- 'Five peaks are out, and the four seas are served!' This domineering phrase has gradually faded with the death of the old shipowner Wang Zhi in the last years of Jiajing, and has become a yellowed memory on the paper. However, life has to go on, and future generations either follow or rebel against the line he delineated, and continue to stage new history.

In his later years, Wang Zhi designated his son Wang Cheng, who had just been at sea for a few years, to inherit his sphere of influence in the waters of 'Taiwan-Korea-Shandong'. He also knew that Wang Cheng's qualifications were shallow, and he couldn't suppress those generals who had added blood to the knife all their lives and only respected the strong. Maybe it's because of old age, or maybe it's because I'm worried that once I don't have a few old guys, my huge power will be even more uncontrollable. Therefore, he did not choose the most thorough way - cutting the grass and eradicating the roots, but sent Mao Haifeng to Luzon, let Ye Bichuan and Wang Qingxi be stationed in Taiwan, and let Wang Cheng be in charge of the base camp of the Five Islands in Songpujin, in order to establish authority for him as soon as possible.

When Wang Zhi was alive, Ye Bichuan, Wang Qingxi and others were very obedient to Wang Cheng's orders, and they did not hesitate to even ask Wang Cheng to return to Hirado Island, which made Wang's father and son greatly relieved, thinking that they had successfully completed the handover. Also because he was worried that after the death of the two, their subordinates who remained on the island of Taiwan would lose control, Wang Zhi did not allow Wang Cheng to do anything to the two and let them go back.

In the forty-fifth year of Jiajing, Wang Zhi died, and the two of them immediately showed their true colors, they no longer obeyed Wang Cheng's dispatch, and coerced the leaders of all walks of life, known as the princes of the 36th Road 'Juyi Taiwan Island', openly claiming that Wang Chengde was not convinced by the public, and demanded that the leader be re-elected, and the strongest should be respected.

Wang Cheng was furious when he heard the news, declared Ye Wang and the two rebellious, and ordered someone to arrest his family members who stayed on Hirado Island as hostages, only to find that the house had already been emptied, and it was obvious that the other party had been planning for a long time.

The clouds of war loomed over the East China Sea, and both sides resorted to looting each other's fleets in order to weaken the enemy and strengthen themselves. However, in this way, the incoming and outgoing fleets were greatly threatened, and the losses were very heavy. The Matsuura family, which was allied with the Wang family, was threatened by the Ryuzoji family, the overlord of Kitakyushu, and had to put pressure on Wang Cheng, asking him to immediately end the chaos and restore the safety of the route, otherwise he could only withdraw and hand over the route to someone.

Under pressure, in the winter of the first year of Longqing, Wang Cheng sent his younger brother Wang Sheng, generals Xie He, Fang Tingzhu and others to lead more than 300 warships south to Taiwan and directly attack Ye Bichuan's lair in Keelung. Ye Wang and the others had already prepared, and they also gathered more than 200 warships to meet the enemy. Wang Cheng had no combat experience, but the powerful Wufeng fleet was under his command; Although the warships of King Ye's command could not be compared with them in terms of quantity and quality, they had extremely rich experience in naval warfare. The two sides fought for several days, and the losses were very large, and Ye Wang's troops were continuously replenished because of their backs to the base, and finally repelled the Wufeng fleet, which had not tasted defeat in history. Wang Sheng was also killed in this battle, which was a heavy blow to Wang Cheng.

After that, the morale of the Yewang coalition army was high, and they took the initiative, basically putting the Wufeng fleet in the sea, Wang Cheng's internal and external pressure increased sharply, and doubts about his ability were also very loud, and from time to time some generals defected with warships. In the spring of the following year, Xie He was unfortunately killed in a sabotage attack, and Wang Cheng's fleet had already lost half of it, and he completely lost the courage to defeat the enemy alone, so he had to ask for help from Mao Haifeng, who was far away in Luzon.

