Hojo Matsuhime didn't look back when he heard the movement outside the room, but said indifferently: "His Royal Highness Ashikaga Kamizaburo has come down!" Is it to take the life of the concubine? ”

Kira Yoshishi stood solemnly in the room with a sword in his hand, looking around at this quiet decoration without the slightest luxurious color, compared to Ashikaga Fujimasa's room is a nouveau riche, covered with gold leaf, the vulgar preference is reminiscent of a monkey, and he suddenly smiled and said: "I have heard that the grass bag princess married a smart and beautiful lady, and today I see that it is really so!" It's a pity that such a beauty just marries that straw bale man! ”

"The town government, please respect yourself, the concubine is by no means a woman who loves vanity, and she is not afraid of your power and sword, if you want to kill, kill it!" Hojo Matsuhime paused, holding the horn comb and gently brushing her long hair.

"Am I really like a bad guy? Or like a bastard who preys on his wife and daughter? Kira Yoshishi touched his cheeks, shrugged helplessly and said: "Yu has no intention of touching Mrs. Hojo, but I just want to tell Mrs. Hojo not to think about the safety of your husband anymore, after the death of that straw bag princess, Yu will make the decision to marry Mrs. Hojo to my brother-in-law Kira clan, this person Mrs. Hojo must know it!" Yu doesn't plan to occupy this ancient river palace, and he doesn't have the bad habit of robbing other people's wives and daughters, and he won't be less than half a point before Mrs. Hojo gets married. ”

Hojo Matsuhime sat stunned and didn't move until Kira Yoshitoki left far away for a while, and then he combed his long hair and said to himself in front of the mirror: "It turns out that he didn't mean this to me at all, I thought he would rob me of being his wife...... Did I think too highly of my own appearance? That's it! Let's just cheap Kira clan towards that stupid boy! ”

……

Kira Yoshitoki never thought of robbing Ashikaga Tomasa's woman, let alone using this method to deepen the hatred of the Kanto samurai towards him. And take this opportunity to hit the reputation that he has worked so hard to accumulate. To his status, the most important thing is beautiful women. As long as he revealed similar thoughts, there would be a large number of samurai who sent their daughters and sisters to recommend their own pillows, and he didn't want to let the blood of the Ashikaga family rot the street, and it would be even worse if he made a few unscrupulous descendants and make some trouble for his sister-in-law, Zhenwangmaru.

This anticlimactic battle of Furukawa reflects how weak the Furukawa Prince's control over the Kanto region is, just like a paper tiger that looks majestic, but in fact, the outside is strong and the middle is not vulnerable at all, Kira Yoshitoki didn't even take out fifty percent of his strength to easily knock him down, this level is really not as good as a finger of the Hojo family, no wonder the Hojo clan also looked down on this guy, and chose to kick him back to the Furukawa Imperial Palace.

The big ones who really suffered in this battle were Chiba Yinfu, Hara Yinzhen, and Takajo Yinji. As for the small city lords of the Shimoku country, the Shimono country, and the Changlu country, it is not very valuable to kill and injure a group of people, and the large number of people of the three leading countries are all separated to make this encirclement and suppression operation not so perfect, and a total of more than 4,000 people are killed, and nearly 10,000 people are captured, which is also a good gain, compared to the self-inflicted loss of less than 400 people, it can really be called a complete victory.

This was an unfair war, and Kira Yoshitoki's unit led the elite of the five countries to crusade against the people of the Kanto Three Countries, Kalam Mutsu, whether it was the morale of the general's command or the unity of the people of each country, it was too far behind, and there was a dissolution within the country before the start of the fight, and the rebellion of Harusuke Hata further pushed this coalition army into the abyss.

has no power to fight back, competing whose legs are faster, and the samurai with a ghost in his heart is still thinking about how to stop his enemy. Let him run slower than it is better to get caught in the rolling iron flow of the Kira army, and there is almost no hope of victory in this kind of joint battle. That's why Yoshiaki Satake will retreat without hesitation, and if you don't leave at this time, you won't have a chance to go again.

