The two of them, Takeuchi Nakamaro and Tachibana Shizu, were trembling for their own peeks of the heavens, and suddenly they saw two embarrassed tax collectors crying and screaming, and they were suddenly terrified. In the middle of the night, Takeuchi Nakamaro saw a ghost and asked in a shrill voice, "Out of ...... Go out...... What happened? ”

The two tax collectors were so weak that they couldn't get up, knelt on the ground and stretched out their arms to make random gestures, and their mouths were whining for a long time, and finally spit out a few words: "God...... God, Tengu waves, Tengu waves! ”

……

With their shouting, it was like a thunderbolt on a sunny day, and Takeuchi Nakamaro, Tachibana Stonefoot, and the tax collectors who came out to see the bustle in the wings on both sides, as well as the merchants and footmen who came to pay taxes and exchange documents to receive bamboo moats, thirteen or fourteen people were shocked and trembled. A Shikoku businessman rolled his eyes and fainted to the ground without saying a word.

Takeuchi Nakamaro was also so frightened that he couldn't possess his body. Facing the sea on all sides, there have been various legends about the overflow of the sea, the roar of the sea, the tide surge, and the mountains since ancient times, and Namba Castle was established as Kyoto only a few decades before it was abandoned, and the palace says that the emperor was guided by the gods to move to Kyoto, but in fact, it is not unrelated to the tengu waves. He also saw in his grandfather's notes a record of a tengu wave 50 years ago, when "the sky shook, the earth and mountains collapsed, the sea beasts were like horses, the sound of canghoof danmane spread for hundreds of miles, and dozens of cities were destroyed, and countless drowned people." In that Tengu wave, the four countries of Tosa, Awa, Awaji, and Kii were all hit hard, and the losses of the five provinces of Izumi, Settsu, Denma, Bizen, and Sanuki were also not small. At this time, it is useless to be afraid, no matter how fast a person's legs and feet are, it is impossible to run through the waves, but the tengu waves can be "soaked for dozens of miles in a moment", not to mention that Namba Castle is on the flat land near the sea, and there are no high mountains and steep slopes nearby, so there is no place to escape...... Thinking of the terrible scene when the disaster came, he struggled to calm down, slowly stood up and asked, "Is there really a tengu wave on the sea?" ”

"Yes, yes, sir! It's really a tengu wave! ”

Takeuchi Zhongmaro is always a little knowledgeable, although the Tengu wave is terrifying, but there are some traces to follow in advance. He calmed down in an instant, and asked sharply with a cold face, "You still dare to coax?" Every day before the dog wave comes, there is always a sign of the shaking of the heavens and the earth, in the past ten days the tree does not move the house does not shake, how can there be a dog wave on the sea? ”

Before he could finish speaking, a foot merchant suddenly pointed in the direction of the port and shouted, "Smoke! Look, it's smoking! Black smoke lit up from the port, and there were pirates one by one! ”

The people in the tax office were startled again, and everyone hurriedly turned their heads to look south. Takeuchi Nakamaro and Tachibana Ishazu also rushed into the courtyard and craned their necks to look. I saw a gray-black pillar of smoke rising two miles away, and Orr was a gray smoke floating, and in the blink of an eye, it was another pillar of smoke. With the three pillars of black smoke rising up, the clanging police gong sounded quickly and densely, there was a wailing outside the tax office, the woman cried and the child called the man to scold and jumped up and roared, and in an instant there were many people running in front of the tax office. By the time Takeuchi Nakamaro walked out of the tax office with a few bold tax collectors, there was already a mess in front of the door, and on a dirt road connecting the port in the south and Tucheng in the north, there were broken wooden bowls, broken clay pots, and broken sacks stepped on by the dumped cart. The ox cart with orange feet also overturned on the side of the road, but the oxen pulling the cart were nowhere to be seen, and only a piece of hemp rope was left on the horse's stake, which was hanging weakly......

Orange Foot followed. Although he felt sorry for the cow, he could still distinguish the severity, and now that the situation was urgent, he didn't care about looking for the cow, and he was carrying a cold and shining Bizen knife in his hand, and asked anxiously: "What should I do?" One sentence leaked out of the bottom of the weak and timid.

