The golden sunset is already touching the horizon, but the final glow paints the walls and castle tower of Tottori Castle with a dazzling layer of color, and with the nearby lofty mountains and scattered military camps, a long-range landscape is presented in front of everyone.

Tottori is indeed a fortified castle, built from the day it was built for defense rather than as a center for external expansion, and the narrow flat land under the castle is not suitable for the construction of a vast castle town, and I even suspect that it was Scrooge who proposed it in the first place.

The generals stood behind them without making a sound, and I think they had discussed each other many times before I arrived, and they were all too familiar with each other's opinions. It's a hillside not too far from the castle, and it's rare that you can see it from a little above the city walls. If you use a telescope, you can even see the activities of people in some areas. The area around this area is all under the administration of Kusunoki and Ishikawa, and there was already a ninja army of 120 people stationed here.

"Can't a shell hit the city even if you fire it here?" I put down the monoculars and slapped my right hand on the brass frame of the eyepiece, and the thinner eyepiece tube snapped into the front.

"Yes, my lord! Can't hit ......" Hearing my question, Keiji Maeda and Kazusuan Tsuda grabbed out of the queue together, and after looking at each other awkwardly, it was Tsuda Kazusuan who answered my question. "Maeda-sama and his subordinates, who are close to the city, have tried it, and their subordinates have also conducted a test firing themselves, and the shells are still ten feet away from the city. The three heights closer to the left here can be shot, but because the terrain is too low, you can only touch the outer wall, and the effect is too weak! ”

"Oh......" I nodded, my face probably not very pretty. To be honest, although the shelf is very big this time, I don't actually want to fight to the death with the Maori family so soon, which is why I chose this time to attack. Because of geographical factors, it is impossible for San'in to achieve too simple unification, and even the entire western kingdom is not easy to do. Therefore, the prestige and prestige of the strong are very important, and most local wealthy clans think that whoever is the powerful overlord is then he is!

It doesn't seem realistic to replace the Maori family in my current situation, and Oda Nobunaga doesn't necessarily want that to happen. The best I can do now is to easily wipe out the important vassals of the Maori family, and they have nothing to do with me. I can fight whoever I want in the whole western country, and no one can stop me!

Once this situation arises, all the wealthy families in the western country will hesitate, and the status of the Mori family and my Oda family will make it even more difficult for them, and the situation will be easy to deal with at that time. Oda Nobunaga had to rely on me even more, and the monkey had to show me a certain gesture for his own development. My choices will be more flexible, after all, it's easy to fish in troubled waters!

Now I'm being dragged here, which is definitely not a good sign! Once Tottori Castle can't be taken down, Yamana Toyokuni will also be abolished, and the people's opinion of me will be greatly reduced. If the Maori family is left free to fight with me, it will be a dilemma whether we win or lose.

"It's the incompetence of the ministers that makes the lord worried!" Kazusuke Tsuda and Keiji Maeda's faces flushed, and the people behind them also looked less natural, and they probably took my silence as a silent accusation.

"It's nothing, it's not all your problem!" I went back and forth twice in the same place, and it seems that it is indeed not that easy to do, otherwise it would not have stumped so many famous players. "If you want to attack, what kind of tactics should you use?" I finally stopped.

"Returning to my lordship, after my consultation with the adults...... "It was Takenaka Hanbei who answered me this time, and although he himself did not support this opinion, he was still prepared in this regard because he was not sure of my final decision." Relatively speaking, the terrain outside the east and north walls of Tottori Castle is relatively flat, which is convenient for large-scale troops and siege machinery, so the preset main attack direction was chosen on these two sides! Like artillery, trebuchets can't hit the gates, but they can fall on the top of the city because they are thrown high. We have prepared some stone pellets and are continuing to mine them. The enemy army in the city is currently a frightened bird, and it is not easy to sneak attack, so the ministers are ready to do the opposite, and let the ninja and the ninja army harass them day and night in batches to achieve the effect of exhausting the army! If this multi-pronged approach is carried out, the city can fall in a month at most, but I am afraid that the casualties will be ......."

"Hmm......" Although he didn't finish speaking, I understood the meaning, and the number of casualties in the continuous onslaught was only afraid that it would not be less. In the face of such a city, the basic casualties will not be less than the number of defenders, and my personal estimate is more than 5,000. "Then ...... Come here! "I suddenly saw a short figure in the back row of the crowd, who had been being seen by people just now because of his height, and only now did he appear because of the occasional movement of the people in the front row.

"Yes!" Hearing my call, Otsubo Hachirouemon hurriedly squeezed through the crowd, and the generals in front of the line had to make way for the former leader of the Black Mountain miners' relatively broad body. "The subordinates are here, please command!" This is really a trivial matter for him, who has dealt with mountains all his life, so he will not be able to climb ten or eight such mountains.

