(New books for collections, recommended votes, please, please!) Your attention is the motivation for my writing, thank you! ）

Ascension has been prevalent in the Wa Kingdom for two years, and in two years, a shipload of Shengxian San has been transported to the Wa Kingdom. An ordinary samurai can spend a month's salary for half a year, and it can be said that the price is extremely low. For this reason, Geng Jingzhong has lost nearly one million taels of silver in the past two years, and more than half of the money he earned from doing business with the Japanese State has been lost on it.

Humanity is a blessing! Geng Jingzhong's loss of one million taels of silver is worth it. The current Wa Kingdom, in the entire Kyushu Island, from the aristocracy to the ordinary samurai, and there are a lot of landlords and wealthy merchants in the middle, all of whom are inseparable from this ascension to immortals. If you don't take two puffs a day, you won't be able to do anything, but after you smoke it, you'll be refreshed and your energy will be doubled!

More and more people have a short small smoking pot pinned to their waists, a small bag hanging, and a small paper bag in their pockets. The small bag is filled with shredded tobacco, and the small paper bag is the ascending immortal. Pumping this ascension immortal powder is not at all like the original smoking crow. The piece is so troublesome, lying on the couch, holding a big smoking gun in his arms, and it's sad to look at it. Most of the time, these people just smoke shredded tobacco, and when they become addicted, they take out a small paper packet, twist a little Shengxian powder and mix it with tobacco shreds and send it into the smoke pot, which is very convenient.

The Kyushu area was the first to come into contact with the Ascending Sensan, and after a large number of Ascending Immortals were transported to Kyushu Island, Kyushu merchants transported them to the neighboring islands of Shikoku and the southern part of the main island. In the past two years, the southern part of the island and the aristocracy of Shikoku Island have become obsessed with Ascension. In total, in the southern region of the Wa Kingdom, at least 500,000 people were smoking Shengxian San at the same time. On average, two tons of crows are consumed a day, and if it weren't for the ocean-going fleet buying crows from the Dutch in the South Seas. Slice. At the same time, the harvest of opium poppies on more than 200 large and small islands along the coast would not have been supplied.

After such a long time. Geng Jingzhong finally decided to make a move against the Wa Kingdom! This decision made Wang Zhenbang and other admirals very excited, and it has been nearly a year since the last time the pirates attacked Guangdong and other seas ended! A year has made the bones of the navy tickle, and now there is finally a war again, which can only not make them excited! It's really not challenging to deal with pirates, especially when they are almost always small groups. A thousand people, a hundred or so small sea ships are a large number of pirates. But in front of the giant ship of the navy, it is a mouse against a cat, and the hand is ready to catch! The navy is also eager to find a strong opponent to show their bravery.

In the past two years, the merchant hall of the Ocean Trading Company stationed in Nagasaki has also explored the strength of the sailors on Kyushu Island, and the specific situation has also been brought back by the Kunpeng fleet that goes to the Japanese country every time. Nagasaki is the only port open to the outside world at the moment, and it is considered to be the most economically developed region in the country because of its trade with China, North Korea, and the Netherlands. At the same time, it was also the direct domain of the shogunate government and the domains of the princes of Omura, Hirado, and Shimabara. As early as the Sui and Tang dynasties, many of Japan's envoys to the Sui and Tang dynasties and monks set sail from Nagasaki to China. During the Song and Ming dynasties, a large number of merchants from coastal provinces such as Fujian and Zhejiang arrived here to do business, and the scale reached 10,000 at the most.

Now is the time. There are also many Chinese people living in Hirado, Fukue and other places in Nagasaki, which is also the only place where Chinese live in a concentrated manner. Although in the past 100 years, the Wa Kingdom has also adopted a lot of Western culture. But it was nowhere near as far as the influence of Chinese culture, not to mention the shogunate's ban on Catholic missionary orders. Some of the customs, food culture and festivals of Nagasaki people are very similar to those of Chinese mainland. It can be said that it originated from China. As a result, Chinese merchants were free to move around in the country. On the other hand, the staff of the Dutch and other foreign trade halls can only move around Nagasaki. This was not only because the Wakoku hated Westerners, but also because it was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate to restrict trade.

Just thirty years ago, a peasant revolt broke out on Amakusa Island and the Shimabara Peninsula in western Kyushu, and most of these peasants were Christians, but they were suppressed. After this incident, the shogunate began to reconsider its policy, which had previously adopted an open foreign policy and rewarded trade. However, it was later discovered that these policies favored the daimyo of the western part of the country, which was inconsistent with the shogunate's policy of weakening the strong feudal clans. As a result, the construction of large ships was forbidden, and trade was ruled.

After the peasant uprising was suppressed, in order to eradicate the influence of Christianity imported from abroad, Christianity was banned, and foreign trade was stopped. Its contents mainly include three points: first, prohibiting Japanese people from sailing overseas; 2. Prohibition of Christianity; 3. Restrictions on the trade of foreign ships, and in particular the prohibition of the arrival of Portuguese and Spaniards. However, there was no restriction on the number of Chinese and Dutch ships, and only Nagasaki was opened as a trading port. Interestingly, the curator of the Dutch Merchant House had to go to Edo every year to meet the shogun and be examined, while the Chinese caravans, which had a large amount of goods, did not have these rules.

In the history of Geng Jingzhong's previous life, when the Japanese State issued the "Decree of Locking the Country", it happened to be the period when Western Europe began the Thirty Years' War. The "Lockdown Order" hindered exchanges between the Japanese and the West, and at the same time avoided the influence of Western forces. China's seclusion was to reduce trouble and avoid being harassed by their pirates, while the shogunate's policy of seclusion was based on the control of the daimyo, which on the surface seemed to have different starting points, but in essence they both had the same effect, and both strengthened their own rule. The shogunate basically only traded with China and the Netherlands, and the intelligence from these two places, the Dutch Wind Tales and the Tang Wind Tales, went directly to the shogunate. Under this closed system, the Japanese country went through nearly 220 years of peace, until 1853 when the Americans knocked on the door!

