On the first day of the first lunar month of the third year of Taichang, Guangning, Liaodong.
In the lobby of the General Military Mansion, Zu Dashou, the chief military officer of Guangning, sat at the top, followed by Zu Dabi, Zu Dale, and Zu Dacheng below. The three of them were all wearing the uniforms of generals and guerrilla officers, with a look on their faces. A arrogant look.
Several lieutenants and heads of servants were standing in the distance. There were some wine, meat, tea and rice on the coffee tables around them. Two maids filled the glasses for everyone and then hurriedly left.
Everyone's eyes fell on Zu Dashou, waiting for the commander-in-chief of Liaoxi Province to speak.
Zu Dashou, who was dressed in military uniform, suddenly stood up from his seat and said with a ferocious face:
"Liu Zhaosun is a thief. He is not satisfied with annexing Liaodong. Now he wants to pursue Liaoxi. I am not Li Rubai or Ding Bi. I will not let his ambition succeed."
After saying that, he picked up the wine bottle and took a sip, looking at Zu Dabi next to him.
"Second brother, has Eunuch Zeng come back?"
Zu Dabi shook his head, thought for a while, and then said:
"I have sent fifty elite servants to ambush on the official road from Fushun to Guangning. As soon as there is news about Eunuch Zeng, I will report back immediately."
"Fifty servants are not enough, please send more!"
Zu Dashou slammed the wine bottle on the table. The brothers' expressions remained unchanged and they all raised their glasses and drank.
After the bloody battle of Hunhe, in order to check and balance the Kaiyuan forces, the imperial court acquiesced in allowing the ancestral family to grow in western Liaoning, and imported huge amounts of Liao salary to Guangning Fuzhou every year, and the ancestral family's power expanded rapidly in western Liaoning.
Zu Dashou's brothers and nephews served as chief officials in Ningyuan, Jinzhou and other places, and the ancestral family was deeply involved in Western Liaoning.
"Eunuch Zeng is the emperor's man and cannot be moved. No matter how many people they kill in Kaiyuan, we must protect him and let him leave Liaoxi safely so that he can talk to the capital when he comes back."
Everyone nodded, and Zu Dashou continued:
"Next spring, the Liu thief will come to attack us. In the past, we could count on Hou Jin to restrain this thief. Now that Jiannu has been destroyed by him, this thief has no worries and is emboldened. We are now isolated and helpless, so We can only rely on the imperial court. I will ask Zhang Yushi to write a few more memorials, and ask Mr. Fang Ge to explain to the emperor the role of western Liaoning in protecting the capital. If western Liaoning is lost, the capital will be in danger. Let the Ministry of War deploy more elite troops from Jizhou and Xuanda, Join forces with us to resist the Liu bandits and destroy the Kaiyuan army under Guangning City. Of course, we have to spend more money to get help from these adults."
After Zu Dashou said this, he discussed with several brothers and finally decided to collect 50,000 taels of silver for the management of the capital officials.
Zu Dalue clapped his hands and laughed, praising:
"This is best. The imperial court should be more anxious than us. Liu Zhaosun is about to cut off the canal in Shandong. This thief is very ambitious. We are determined not to go to the capital. We will obey the orders but not the orders. The emperor will have to rely on us to send troops to reinforce Us! Even the civil servants won’t be able to control us from now on! Hahaha!”
The generals in the room burst into laughter.
Zu Dashou laughed dryly and put down the wine bottle.
He has experienced hundreds of battles, is alert, and is good at judging the situation. He is not as useless as Li Rubai, nor as greedy as Ding Bi.
In the past two years, Liaoxi has maintained a delicate balanced relationship between Hou Jin and Kaiyuan.
However, Zu Zongbing did not love peace, he was just waiting for the opportunity.
He had a good grasp of Emperor Taichang's psychology. The emperor was full of doubts about Liao Zhen, but he did not dare to completely break up with him. Because in Liaodong, there is a more ferocious existence than Jiannu, and that is Kaiyuan.