What surprised Kira Yoshitoki was that Yuki Haruhuna had such a big courage to take advantage of the chaos of the Furukawa Imperial Palace to "plunder" Ashikaga Fujimasa, whether he was out of public intentions or other factors, he was openly going against the Kira family, which greatly touched the bottom line set by Kira Yoshitoki, so Kira Yoshitoki immediately ordered an attack on Yuki Castle.

Maybe Yuki Haruhasa thinks that it is a good strategy to save Ashikaga Fujimasa by doing this, and it is a big deal to wait until the Kira army kills him and then admit defeat with dignity, but he doesn't understand that Kira Yoshishi wants Ashikaga Fujimasa's life, and saving this waste wood is to go against him, and he is so flattering Ashikaga Fujimasa that he basically cuts off the possibility of continuing to sell to the Kira family.

Yuuki Harumo's act of snatching Ashikaga Fujimasa should have been a temporary decision, and the hasty action did not seem to have communicated well with his brother Koyama Hidetsuna, so that he only led 1,500 troops to withdraw to Yuki Castle to defend it, and before he could send a messenger to inform Koyama Hidetsuna of a reply, Nagano Yoshimasa led 10,000 troops to drain the siege of Yuki Castle.

Almost overnight, the wind in the Kanto region took a big turn, first the Yamakawa Castle controlled by the Yuuki clan was forcibly opened by the samurai of the Uchido Kira clan to lure the wolf into the house, forcing the powerful clan of the Yuuki clan to abandon the castle and flee with the lord of Yamakawa Suruga Morishi, and then the residence of Tagaya Masahiro, the lord of Kaya Castle, another sect of the Yuuki clan, was also captured by the Kira army and forced to flee to Yuki Castle for refuge.

The speed of the Kira family was too fast, which made the Yuki family's genealogy retainers feel worried, and that night they gathered in the Ohiroma of Yuki Castle to discuss countermeasures, Oshima Katsuyoshi said worriedly: "My Yuki family's territory is lost one by one, and if this continues, the Kira family will swallow up all the places where we wait." ”

The retainers of the spectrum swept their eyes towards the body of Yuki Haruma, as for the attitude of Ashikaga Fujimasa sitting on the throne, it was not important at all, this straw bag prince was like a lost dog since he left the Furukawa Imperial Palace, and he sat in the room in a daze in despair, he had already recalled that because of the collective betrayal of the retainers of the Spectrum Dynasty with Harusuke Tsutachi, he killed the favored retainers with his own hands and was abandoned by the most trusted Matsunaga Tsutsu, and finally came to Yuki Castle in a daze.

Thinking of that painful memory, the corners of Ashikaga Fujimasa's mouth twitched slightly, even if he didn't have to look up, he could feel the contempt and hostility of the Yuuki family tree, and other Kanto samurai might have already sent him, the Furukawa Prince, to Kira Yoshishi to ask for merit and reward, and he could barely maintain his politeness mostly because of the face of the Yuki Harumo.

Ashikaga Fujimasa can only hope that Yuuki Harumi can turn the tide and use the loyalty and courage of the Yuki clan to recreate the great deeds of the Yuuki battle in the past. But the bale man still forgot the most important point. The Battle of Yuuki was at the cost of Yuuki holding the dynasty and dying in battle, and almost extinction. The Kwantung samurai were to preserve the last trace of blood for the descendants of the Ashikaga clan they revered, and Ashikaga Fujimasa's actions did not have the qualifications to be revered, and Yuki Haruhuna had no intention of looking for death and life for this waste wood.

