellious fortress on the Void Hidden Mountain, so he summoned all the generals to discuss. ”

I was secretly relieved that I was no longer worried that my identity as a spy would be revealed.

Yesterday I heard the news that Toshimori Doi intended to deal with the Void Fortress that threatened the right wing first, but I didn't expect to put his intention into practice so quickly.