On the western side, Niko Haruhisa, who was appointed by the shogunate Ashikaga Yoshito as the guardian of the eight kingdoms of Inhata, Hakuki, Bizen, Bichu, Bigo, Misaku, Izumo, and Hikiki, can be described as majestic at this time, and he really thinks that he has become the real boss of the eight countries.

In fact, at this time, the only countries that were really controlled by the Niko family were Izumo, Hidden Ambiguity, and Boqi, of which the Hidden Ambi Country was only two small islands. The rest of the countries, Inhata Province is controlled by the Yamana family, and it is an absolute bird and not a bird to Niko Harumu, after all, the Boqi country was snatched from the hands of the Niko family. And in the four countries of Bizen, Bichu, Bigo, and Misaku, a large part of the area is occupied by the power of the Ouchi family and the Mori family, and in fact, they are not completely following the orders of Niko Haruha. This is different from the situation of Masara, Masara's five kingdoms of Hizen, Higo, Chikugo, Chikuzen, and Bunzen are guarded, of which the four countries of Hizen, Higo, Chikugo, and Chikuzen are completely the territory of the Luo family, and most of the Bunzen country and the Bungo country belong to the Luo family. So in comparison, the title of Nizi Qingjiu Eight Kingdoms Guardian is actually very wasteful.

But even so, Niko Haruhisa felt that it was at this time that the encouragement of the Niko family by becoming the guardian of the Eight Kingdoms was an inspiration to the Niko family, and immediately decided to march to the Iwami Kuni Silver Mountain area. But at this time, he realized that the damned Maori family had also extended its power to the borders of Iwami Province, and it seemed that he was also interested in seizing the Ginzan region of Iwami. If the Nunri family on the flank sent troops to attack the Nunzi family during the attack on this area, the Nunzi family would be in danger. So after some discussion with the retainers, Niko Haruhisa officially went out to Anyi Country after the autumn harvest this year to crusade against the Maori family.

Before going out of battle. Niko Haruhisa had considered bringing in some helpers to attack the Maori family. The first thing that came to his mind. Naturally, he once wrote to him to pay attention to the Masayo of the Maori family. However, the Luo family happened to be in the Toyoura-gun area of Nagato Province during this period and was "dead-footed" with the Naito family and the Tao family. Moreover, he invited the Luo family to attack the Maori family. There were only two directions to come to help, one was to reach Izumo Province through the coastal waterways of Nagato Province and Iwami Province, and then join up with the army of the Niko family before going into battle, and the other was to attack Aki Province directly through the Seto Inland Sea, which was controlled by Murakami's naval forces. These two roads are either far away, or they are full of threats, and the Luo family will never be invited.

Since it was impossible to invite the Luo family to send troops to help, Nizi Qingjiusu immediately thought of the Yixiang Sect in the Aki area. He immediately sent someone to Ishiyama Gobo Castle in Settsu Province to see Honganji Temple, and asked him to order the Isō clan in the Aki region to assist the Niko family in attacking the Mori family. However, it was rejected by Honganji Temple. Since then, Nizi Haruhisa has held a grudge against the Ichijo sect, and soon began to suppress the Ichijo sect in his own territory, which caused a lot of chaos.

Without the help of the Sect, the Nizi family had to go out on their own. In the face of the invasion of the Nizi family, Mao Liyuan also went out on crutches to meet it in person. The two sides fought fiercely on the border of An Yi for several months until the end of last year. Although the army of the Niko family did not advance far into the territory of Aki Province this time, it beat the army of the Maori family to hide in the fortress and cowered. The morale of the Nizi family suddenly increased greatly. And the Maori Yuan finally realized a problem on this side. That is, if you want to deal with the Nizi family, you must first solve the most elite Xingong party in the Nizi family, and at this time he already has a good plan in his heart.

Judging by this intelligence. The great names of the Japanese people in all parts of the country are constantly advancing according to the wheel of history. And the Luo family's side naturally can't lag behind. After the Luo family had basically controlled the newly occupied territories such as the Nagato Kingdom, Masahiro immediately issued a "demolition order". He ordered that all the castles in Chikuzen Province, Toyozen Province, and Nagato Province should be demolished, except for those in the border area.

Naturally, this order had a great impact on the local nobles in these newly occupied areas, after all, the nobles had long been accustomed to living in the fortresses they had built, and now that their walls had been suddenly torn down, they naturally felt very insecure. So the castle family of Toyozen, the Akizuki family of Chikuzen, and the Aso family, led by a part of the retainers, jointly petitioned Masato to cancel the castle demolition order.

Naturally, Masara ignored these people's requests, and he just asked Togo Heiji and Yamamoto Kansuke to meet these people. As soon as they met, Dongxiang Heiji directly scolded these wealthy people:

"This family law clearly stipulates that except for the residence of the governor and the garrison of each army, unless it is approved by the governor himself for military merits, no other retainers shall have their own castles. Are you planning to let the governor of your house violate your own laws? Or do you think that your military exploits are enough for your lord to approve your own fortress? ”

"Or do you think that your contribution to your family is even greater than that of us? Do you have in your hearts the idea of rebelling against the city? ”

Faced with Dongxiang Heiji's questioning sentence after sentence, especially the last sentence about rebellion, it suddenly made the retainers of the Chengjing family, the Qiuyue family and other retainers scared into a cold sweat. So they tried their best to defend themselves, and it wasn't until they came out of Okura Castle that they realized that they were all busy defending themselves, and they forgot about asking for Masayo's life.

