In the twentieth month of Wanli, when the new privy envoy had just been appointed by the Ming Dynasty and the new cabinet minister Zhang Wei was ordered to enter the territory of Korea, a Japanese ship from Edo also arrived at Songshan Port in the Dongying Jiaohua District of the Ming Dynasty.

In addition to carrying 300 young widows and other goods and money, the ship was Masuda Nagamori and his party.

And the moment Masuda Nagamori arrived at Matsuyama, he saw that there were many Ming army naval warships moored in the entire Matsuyama Port.

Most of these warships have towering masts into the sky, reaching more than 18 to 20 zhang, and the ships are even more than two or three zhang high, with more than 10 to 20 or 30 cannons.

The vermilion boat he was on was very small compared to one of them.

Then.

When Masuda Nagamori continued to the depths of the harbor by boat, he saw that there were larger warships in the nearby military port, and they stopped in the direction of Shimonoseki (Maguan), on which there were thousands of Ming soldiers training, and dozens of Ming horsemen were running horses on it.

Masuda Nagamori couldn't help but gasp because of this, and couldn't help but say to Sakai Ieji, who came with him:

"The gap between us and the Tang people is too big! The unification of the four countries is probably far away! ”

Sakai Ieji also looked depressed: "I heard that this is not the headquarters of the Tang Dynasty Naval Division, but in Nagasaki!" We now see so many warships and such large ships in Matsuyama, and I really don't know what will happen to Nagasaki, and Nagasaki will undoubtedly be even more difficult to recover. ”

"I wanted to enter the Tang Dynasty, but I didn't expect to be entered by the Tang Dynasty!"

Masuda Nagamori gritted his teeth and said, and then he continued to look at Matsuyama Port.

And then.

Masuda Nagamori couldn't help but sigh again because he saw that the town of Lingang was densely populated and there were many shops, and he said:

"Shikoku is really rich today, and even this Matsuyama is full of commercial ports, and the many villages and fields with no weeds and canals that you see when you pass by are really not very embarrassing compared to the withered villages, stagnant rivers, and barren fields you see when you come here."

"Yes, we still have a lot of farms in Edo that are barren due to heavy taxes, and there are still very few villages, but I didn't expect that the four kingdoms owned by the Ming people were better than Edo."

"Don't the Ming people collect heavy taxes?"

Sakai Kaji is also in a very complicated mood.

Masuda Nagamori couldn't help but shake the sword in his hand here, and he had the heart to go to captivity for a day.

For there are many houses, granaries, fields and tillers, and many shops in the town, and a wide variety of goods, including gold and jade jewelry.

Especially after seeing that many people here were wearing silk cotton clothes, Masuda Nagamori and the samurai under his command felt that even grabbing a few clothes was very profitable.

To know.

Today's Wa Kingdom has just ended its war.

Honshu was ruled by the Tokugawa clan.

Kyushu and Shikoku, in addition to the territories of the two daimyo of Ryuzoji Temple and Otomo, as well as Hokkaido, have become Daming religious areas.

In this case, the war finally ended in Honshu, so it is still very poor, and the productivity has not yet recovered, not only silk, but also cotton.

Therefore, Masuda Nagamori now wants to lead his samurai to grab a handful.

But Masuda Nagamori and Sakai Ieji, as well as the other samurai in their party, held back.

One is that he remembered that the task assigned to him by Tokugawa Ieyasu was to show goodwill to Ming Guo.

The second is that he also knows that the current Ming is not easy to mess with, if he really dares to plunder here, it will give the Ming Kingdom a reason to continue to expand in this state.

What's more, these giant warships in front of them and the soldiers on the deck who were as strong as towers and murderous were just in front of them, and they would be afraid at a glance, which made them have to hold back their edge more and make their posture more deferential.

Because of this.

After they were stopped by a Ming city patrol ship at the port entrance, they still behaved very politely, bowing down and explaining that they were not ronins who had come to plunder, but tribute envoys who had been ordered to go to Middle-earth to pay tribute to the Ming Emperor.

However, the officers of the Daming patrol ship still ordered them to get off the ship and be questioned first.

And Masuda Nagamori and others also need to handle the survey in the branch of the city ship division here before they can go to the Ming Dynasty to visit or trade.

Therefore, they still did the same, handed over their weapons, and climbed onto the boat through the ropes thrown by the Ming army.

After getting on the boat, Masuda Nagamori and others squeezed out a trace of smirk more honestly after seeing the rockets and heavy artillery on the ship, and when they saw an official coming over, they nodded their heads, and after seeing the secretary, they knelt down directly.

Tokugawa Ieyasu told him to be polite to the Ming officials, so he tried to humble himself as much as possible, and knelt down when he saw the Ming officials, so as to make the Ming officials relax their vigilance against themselves, and even become their own dependence.

"You widows love to go to Middle-earth if you have nothing to do, don't think that this official doesn't know what you're thinking, and you don't want to come back if you go, right?"

Feng Jixu, the customs clearance officer sent by the branch of the city ship on this patrol ship, did not have a good face towards Masuda Nagamori and the others, and said such a sentence as soon as he saw them, and then patted his green-robed official uniform.