In order to prove his worth to the court, under the instruction of Zu Dashou, Liao Town often had conflicts with the Kaiyuan Army. In Fushun and other places, soldiers and civilians from both sides often died in fights.
Under Zu Dashou's operation, in the second year of Taichang, the imperial court sent most of the Liao's salary to Liaoxi, which had nothing to do with Jiannu, but only gave one hundred thousand taels to the Kaiyuan army who fought bloody battles.
Zu Dashou took the court money and was not idle.
In the bloody battle of Hehunhe and the battle of Hetuala, Liao Zhen stabbed Kaiyuan in the back twice in an attempt to pick up the pieces, but in the end they were resolutely counterattacked by the Kaiyuan army and did not take any advantage.
After the rise of Kaiyuan, it pursued a policy of active expansion.
When Sun Chuanting was in power in Fushun, he had constant disputes with his ancestral family. Tenants from western Liaoning often fled into Fushun. Sun Chuanting naturally refused to surrender, and several armed fights broke out between the two sides. At that time, Liu Zhaosun was busy with the war in Shandong, and the contradiction between Kaiyuan and Liaoxi was not so obvious.
Now that Jiannu has been destroyed, the decisive battle between Liaodong and Liaoxi is inevitable.
Of course, Zu Dashou did not want to sit still and wait for death, so he decided to attack Kaiyuan first.
After learning that Duke Xinchang and Marquis Pingliao also had a holiday, Liaoxi and Dongchang hit it off immediately, so they launched an undercover operation to assassinate Marquis Pingliao.
Two months ago, Zu Dashou sent twenty elite servants to cooperate with Dongchang Fanzi's operation.
After they arrived in Kaiyuan, they just wanted to spy on intelligence and collect evidence of Liu Zhaosun's rebellion.
Later, as the number of killings increased, Eunuch Zeng simply tried to remove the fuel from the pot. While sabotaging the strategy of using Xia to conquer the barbarians, he also prepared to assassinate Liu Zhaosun, causing chaos in Kaiyuan.
In the end, the situation was completely out of control, and the decisive battle between Liaoxi and Kaiyuan had to break out in advance.
Zu Dashou had reason to suspect that this was done deliberately by the rebels to drag Liaoxi into the quagmire against Kaiyuan.
"Zu Dale, you go too, and bring more servants with you. This time we are not going to make a small fuss, and be more ruthless if we want to do it. If Kaiyuan soldiers dare to chase them, they will be killed! Liu Zhaosun just finished beating Jiannu , his vitality is severely damaged, and he is unable to fight anymore at this time. We must let him know that Liaoxi is the Liaoxi of his ancestral home, not his surname Liu!"
"It's time to settle the accounts between us and Kaiyuan."
~~~~~~
Bohai Sea.
The sea finally calmed down after the storm, and a fortune ship loaded with cargo lay limply on the sea. Occasionally, when the wind picked up, it crawled northwest for a while with difficulty.
Only half of the fortune ship's mast was left bare, and the canvas above it, together with the brave guard, drifted to an unknown direction.
The sailors spent a lot of effort to raise a worn-out canvas on half of the mast. This canvas was also riddled with holes. Only when the wind was strong enough, the ship could barely move forward. Most of the time, it still had to rely on the ship's strength. People use wood pulp to paddle.
The hull was beaten by wind and waves, and numerous small cracks appeared. Seawater poured in along the cracks, and the water in the bilge reached up to people's calves.
The sailors were busy mixing tung oil and ash into oil sludge, blocking the gaps in the ship's side, and finally working together to scoop out the seawater.
A group of strong men who looked like servants took out boxes of heavy goods from the bilge. Under the eyes of everyone full of regret, the goods were thrown into the sea to reduce the load of the lucky ship...
On the sea more than fifty miles southeast of this damaged ship, another large ship was sailing from southeast to northwest.
