In the early hours of mid-June, Edo Bay.

Under the starlight in the sky, small black dots appeared on the sea level in the distance, slowly coming towards Edo Bay.

When those little black dots got closer, they found that it was a huge fleet, sailing mightily on the sea.

This fleet was naturally a naval division of the Ming army, and the flagship was Li Hongyu's ship "Sea Dragon", and the fleet was escorted by twelve three-masted warships to protect the 40,000 Ming troops landing in Edo Bay and then raiding Edo Castle.

On the Sea Dragon, Li Hongyu stood on the deck blowing the sea breeze, looking at the faintly visible coastline ahead, as the saying goes, the thief captures the king first, so he is ready to sneak attack Edo Castle and capture the Tokugawa family of the shogunate.

Next to Li Hongyu stood a beautiful woman in red samurai plate armor, looking at Edo Bay getting closer and closer with some excitement.

She is none other than Li Hongyu's wife, Sakurako Yamashita, who has grown from a young girl to a beautiful and heroic beauty, and her beauty is comparable to Zhao Xin, and even Youlan is slightly inferior.

Yamashita Sakurako's greatest wish is to return to the Wa Kingdom and glorify her ancestors after killing her enemies, and she has been waiting for many days for today.

Originally, Li Hongyu wanted Yamashita Sakurako to join the Ming army blockading Kyushu Island, so that Yamashita Sakurako could personally lead the army to attack Tsushima Island, where the Japanese were entrenched, and kill the enemies who killed his parents on Tsushima Island.

However, Yamashita Sakurako was worried about Li Hongyu's safety, so she gave up her trip to Tsushima Island and followed Li Hongyu to attack Edo.

The shogunate, Shimazu Naruto and others could not have imagined that Li Hongyu's war letter was actually a plan to divert the tiger from the mountain, transfer the main force of the Japanese state to Kyushu Island and blockade it, and then send troops to attack Honshu Island, so that the Ming army would not encounter any major resistance.

For this reason, Li Hongyu has already withdrawn all the main forces of the three major sailors, leaving only a small number of sailor ships to maintain the safety and order of overseas trade routes.

After these years of development, the three major naval divisions under Li Hongyu have expanded rapidly, and the total strength of the naval divisions has exceeded 100,000 people, playing a great reputation on the sea, becoming the most powerful water force in the world.

Li Hongyu was not worried about the safety of overseas trade fleets, and after all these years of naval operations, the large and small pirates along the overseas trade coasts had almost been annihilated and could not endanger the trade fleets.

Not only that, with Li Hongyu controlling Nanyang over the years, the lives of the people of Nanyang have been greatly improved, which also makes no one want to live the kind of life with their heads tied to their belts as pirates.

It was precisely because of this that Li Hongyu transferred all the main forces of the three major naval divisions to fight against the Japanese state.

While Li Hongyu led the fleet to attack Edo Bay, the rest of the naval ships, mainly three-masted warships and ordinary gunboats with sea attack capabilities, launched simultaneous attacks on several major ports on Kyushu Island.

In the face of the fierce artillery attack of the Ming army's naval divisions, all the large and small ships in the port were destroyed and almost destroyed.

Just when the daimyo of Kyushu Island thought that the Ming army would land, the Ming army sailors who destroyed those ports had no intention of docking, but just cruised on the sea from afar, monitoring the movements of the ports.

At this time, the Japanese army, which was already ready for battle, seemed very helpless, and it was impossible for them to fly over to engage the Ming army's naval division, so they could only passively wait for the Ming army's next plan.

The Ming ships of the Great Ryukyu soon sent elixirs and food supplies, and the replenished Ming naval divisions carried out another wave of attacks on the surviving ships in several ports, and began to eliminate the large and small ships docked along the coast, completely blocking the connection between Kyushu Island and the outside world.

It was only at this time that those daimyo on Kyushu Island discovered Li Hongyu's true intentions, not to fight them but to trap them on Kyushu Island, which made people panic.

In order to defeat the Ming army on Kyushu Island, the daimyo from all over the country transferred elite troops, so that the feudal domains not only had insufficient troops but also had poor soldiers, so if the Ming army took the opportunity to attack at this time, how could it resist?

Mori Hidehiro sighed secretly in his heart, he had a premonition that Li Hongyu's war book was too strange this time, and it turned out that things were really as he thought, the shogunate and the feudal lords in various places were fooled, so that they concentrated their forces on Kyushu Island, and their respective base camps were exposed to the threat of the Ming army.

Although those daimyo secretly felt anxious in their hearts, because the Ming army's sailors had blocked the water traffic and the ships were destroyed one after another, they couldn't do anything about it, so they couldn't let the soldiers swim over.

Of course, some daimyo did not give up and let his subordinates rush to make ships, but as a result, many ships were found by the ships of the Ming army sailors cruising on the sea, and they only had the fate of being destroyed.

In fact, the Ming army's blockade of Kyushu Island was mainly to prevent the Japanese people of Kyushu from entering Shikoku Island and Honshu Island, so the blockade was to the sea area to Shikoku Island and Honshu Island, and this effect was the highest.

The power of the three-masted galleon was clearly apparent at this time, and the formation of two three-masted galleons could cruise a very large area of sea.

However, there were also some people who managed to reach Shikoku Island and Honshu Island under the cover of darkness through the blockade of the Ming Army's naval division, and because the number of these people was very small, they could not affect the overall situation at all, but instead brought a tense atmosphere to Honshu Island and Shikoku Island.