At this time, Mao Haifeng is no longer what it used to be, he relied on the 'China-Luzon-America' route, accumulated a huge fortune in a few years, and relied on the good relationship with the Ming official and the Nanyang Company, and could continue to buy new warships.

Drinking water and thinking of the source, Mao Haifeng is still very grateful to his father-in-law, and he never dared to forget Wang Zhi's testament before he died, asking him to take care of Wang Cheng's testament, and after getting the approval of Shen Mo, he led the fleet to the north, joined forces with Wang Cheng, and broke the Yewang coalition army in a battle. However, after all, Ye Wang and the others were generals, and when they saw that things were not good, they led the crowd to flee, only waiting for Mao Haifeng to leave and then returning to the army to strike.

In the face of this situation, people with a slightly delicate mind are likely to be in a dilemma, but a rough man like Mao Haifeng is the most suitable to deal with this situation, he is straightforward to Wang Cheng, it is too dangerous to hold it, and I can't go back to save it. Why don't we change, go to me, I'll be here.

Wang Cheng was petrified at that time, this is really the front door to reject the wolf, the back door to enter the tiger, but the situation is stronger than people, what can he do? Don't say yes? Mao Haifeng slapped his ass and left, and the Yewang coalition army could kill it back in a blink of an eye. Fortunately, the days in Luzon are really good, didn't you see Mao Haifeng go for a few years and send it? In order to be stable, Wang Cheng could only put away his unwillingness, obediently packed up his things and led the crowd south...... The people who begged for a living at sea were all convinced of the strong, Wang Cheng was so cowardly, they naturally would not follow anymore, and in the end he only took half of it, and those who were capable and powerful stayed from Mao Haifeng.

Seeing this, Wang Qingxi and Ye Bichuan didn't want to kill each other, so they accepted the truce, and in the autumn of this year, a tripartite alliance was held in Shanghai to make peace for Wang Cheng and Ye Wang. More than a year after the start of the war, both sides tasted the harm of killing each other in an environment surrounded by strong enemies. So the alliance was re-concluded, and it was decided that the three would take turns to sit in the village, and the alliance leader would be elected as the first alliance leader every five years.

After sorting out the civil strife, Mao Haifeng concentrated on gaining a firm foothold. This is not too difficult, because first, people have always respected the strong, and Wang Cheng was untenable before, just because he was not strong enough. Second, he is Wang Zhi's adopted son, and Wang Zhi's confidant has always been a general, and he is very familiar with the Matsuura family, and the other party should be happy to accept him as a strongman to protect foreign trade routes.

However, difficulties did exist - the new suzerain of the Matsuura family, the Ryuzoji family, one of the three powerful feudal clans on the island of Kyushu, did not welcome him. At the age of sixteen, his father and grandfather were killed for rebelling against the daimyo Shoji Sho, and he fled to Chikugo Province with his great-grandfather, and with the support of the Kamachi clan and Ouchi Yoshitaka, he finally revived the Ryuzoji clan again, defeated the Shoji Shoji, forced him to commit suicide, and replaced him as the guardian daimyo of Hizen, and through the Eastern Expedition to the West, he continued to expand, and became one of the three powerful feudal clans of Kyushu with the Otomo family and the Chiba family, and occupied the Matsuura family in Kitahizen, also had to bow down.

The special experience has created the character of Ryuzoji Takanobu who is ruthless, cruel, despicable, cunning, and ambitious. In order to realize the dream of unifying Kyushu, Ryuzoji Temple had long wanted to annex the Matsuura family and occupy Hirado Castle, but he did not dare to make a move against the Matsuura family because of the strong Goho fleet. That's why he contacted the daimyo of Kyushu Island and put pressure on the Matsuura family to drive the Ming people out.

The head of the Matsuura family, Takanobu Matsuura, has been a daimyo for decades, how can he not see the Tao in this? He confessed his predicament to Mao Haifeng, and reluctantly said that because of the identity of the other party's foreigner, he had the intention to protect him, and he didn't dare to do too much.

