At noon on August 24 in the third year of Chongzhen, Chen Jisheng, the new envoy of Yingzhou, led more than 500 large and small ships that had gathered in the waters east of Tsushima Island to appear outside the bay where the Yanyuan Port on Tsushima Island was located again.

The twenty-six-year-old lord of the Tsushima Domain, Zong Yoshinari, with his retainers and attendants, stood at the highest point of Jinshishan Castle in the port of Yanyuan, looking at the dense Ming army and Korean warships outside the port, his face full of exhaustion and worry.

Although he was young, he had inherited the title of lord of the Tsushima domain from his father, known as the old fox, for fifteen years.

In the history of the Tsushima Domain, there have been many existential crises faced by the Tsushima clan, but never before has it reached the point where it has run out of ammunition and food.

Not long after Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Japanese army was defeated and withdrawn from the Korean Peninsula, the Tsushima clan immediately bore the brunt of the Korean army's retaliation, and the Koreans attacked Tsushima Island and massacred the population of the Tsushima clan on the island.

At that time, the lord of the Tsushima domain, Yoshitomo So, led the feudal clan to defend the army, and with the help of the two Jinshishan Castles located in Fuchu and the Shimizu Mountain Castle in the northern Jizhi, especially the large amount of grain and grass stored in Shimizuyama Castle, he held on for a long time.

However, in the end, Zong Yizhi, who was cut off from foreign contact, finally chose to negotiate with the North Koreans who came to retaliate aggressively.

In the end, the two sides reached an agreement to surrender, and in addition to paying a large amount of compensation, Zong Yizhi also decided to pay tribute to the then king of Joseon.

At that time, with the help of the Ming Dynasty, Korea had gone through many years of war, and it could be regarded as training a group of troops that could fight.

If the Joseon king at that time did not want this false name of being a minister and insisted on destroying the Tsushima clan, then the Tsushima domain would no longer exist today.

However, the king of Joseon at that time, who later became Gwanghae-kun, did not resist the temptation of a Japanese daimyo to claim himself as a vassal and agreed to negotiate peace, and Tsushima survived.

For more than a decade after that, the lord of the Tsushima Domain, Soyoshi, played a two-faced approach, continuing to pay tribute to the Tokugawa shogunate, which had won the civil war, and to the Gwanghae-kun of Korea, and to monopolize the trade between the two sides.

This is also the reason why Korea, a country that had become a feud with Japan at that time, agreed to trade with the Japanese merchant ships of the Tsushima Domain to open a Wakan in Pusan, so many years after the war.

Because the Koreans at that time did not look at the Tsushima clan as a Japanese.

This practice cheapened the Zong family, and the Zong family, which lived on a group of barren islands, quickly recovered.

At the beginning of the Apocalypse, when a coup d'état and civil strife occurred in Korea, that is, after Gwanghaejun stepped down and Ayayangjun Yi Liang (now the Joseon King Yi Liang) came to power, the Tsushima clan immediately cut off the matter of paying tribute to Korea.

At that time, Li Liang, who had just come to power, was not right-spoken, and he was not officially canonized by the Ming Dynasty, and the north was facing a serious threat from the Jurchens, so he had no time to take care of this two-faced Tsushima domain.

As for the Japanese palace in Pyongyang, the DPRK monarchs did not dare to ban it.

Because as soon as it was banned, the Tsushima Domain sent rice-robbers to attack and harass, which caused the Koreans a headache but were helpless.

In this way, the Tsushima clan's clan played this two-faced trick to the fullest, not only keeping the family's territory, but also rising again by virtue of its superior geographical location.

Of course, the current lord of the Tsushima domain, Zong Yoshinari, knows that in the Ming Dynasty or Joseon, it is enough to be regarded as a treacherous duplicitous approach, but it is the way of survival of the Zong family and even the daimyo in Japan during the Warring States period at that time, and they are not ashamed, but proud.

And this way of survival is also the secret of the Tokugawa shogunate period when the daimyo of each feudal clan taught their own children.

As the eldest son of Zong Yizhi, Zong Yicheng is of course well versed in his family's history and wisdom.

At this time, standing on the top of Jinshi Mountain City, looking east at the dense Ming warships on the sea, Zong Yicheng's heart was thinking about the history and wisdom of the family.

Zong Yicheng was thinking about it, and he watched the Ming warships on the sea burst out one after another, and then he heard a series of cannon sounds of "bang", "bang"!

