Since being besieged in the mountain pass, the combined forces of the Shimazu and Ito families have launched attacks from time to time, but the targets of the attacks have been the trench positions in the south near Matsuo Castle, where Isono and Irita Yoshimi are located.

However, after the constant harassment of the pursuing army led by Masarashi himself in the north, and the reinforcement of the trench position in the south by an army of more than 1,000 men from Higo Province, the attacks of the Shimazu and Ito coalition forces ended in failure. Moreover, the fortifications on Masara's side, similar to the southern position, were also completed during this period, and now, even if the combined forces of the Shimazu family and the Ito family turned their guns to attack the main army of Masara's side, it would be as difficult for them to attack the position of the Naka's trench in the south. With the situation in the mountain road at this time, the combined forces of the Shimazu family and the Ito family were besieged by the Luo family in the formation of two turtle shells.

Moreover, at this time, the forces concentrated near the Manjigu Mountain Road had more than 3,000 troops on the part of the Shimazu family and the Ito family (during this period of time, during the attack on the southern position of the Luo family, they lost more than 1,000 people), while the Luo family had more than 9,000 people (of which there were more than 7,000 on the north side of the Masara office, and more than 2,000 people on the south side of the south side where Isono Yuanmasa and Irita Yoshimi were located). Of course, generally speaking, Masaro can only judge the approximate number of enemy troops from the enemy's formation, but who told the other side that there have been "betrayers" from the Saeki family, so after some calculations, Masarashi naturally knows how many troops the opponent has.

Judging from the above situation, the Luo family's side obviously has an advantage in terms of troops, and if it is Masashi's original intention, it is completely possible to directly attack the combined forces of the Shimazu family and the Ito family. Thus taking them down in one fell swoop.

But Masato didn't do that. On the contrary, it was only when the combined forces of the Shimazu family and the Ito family attacked the southern mountain road position that they would be contained from their rear.

So. Why did Zhengliang do this? After all, with such a large-scale military situation, every day of delay will consume one's own materials.

The reason is very simple, because it is more beneficial for the Luo family to delay the attack than to take the initiative to attack.

First of all, although the north and south formations of the Luo family had a total of 9,000 troops, the mountain road was very narrow, and the Luo family could not give full play to the superiority in strength (just as the combined forces of Shimazu and Ito attacked the southern position of the Luo family at the beginning stage). In the case that the other side has also built fortifications. If the Luo family attacked, then the role of the offensive and defensive sides would be changed with the opposing coalition, and the Luo family would become a passive party.

Secondly, it is the so-called trapped beast fighting. In the face of the dilemma of certain death, it is inevitable that the Shimazu family and the Ito family will be killed, and they will directly try to exchange their own sacrifices for greater casualties of the Luo family. After all, compared to the ordinary big names and heroes, the Luo family's standing reserves, reserves, and even temporary peasant soldiers are much more valuable. You must know that the training and treatment of the Luo family's standing and reserve standing forces in ordinary times have consumed a lot of resources. As for the dispatch of temporary peasant soldiers, it is also necessary to provide some compensation to their families. One word. It's Gui.

Finally, the two positions of the Luo family are interconnected with their respective rear territories, so they are able to maintain a long-term supply of logistics. On the side of the Shimazu family and the Ito family, because they were besieged, all the supplies were almost used up one day a day.

This can be seen from the fact that the iron cannons and bows of the Shimazu and Ito families have been less and less common recently. In fact, the most miserable are the wounded soldiers, in the absence of medicine, unless their bodies can survive, they can only stare and wait for death.

Of course, Masayo is also very benevolent, and for this reason he has recently sent people to shoot strips of cloth with arrows removed but tied with words of persuasion into the coalition camp almost every night to persuade the opposing soldiers to find an opportunity to surrender. Even, Masato deliberately roasted a wild boar or cooked a fragrant delicacy in front of the coalition army, and invited the coalition soldiers to come and have a meal. However, until now, not a single coalition soldier has come to surrender.

In this regard, Masashi naturally doesn't care, anyway, if you attack the combined forces of the Shimazu family and the Ito family, then the two positions of the Luo family will fight back at the same time, but they also mainly rely on their own positions to fight back, and never pursue excessively, and all of them rely on the position to intercept the Shimazu and Ito coalition forces as the basis.

As long as it lasts for a period of time, and when the materials including food within the coalition army are consumed, at that time, it is estimated that it will not take much effort on the part of the Luo family's army to be able to bring the coalition army to the next pot.

