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At the beginning of the year, the wind from the Seto Inland Sea blows on the land, and although it is not cold, it is continuous and cold.

This was especially true for low-ranking samurai who were on duty outside the home, wearing armor and unable to wear cotton clothes.

On this day, this weather ...... I was supposed to be with my family, curled up in the warm hearth, closed the doors and windows, and enjoyed the hot miso soup and rice cakes!

Because of this natural reason, Ryohei Asai is not in a very good mood.

On a cold winter night, and during the Spring Festival, who wants to work overtime for free?

About a year earlier, the Asai family of Omi had been granted the title of crusading against Harima Province Akamatsu Yoshisuke under the mediation of Oda Shigetomi Hirate Honhide, at the cost of acquiescing in the Oda family's "illegal possession" of Kita-Omi.

Over this period of time, under the leadership of the head of the family, the brave Asai samurai won more than a dozen battles, large and small, and captured thousands of enemy heads and occupied large territories.

But the strange thing is that the opponent is always dead and not stiff.

The people of this part of Harima Province have strange accents and hard tempers, and they are very repulsive to outsiders. It is said that Yoshisuke Akamatsu is already a nominal empty shelf guardian daimyo, and it shouldn't take much effort to defeat him. However, as soon as the Asai family came in, they found that the people of Harima Country, who had many internal contradictions, stopped their guns and went out in unison.

This group of local snakes, if they hit the front, they will not be enough to see together, but people go to the mountains to fight guerrillas, and they steal and destroy transportation and supply lines every once in a while, which is really a headache.

Therefore, Ryohei Asai was entrusted with the "heavy responsibility" of protecting the transportation of military rations and assumed the position of porter.

Although he is also surnamed Asui, he is barely a family, but his kinship with the contemporary head of the family is actually far away, and he is almost out of Wufu. Therefore, the ancestral property that Asai Ryohei can inherit is only a small village, and Zhixing, which is equivalent to about 130 stones, can only do the task of escorting military rations.

Then again, in the past few years, Ryohei Asai's fiefdom had not risen much, and it was only after he reached Harima Country today that he was lucky enough to be sealed with two new fiefs, and it is estimated that there will be a harvest of several hundred koku. Although the internal affairs of the Asai family are a bit chaotic, the history of the registered population of the two new Zhuangzi is not clear, and tax evasion cannot be avoided, but on the whole, it is much stronger than before.

Therefore, he still has "enthusiasm for revolution + life", and he has no negative thoughts of sabotage, just a little impatient.

Today he was ordered to take 20 bannermen, 100 miscellaneous soldiers, 100 servants, and 30 pack horses to the harbor, and in the afternoon he had just received 300 koku of brown rice from the "Sankaya" of the Heite family, and the next thing was to transport it to Shiroyama Castle on the front line. There was sleet on the road, and the team couldn't go fast, so they simply found a broken temple to stay.

According to the current market price, each stone of genmai is more than 850 wen, but the Hirate family only supplies military rations to the Asai family at a unit price of 500 wen. Speaking at the level of Ryohei Asai, he felt that Lord Shijo was really good to the Asai family, not only got the reputation of crusading against Harima, but also took the initiative to provide cheap food supplies.

It's no wonder that the Akao Hall wants to give the beautiful little daughter to the master of the flat hand as a side room, after all, he is such a great hero who has kindness to his family!

And the method of supplying food is also very interesting, instead of receiving money and transporting rice directly, it provides a kind of "military food stamps" of different denominations. After the Asai family got the coupons, they issued them to the retainers, and then the retainers could go to the branches of the Hirate family's "Sankaya" to receive food with tickets.

In this way, the trouble of storage, transportation, and distribution is eliminated, which is undoubtedly a great benefit for the Asai family, who lack domestic talents - at least according to Asai Ryohei.

The only drawback is that there are not enough semicolons in Sankaya, and there are only four in the entire Harima country, so Ryohei Asai has to work overtime during the Chinese New Year.

