In the shadow of the wooden corridor, Yoshikawa Kosuke told Mu Tianbo what had happened. The matter began in the afternoon five days ago, when Yoshikawa Kosuke, who was on official business at the Yamen, suddenly received a summons from the governor, and after he packed up his desk work, he followed the visitor to the governor's signing room.

After seeing Yoshikawa Kosuke's arrival, Governor Zhou Kangen told him: "The informant from the Governor's Mansion has sent back information that a group of samurai from the Imperial Empire faction have arrived in Osaka by ship from Daming to Sino-Japanese merchants disguised as merchants between China and Japan, and are now settling in the Shinmachi Flower Street outside the city. It is said that the purpose of their visit to Osaka was to assassinate high-ranking officials in the Osaka shogunate and cause chaos in the shogunate. It seems that there is a greater conspiracy behind this, so I would like you to bring them back as quietly as possible, and ask them for their purpose and the real mastermind behind them. Don't alarm the five elders about this, can you do it? ”

Yoshikawa Kosuke naturally agreed without hesitation, but the governor did not immediately order him to retreat, but after hesitating for a while, he handed him a crumpled piece of paper and said, "In addition to the information from the Governor's Mansion who sent back this information, someone else dropped this in the Governor's Mansion in the morning. If we could, we would try to catch them alive today, and maybe there would be some of them that we needed. ”

Kosuke Yoshikawa scans the contents of the paper and realizes that it is a text written in kanji, which is also a report to the governor's palace, and a group of samurai disguised as merchants try to attack shogunate officials, mainly targeting him and Mizuno Shinko. He immediately put away the whistleblower letter, saluted to the governor, and said, "Understood, please rest assured, the lower officials will definitely bring this group back alive for interrogation..."

Shinmachihana Street, a brothel of green houses outside of Osaka, is now more bustling than it was five years ago. Surrounded by a ditch and isolated from the rest of the castle town, Yukaku looks much more imposing than the neighborhoods next door, protected by a tall wooden fence. Newcomers to the countryside often think of this place as Osaka Castle, so this place has also been nicknamed Osaka, the flower city.

The schedule here is also completely different from that of other neighborhoods, and when the other neighborhoods are crowded during the day, the girls and prostitutes of Flower Street have not yet gotten up. At night, when the rest of the neighborhood begins to fall silent, it is brightly lit and the streets are constantly crowded. As a result, anyone who is an Osaka person knows that if you want to go to Shinmachi Hanakai to see the world, it is best to enter this place at dusk, and you will not meet any outstanding women in Hanakaichi during the day. Because only those who don't have much business at night will appear on the streets during the day to recruit some people who are in a hurry to solve their physical problems.

Shinmachi Hanakai was originally located on the fringes of the castle town, but with the continuous development of Osaka's economy, the flower street, which was originally adjacent to the rice fields and vegetable fields, has gradually become the center of the castle town. It is said that the Governor considered moving the overly complicated Shinmachi Hanagai to the edge of the city, but after a petition from the brothel owners of the Hanakaichi and a contribution to the cost of public security and firefighting, the matter was finally settled by adding a police station and a fire station near the flower street.

In fact, Kosuke Yoshikawa, who was an economic minister in this matter, also made a great effort to dispel the Governor's disgust with the industry after showing the Governor the amount of taxes paid by the Flower Street in a year and the amount of land sold around the Flower Street.

Therefore, when Yoshikawa Kosuke entered the flower street with the co-captain Numata Kanichi, he commanded the army to surround the brothel where the rebels were located without looking at the map, as if he had returned to his own home.

Blocking the outer streets, as the army was about to enter the door of the brothel, Kosuke Yoshikawa asked Wing Commander Kenichi Numata, "Can you take them down without muskets?" I don't want the whole Flower Street to know that we're here to catch the thieves. ”

Numata Kanichi, who was wearing a black hat on his head and a black military uniform, bowed his head slightly and said, "Please rest assured, my lord, I have selected a squad of swordsmanship masters, as long as there are indeed no more than 20 traitors, we will definitely solve it quietly." Or do you wait outside the door for a while, and let the subordinate go in first to arrest the traitor? ”

Kosuke Yoshikawa suddenly smiled and said, "Captain Numata, I'm also a swordsman who has received a junior evaluation from Tomita-ryu, and I think I can still protect my life." As for the traitors inside, according to the established intelligence, it should be 17 people, of which 6 are merchants who have returned from China, and the remaining 11 are ronins they recruited locally. ”

Numata Kanichi immediately bowed his head and apologized, "I'm sorry, it's the lower official who is rude." Now that you have such detailed information, there is no problem with this arrest..."