Takeuchi Nakamaro was able to make a good sword, and he also learned some spear skills, and even a few samurai around the Namba Castle Shou courtier Masana were not his opponents, so he was afraid of Tengu waves, but he was not afraid of sea kokou. He also thought clearly, although there are a few pirates off the coast of Namba Port, but these pirates also know the rules, every year in June, July, August and three months is when the big Zhao maritime merchants come to do business, borrow their ten guts, they don't dare to make trouble at this time! Unless it is those thieves in the Seto Sea in the west, who have not suffered losses at the hands of the Great Zhao Maritime Merchants, they have the courage to choose this time to come over to do business. Listening to Tachibana's words, he glanced back at the ruined walls of Namba Castle, nodded and said, "Let's go, go to the port!" "There are still more than a dozen tax collectors and twenty or thirty soldiers in the port, plus these people around him, they just can't fight back the pirates, but it's not difficult to retreat to the city.

But when he walked to the port, he saw that the entire port was a mile or two, not to mention the tax collectors, and he didn't see even a few shadows. Two merchants, who don't know where they came from, hugged their heads and wept bitterly as they guarded the three half-sea boats on the pier that had just arrived at the berth; A few dejected fellows, with dull faces and drooping arms, wandered around the docks like ghosts. In the distance, there were also a few unlucky fishing boats on the sea, desperately fleeing along the shore in the direction of the mouth of the Nambatsu River. But the seabirds, which usually only dare to hover overhead, are now enjoying great benefits, jumping in flocks under the boat in search of food.

A group of people has long been dumbfounded. Orange Stone looked around in circles, and kept muttering, "What to do, what to do?" How good is that? ”

Takeuchi Nakamaro didn't pay any attention to him at all, and looked vigorously at the sea to the south with his hand on the canopy, only to see a black line two and a half fingers high running through the east and west at the intersection of the sea and the sky in the extreme distance, and it was rushing over without hurry. Listen to it, the sea breeze whimpering, the birds chirping, and then the sound of the waves hitting the pebbles on the pier, what "the sound of the sea is as thin as pouring beans", "the sea roars like a ghost's howl" and other literary records are all gone. Looking at the large flock of seabirds rising and falling on the pier, his heart jumped suddenly, and he casually pointed to a tax collector: "You go!" You go over there and take a closer look to see what the hell is coming from over there! ”

The tax collector opened his mouth but couldn't speak, and he didn't dare not move under the fierce gaze of Takeuchi Zhongmalu, and he took a few steps backwards with a trembling twist, screamed suddenly, lost the bamboo gun in his hand and turned around and ran......

The tax collectors who came with him were already beating drums in their hearts, but now that someone has taken the lead, naturally some people will follow and flee for their lives, Takeuchi Nakamaro was just stunned, and half of the dozen or so tax collectors ran away. He glanced at the three or five people left behind, and felt that these people were unreliable, not because they didn't want to escape, but because their legs and feet were so weak that they couldn't take a step at all. The orange stone beside him could still stand, but his face was pale, and his eyes wandered, and most of them couldn't count on it. He sighed silently, reached out and took the sword from the orange stone foot, and said, "I'll go up and take a look." One by one, you take them and retreat to the city first. As he spoke, he jumped up the stone hill in three steps and two steps, and jumped onto the high platform again, grabbed the wooden ladder with a knife in his mouth, and jumped up to the three-zhang high watchtower in a few clicks, and clenched the railing and stared at the place where the sea and the sky intersected in the south.

This time, he saw clearly that the black line was not a tengu wave, nor a sweeping tide, but a sea vessel. It's just that the distance is too far, these sea ships are not much longer than chopsticks, a vague black line, and there are too many boats, I am afraid that there are two or three miles wide, and they are continuous with each other and the line of sight is hazy, so it is mistaken for a black line. In the moments when he was staring, a black line poured out of the horizon after the line......

Just as his eyes were moving, someone suddenly spoke beside him: "Those are all boats? ”

Takeuchi Nakamaro turned his head to see that Tachibana Ishazu didn't know when he had climbed the wooden building. Before he could speak, Orange Shizu swallowed his saliva and said, "Counting the time, those big Zhao maritime merchants should also arrive." But, but...... Why did they come this time, why did so many people come? ”

Takeuchi Nakamaro grinned dryly. Orange Foot asked him, who should he ask?