The current United States has not yet been founded, and there is not even a shadow, but Geng Jingzhong has decided to take the lead in knocking on this door. May has just ended, and it is July in the Gregorian calendar, and Fujian is ushering in the hottest time of the year.

"This ghost weather, and it doesn't rain, it's really hot!" In the hall, Wang Zhenbang held a piece of watermelon and said to Li Guangdi and others while gnawing on it. Quickly finished a piece of watermelon, and immediately grabbed another piece. "Comfortable!"

Several other people also kept eating a watermelon with a petal in their hands, and no one paid attention to him at all. A few people had just accompanied Geng Jingzhong to inspect the barracks. Also looked at the armaments. I've been outside for nearly an hour, and I'm burning from the sun. As soon as I got back to the hall, I couldn't wait to eat the chilled watermelon. This chilled watermelon does not use real ice, but a watermelon that has been soaked in cold water in a deep well for a long time. In Fujian, a place that does not freeze all year round, you want to find ice. That's really hard to beat. I just want to transport some from the north in winter, but it's all melted halfway through!

In just a few minutes, everyone ate two pieces of chilled watermelon one after another, and the anger in their bodies was also reduced by half. "Shizi, you have also seen it, we are fully armed, when will we leave?" Huang Dazhong is the deputy commander of the navy, mainly responsible for artillery training and logistics preparations. Geng Jingzhong led more than a dozen of their generals to inspect the armament of the whole army, and the armament was complete. Geng Jingzhong was very satisfied, and at the same time made him show his face, he was proud at this moment!

"What's the hurry, you guys are fighting! Have you read all the information about Kyushu? Geng Jingzhong asked a dozen generals on both sides of the Navy and the Marine Army.

"Look!"

"Look!"

"I'm done!" More than a dozen people replied.

"General Wang, tell me what you think first!" Geng Jingzhong said to Li Guangdi first.

"Shiko, you know, I am most eager to go to the Wa country to find the Shimazu family to avenge my two thousand dead brothers. In the naval battle at the mouth of the Minjiang River, although we won. However, it was a disastrous victory, and the brothers who participated in the war lost more than a third. That's the shame of the admiral, and it's the shame of the navy, and we must take revenge! The more Wang Zhenbang spoke, the more angry he became. By the last sentence, it was already gnashing of teeth!

"I know this, my ears have been calloused in the past two years, aren't we discussing how to get revenge! But just now I meant that. Kyushu Island is not only Shimazu family name, how are you going to fight? Geng Jingzhong waved at Wang Zhenbang with his hand. Signal him not to be so emotional.

"Well, let's be honest. Shizi! Before the last general read the information, he thought that Kyushu Island was the territory of the Shimazu family. After reading it, I was really surprised! Originally, I thought that this Kyushu Island was a larger island, but I didn't expect it to be as big as half of Fujian, and the population on the island is actually much larger than our whole Fujian! Therefore, I think that if we want to fight, it is better to raid and attack the Shimazu Satsuma clan first, and not give him a chance to contact other daimyos. If we defeat the Shimazu family, the other daimyo on Kyushu Island will not dare to act rashly! ”

Geng Jingzhong nodded, and the other generals also felt that it made sense. They all read the intelligence information given to them by Geng Jingzhong, and from this information, the generals also knew the size, population, and economic situation of Kyushu Island, as well as the distribution of each daimyo and the number of troops they belonged to, etc., which opened their eyes. The intelligence generals ranked the daimyo of Kyushu Island according to their strength, and the strongest and largest were the Shimazu Satsuma Domain, followed by Otomo, Ouchi, Ryuzoji, Hefu, Aso, Omura, Sagara, and Ito.

The Shimazu Satsuma Domain, located in the southwestern part of Kyushu Island, occupies one-fifth of the entire territory of Kyushu Island and is the most powerful of the nine daimyos. After two years of overt and covert investigations, the intelligence officers stationed in Nagasaki were able to roughly find out the specific strength of each daimyo. Not every of these nine daimyo has a regular fleet of sailors, but only the three largest have it. As a result of the shogunate's policy of weakening the feudal domain and strengthening the feudal domain, the shogunate began to prohibit the construction of large ships without permission 30 years ago. As a result, the sailors owned by the three daimyo have not been developed, but have been weakened.

As far as the Shimazu Satsuma Domain is concerned, at this moment it has a total of 20 large ships similar to the No. 2 Fukubune, more than 30 second-class warships, and 100 first-class clippers of about 20 meters, with a total of more than 10,000 officers and men of the Navy, and the overall strength is similar to that of the Mawei Navy two years ago. The other two daimyos, the Otomo clan and the Ouchi clan, were even weaker, and neither of the sailors exceeded six thousand.

All the sailors on Kyushu Island at the moment combined, its scale can only be compared with the current Mawei Navy in terms of the number of people and the number of ships, but in terms of ship size and performance, it is far behind! In this regard, the admiral was also very excited, and the day of eliminating the Shimazu family was just around the corner.

Although the number and scale of the naval divisions on Kyushu Island are not good, the army is much more powerful. The total strength of the nine daimyo is close to one million, which sounds very scary. In fact, of the million-strong army, there were less than 200,000 regular soldiers, and the rest were the most inferior ashigaru troops composed of ordinary peasants. (To be continued......)

PS: Continue to codeword! Ask for attention, ask for tickets, ask for subscriptions! The little brother is doing it!