I really hope that the branch of Sanlu House can be opened directly to the doorstep!

With such a vision, Ryohei Asai reluctantly nibbled on two cold rice balls, felt a little warmer on his body, and then got up to make rounds to make sure that there were no signs of falling behind and losing goods, and then found the most burning fire and unceremoniously took a place.

His arrival made the soldiers hesitate for a moment, but only for a moment - after all, a few hundred stone Ashigaru Shogun was not that intimidating. After eating their dry food, everyone gradually began to talk, and in a few words, several "grassroots leaders" at the group level got together, and they didn't know where to get a pair of dice and dice cups, and they were about to start engaging in a traditional entertainment project that the masses of the people liked to see.

On the march, they are not allowed to drink alcohol, and they can't fight, and this group of rough men can't understand the truth of poetry and songs, and the only thing that can express their excess energy on this winter night is gambling, right?

Everyone was about to start, but was seen by the Ashigaru general Asai Ryohei, who was not dissatisfied, but asked with some doubts: "You group of gamblers, do you also carry gold, silver and copper goods on the road with the army?" ”

Although Ryohei Asai is not very knowledgeable, he also knows that for gamblers, it is enjoyable to pay real money in person, and bookkeeping is not refreshing enough, in case someone does not give it, making the scene ugly, and friends can't do it, it will be even more embarrassing.

However, the marches and battles are all lightly armed, and no one will carry heavy coins for the convenience of gambling, at most they will carry some gold and silver close to their bodies for emergencies, but the gold and silver are too conspicuous to attract thieves, and they will not usually take them out.

He was curious, so he asked casually. Then a gambler waiting in line to shake the dice turned around thoughtfully, smiled, took out a small stack of papers from his arms, and replied: "Liangheidian, you can't imagine, we have been using this recently." ”

Ryohei Asai looked at it, wasn't that small stack of paper the "military food coupons" issued by the "Sanlu House" under the command of the Heite family?

It is said that back then, Hirate Tsunohide patted his chest and provided a monthly supply of no more than 2,000 koku to the Asai family's western expeditionary army, and only charged 500 wen yuan per stone of genmi, which lasted until the original Harima guardian Akamatsu Yoshisuke was defeated.

He also fulfilled this promise responsibly. At first, he sent his retainers to escort them by sea and deliver them in person, and then he directly gave the "military ration coupons" and asked the Asai family to exchange them freely at the Sanluya branch.

There are three types of "ration stamps", the largest is 100 koku, followed by 10 koku, and the smallest is 1 koku.

The internal affairs system of the Asai family was relatively chaotic, and there were not many people who pursued it, so only the large denomination of "military ration stamps" was left as a reserve for the banner soldiers, while the small denominations were distributed to the retainers, which was regarded as a supply for the private soldiers of the retainers.

For example, today Asai Ryohei was ordered to come to transport grain, that is, he received three "public funds" with a face value of 100 koku, and in addition, in his own small treasury, there were tickets totaling 350 koku that he had saved up for no money. These are all paid by the Asai family according to the standard of three buckets per person per month, but in fact, ordinary soldiers can't eat so much, and the extra is equivalent to a wartime allowance.

The "Soldier Rations Voucher" is anonymous, and any samurai of the Asai family can take it and exchange it for the same amount of brown rice, so it can be used as a "general equivalent" to serve as a bargaining chip for gambling. On the other hand, this thing has not been issued in large quantities, and it has not yet been targeted by thieves everywhere, and its security and stability are relatively guaranteed.

"It's really easy to eat!" Ryohei Asai couldn't help but nodded, "It would be better if you could use the ration coupons to resist when you buy things or go to a sake house or a lodging house......