Just as the two were talking, the owner of this brothel had been brought out by the samurai who had pretended to be a prostitute before, and looking at the other party's trembling appearance, Yoshikawa Kosuke didn't make any more threats, but asked him with a pleasant face: "Where are the cloth merchants from Tianjin, Mei Taro and his group, now?" As long as you speak quietly, nothing will happen to you here. ”

Although the brothel was divided into four courtyards, the main place to receive customers was in a two-story wooden building with a hollow structure in the middle courtyard. Umetaro and his companions live in two adjoining rooms on the second floor, while ronin, who are close to them, live in four rooms scattered downstairs.

After asking about the location of these people, the location of the room and the passage in the building, Yoshikawa Kosuke couldn't help but ask Numata Kenichi: "Captain Numata, you and I will go upstairs to meet that Umetaro for a while, and as for the affairs downstairs, I will leave it to your subordinates to solve." ”

"Absolutely." Numata Kanichi agreed, and then he gave a few orders to the two subordinates around him, asking them to take the brothel guys to arrest the prisoners on the first floor, while he took more than a dozen people to escort the boss and Yoshikawa Kosuke to the second floor of the wooden building in the middle courtyard.

According to the brothel owner's designation, they went up the stairs in the southeast corner and walked north through two rooms, where Metaro and his companions lived. The layout of the rooms here is almost identical, with a long suite divided into an inner and outer room, the outer room facing the inner corridor and the inner room leading to the outer balcony.

The outer room occupies about two-thirds of the area of the suite and is used for eating and entertaining; The inner compartment is smaller, and it is used as a place to sleep. Although there is a Japanese-paper-framed sliding door between the outside room and the passageway, this door is basically open in autumn tiger weather, except that there are two curtains blocking the upper part of the door, so that passers-by can clearly see the situation in the room.

When Kosuke Yoshikawa and the others entered the building, it was around four o'clock in the afternoon, and although it was still sunny outside, the building was a little dark. It's not too strange to have a guest come to the door at this time, this was originally calculated by Kosuke Yoshikawa. It's just that he didn't expect that from the moment he entered this building, accidents would happen one after another.

The first is that the thieves who were supposed to be drinking in the room actually ran to the next room to gamble. Therefore, when Numata Kanichi's subordinates rushed into the room where the traitor was, they immediately alarmed the samurai, who was gambling next door. After hearing the voice from next door, this one didn't jump off the building to escape, but directly picked up the saber and rushed out, and the room he was in was facing the place where Yoshikawa Kosuke was standing, if it weren't for the fact that this samurai was too reckless, he forgot the door frame in front of him when he drew his knife and slashed, and cut the knife deep into the door frame and it was difficult to pull it out for a while, Yoshikawa Kosuke might really have eaten a knife.

As the samurai who rushed out of the next room struggled to draw his sword, Numata Kanichi's subordinate finally reacted and slashed him in the stomach as he pulled the saber on the door frame with both hands. The knife was so fast and so hard that it caused the opponent's internal organs to flow out, and the samurai suddenly lost his strength and fell to the ground. The sudden battle caused both the prostitutes and their clients in the room to scream and flee to the inner room, and Kosuke Yoshikawa's plan to deal with it quietly collapsed.

What's worse is not only that, when the prostitutes and prostitutes in the building are messing around, the samurai who rushed into the thief's room came out to report that there were three people missing from the room, and the most important thief leader, Metaro, was not in the room. Kosuke Yoshikawa glanced at the samurai lying in a pool of blood, frowned and corrected, "It's not three people who are missing, it's two. Ask where they went? ”

The samurai glanced at the adjacent room, then ran back again, and then he grabbed a prostitute and said, "She said that she was invited by the new girl in the building." ”

Shinei was the highest-ranking prostitute in the brothel and a famous prostitute who could compete with the Oiran of Flower Street, and she lived in the northwest corner, occupying almost half of the inner porch. When Numata Kanichi was about to beckon his subordinates to rush over and not let them escape, Kosuke Yoshikawa stopped him and listened sideways for a moment.

Numata Kanichi also subconsciously listened to it, only to realize that in such a situation where people were turning their backs, there was a man's singing voice and the melodious music of the shamisen faintly coming from the room of the Shinei girl.

Numata Kanichi's face suddenly showed anger and said: "This person is really bold, knowing that the official army has arrived, he still dares to stay, is he despising the official army?" ”

After glancing at the corpse of the samurai next to him, Yoshikawa Kosuke smiled and said, "I thought these people were brainless thugs, but I didn't expect there to be such interesting people." Captain Numata, why don't we go and meet this character together? Let's see if he is really calm, or does he know that there is no way out, so he pretends to be calm? ”

When Kosuke Yoshikawa and Kenichi Numata walked into Shinei's room with four samurai, they found a man in a cyan kimono with his back to them, plucking the shamisen and singing, "Three thousand world crows have been killed, and I will sleep with you until dawn..."