Of course, the coalition forces can also escape into the high mountains and dense forests on the east and west, but first they have to climb over the steep mountains of more than ten meters to the east of the Wandi Valley, and as for the west of the Wandi Valley, there is first a Beichuan five or six meters wide and a turbulent river, and after crossing the Beichuan, it is also a steep mountain of more than ten meters. It was precisely after seeing that the personnel of the Intelligence Pavilion highlighted such a terrain that Masayo ordered Isono Yuanchang and others to quickly block the northern exit of Wanji Valley.

However, if the coalition forces were really helpless, there would really be people who would venture to climb the mountain. Under the surveillance of the Luo family, they naturally would not climb the mountain during the day, otherwise they would be harassed and attacked by the Luo family. But if you climb the mountain at night, you can only "hehe", after all, in this era, the average local people basically have night blindness. If they lit torches, it would still be difficult to escape from the surveillance of the Luo family, and if they finally crossed the mountain without dying, only to find that there was a group of Luo family troops waiting there on the other side of the mountain, then they would really cry.

So in the confrontation with each other, the time soon came to the end of April of the second year of Eiroku, and during this period of time, the land and water army led by Li Huamei and Takasaka Masanobu on the Hyuga side of the Hyuga country quickly entered the central Hyuga region from the northern Hyuga region, and even captured the capital of the Ito family. And many people such as Kai Qinnao of Hizen Province and Nobuyin of Enjoji Temple also entered the territory of Satsuma Province and Hyuga Province respectively. These two events directly led to a turmoil in the entire southern Kyushu region (that is, the incident mentioned earlier occurred at the same time as the incident in which Masarashi pursued the Shimazu, Saeki, and Ito coalition forces).

And at this time, Zhengliang's camp also ushered in a group of special guests.

The guests will receive an expedition assignment from Masayo, and then split into two teams. Wadking through mountains and rivers to two places. Began to carry out the special task given by Zhengliang. Since the place they will be heading to is far from the territory of the Luo family. Not only could they not get military support from the Luo family, but even the general material support needed to be very secretive. Even more dangerous, the prestige of the place where they live is also likely to pose a threat to them. Therefore, before officially assigning the task to these people, Masashi personally met with them one by one, and consulted them one by one whether they were willing to accept the task.

"Have you decided?" When the last of these guests walked into Masahiro's military tent, Masara asked a little helplessly.

"Father, the son-in-law has decided, please allow the son-in-law to go with you."

Faced with Zhengliang's inquiry. The person who came said in a firm tone. It was in Hizen Province that this person secretly said goodbye to his brother Luo Shi Huiliang, and then rushed here non-stop to Luo Shishiliang, the second son of Masaliang.

"Hey!" Seeing that the second son Luo Xinliang was so resolute, Zhengliang really had a little headache, so he had to finally try to persuade him: "You know, I don't really want you to go." And if you leave secretly this time, it's not easy to explain to your mother. Thinking of the expression of Tsuruhime, who was sad to learn the news that Luo Shinra would be away from his side for a long time in the future, Masarashi was a little unbearable.

Although this time the two teams of people went to the place and had already prepared and dealt with the Intelligence Pavilion and the Roche House in advance over the past few years, it was still very dangerous. And as a father, although he also knows the Warring States Period, he can't be too scruple about family affection. And also pay attention to the exercise of their offspring, but as a posterity. After all, he wants to watch his son enter danger, so Zhengliang is really a little unbearable.

In Zhengliang's opinion, if you need to train your offspring, then it's good to stay by your side and watch the exercise, so that at least you can deal with it at any time. But the place where the mission went this time was too far away and dangerous, and once something happened, Masashi couldn't reach out in time to help. But he also knew the stubborn character of the son in front of him, so he could only try his best to persuade him in the end.

As for why Masahiro didn't cancel this task? This is impossible, after all, the next opportunity will determine the layout of the Luo family in the entire Warring States in the future, and there will be no more such opportunities, and Zhengliang will naturally not give up.

So why not force your second son to stay at home? This was mainly caused by Masahiro's own momentary negligence. When this expedition mission was announced, for the sake of secrecy, Masarashi did not say exactly what the mission was, but it was clearly stated that it was a mission that was far away from the territory and had been away for a long time.

As for Masahiro's refusal to directly appoint personnel to participate in this mission, the main reason is that this task is too important to be negligent, and if he assigns a retainer who is unwilling to go there, it is very likely that he will accidentally cause the destruction of the entire expeditionary team. General Zhengliang not only lost this team of people because of this, but also attracted the attention of local heroes and celebrities, thus losing this opportunity. Therefore, Masahiro preferred his retainers to participate voluntarily.