This large ship is larger, with a total of three sails hung from bow to stern. The bow is a bowsprit, which extends diagonally forward, and hangs a white soft sail. The stern hangs a Portuguese square soft sail. The middle sail is basically the same shape as the main sail that was blown away from the previous Fu Ship.
The sides of the ship are one foot above the sea, each equipped with three small Franco cannons, and the bow is a "Yamato-type" bow with wooden rails. This hybrid type of Eastern and Western sailing ships is the Sixteen A typical Japanese "shuin ship" from the seventh century. (Note 1)
On the Zhuyin ship, several Japanese warriors dressed as warriors were walking back and forth on the deck. On the observation pole high on the deck, a short Japanese sailor was holding a telescope to observe the sea in the distance.
Miyamoto Musashi, who was wearing a black patterned haori, clenched the black fracture fan in his hand and slowly looked towards the western sea. The murderous nodachi hanging straight from his belt showed his master's extraordinary achievements in the past.
"I have been studying swordsmanship since I was a child. I have traveled all over Japan, met warriors from various sects, and competed more than sixty times without ever losing."
The two samurai following him nodded repeatedly. Both samurai had read "The Book of Five Rings" written by Miyamoto to understand the legendary experience of this legendary samurai.
According to Miyamoto's own description, when he was thirteen years old, he defeated Arima Kihei of the "Shinto-ryu" and later traveled to various feudal domains without encountering an opponent.
In the fifth year of Keicho, Miyamoto Musashi participated in the famous Sekigahara Battle. He served as an iron artillery ashigaru (fire gun soldier) in the iron artillery team of Ukita Hideie of the Western Army. He fought against Tokugawa Ieyasu, but was defeated and exiled.
It is a pity that such a (self-proclaimed) genius swordsman entered the shogunate era and had to bow down for five buckets of rice like other samurai. Relying on his many years of true and false duel experience, he took refuge in the Hosokawa clan.
Due to the continuous expansion of Kaiyuan business in North Korea, Hosokawa's fur and tea businesses in Seoul were severely squeezed. Last year, the amount of money paid by merchants to the Hosokawa Daimyo shrank by half.
The New Year had just passed in the seventh year of Emperor Yuanwa's reign (1621). The thirty-five-year-old Miyamoto Musashi hurriedly boarded the Zhuin Ship and went to Incheon to investigate the details of this Liaodong trading company with the Hosokawa family elder (an important minister of the daimyo).
Miyamoto sat on the waist hanging (mazar), raised his eyes and stared at the calm sea, recalling the scene of the decisive battle between himself and Kojiro a long time ago.
The duel was held on Yanliu Island at noon. Kojiro arrived early, but Musashi didn't show up for a long time. When he saw the sun turning to the west, Musashi came slowly. Kojiro, who was impatient with waiting, drew his sword out of its sheath and ran over. Musashi waited for work and killed him with one blow.
Fifty years of life are like a dream and an illusion.
Suddenly, the Japanese sailor on the observation pole blew the horn.
There was a commotion on the deck, and all the rogues and sailors stood up.
"Ming Dynasty Fortune Ship! The mast is broken!"
Miyamoto Musashi, who had been elegant just now, heard this and immediately returned to his pirate nature. He jumped to the helm behind the deck a few steps at a time, raised his folding fan to block the sun, and looked in the direction of the ronin's fingers.
There is a faint black spot on the western sea, which is like the gloomy sand on the body of a Nagasaki woman, which is fascinating.
Miyamoto Musashi laughed loudly and said to the two Japanese sailors at the helm:
"You may die, but your name as a warrior cannot be abandoned!"
"Lean over and take a look!"
Note:
1. Vermilion Seal Ships: In the Momoyama and Edo periods of Japan, ships that held the "Crimson Seal Certificate for Crossing Foreign Seas" and were allowed to conduct trade activities in Southeast Asian countries such as Annam, Siam, Luzon, and Cambodia. Some of them were pirate ships.
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