Hundreds of 400-odd ships lined up and fired their guns around the harbor, and each time hundreds or even hundreds of projectiles came together, some of which had a long range and had landed on the shore in the harbor from time to time.

And in Yanyuan Harbor under Jinshishan City on his side, many forts that had previously made the Ming warships dare not enter the harbor were silent for a long time, and occasionally a certain fort emitted one or two cannon sounds.

Those who don't know the truth may think that at this time, the defenders of the Tsushima Domain in Yanyuan Harbor are playing tricks to lure the enemy into the port, such as Chen Jisheng, Li Xingzhong and others who were watching the battle with binoculars on the Ming warship at this time.

But Zong Yicheng, who stood on Jinshi Mountain City, and his teacher and mastermind Gui Bo Xuanfang, who grew up since he was a child, knew very well that the reason behind this was not to lure the enemy deeper, but to run out of ammunition.

At this time, Zong Yicheng finally made a decision in his heart, turned his head to look at the old monk Gui Bo Xuanfang, who was nearly thirty years older than him, and said in a firm tone:

"Master! Ben Shou's mind has been decided, and the Zong's family business to Ma Shou cannot be destroyed in the hands of Ben Shou! Let's go meet the enemy commander! ”

The master in Zong Yicheng's mouth was the wrinkled old monk Gui Bo Xuanfang standing beside him at this time.

Because Tokugawa Ieyasu himself was a Buddhist, and at the same time extremely rejected Catholicism, after the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, Buddhism was very respected, and the status of Japanese monks was very high.

Moreover, the Japanese monks of this era were not as vulgar as the Japanese monks of later generations, so they were worshiped by the daimyo of each domain, and often participated in various major decisions as teachers or messengers of the daimyo of each domain.

When Zong Yizhi was not dead, this Gui Bo Xuanfang was already serving Zong Yizhi as a strategist.

Whether it was the Tsushima Domain's tribute to Korea in the past, or the tribute to Edo now, it was handled by Gui Bo Genfang as a messenger.

Zong Yicheng worshipped him as a teacher when he was a child, so he respected him very much.

"If the sovereign has done his best, he does not need to repent and feel guilty, and see how the ruler of the Ming Kingdom answers!"

Gui Bo Xuanfang folded his hands and bowed to Zong Yicheng and said: "In the opinion of a monk, the sailor of the Ming Kingdom came from afar, and his so-called questioning was just an invitation from his vassal state Joseon. If it comes from a long way, it will not stay long.

"Judging from the letter sent by his commander before, the various demands put forward do not mean to destroy the Ma Zong clan. In the monk's opinion, when this is a last resort, it is not impossible to agree.

"If it will destroy the clan, the monk and the lord will fight together to the end, if he can save the clan, the lord can endure the humiliation for a while, what does it matter if he pays tribute to him! This Ming country is also, not North Korea! ”

Tsushima Domain's lord Zong Yoshicheng and his family Lao Yanagawa Tiaoxing, as well as the old monk Gui Bo Xuanfang, originally thought that this group of Ming naval divisions and Korean troops, after two defeats and retreats, should withdraw their troops to make sense.

Even if you don't withdraw your troops, you can continue to attack Tsushima Island, as long as you dare to come, I will continue to rely on the mountain castle on the island and the fortifications in the port of Yanyuan to do it with you, and I am not afraid of you when the firearms are superior and the location is advantageous.

That's what Zong Yicheng and the others thought, but what they didn't expect was that the sailor warships cruising outside the harbor did not come to really attack, but only blocked the port and cut off all contact between the Tsushima Domain and the outside world.

Not to mention that grain ships and cargo ships can't get in, even if you want to send a small boat out to deliver letters, you can't send them out.

At the beginning, Zong Yicheng and Yanagawa Tiaoxing also felt that the Ming warships and the Korean army outside the island would not last long, and they would run out of food and retreat, as long as they held on to this day, and then restored the connection between the island and the outside of the island, everything would be easy.

However, unexpectedly, the enemy ships blockading Tsushima not only did not retreat for several months, but also continued to shell the port and harass the coast during these months, forcing the defenders of the Tsushima domain to fire back incessantly.

It wasn't until Yanagawa sent someone to report that the gunpowder and projectiles of the many forts in the port of Yanyuan outside the city were about to run out, that Zong Yicheng realized that he was in a predicament.

At this time, after more than three months of naval blockade from May to the end of August, the island's already small rice stocks were about to bottom out.