Listening to Matsuura Takashi's bitterness, Mao Haifeng laughed, although rest assured, the attitude of Longzoji Temple will soon change greatly!

Sure enough, the rapid rise and ugly appearance of the Ryuzoji family finally attracted the attention of the Otomo family, the overlord of Kyushu Island. In the third year of Longqing, Zonglin, the head of the Otomo family, personally led an army of 60,000 to set up a formation in Gaoliang Mountain, while the army under the command of Longzoji Temple was only 5,000 people. The army pressed the border, and the people of Hizen who had already succumbed to the dragon temple family rebelled one after another. In desperation, Ryuzoji could only bribe Maori Motoshi with a lot of money and attack the territory of the Otomo family, Fengzen Province, so that he could negotiate peace and strike the army.

After this incident, the attention of Longzao Temple was all attracted by the Dayou family, and his attitude towards Mao Haifeng also changed greatly, because he realized that he must have the support of the Songpu family and the Ming maritime merchants who focused on commerce, so that he could get more money and obtain material support faster and more than other princes, especially advanced muskets and artillery, which was definitely a big advantage in the Warring States Period.

So he married his second daughter to the grandson of Matsuura Takanobu, formed a solid alliance with him, and worshipped Mao Haifeng as brothers, and agreed to be rich and prosperous together. Mao Haifeng didn't expect this kind of cheap brother, but even if it was for more convenient arms sales, he didn't have to refuse this kind of request.

In the fourth year of Longqing, the Great Friendly Army sent 60,000 troops again to attack the Longzao Temple family. After intense preparations, the army of Longzao Temple was able to gather 20,000 men. Although it is still inferior in numbers, it is superior to its opponents in terms of equipment. Eventually, Ryuzoji Takanobu launched a surprise attack and defeated the Otomo army. After the war, Ryuzoji Takanobu took the initiative to sue for peace, and after that, the Ryuzoji family was nominally subordinate to the Otomo family, but in fact the three-legged pattern of Kyushu had been laid.

During the war, the Otomo family realized that the weapons of the Ryuzoji family were advanced, so they also sent people to find Mao Haifeng and buy arms at a high price. Mao Haifeng naturally didn't think about the feelings of his cheap brother, no matter who the customer was, as long as he had money, various types of guns were openly supplied.

In this way, the Chiba family couldn't sit still, so they could only open the money bag and join the arms race. Mao Haifeng's name also spread to the major princes with the purchase of the three families. In this era, there is a shortage of materials but it is in the era of large-scale gold and silver mining, and it is really poor that there is only money left. The goods trafficked by Mao Haifeng, whether it was muskets, swords, armor, raw silk, cotton cloth, or tea, were all booked until several years later, but the payment for the goods was paid in full at the moment the order was placed, so that Mao's account office counted the money until their hands cramped. His income is several times higher than when he was in Luzon, which shows that no matter how good a business is, he must have the ability to do it.

In order to cope with the long-term surplus of orders, Mao Haifeng ordered the latest warships and armed merchant ships from the three major shipyards in China, and recruited people in China, along the coast of Daming, and many maritime forces, desperately expanding his strength.

Solving the shortage of transportation capacity is just a pretext, and his real purpose was not known to the world until eight years later, in the sixth year of Wanli - everything was for that Warring States era, a man like a demon god!

During the Warring States Period, there were many heroes, but there was only one real hero, and that was Oda Nobunaga, who was later known as the 'Sixth Heavenly Demon King'. Compared to him, Ryuzoji Takanobu is nothing more than an incompetent bear, and he is not worthy of being Nobunaga's enemy at all.

The eldest son of the Oda family, absurd, adventurous, and exposed to new things since childhood, showed extraordinary determination and courage in adulthood, cunning and ruthless. Of course, before the thirty-eighth year of Jiajing, even if he unified the entire Owari Kingdom, it was not conspicuous in the Warring States Period, when there were many heroes. However, an incident occurred the following year that pushed him to the forefront, and he never left the center stage of the history of the Warring States period - at that time, the national power was in full swing, and the daimyo Imagawa Yoshimoto, known as the "first bow of the Tokaido", led an army of 25,000 and claimed to be 40,000 to go to Luojin to meet the general.