Yuki Harusao had long noticed Ashikaga Fujimasa's hopeful eyes, and secretly thought in his heart that if His Royal Highness the Princesses had known this, why did he cause so many scandals in the first place, ignoring the expression of the Straw Bag Princes, he turned to the samurai in the room and said, "Ask for peace!" As long as the town government is willing to let His Royal Highness go, the rest can be talked about slowly. ”

……

The main camp of Kira Yoshitoki was located in the mountain and river castle only a mile away from Yuki Castle, and from this castle you could see almost all the movement in and out of Yuki Castle, and only 5,000 elite horsemen were stationed in the castle. Nagano Yoshimasa led 10,000 Ueno legions to besiege Yuki Castle, while Sanada Yutaka led 15,000 troops and turned around and attacked Shimokoku.

The largest number of people in the lower country and even in the northern part of the upper country, Chiba Yinfu, Hara Yinzhen, and Takashiro Yinyoshi were all detained in Shanchuan Castle as prisoners, making the southeast of the lower country almost a place that could not be defended, under the combination of Sanada Yutaka's strategy and large-scale military suppression, the people of the lower country could not form an effective grouping possibility at all, and several people of the country were first to open the city or block the ability, and soon encroached on the territory of the Chiba clan under the role of example.

The remaining part of the branch castle is from the direct lineage of these three families as the lord of the castle, in the face of Sanada Yutakaka's Shinano army to stubbornly maintain a resolute attitude of not opening the castle, belonging to the core area of these three territories, not only the castle is high and deep, but also has a large number of loyal and brave samurai to guard the city.

Sanada's approach to disposition is somewhat similar to Uesugi Teruto's strategy of aggressively advancing into the Kanto region. First, a large army was sent to cut off the main road to Xiajie Street, ensuring that several cities remained relatively silent and lost. The Chiba clan was located at Moriyama Castle on the south bank of the Tone River in the easternmost part of Shimoshi Province, and the topography was more conducive to the Kira army's strategy of cutting off communication.

Cutting off the connection is to catch turtles in the urn, constantly passing on all kinds of false information that the Kira army has entered the lower country, some rumors say that Chiba Yinfu, Yuan Yinzhen, and Takajo Yinji were defeated and captured, and some say that these three family governors are still safe and sound, and they are still holding the last line of defense at the Furukawa Imperial Palace, and the Kira army in the Chiba Territory is said to be 6,000 people for a while, and then it is 30,000 people, and the true and false information is transmitted to the hands of the city lords.

The people in the market don't understand the military affairs of the lord level at all, but they hear a wave of rumors that are still like that, and for a while they can't figure out which rumors to believe are more credible, which is also caught in one of the most common logical traps, when several rumors appear at the same time, people always try to screen the credibility of each rumor, and find out one of the rumors that they think is the most credible to believe as true.

This is the brilliance of Sanada Yutaka spreading rumors, and there are a lot of rumors in the towns of Shimokoku almost at the same time, whether they are true or false, reliable or outrageous, they are all flying in the sky, and there are many people who claim to have witnessed the outbreak of the battle outside the Furukawa Imperial Palace, and there are really many townspeople who want to believe it.

People always have an instinct called blind obedience, and this is what it means when a lie is told a thousand times to become the truth, and no matter how blind the nonsense everyone is saying, it will be generally accepted, and the creators of these rumors must be Kira ninja, and they make up these rumors of course not for fun, but to facilitate Sanada Yutaka to hide his true combat intentions.

Medieval countries have a characteristic, that is, the speed of information exchange and dissemination is very slow, an ordinary news from the Kanto Road to the Kinai often takes half a year or even more than a year, that is to say, there is no so-called "news" in this era, all of them are a number of old news from hearsay, such as the movement of the three rivers has a channel and also needs a month to transmit time, without a channel, it always takes three or two months to slowly complete a natural transmission process.

The things in the lower kingdom are usually known by ordinary samurai every ten days and eight days, after all, the distance is close and the lord of the country belongs to the same Chiba clan, and the relationship between relatives and relatives is so many that it is not clear. One day, they suddenly find themselves in a less well-informed way. A large number of favorable and unfavorable news flooded my ears. The relatively simple information identification system of the people in the lower country is a bit insufficient, and it is impossible to distinguish which one is true and which one is false.