The people who came to their senses immediately looked at each other. Do you want to go back and ask to see the Governor again? But judging from the situation of Fang Cai, it was categorically fruitless, and it seemed that the fortress of the city that had been built by their family for several generations was bound to be demolished.

Directly resist, right? But now that their own military forces have been disbanded, even the retainers have been divided by the Luo family under one excuse or another and settled in areas that are basically impossible to contact in a short time. The people in the territory, whether they were newly relocated or the old ones, were attracted by the Luo family's alluring laws, and had firmly followed the surrounding villages and towns appointed by the Luo family's internal affairs cabinet, and became loyal supporters of the Luo family. If they resisted, they suddenly found that they could only lead a few clansmen to resist in the end.

Of course, they didn't get nothing. At least after joining the Roche family. The income of their realm will increase considerably. Among these people, there are also many talents who are familiar with farming. After seeing the cultivation of various crops, farming tools, and farming measures promoted by the Luo Family's Internal Affairs Pavilion on their territory. It is known that this will increase the income of their territory a lot. With more income, they can join the business that is currently being promoted by the Roche family.

In fact, what they don't know is that according to the Luo family's employment system. Due to the occurrence of this petition, at least for the next ten years, except for the members of their families who were jointly reviewed by the Intelligence Pavilion and the Military Pavilion in order to appease them, and approved by Masahiro himself, all the other clansmen of their family, no matter how talented they were, would not be able to enter the official institution of the Luo family. This is mainly to prevent these wealthy families who have not yet integrated into the Luo family system from secretly forming a latent unstable force in the Luo family's institution. Prevention is better than prevention. These regulations are necessary.

Just as the Luo family's territory was intensively carrying out a large-scale demolition campaign by organizing the people to participate in forced labor and dispatching slave teams, the wealthy clans such as the Sugi family in the southeastern part of the Bunzen Province, who had finally recovered from this year's special weather disaster, were ready to move again.

Masara, who heard the news, sneered, some time ago, because of the disaster relief and the attack on Nagato Country, I temporarily let you guys take a breather, and now you have sent it to the door by yourself. As a result, Masashi immediately issued a mobilization order to the teams on the borders of Fengzen Province and even various parts of Bungo Province, ready to attack these areas at any time.

Of course, although both sides want to play against each other, they both have a tacit understanding. That is, they were all prepared to wait until the end of the spring ploughing in the 22nd year of astronomy (1553) before going to war. It was only at this time that in historical records, the largest drought in the astronomical year came, known as the "astronomical drought".

As the saying goes, a great flood will be followed by a great drought. Indeed, the ancients did not deceive. After last year's continuous rainstorm and typhoon weather, it has been in astronomy for 22 years. God hasn't even rained a single drop. After May, the drought intensified, with the sun raging in the sky and the temperature rising sharply. In hot weather, the water level of streams and rivers in various places drops sharply, or even dries up directly. To add insult to injury, some mountainous areas spontaneously combusted due to high temperatures. Due to the large number of mountains and forests in the Wa country, once a place burns, a large forest fire is formed in an instant with the help of such a hot weather. The land is arid and cracked, the rivers are cut off and dried up, the mountains and forests are full of fires, and for a time there is a scene of the end of the world.

This time, the disaster is no longer confined to certain areas of the Japanese country as it was last year, but has swept across the country. Even from Wang Hai's mouth, he learned that the same disaster occurred in the Ming Kingdom, so during this period of time, the number of Ming immigrants who were relocated to the territory of the Luo family also increased significantly, so Masahiro took the opportunity to disperse these Ming subjects to the Higo Kingdom, the Fenggo Kingdom, the Chikuzen Kingdom, and the Fengzen Kingdom, which had not had many immigrants from the Ming Kingdom before.

This kind of disaster lasted from the beginning of the 22nd year of Astronomical to August. All parts of the country were affected to varying degrees. Fortunately, after more than ten years of development, the Luo family has established a relatively complete water conservancy system in Hizen Province, Higo Country, and Chikugo Country, so these three areas have been almost the least affected, and the local spring plowing and farming during this period have been greatly guaranteed.

The western part of Chikuzen Province and the central part of Toyokuni Province, which became the domain of the Luo family a little later, have not yet reached the level of perfection due to the construction of many water conservancy facilities, but they have also minimized the impact on the local area, at least the local spring ploughing has been preserved, and the autumn harvest is expected to be guaranteed.

On the other hand, the areas that were most affected were naturally the five eastern counties of Chikuzen Province, the five north-central counties of Toyozen Province, and Toyoura County of Nagato Province, which had just been occupied by the Luo family during this period of time. Due to the relatively short period of rule by the Luo family, during this period, the main work of the Luo family's internal affairs cabinet was to register the local population, inspect the land, relocate and resettle the people, appoint those who graduated from the Luo family or retired from the Luo family to serve in the local area, organize paid forced labor, or arrange slave teams to demolish the city fortresses in various places. As for the cultivation of fields, the construction of marching roads, and, most importantly, the restoration of water conservancy, these works have not yet been carried out.

Therefore, just by relying on the old local water conservancy facilities, the local spring plowing and farming during this period were naturally greatly affected. To be precise, the people of these regions can only resign themselves to their fate and rely on the sky for food. During his visit to the area, Masayo found that only some fields near rivers and streams could continue to be cultivated, and some fields on higher ground had been completely abandoned.

Of course, the so-called harmful will be beneficial, and this drought is not all bad for the Luo family. (To be continued......)