Of course, in order to avoid the retainers who voluntarily participate from being hindered by other factors such as clansmen (after all, people are selfish, not every retainer is willing to give up a qiē to serve the Luo family, this is the foundation of human nature, which is also the reason why Zhengliang has been fully implementing the Luo family law, the purpose is to use a set of laws to support the stable development of the Luo family's rule. And according to the current development of the Luo family, it is enough to stay at home and participate in some tasks close to the territory to obtain good merits, so why bother to venture away from the territory? Therefore, if your own people or family members participate in such a mission, it is natural that someone will secretly create obstacles. Even if the political conscience has the intention to put an end to this situation, it is inevitable that there will be moments when it is not perceived. Since this is the case, Zhengliang simply blocked the minds of these people, and directly made it clear that as long as they are voluntary, they must not be hindered).

It's just that shortly after this order was issued, Masara slapped his mouth, because his second son actually volunteered to participate. The so-called selfishness of people is really reflected at this time. After learning the news, Masara privately called his second son Nobuya over, and directly told this son the specific content of this task in advance, the purpose of which was naturally to hope that his son could understand the danger and voluntarily give up this task.

As a result, Nobuya still refused, and Masato had no choice but to make it clear that he didn't want Nobuya to participate (as for not directly excluding Nobuya on the surface, the main thing is that Masarashi wants to maintain his majesty and fair appearance in front of his retainers, otherwise it will be difficult to convince the public, and it will be difficult for a family to rule), and I hope that Nobuya will think about it again.

It's just that now the second son Nobuya has come directly from Hizen Province to Masaara, and he has already shown his determination to Masara, even if Masara still doesn't give up, but obviously this son really won't change his decision.

"Hey!" Looking at the stubborn eyes of the son in front of him, Zhengliang could only sigh again in the end. This reminded him of the one-eyed dragon of the Luo family, who had just been sent away.

This guy was injured in the previous battle with the Shimazu family, the Ito family, and the Saeki family, and I didn't know where I got the news that everyone on this mission was about to leave, and even ran to ask to participate in this expedition mission. Finally, after confirming that his injuries could be healed during the journey, Masara reluctantly agreed to the request of the little surname he had at the beginning.

"In that case, it's good to see it during the trip." After determining that he could no longer persuade this stubborn son, Masara had no choice but to consider his safety, "Look here. Masarashi then opened a wooden box beside him. I saw a pair of armor exposed inside.

"The name of this armor is Jin Xiao Za Sewei. It is an armor made of four colors of silk thread strung together with gold leaf. In fact, in history, this armor was owned by Oda Nobunaga, and after Oda Nobunaga learned that Takeda Shingen was going to the west, he also gave it to Uesugi Kenshin as one of the tokens of the alliance between the two families.

Now that the Luo family had obtained this armor from the merchant in advance, it was naturally going to be reserved for their own use. As for why Zhengliang didn't give the armor and weapons such as the Luo family armor to his son and other retainers who were about to travel far this time, the main reason was that these weapons were unique to the Luo family, and there was almost no outflow, if these people suddenly wore a lot of these equipment outside, it would be tantamount to telling them that their relationship with the Luo family was very unusual, and their identities would naturally be exposed.

After arriving at their respective destinations, these people still have to pay attention to lurking at the beginning, waiting for the arrival of the opportunities predicted by Zhengliang, or preparing in advance for the upcoming opportunities, and developing their own forces. In this way, during this period, it is best for them to prepare themselves with the best weapons and equipment that were common in this Warring States period.

"And, here." Zhengliang pointed to the knife holder on the other side, where a knife was placed, "This knife is called Xiao Chest Cut, which has been with my father for many years, and it is a very sharp and strong good knife, when you encounter difficulties or dangers outside in the future, take it out and take a look, so that you will see how your father developed the family from a small local tyrant to the current Warring States overlord." ”

"Take good care of them. After today, it will be difficult for you and me, father and son, to meet again in the short term. Let's have a good conversation tonight. Masahiro finally said.

"Yes!" Luo Huiliang's face was a little flushed at this time, obviously he felt the love and reluctance of Zhengliang as his father.

"But, please forgive my father and my mother, who is still in the dark, for their stubbornness. After all, Erchen also has his own dreams! While listening to the precautions that his father Masashi began to talk about, Luo Xinliang muttered to himself in his heart.

(Thanks to "Hua Xizi" for their tipping support; Thank you for the monthly pass support of "Best Economic Package". (To be continued......)