In layman's terms, it is to be a turtle lord in the countryside, usually the gate does not go out of the two doors, and the nest is in the countryside in his own territory, except for the occasional trip to Moriyama Castle to almost ask the lord of the country to be well, usually ten or eight years will not think of a trip to the Kanto Eight Countries to visit relatives and friends.

There are many of these typical conservative samurai in the Kanto region, and if you can describe it in one sentence, it is "poor mobility, closed people, and conservative folk customs", although they are not savages who live among the mountains, but they still have the same old-fashioned temperament and simple and simple life. This is also the most standard way of life of the Kanto samurai.

Moriyama Castle's communication channel with the outside world has been blocked, and the streets that communicate with each other in Shimo Province have been blocked, so if you don't get accurate information, you can't talk about self-screening of the truth of the information, and listening to a bunch of false information provided by the Kira family will either make a completely wrong judgment, or you will be too scared to make a judgment easily, and the people of Shimokuni happen to have both kinds of people.

The first person who came out was Shimada Yoshihiro, the lord of Mitsu Castle, who was very close to Moriyama Castle, and rushed to Moriyama Castle with two hundred troops to find out, and immediately crashed into the net set up by Sanada Yukitaka's main army, and was not even surrounded by the Kira army that appeared from all directions, and the disarmed prisoner in a daze became a glorious prisoner.

Sanada Yutaka kept making up fragments of lies and revealing them. To give the people of the lower country a kind of war is in danger but not to the point of desperately lifting their swords, the samurai of the countrymen who are lucky are still waiting to see the change in the situation of the people. Taking advantage of this opportunity, he used heavy money to buy, design and provoke, and even framed to force the samurai of the lower kingdom to lead the way for the Kira army to deceive the gates of the fortified fortress.

Fortified fortresses are often breached from within, Sanada Yutaka is well aware of and good at maneuvering, every time he can catch the enemy samurai most desired and need the most and use it to lure, whether it is fame, fortune and power, as long as the Kira ninja finds the clues, he will pull these samurai into the water under his internal and external pressure, once on the thief ship, he will become a grasshopper on a rope, and there is no chance to break out of the palm of Sanada Yutaka's hand.

These traitors of Riche are the most hopeful that the Kira army will take down all the cities, because the Gera army will take down the city, they can reward them for their merits, and naturally everything is easy to say, but if they can't beat the city, then they have to worry all day long for fear of their own Richie news leaking before going, they don't dare to take the initiative to confess to their lord, not to mention how much shadow Riche will cast on their reputation and the trust of the lord's family, that is, Sanada Yutaka's gloomy and unpredictable temperament is enough to make these traitors dare not betray again.

In just a few days, Sanada Yutaka quietly pulled out more than a dozen large branch cities on the Fangwei Peninsula with excellent strategic means, but all these actions also succeeded in keeping the Chiba family of Moriyama Castle in the dark, and the gap in strategy, military strength and information mastery has been widened too wide, and the unfair war is doomed to the people of the country can only reap a fiasco.

Most of the people of the lower kingdom did not dare to take the lead, and some of the retainers of the Chiba clan who were close to the border took the initiative to move closer to the Hojo army of the upper kingdom, but at this time, the Hojo army was surrounded by the army of Satomi Yoshihiro in the city of Kururi and was chased and beaten, and their fate was uncertain, and how could they dare to accept these people of the lower country to come all the way to take refuge, in case of angering Kira Yoshishi, he turned around and came to the upper country to fight them.

Murakami Yoshikiyo led three thousand troops around the lower country for half a circle, taking advantage of the deep night to attack the Chiba clan's original home city Usui Castle night attack down, the whole siege process is far smoother than imagined, Usui Castle Lord Usui Zuojin General Jiuyin is still a seventeen or eighteen-year-old young man, four years ago his father Usui Jingyin died suddenly and hurriedly succeeded as the governor, the only few times out of the Kanto or with a leading family governor Chiba Yinfu to play soy sauce, has not experienced a real battle test.

