"Father?" Emperor Koko looked up at his father, "What the hell is going on?" ”

"Is everything ready outside?" However, the Emperor did not pay attention to his daughter, but kept looking at Nijo Yasudo.

"It's all ready, we can escape from the Imperial Palace with His Majesty now, and then someone outside will pick it up, and everyone will leave Kyoto together in chaos, as long as we leave Kyoto, whether it's hiding in the mountains and forests or going south, as long as it drags on for a while and doesn't let the people who are being searched by the shogunate find it, then the shogunate will no longer have time to take care of us."

The Emperor nodded slightly, but he was not as excited as Nijo Yasudo imagined, but a little solemn. "You have worked hard, today's matter is just the beginning, please guard against arrogance and rashness, there are more things you need to do in the future."

"Yes!" Nijo Yasu went to everyone and bowed their heads at the same time.

At this moment, the people who had been sent by Nijo Yasudo to get the three artifacts had also run back, and in the dim candlelight, the rusty artifacts emitted a strange light.

Nijo Kangdao didn't look at it, and directly rolled these utensils into a soft bag that was padded in advance.

For the Japanese people, this is an artifact that represents the whole of Japan and carries divine power and national fortune, but for the Emperor himself, and even for Nijo Yasudo, this is just some mundane things, and there is no need to treat them deliberately.

At this moment, the noise outside started again, and it was clear that someone was rushing towards it.

"Your Majesty, everything is in place, let's hurry up, don't make any more extraneous branches, the people of the shogunate will react sooner or later." Nijo Yasudo hurriedly urged the Emperor.

"Good...... Okay......" The Emperor's breath became short, and then he suddenly moved, pulling Emperor Koko and walking out.

"Father?" Xingzi was a little pained, and asked the Emperor in horror, "Where are we going?" ”

"Don't ask so much, just follow your father!" The Emperor yelled at her directly, then pulled her and walked out.

Xingzi's eyes grew and he looked at his father who suddenly changed his face in confusion. Recently, because her father came to teach herself, the image of her father in her heart has changed greatly, and now, although she doesn't understand what happened, the new image that she has built up with great difficulty has collapsed.

Out of an instinctive insight, she suddenly discovered that perhaps the pleasant face that her father put on before was actually just a disguise.

However, even if she was sad, she could only be forcibly pulled out by the emperor.

The palace is now in an uproar, and the palace people everywhere are rushing to the usual side of the palace, but how can they resist this group of people who have been prepared and armed for a long time? I could only watch in horror as they took the Emperor and His Majesty the Emperor hostage and walked out.

Hundreds of years since the Heian period, although the imperial court fell to the side, and the royal family and the minister became puppets of the samurai family, no matter who was in power, at least they maintained a superficial respect for the imperial court, and it was unprecedented for them to rush directly into the court and hold the emperor hostage. Besides, now that the Tokugawa shogunate has a deep foundation and its rule over the world is becoming more and more secure, who thinks that the royal family is still worth using?

No one was prepared in advance, and even if some tried to stop it, they would end up dead or wounded, and they watched the group leave, and from time to time some people wailed.

The Emperor remained silent, and followed his loyal servants step by step. After living here for so many years, he is very familiar with every plant and tree here, so even in the dark night, he walks very briskly.

This is his home, the place where his ancestors upheld national politics and gave orders to Japan many years ago, but it is also a cage where he is imprisoned. In order to return as a true ruler, he must leave for a while.

Although his face was solemn, his breathing became heavier and heavier, firstly, because he had always been pampered, so his physical strength was very weak; Another reason is that his mood is too agitated right now.

Yes, with every step you take, you get closer and closer to freedom, and to restoring the glory of your ancestors...... The Imperial Palace was small, so the group quickly returned to the Yiqiu Gate.

As soon as they walk through this door, they will leave the Imperial Palace, and will embark on a path from which there will be no turning back.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Just as the Emperor was about to leave, a sharp shout suddenly came from behind.

Because the voice was so familiar, the Emperor couldn't help but pause slightly, and then looked back.

In his sight, the Empress Dowager Tokugawa Kazuko followed after her, her voice was full of anxiety, although the light of the torch was very blurry, but from a distance, she seemed to have gotten up directly from bedtime, so she was dressed very thinly, and she seemed to be crying.

"Your Majesty......" and the Empress Dowager shouted as they rushed over at a speed unimaginable to ordinary people.

The moment the two looked at each other, the Emperor suddenly lowered his head, not daring to look at her.

"Your Majesty, don't leave here!" Because her steps were so hurried, Kazuko tripped over a stone and fell to the ground, "Don't be fooled by traitors!" ”

She fell so hard that she couldn't get up for a while, but the crying in her mouth never stopped, and she was obviously anxious and sad to the extreme.