Masuda Nagamori replied: "Don't dare not go back!" ”

Feng Jixu just smiled at this, while looking at the application paper that Masuda Nagamori had written a long time ago, while enjoying the massage of a widow behind him, and then asked, "How long are you going to go?" ”

Masuda Nagamori was asked, because Tokugawa Ieyasu did not set a deadline for him.

"Our lord asks you something!"

Feng Jixu couldn't stand the slave beside him, so he directly pointed at Masuda Changsheng with a Japanese fan and shouted loudly, and said to Feng Jixu:

"Master Shengming, the slave thinks that these people must just want to go and don't want to come back."

"Coming back, definitely coming back, we're going to go for a year."

Masuda Nagamori replied.

Feng Jixu said: "So long? Are you going to find out what I am doing in Middle-earth? ”

"Don't dare!"

"We just want to go on a pilgrimage to His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and pay homage to the holy face."

Masuda Nagamori hurriedly replied cautiously.

"Take him down and search him carefully to see if he has any other documents and sharp weapons on him."

Feng Jixu commanded.

As a result, Masuda Nagamori and others were dragged down like prisoners, waiting in line for stricter inspections.

Only after they have passed the inspection can they be interviewed by the supervisor of the city division in the county, and after passing the interview, they can leave for Nagasaki and then take a boat to Middle-earth.

The reason for queuing up is because there are many Japanese people who have to go to the Dongying Jiaohua District and Middle Earth in the Ming Dynasty every day, and many of them do not come back when they go.

In particular, if you speak Chinese well, you will not come back as soon as you arrive in Middle-earth, and pretend to be Han Chinese, living a life of exemption from forced labor, low commercial taxes, and high welfare guarantees, and even by marrying low-level Han girls such as good wind and dust girls, etc., to obtain household registration, and then obtain the qualification for the imperial examination, and then become a scholar, and even become an official.

Even if you can't speak Chinese, you can only go to the Ming Dynasty as a slave, and you will have a good life.

Therefore, the Ming Dynasty is now particularly strict with the entry of foreign countries.

After some strict interrogation, Masuda Nagamori and others finally had the qualifications to go ashore to Matsue County, mainly because he had a political task to ask for the seal for Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the officials below did not know the emperor's attitude, so it was naturally difficult to directly stop Masuda Nagamori and others.

As a result, Masuda Nagamori and others finally went to the shore of Matsue Port and headed for Matsue County.

And they still lowered their eyebrows, and even when he went ashore and was accidentally hit by a child who was opening an iron hoop in the market, he couldn't help it, didn't kill the child, but also helped the child, squeezed out a smile, and then asked the child in Chinese to go to the branch of the city.

The kid showed him the way, and Masuda Nagamori and his party continued to walk towards the gate of Matsuyama County, which was close to the city's branch office.

On the way, Masuda Nagamori continued to look at everything in front of him.

Masuda Nagamori found that the closer to the county seat of Songshan became, the denser the villages became, and there were already many Han Chinese farming here, so that there were fertile fields everywhere and there were not many Japanese people.

"Could it be that we widows are having a miserable time here?"

Masuda Nagamori asked.

At this time, Sakai Ieji suddenly pointed to an oil mill and said to Masuda Nagamori, "Look! There's us in there! ”

Masuda Nagamori looked over, and then he saw that there were many Japanese people working in the oil mill, and although they looked very hard, they were all wearing cotton jackets, and some Japanese workers were still eating white rice while waiting for their shifts to eat.

Sakai Ieji therefore came over and asked these Japanese people who were eating:

"Why does the oil mill make you eat so well?"

"Is this good?"

"When we used to work in the oil mill opened here in the Marquis of Ningyuan's mansion, we could still eat one fatty meal a day!"

"Now this black-hearted new owner, because the Marquis of Ningyuan Mansion no longer does business, and after buying us as slaves from the Marquis of Ningyuan's Mansion, he said that we have to work for more than five hours a day before we can eat meat."

A widow replied at this time.

Another widow said, "Be content, it's good to have enough to eat, it's better than when you were a slave in Kyoto." ”

Masuda Nagamori and Sakai Ieji both looked at each other, had nothing to say, and returned in silence.

"How much food is not lacking in Middle-earth, and slaves can eat white rice."

And when he arrived in the county seat, Masuda Nagamori couldn't help but say this to Sakai Ieji while looking at the shops opened by the Ming people and all kinds of Ming people who came and went in the city.

Sakai didn't answer, but looked at the coolies who were smiling as they were carrying the grain into the warehouse, and the overseers who were wearing Hanfu but speaking in Japanese language and directing the coolies.

It wasn't until he walked in front of a newsstand that he grabbed Masuda Nagamori and pointed to a copy of the official newspaper of the Ming Dynasty on it:

"You see, their Han people actually achieved a maximum yield of five stones per mu of paddy fields through oil cake fertile fields and new waterwheels in Songshan!"

"If I could, I really wanted to catch a few Han Chinese and go back to Edo as serfs!"

"Maybe the Tang people are really more favored by the gods than us, and they are really wiser."

In this era, for the Japanese people, the yield of two stones per mu was already a high yield, so Sakai Ieji was very shocked by this.

Masuda Nagamori is the same.

He looked at the newspaper for a long time, and then thought of the large number of grain ships and granaries he had seen in the harbor, and he couldn't help but say:

"Now I'd rather go to Middle-earth to see if there's really no one there?"

(End of chapter)