In the face of Murakami Yoshikiyo's night attack, he didn't know how to deal with it, and the Usui family's genealogy retainers walked within a few miles of Usui Castle, working in Usui Castle during the day and returning to their own city at night to rest.

The blockade line of the Kira army could only maintain the communication and suppression of the key areas of the main street, and the lords of the countrymen in the non-military key areas immediately turned the wind direction as soon as they saw that the situation was not good. Without hesitation, he devoted himself to the big family of Kira Army.

In the blink of an eye, most of the lower kingdoms were surrendered so easily. The Chiba genealogy group of retainers, who lacked orders from the governor, did not intend to continue to resist. I was thinking about how to surrender in order to get decent treatment, when I heard Sanada Yukitaka adjust the people in Moriyama Castle at great speed, and easily opened the city gate and controlled the Chiba clan's residence in a grand manner.

The news of the surrender of the Chiba clan flew like wings to the entire Fangwei Peninsula, and this time it was not only the Fangwei Peninsula that shook but also the entire Kanto country. In less than ten days, it was a succession of battles and sieges to achieve a huge victory, and a territory swallowed the Suruga invasion with a speed comparable to Takeda Shingen's.

The Kanto samurai family has long heard that the Kira family is matched with the famous generals Sanada Yutaka and Murakami Yoshikiyo from Shinano Province, and the first time they saw them, they gave the people of the Kanto Kingdom a dismount on the spot, even a blind man can see that the Kira family at this time is definitely not a powerful character they can provoke, so a rumor quietly circulated on the Fangwei Peninsula, saying that Murakami Yoshikiyoshi is as brave as a tiger, and Sanada Yukitaka is as cunning as a fox, and this name gradually spread to the eight countries of Kanto and even the world in the following time.

At the moment when Sanada Yutaka captured a large territory in the southeast of the Fangwei Peninsula, and at the most critical moment when the Yuki Battle in the northwestern part of Shimoki Province was also underway, Kira Yoshitoki did not hesitate to reject Yuuki Harutomi's proposal for peace. On the contrary, he put forward a choice between the Cheng clan and many rebel forces taking the opportunity, or obediently surrender to everything. Or you have to enjoy the thrill of raging war.

Yuki Harumao is not a person who is afraid of things, and seeing that Kira Yoshitoki is not going to give up, he contacted his allies everywhere to put on a posture of stumbling to the end, but only a few days after his frame was opened, he heard the information that the Chiba clan was defeated and all surrendered, and for a while, the retainers were panicked and the samurai at home were shaken.

Kira Yoshitoki did not give him more time to think about how to deal with the crisis, and took advantage of the fact that Yuki Castle was closed to the news of the siege, and used the distance and proximity of the Iron Artillery Team and the Roasting Team to blast away the Yuki Clan's territory in Hitachi Province at all costs, intending to take this opportunity to completely cut off the possibility of the Yuki Clan's retreat.

The lord of Shimotsuma Castle, Tagaya Masakei, is also a powerful member of the Yuki clan, responsible for the strategy banner of the Hitachi country and the head of the four heavenly kings of Yuki, not only has a great say in the Yuki family, but also is a powerful countryman with a thousand troops, but in the face of the siege of the Kira army, Tagaya Masakei still gave up the idea of suicide and gave in honestly.

The submission of Tagaya Masaki had a great impact on the Yuki clan retainers of Hitachi Province, and when the main camp of Kira Yoshitoki launched a non-stop attack on Shimodate Castle, Mizutani Masaki, the highest martial artist among the Four Heavenly Kings of Yuki, did not choose to go out of the city to fight, but planned to resist stubbornly according to the castle, and this decision that was completely different from his usual character completely exposed the bottom of his weak heart.