Orange Stone didn't really want to get any definite answer from him, so he leaned on the railing and looked at it for a while, and suddenly said: "Look at those fishing boats over there, they look like those big boats are the same size as the Bodhisattva, how big should this boat be?" Takeuchi Nakamaro didn't say anything. He had long been aware of this. Based on the size of the ships and the size of the fleet, it is impossible for the Seto Sea to come. If Haikou had such a skill, what place could they not go to in the Sixty-six Kingdoms of the Eastern War? So it can't be Haikou in front of you! If it's not Haikou, who will it be? Could it really be Da Zhao's maritime merchant? However, the big Zhao maritime merchants who came to Dongwei to do business have never appeared in groups like this. There are twenty or thirty ships that can be counted in front of me, how many ships can carry, and how many merchants and foot sellers need to find to sell so many goods? And the sailors who operate the ships on the sea, how many people are there? Not to mention the rest, just to provide food and drink for so many people who suddenly had to be fed, both Namba City and Settsu Province had to dig three feet into the ground...... Before he could come up with an eyebrow, Orange Stone suddenly raised his head and asked him, "You say, could this not be Da Zhao's maritime merchants, but Daoyi people?" I remember that thirty years ago, when the Daoyi people entered the Kou, they also went ashore in groups of dozens of boats......"

Takeuchi Nakamaro shuddered violently. If it weren't for Seto Kaiko and not the Great Zhao Maritime Merchants, it could only be the Daoyi people who plagued Kyushu, Shikoku and half of Honshu thirty years ago! However, Dazaifu did not say that the Daoyi people who had entered the Kou had been completely wiped out, and Fujiwara Michicho, the left minister at the time, also issued an edict to the world on behalf of the emperor and continued to reward meritorious soldiers......

Tachibana Shizu's heart was pounding, but he sneered and said, "If what Mido Sekihaku said is credible, then rice can also be grown on the stone!" I do remember that Yasuhide, who was the Minister of Finance at the time, asked Fujiwara Michigan why he offered gold, silver, and cloth to Goryeo since he had completely destroyed Daoyi and there was no more Daoyi in the territory. As a result, he was fooled by Fujiwara Michicho who slyly said that he had a good relationship with Goryeo. Within two years of that, the Ministry of Finance Kangxiu inexplicably went to Gaomiao Temple to become a monk, and soon the news spread that he had been extinguished. ”

Tachibana Ishizu is talking about the story of the past that happened twenty or thirty years ago, but the Takeuchi family is a small family in the Namba region of Settsu Province, and what Dazaifu is the Minister of the Shonayama Minister, etc., are too far away from Takeuchi Nakamaro. Yes, he was thinking about reviving the Soga family, thinking about knocking the Fujiwara clan to the ground and stepping on it again, so that Fujiwara Michigan Fujiwara Yoritsu and all the other people surnamed Fujiwara, as well as all the people and things that were involved with the Fujiwara clan, would become stinky stones in the pit, and people would not want to think about it, and they would not like to mention it, but these are his ideals, maybe it would be more appropriate to say that it is a dream, and it is just an ideal. The question now is not that the Fujiwara clan is cheating on the issue of Daoi's involvement, but that these previous sea ships, the people on these sea boats, who are they, and what kind of goals did they come to Namba with? Is it here to burn, kill, loot, or to trade? There is also a question, are he and Orange Stone Foot running away now, or are they staying here and waiting for something to happen?

He's ambivalent. His intellect told him that in the face of impending catastrophe, fleeing was the best option. Even if it wasn't a disaster, he could have waited until he figured out the purpose of those ships. But he felt that it might well be a terrible idea to escape. Thinking about the ballad that he and Tachibana Isha visited half an hour ago, the proverb made it very clear that the Fujiwara clan was in a catastrophe, and the people who taught the destruction of the Fujiwara clan were the first three great monks of Asuka Temple. Where did the first three go? He went to Da Zhao; What about these sea ships in front of you? It is likely to be Da Zhao's boat; So the people on these ships, could they be the heavenly soldiers and generals invited by the first three from Da Zhao?

He clutched the railing with both hands, almost grinding his palms out of blood, and trembling with excitement. Opportunity, this is an opportunity! If the first three families brought back the soldiers and horses on the ship, then this is the opportunity that the Su family has been longing for for more than ten generations! As long as he can seize this opportunity, the Soga family is likely to be revived in his hands, and he Takeuchi Nakamaro may also become a generation of famous ministers like the ancestor Takeuchi Suyu, and become the ancestor of the family......

Like him, his good friend Tachibana Stonefoot also has the same ambition of the Tachibana clan. Although Tachibana has a rash temperament and has some problems with low eyesight, he does not lack urgency, and he can also think of things that Takeuchi Nakamaro can think of. He even thought farther than Takeuchi Nakamaro. He had already begun to think about how he would contact the wealthy families and important ministers in Kyochu and how to support the new emperor after the Fujiwara clan was destroyed. At least, he also has to plan a five-rank official position for himself. He's in this ......

While they were hesitating and apprehensive, when they were terrified and longing, the fleet, which had come from nowhere, was getting closer and closer to the port......