After a night's rest, the army continued its march.

Oda Nobutada left Niwa Katsu and others behind, and ordered them to sweep away the remnants of the enemy in the territory they had occupied, establish strongholds, pacify the civilians, and restore law and order. The two men were three thousand six hundred.

In addition, Oda Nobubu, who was guarding the back road, Katsumasa Ikeda, Inaba, Ichitsutsu, who was in front of the attack, Hatakeyama Akitaka, who lost his formation and rebuilt in situ after the raid, and the special forces led by Hidetaka Kawajiri, all of them temporarily left the large army and acted alone.

As a result, the originally huge army of 32,300 people was gradually "slimmed down" to just over 10,000 people, and the command and supply were greatly flexible.

The pioneer Inaba Ichitetsu led the Mino, and the second striker Katsumasa Ikeda led the Settsu people, and on the second day's trip, they were still invincible, slaughtering five small guns in a row and annihilating more than 300 enemies.

This kind of people with a scale of several hundred stones, if they can't huddle together to keep warm, they will have no resistance in front of the army. You only need to fire three volleys with iron cannons and bows, and then charge with elite dead soldiers to easily defeat them.

It wasn't until the afternoon of the eighth day of the seventh month that the Inaba Ichitetsu Division went deep into Kashiwahara Castle, the largest stronghold in Najani County, that the situation changed suddenly.

At a distance of 100 zhang, I heard shouts of slaughter in front of me. I sent someone over to investigate, and found that this Kashiwahara Castle was actually being besieged.

Moreover, the defenders of the castle played the banner of the Oda family, and the attackers outside the castle were the local indigenous people. These aborigines are mainly old and weak, women and children, and their armor and weapons are very backward, but they are not afraid of death, their morale is extremely high, and their faces are crazy, and the regular army in the city is very embarrassed and crumbling.

Seeing this, Inaba Ichitetsu didn't have time to tell the reason, so he hurriedly launched a formation on the spot, and asked the second striker Ikeda Katsumasa to join forces and prepare to meet the friendly forces in the city to counterattack. At the same time, an old man was appointed, and An Tengshou went back to report to the base camp.

Oda Nobutada and Hite-hode were also shocked when they received the report.

As a surprise attack team, Hidetaka Kawajiri used decapitation tactics to take Kashiwabara Castle in one fell swoop, killing Takino Sadakiyo, one of the big leaders of Iga, which was expected.

But how did he arouse the bitter hatred of the women and children around him, so that he was beaten?

It is useless to think too much at this moment, and only by meeting the person concerned as soon as possible can we know the details.

So the military order was conveyed from top to bottom, urging the soldiers to speed up their pace and march towards Kashiwahara Castle.

The large army was divided into two again, and the main force of 8,000 left their luggage and set off first, leaving Mizuno Nobumoto with two or three thousand men to transport the baggage.

On the way, Oda Nobutada also asked if there were any hidden dangers in such a division of troops. However, Tie explained that our side was far outnumbered by the enemy, and even if they were divided into ten queues, they would still be able to ensure that each team would not be in danger of being outnumbered. In this case, the division of troops is to maximize the use of numerical superiority and limit the mobility of the locality.

Before sunset, the army barely reached Kashiwahara Castle. And it just happened to be rewarded, saying that Inaba Ittetsu and Ikeda Katsumasa had cooperated with Kawajiri Hidetaka in the city, and they had won the victory, held the city, and destroyed the enemy.

At this time, the west side of the sky was already covered with the setting sun, as red as a flame and as hazy as a light veil.

However, when he came to the hillside at the gate of the city and looked up, the scene he saw was in stark contrast to the sky.

Mountains of corpses and bones, rivers of blood, endless wreckage stacked in irregular piles, and the rich smell of rust and gunsmoke in the air lingered.

A small square city with a side length of no more than a few feet. Within a hundred paces outside the city, all of them were covered with the corpses of the deceased, dyed a dense dark red, so that the original color of the land could not be seen at all.

Internal organs and bones are exposed from the wound and can be seen everywhere. Flying insects, wild dogs, and scavenging crows were brought in to feast in the slaughterhouse, occasionally making cheerful noises that became even more terrifying.

It's hell on earth!

According to a rough estimate, I am afraid that at least 3,000 people will die in one day in this square inch of land!

Hirate Honshu gasped.

In the past fifteen years, after twenty or thirty battles, I thought I had seen enough tragedies in the world, but I had never seen such a high density of corpses.

Especially—

As far as the eye can see, at least half of the dead were ordinary people who wore no armor and only burlap clothes, not to mention the elders and women.

For example, not far ahead, the head of the corpse has been trampled to a bloody blur, but it can be seen from the body shape that it is a woman. The man's waist was cut diagonally more than a foot long, and his internal organs and intestines were turned out. Her original clothes had long since become tattered strips of cloth that were barely wrapped around her body, and on the short knife that she held tightly until death in her hand, although the blood was thick but not completely coagulated, it was still dripping down slowly, I don't know who left it from.

Immediately to the left is the corpse of an old man with a white beard - in fact, the description of "Whitebeard" is inaccurate, as half of his hair is soaked in blood and mud. This old man was rickety, skinny, and had not even a piece of iron on his body, only a few marks of being pierced by swords and spear blades, and there was no trace of his participation in the battle, did he really die in battle and not slaughter?

Two steps away, there is another one, much shorter than average, obviously a half-sized child, maybe less than ten years old, and may not be as tall as the kid of the Hite-family Yan Chiyomaru. It was a rare corpse with a clear face and few stains, shot by lead bullet in the middle of the forehead, and dead with wide eyes and open mouth, showing a mixture of fanaticism, excitement and hesitation. But in the palms of his two hands, he held a bamboo spear that had been trampled on......

As for the severed limbs and broken bones, and the entire cut off half of the face, even Hirata Tsui couldn't look at it directly.

At this time, I heard a "wow" sound behind me.

Turning to look, I saw Oda Nobutada, supported by two guards, bending over and vomiting.

The other generals who followed one by one were either unbearable with compassion, or frightened, or dumbfounded.

Not to mention the people on the side, only in the army of the Hirata family, Hirata Hideyi and Kawada Changqin, who have always been calm, were also dumbfounded, looking like they didn't know what to do.

And Honda Masashige, Bai Xiang Jia, Numata Yumitsu, etc., are already holding Buddha beads, amulets and other things and bowing their heads to themselves.

Fan Xiu also felt uneasy, how could he criticize the retainers?

The only two who were calm and composed were the two old foxes, Matsunaga Shu and Gamo Dingxiu, who had probably seen more exaggerated scenes.

The crowd waited quietly.

It wasn't until the second generation spit out all the sour water in his abdomen, and only retching was left, that Hisho Fan Xiu quietly stepped forward and suggested in a low voice: "Please move to the city first, and after a little rest, come and ask what happened." ”

Hearing this, Oda Nobutada forcibly held back the discomfort in his stomach and nodded with a calm face.