"Is it possible to build a tunnel to the inner city?" I remember that Shingen Takeda had used a similar approach in dealing with individual "difficult problems" in the past, so I asked him. "Yes!" He also took out a map from his bosom, which I couldn't make out when I looked at it, it was full of strange circles and differences, and it was not a commonly used military symbol. "Back to the lord, the tunnel leading to the inner city will take four months to build, if it is the outer city, then two and a half months will do!"

"Is it going to take that long?" I was a little surprised by the sheer size of the project, and it was almost time for the siege to work.

"Yes, my lord!" Otsubo Hachirouemon replied with the rigor of a professional technician, with a meticulous expression on his face. "The foundations of this Tottori Castle look like simple rammed earth, but in fact, most of the stone in the middle is made of natural stones! The soil layer was supplemented to complete the appearance of the city, and the main structure was on a hill. The tunnels leading to the city must not be discovered by the defenders, so they must neither be too large nor too close to the mouth of the tunnels......"

"I see!" I now understand why there are so few cases of tunnel-breaching cities in history, it turns out that this is really more laborious than ordinary sieges, so it can only be used for cities that have no defects and are richly stocked. "Is it okay to cut off the city's water supply?"

"Theoretically, yes, the water source at such a high level must be spring water and not well water!" He held up the picture in his hand again, the sun had already set, and he could only rely on the light of a few torches that had just been lit. "Since the siege of the city for half a month, the subordinates have made some preliminary surveys, and have discovered the location of the five springs below the outer city. I think I'll be able to ...... another month."

"Lord Kobayashi, come here!" I don't want to delay month after month, and I'm not interested in knowing what he wants. It's better to use a simple and direct approach, and I directly called Kobayashi Mitsuki, a retainer from Yamana who was brought in to offer advice. "Please take the time to explain how many water sources there are in Tottori Castle! Where are they! ”

"Returning to His Royal Highness, Tottori Castle ** has 13 large and small water sources, divided into 3 inner cities and 10 outer cities! As for the specific location...... "Seeing that he couldn't speak, Otsubo Hachirouemon hurriedly handed over the map in his hand, but unfortunately he couldn't understand this unconventional drawing. “…… That's it! It wasn't until he took out a map of the military Tottori Castle that he made a detailed mark.

"How about it, can you cut it all off?" I asked about Hachirouemon again.

"There shouldn't be any problem!" He looked at the marks on the military map and corrected his drawings again, and then said: "The 10 water veins in the outer city are not difficult to find, and they can be completely cut off by giving their subordinates a month!" The three water veins in the inner city are deep in the mountains and rocks, and there are no three months for me to be afraid of ......"

"Tell Takenaka-sama what you need, and get to work when you're ready!" I sighed and said. It seems that it is impossible to take Tottori Castle lightly, and I will have to spend a lot of human lives if I don't want to wait, so I made a decision after weighing it repeatedly. I may not be short of money, but with these remote and backward territories in my hands, once the elite soldiers of a hundred battles are lost, they will not be so easy to recover. "Heavy governance, keiji!" I called Hanbei Takenaka and Keiji Maeda.

"Yes, please command!" They also saw that I was determined and was ready to do so.

"That's it...... Siege the city! I said helplessly: "Heavy governance is responsible for overall planning; Keiji commands feints everywhere! Although it is not necessary to actually attack the city, it is necessary to constantly shoot the head of the city with trebuchets to make them terrified all the time. As I said earlier, the Ninja Army's Otsubo Reserve carried out the 'water-cutting' operation, but this was far from enough! Duan Zang wants to intensify the attack at night, and the first target is the granaries everywhere, which is the key to determining the time for both the enemy and us......"

The generals I ordered agreed one by one, and the few who had doubts asked them in person, and reconfirmed them at the supplementary suggestion of the Takenaka Hanbei.

......I breathed a sigh of relief after the intense work, the mountain breeze on the summer night was a little cold, and I couldn't help but shiver when I was sweating when I climbed the mountain just now. Looking up at the sky, I don't know what day there was not a single star.

"The lord has been tired all the way, so let's go back and rest early, right?" The half-guards of Takenaka noticed my anomaly in the half-light and half-dark torch light, and reminded me with concern.

"Okay!" I nodded and walked down the hill first, only to hear a thud and all the torches suddenly went out at the same time.

The "......" rain fell without warning, catching people off guard. Everyone immediately became chickens in the soup, and the water in the cracks of the armor flowed into a slip. "It turns out that there are no stars because it's cloudy!"