"At least there's nothing wrong with the sake brewery." The man who spoke just now continued to respond, "You may not have heard that a few days ago, His Royal Highness Endo Kiemon (i.e., Asai Clan's fierce general Endo Naokei) invited everyone to a banquet in the sake house, but after a few more drinks, the silver coins that he brought were stolen by the thieves without noticing, and it would be really embarrassing if he hadn't taken out fifty stone food coupons on the spot to pay off the debt......

"That's right! It seems that the thieves are still not well-informed, and only know the value of gold and silver, but do not know that this food stamp is also very valuable! Ryohei Asai was amazed, "Is the sake house acceptable?" Isn't it possible to ...... commercial houses?"

"Don't say it!" Another colleague who had just won the money turned his head to take over the conversation: "You may not know that the merchant that is related to the Heite family, in addition to the 'Sanlu House' that sells military rations, there are also 'Harutaya' that does iron cannon business, and 'Tamargoshiya' who does weapons and equipment business, both of which also have branches in Harima Province, and they can accept military ration coupons to pay bills......

"Can you buy even iron cannons?" Ryohei Asai was a little budding in his heart. He had always been very interested in this new type of equipment, but he had not been able to buy an excellent finished product for a long time. According to his status and income, he actually has this financial resources, but the profiteers who sell iron cannons have always only collected gold and silver coins (the seller's market is so awesome), and the taxes collected from the villagers are mixed with rice, miscellaneous grains, aquatic products, copper coins, etc., and it is quite troublesome to exchange them into whole gold and silver in one go, and it is inevitable that they will be exploited by grain merchants and money banks......

All in all, in the loose structure of the Asai family, where laws and regulations were lax, the retainers had a high degree of freedom in domestic affairs, and a few people with a high financial index were able to take advantage of the opportunity to accumulate wealth, but this was not a good thing for most people like Ryohei Asai who had little talent.

The colleague who answered the call earlier listened to Ryohei Asai's question, thought for a while, and replied, "Hmm...... I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard that the branch of 'Springfield' mainly supplies three kinds of iron cannons, the cheapest small cannons, which cost 50 koku or 50 koku in cash, and the larger ones are 100 koku or 100 koku, and there is a special iron cannon that is said to shoot very accurately, and each one costs 300 koku......

Ryohei Asai is not a samurai who does arithmetic without permission, but if you put it a little together, you can understand that it is much more cost-effective to buy iron cannons with military ration coupons than with cash. He immediately pondered for a moment, and then wanted to see the kind of medium iron cannon of a hundred stones.

It's just that the total amount of the current military ration coupons on his body is only seventy or eighty stones, and there is still a bit of a difference!

So Asai Ryohei tentatively asked his colleagues around him: "I've always heard that the iron cannon of 'Harutaya' is very good, I want to go and see it, but the tickets in my hand are a little insufficient, I don't know who can redeem some for me?" I can pawn the equipment or loot I have. ”

As soon as the words landed, a black-faced samurai who had been silent and did not participate in the gambling game moved over and said in a deep voice: "I saw you snatch a maroon red war horse from the enemy last month......

"Ah...... That's right, that's right! Ryohei Asai saw that this path could be passed, and he couldn't help but be happy. But then I remembered that excellent horse, and I couldn't help but feel a little painful, and subconsciously bargained: "That's a good horse!" At least you can exchange it for 100 stone of grain! ”

The black-faced samurai remained silent and slowly shook his head: "I only have more than fifty stone of military rations in my hand, otherwise I will give you another unsheathed Bizen Wakicha, how about it?" ”

"What's the threat? Which swordsmith in Bizen is the product? Are there any inscriptions? How new is it? …… Anyway, I have to take a look first...... "How can a veteran who deals with weapons all day not love famous swords, and Ryohei Asai is not exempt from vulgarity."

Even a few gamblers turned their heads and focused on the deal.

"Well, my baggage is tied to the horse's back, you can wait a minute," the black-faced samurai grinned, and immediately got up and walked towards ......the luggage pile. Reading, a better reading experience.