In the face of the surprise attack of the Ming army's naval divisions, the Japanese people in Edo Bay were dazed by a cannon fire from the three-masted warship before they could react, and the wolves rushed to make the landing force successfully land in Edo Bay.

It is worth mentioning that the main troops to log in this time were the DPRK troops, and Li Hongyu conducted many years of training for the DPRK troops for today's battle.

For those North Korean soldiers, this was the best opportunity to avenge the Japanese invasion 40 years ago, and it was also a moment to make war achievements.

Although there were quite a few marine units of the Ming Army's naval division, they were all placed in Nanyang by Li Hongyu, which was suitable for operations in the Nanyang environment, while Korea was very close to the Japanese and was more familiar with the geography and climate of the Japanese State, so that it could exert greater combat effectiveness.

After the landing in Edo Bay, the Ming army's marines did not stop and went straight to Edo Castle, blocking the Tokugawa Iekai who had not had time to escape.

Li Hongyu and Yamashita Sakurako arrived outside Edo Castle under heavy escort and fired letters into the castle asking the Tokugawa shogunate to surrender, and he would ensure the safety of the shogunate and the people of the city.

However, the Tokugawa shogunate rejected Li Hongyu's kindness, believing that the Honshu feudal domains would soon come to the rescue and drive the Ming army away.

Li Hongyu naturally did not give the Tokugawa shogunate this opportunity, and ordered the siege of the city after it refused to surrender, to the surprise of the defenders of Edo Castle, the Ming army did not use siege equipment, but set up many artillery pieces outside the city, and bombarded the walls of Edo Castle.

Due to the high cost, the Wa Kingdom did not build castles that included residential areas like the Ming Dynasty, and usually built a castle tower like a fortress for the feudal lords to live in.

Although Jianghu Castle has a city wall, it is not strong, so it can not withstand the bombardment of the Ming artillery and soon collapses in many places, and the Ming army, which has long been eager to try, immediately raised the weapons in their hands after the shelling stopped, and rushed into the city from the gap with a shout, so that Edo Castle was immediately shrouded in a bloody wind, and many people suffered from it.

Li Hongyu is incompetent about this kind of thing, and he can only secretly sympathize with the civilians who were killed in his heart, this is the cruelty of war, and it is not easy to love the people of the empire.

After the walls of Edo Castle were breached, the entire castle was quickly controlled by the Ming army, which in turn surrounded the castle tower and the Honmaru Goten.

The castle tower was inhabited by the successive shoguns of the Tokugawa shogunate, and it was made of solid rock, which was very strong, and the Honmaru Goden was the place where the concubines lived, and the most famous place was Oku.

Compared to the fortification of the castle tower, the defense of the Honmaru Palace was much weaker, and it could only be defended by the castle walls.

After all, the Tokugawa shogunate was the ruler of the Wa Kingdom, so Li Hongyu didn't want to go too far, so he didn't order the attack on the castle tower and the Honmaru Palace.

Although the castle tower was easy to defend and difficult to attack, it was still unable to hold out for long in the face of the Ming army, which had already destroyed the walls of Edo Castle with artillery, and Tokugawa Iekai knew about it.

Li Hongyu sent an envoy this time to enter the castle tower to persuade Tokugawa Ikei to surrender, and now there is only one way to surrender in front of Tokugawa Ikei, otherwise the Ming army will definitely attack, and the people in the Honmaru Palace will be unable to escape death.

After negotiations, Tokugawa Iekai finally chose to surrender under Li Hongyu's promise to ensure the safety of the Japanese people, opened the gate of the castle tower and walked out to apologize.

With the surrender of Tokugawa Iekai, the Tokugawa shogunate officially came to an end, and the Wa kingdom was in a state of disarray.

The next thing Li Hongyu had to do was to recruit the daimyo from all over the Wa kingdom and launch an armed attack on those who refused to surrender.

Since the main forces of the three major island lords of Honshu, Shikoku and Hokkaido had already been transferred to Kyushu Island, with the surrender of Tokugawa Iekai, many daimyo chose to surrender under the military pressure of the Ming army, and some of them resisted stubbornly, resulting in an inevitable war.

When the news of Li Hongyu's capture of Edo Castle and the surrender of Tokugawa Ikekai reached the Japanese army on Kyushu Island, it immediately caused a huge commotion, and no one expected that Li Hongyu would directly destroy the Tokugawa shogunate.

At this moment, the most desired thing for the Japanese army on Kyushu Island was to have a decisive battle with the Ming army, but how could Li Hongyu satisfy their wish and order the sailors to besiege but not attack, if this continues, the supply of grain and grass for the Japanese army will become tight, and it will definitely collapse without a fight.

Unable to fight a decisive battle with the Ming army and unable to rush back to the rescue, the mentality of the Japanese generals from Hokkaido, Honshu and Shikoku Island gradually changed, and some people began to practice privately discussing the surrender of the Ming army, after all, their families were under the control of the Ming army, where were they still thinking of fighting.

Li Hongyu used the two tactics of diverting the tiger from the mountain and capturing the thief and capturing the king, which instantly shattered the will of the Japanese army to resist, and was regarded as a classic tactic of war by later generations, forcing the Japanese army to be unable to use its strength.

Although he succeeded in forcing Tokugawa Iekai to surrender, Li Hongyu was well aware that he still had a long way to go if he wanted to truly control the Wa Kingdom, and how to govern it would become a very important issue, and it would take time for the Wa Kingdom to be integrated into Chinese culture.

(End of chapter)