Joraku, which means 'to go to Kyoto', is a more formal method of 'going to the capital', but it is not used by ordinary people, but is used to describe the process by which the strongest local feudal chiefs gather a large army and march to Kyoto to declare their status. Since the road to Kamiraku had to pass through Owari, Nobunaga was unwilling to surrender and decided to raise troops to fight, but the total strength was only five or six thousand, and in order to deal with Saito Yoshiryu in the north, he could take out the strength to intercept the Imagawa army was only three or four thousand.

However, Nobunaga remained quiet in the face of the Oda family's crisis after losing the first battle, and after carefully observing the formation of the Imagawa army, he danced the Kowakamai dance in the middle of the night. After Tunmori, he personally went into battle and led all 4,000 troops to attack the main camp of the Imagawa army. Due to a torrential rain, the soldiers of the Imagawa army had not yet come to their senses, so much so that it took a long time for the Oda army to shout: 'The enemy is coming!' As a result, the general Imagawa Yoshimoto died on the spot, and the news spread, the Imagawa army collapsed and fled, and Oda Nobunaga won one of his many battles with fewer victories, which later became known as the Battle of Barrel Sasama.

After the Battle of Barrel Sasama, the power of the Imagawa family gradually declined. Nobunaga formed an alliance with his childhood friend Tokugawa Ieyasu, and completed the difficult but crucial 'Mino Raider' without distraction, and finally incorporated Mino Province into the territory in the first year of Takakei. When he became the daimyo who ruled the two kingdoms of Owari Mino, Nobunaga was Chinese New Year's Eve at the age of thirty-three.

It is rumored that "whoever obtains Mino will be able to win the world." After Nobunaga acquired Mino, he renamed the well-no-guchi, the stronghold of the Saito clan, the former lord of the Mino Kingdom, as the name of Gifu, based on the allusion that the Zhou Dynasty of China established itself in Qishan and overthrew the Yin Dynasty to unify the world. At this time, the 'World Buwu' seal was used, and the goal was officially to unify the world!

After a series of alliances, in the third year of Longkei, Nobunaga supported Yoshiaki Rishi as the fifteenth general and began to 'Shangluo', and quickly defeated the opponents and achieved the success of Shangluo. After that, the Miyoshi Matsunaga government, which was in charge of central politics, collapsed in only half a month in the face of Nobunaga's lightning speed, and the Miyoshi trio fled to Iga. The Oda regime, established by Nobunaga, who was the fifteenth shogun based on Yoshiaki Toshiaki, was born.

In the first month of the fourth year of Takakei, Oda Nobunaga established a statute called the 'Imperial Nine Articles of the Imperial Palace', stipulating that the shogun should not do anything, but in fact weakened Ashikaga Yoshiaki's power and made him a puppet of his own. Of course, Ashikaga Yoshiaki was very dissatisfied, and although he was forced to sign the article and announce it to the world, he turned back and secretly united with the daimyo in various places to resist the 'public enemy of Nobunaga'.

The first to respond to Ashikaga Yoshiaki's call was Echizen Asakura Yoshikei, and then Asai Nagamasa betrayed Oda Nobunaga and threw himself into his old ally Asakura. Although Oda Nobunaga united with Tokugawa Ieyasu and defeated the combined forces of Asakura and Asai and won the Battle of Ogawa, his predicament became more and more serious - Honganji Temple and Enryakuji Temple successively opposed him, Ise broke out Nagashima has always been a one, Kai's Takeda, and Echigo's Uesugi also responded to Ashikaga Yoshiaki's call and became enemies of Oda Nobunaga; The Mori of the Western Province came to the aid of Honganji Temple from the water, and the Asai that did not break the bones, Asakura, and Miyoshi family, and the famous 'Nobunaga Siege' was formed.

Partition!