However, he still did not stop his steps.

"Your Majesty! Xingzi ...... Xingzi, she's still young! Forgive her! Don't get her involved, Your Majesty, she's your daughter! ”

As if he already knew the emperor's intentions, Kazuko stopped urging him, but just begged him to return Xingzi.

However, even this wish could not be fulfilled, and although Xingzi stopped, the Emperor grabbed her hand and dragged her out.

"I want the queen mother! I want a queen mother! Xingzi struggled anxiously, but he was unable to break free from his father's hand, so he could only be taken out together.

Seeing that she was about to be forcibly taken away, she couldn't care so much, so she opened her mouth and bit down on her father's hand.

"Ahh The Emperor was in pain and immediately let go of his hand.

Emperor Koko immediately rushed towards the queen mother, but before she could take a few steps, she was grabbed by Nijo Yasudo behind her, and then pulled back hard.

"Sure enough, it's the daughter of the Tokugawa family!" Nijo Kangdao scolded in his heart, and he was naturally unkind to her.

"Let go of me, let go of me!" Xingzi's shoulder hurts, so she cries.

Nijo Yasudo ignored her screams, and regardless of the fact that she was the emperor at the moment, he directly took her into his arms.

"Your Majesty, are you alright?"

"It's okay, it's out of the way, let's go quickly." The Emperor shook his head, but his hand was already oozing blood.

"Your Majesty! Xingzi! In the midst of the incessant wailing, Kazuko's voice was particularly harsh, as if it could puncture the eardrums.

The Emperor looked up at her again, and then turned away with a ruthless heart.

"Let's go, don't waste any more time!"

The group immediately set off again, and soon came to the door, because Xingzi had been distressed, so Nijo Yasudo simply put his handkerchief in her mouth, and finally Xingzi could only make a whining sound, as if she was screaming and crying.

As they left the palace farther and farther away, the cries and mournful cries of the Empress Dowager grew farther and farther away, and finally they could no longer be heard.

Is this freedom? The thought suddenly crossed the Emperor's mind.

There was still a faint pain in his hands, but he didn't mean to blame Xingzi at all.

It wasn't until the moment he fled that he realized that something weighed much more in his heart than he had originally thought. Kazuko's terrible cry still echoed in his ears now, as if it were close at hand......

He turned his head to look at Xingzi next to him, who was now being carried forward by a person. She was still crying and struggling just now, but after being snatched out, she has stopped struggling now, and just looks up at the imperial palace that is getting farther and farther away from her. Her eyes widened, but they were unfocused, and her gaze was very distracted, as if she had been stunned.

The Emperor's chest suddenly felt a twitch

However, he also knew that it had come to this point, and there was no turning back. There are some costs that must be paid in order to achieve the goal.

After they escaped from the Imperial Palace, the people who had already prepared outside the Imperial Palace led them through the dark streets of Kyoto, and fled Kyoto in a panic that filled the city.

When he escaped from Kyoto and was about to hide in the countryside, the Emperor took one last look back at Kyoto. This is the city where he grew up, and it has been the capital of Japan for nearly a thousand years. At this time, the fire was still not extinguished, but grew bigger and bigger, and the fire spread and flew into the air, illuminating the sky and shining brightly.

This ill-fated city, which today is suffering from its new round of catastrophe, is like this country.

But...... All these calamities can be ended the next time I return here, and then under the governance of myself and my ministers, it will regain its glory and become the most dazzling capital of the country......

"Wait until I get back." He spoke softly, not knowing if it was for the city, or for one of them.

As this group of people disappeared into the darkness, the night wind echoed in the mountains and forests, and everything returned to calm, as if nothing had happened, who could have imagined what kind of turbulent waves were born in this silence?

On the same day, urgent reports from Kyushu and Kyoto were sent to Edo at the same time, and although the two places did not know what had happened to each other at this time, they both knew that a great storm had struck Tokugawa Iemitsu, who had enjoyed peace and well-being since his ascension to the shogunship, and a great test that the Edo shogunate had not experienced since its opening.

From the day the Kyushu Han mission disappeared, he sent people all over the island to search for these missions, and at the same time, with the most urgent means, ordered the pro-shogunate feudal lords of Kyushu to quickly assemble and mobilize all the forces that could be mobilized to resist the possible attack of the Han. Although it is unclear what is happening now, these feudal lords carried out the shogunate's orders, and then mobilized all the samurai retainers and ashigaru feudal lords in the domain.

However, the power of the feudal domains has now declined, and it is impossible to compare it to the Warring States period, when it was possible to recruit large armies from within the territory at every turn.

In ancient Japan, the military was separated from the peasants at the bottom, and war was a game for the noble samurai, and the army was dominated by elite armaments and weapons, and the peasants were limited to producers and were subjected to extreme oppression.