The vigorous killing of the Kira army finally frightened the people of the Kanto Kingdom, and the Hojo family did not expand in such a big stride when it was the most majestic, from Musashi Country to Shimoku Country and then to Hitachi Country according to the map, such a terrifying combat power is simply unheard of and unseen, and there are never-before-seen baked jade tactics and terrifying strategies, and there are ghosts if you don't frighten these Kwantung people who don't know the details.

Kira Yoshitoki immediately seized the opportunity to pour out all the remaining baked jade in the camp, and blasted several gaps in the sturdy earthen of Shimodate Castle, Kira Yoshitoki simply ordered the samurai gate to go together, taking advantage of the fact that the Mizutani army did not know whether to defend the gap in the earthen or the broken Otemon, both sides launched an attack at the same time to break through the city and enter the city, Mizutani Masamura was unwilling to fail and tried to break out of the encirclement, and was finally beaten into a sieve by the indiscriminate guns of the iron artillery team.

It is also a last resort to use up all the roasted jade that does not have a lot of inventory in one go, and this is the case in war, especially siege warfare, either imitating the strong siege of the city and filling it with human lives, or besieging the city for time until it runs out of food, or using a huge amount of ammunition to pour out in a short period of time to break the opponent's defense system and break the morale and collapse.

Japan has no saltpeter-related deposits, all saltpeter relies on the trade input of the Ryukyu countries, this trade input is also a one-way import, the price is high, the service is poor, the supply is unstable, and often gets stuck in all kinds of daimyo who want to play iron cannons, Kira Yoshitoki has a slightly better advantage than them is that he can make soil nitrate and use the soil method to synthesize gunpowder particles, but earth nitrate is not a mass-produced mineral deposit after all, how can there be so many stable soil for him to use.

Even though Echigo has vigorously promoted livestock breeding over the years, the amount of manure produced by the annual slaughter of tens of thousands of livestock is still limited, and this livestock manure must be accumulated over the years to produce high-quality manure, but the high-temperature composting method advocated by the Kira family and the use of biogas in some workshops are related to the development of agriculture and handicrafts, as well as the economic layout of the Kira family, both of which require a large amount of livestock manure to be used as a base fertilizer for decomposition.

You can't just throw a large pile of livestock manure in vain and throw it in the idle land for military use, and then after a few years of natural degradation to form a usable stable soil, which is inefficient, low yield, and very unstable, and also needs to occupy arable land, the land planning of the Kira family is very strict, and it is forbidden to cut down trees on the mountains next to the river road and in various dense forest cover areas.

Other usable land is mainly farmland, villages, roads, castles, and towns, and the division of land that has been developed, to be developed, and to be improved is also very detailed, and it is impossible to set aside a piece of wasteland and throw a large pile of manure to degrade freely, and the devil knows if there will be countless pests and many troublesome things in this summer.

The military serves politics, the economy also serves politics, and when it is difficult for the two sides to compete, it is necessary to look at the short-term and long-term interests, and the consideration of Kira Yoshishi is more important than the economy, so the raw materials of baked jade are delayed, and the production of soil and nitrate in recent years is to rely on laying a piece of land, and then send a person to investigate where there is a stable soil and toilet soil in the local area, and then call on hired workers to refine black powder on the spot.

The production is small, the efficiency is low, the supply is unstable, and it is still the same thing that plagues the Kira family, but fortunately, Claudia brought a lot of saltpeter to support it for a while, but the pure saltpeter is not willing to directly refine black powder, and always wants to leave some as a strategic reserve, in case it is needed one day, take it out and use it to refine gunpowder.

It is precisely because of the above various reasons that there are few opportunities for the baking team to appear in recent years, and even Kato Kyoaki has been transferred out of the baking team as a general of the ashigaru, which shows how much impact this lack of raw materials has on this strange army, so that Kira Yoshitoki once planned to abolish this special class, but he remembered some old things and felt that it was a thought to keep them before he preserved. (To be continued......)