In the war-torn era that followed, especially during the Warring States period of the Muromachi shogunate, the wealthy clans in various places wanted to develop and compete for hegemony, so they abandoned many ancient practices, no longer blindly relied on elite samurai who had been trained for many years, and began to seek any way to expand their military power.

Wars and endless taxes and plundering have left large numbers of peasants without land or facing the oppression of death, and for those peasants who are dissatisfied with their own fate, the turmoil of the times has also provided them with a way out but to join the army. Many of them joined the daimyo's army and became low-ranking ashigaru. As can be seen from the word "ashigaru", these peasant soldiers lacked armor and other equipment, and even did not have enough weapons, so they had to rely on narrowly fetching deaths again and again, gaining experience from battles with high casualty rates, and climbing up the ranks of the army.

At the same time, because of the large import of gunpowder weapons into Japan, the situation and methods of war began to change dramatically, and a large number of wealthy families were equipped with gunpowder weapons, which could be used only after the most basic training, and were powerful enough to greatly reduce the value of elite samurai trained for many years -- and Ashigaru, who was born out of the peasantry, naturally began to steadily increase his status because of his numbers.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who later became the first person in the Sengoku period, his father was an ashigaru, and served in the army under Oda Nobunaga's father, Oda Nobuhide. During one battle, he was wounded in the leg and had to quit the ranks altogether. As a result, he lost his ties with the Oda family and became a farmer again. His son, Hideyoshi, continued to serve, and gained the trust of Oda Nobunaga, and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a general under Nobunaga.

After Nobunaga's death, Hideyoshi fought a series of campaigns and political maneuvers, and eventually became the true heir of Oda Nobunaga, eventually ruling all of Japan. But once Hideyoshi had achieved his goal, in order to consolidate his rule, he began to remove the ladder that had enabled him to successfully climb to the top, preparing to break up the peasant and military ties. When the conquest of the whole country was almost complete, he issued the "Sword Hunting Order", ordering the confiscation of weapons from the peasants throughout the country. This was a very bold move, which no ruler had ever done before (no one dared to do such a self-defeating thing in the previous days), but due to Hideyoshi's sheer power, it was largely successful not only in his own territory, but also elsewhere. In this way, the peasants were forcibly and slowly separated militarily and returned to the position of producers and exploiters.

When Tokugawa Ieyasu established the shogunate and ruled Japan, he not only did not want to reverse this trend, but promoted this policy even more, and the feudal domains became more and more restricted, and their finances became more and more difficult. Under the regulations of the Tokugawa shogunate, a daimyo of about 100,000 koku was only able to possess more than 2,000 men of arms - and the equipment was becoming more and more inferior, and it was only able to maintain law and order in its territory. Even the shogunate itself began to use the lifelong military service of the Banner and their attendants as the core strength of the shogunate.

So, after abandoning the large-scale armament, the peasants had been excluded from the military field, and there had been no major war in Japan for many years, and in a generation or two, they had long forgotten the war and training of those years.

Although the feudal clans were in a hurry, they could only urgently gather their close samurai and attendants, and within a few days they gathered a few thousand men and rushed to Nagasaki, most of them poorly equipped. In addition, because the shogunate forbade the feudal clans to trade weapons with other countries without permission, their firearms were not replaced for many years, and most of them were so old that it became a problem whether they could be used.

When they found out that the people gathered by the various feudal clans were so poor, Naito Tadashige and Soga Koyu did not know whether to rejoice in the success of the shogunate's policy of restricting the feudal domains, or to be distressed by the embarrassment of their current situation.

However, even though they felt pessimistic in their hearts, they still had to do what they had to do, and the two of them could only suppress the anxiety and fear in their hearts while seriously starting to arm. As their station, the port of Nagasaki is naturally the top priority, they put most of the assembled army in Nagasaki, and then began to move the remaining part of the army to the north, hoping to give some support to the Fukuoka domain - Hakata Bay, where the Yuan army landed twice in history, was in the territory of the Fukuoka domain, so of course Naito Tadashige and others would not relax their guard there, and the army of the Fukuoka domain was also left there by them, and they were preparing to support each other in the event of an incident in these two key defense areas,

After the preliminary preparations of the pro-shogunate feudal clan were completed, Naito Tadashige did not care about anything else, and began to send envoys to inform the other feudal lords of Kyushu, and called on them to quickly prepare their troops and defend the territory in Hongo in case of invasion by the Han, this order also caused a great commotion.

However, to their strange surprise, although all the feudal domains in Kyushu had been notified and were assisting the shogunate officials in the search, none of the escaped officials of the Daihan Merchant House had been caught, as if they had all disappeared.