"So you just said... you wanted to massacre the city, but you didn't want soldiers to kill people. You were afraid that the sword would be blunt, so you decided to kill them and bury them alive, right?" Imagawa Yoshimoto recalled Takeda Harunobu's initial answer and asked in a low voice. .
"Yes, there will be a war later. If you kill thousands of people here, you will probably have to break a lot of knives. And after you finish cutting, you still have to find a place to bury the bodies, otherwise there will be epidemics. It will be too troublesome. Dig thousands of people How much energy does it take to make this pit? How could I waste my army's energy here? What if the enemy comes to surprise me?" Takeda Harunobu nodded matter-of-factly, and at the same time pointed with his toes at the mass grave that was beginning to take shape in front of him:
"So I asked these people to dig their own holes. After digging, I pushed them in and buried them. This killed two birds with one stone and saved trouble."
"They know the hole they are digging is to bury themselves, so why are they still willing to dig it?" Imagawa Yoshimoto looked at the pale crowd on the wasteland and couldn't help but sigh. They buried their heads one by one, like soulless puppets, numbly using the tools in their hands to mechanically repeat the action of digging. Those who moved slowly, hesitated, or secretly wiped away tears would be whipped if they were seen, and in the end they had to get up and continue digging.
"Of course there are some people who refuse." Takeda Harunobu pointed to a small commotion that suddenly occurred in the west: a dozen strong men suddenly broke out, holding shovels and poles and trying to break out of the way, but they were immediately killed by the Takeda soldiers. He was chopped down neatly and fell into the pit covered in blood. There was another woman who didn't know what happened. She just lay on the ground and curled up in a ball, refusing to dig. She refused to move even though she was bruised all over with whips. Finally, she was kicked into the pit.
The other people around him seemed to have accepted their fate, turning a blind eye to the corpses in the pit and still digging shovel after shovel.
"But that's how most people are, and that's how human beings are. When the future outcome is too bad to bear, they will selectively ignore the outcome and give up thinking. Instead of thinking about how to struggle, they will Right now, they are thinking about other small things that they can bear." Takeda Harunobu showed a playful smile:
"Knowing that they will die, they can only live for a few more hours at most. But in order not to be whipped in these few hours, they will do it honestly and relieve their pain before death. Human beings are destined not to be good at thinking. Creatures of the future. The simplest example: Even though we know that 'the boss is just sad', aren't there still large groups of people who are 'young and not working hard'?"
Before evening, the pit had been dug. The Takeda Army supervising the pit cooked simple delicacies in a field pot, but these people who were about to go on the road were destined to die to eat their last meal. They were driven in groups and kicked into pits deeper than human beings, waiting for the Takeda Army to fill them in after they finished eating.
Until then, the people, who had previously avoided thinking about the outcome, were forced to accept their destined death. One after another, people collapsed, and howls and screams were heard in countless large pits, and soon spread to thousands of residents. Some people seemed to have finally mustered up the courage and tried desperately to get out of the pit, but were shot several times by the soldiers guarding the Takeda Army. Many more people were standing on the edge of the pit, crying and pleading with the enemy soldiers they had never met before, saying all the good things, hoping that he would spare their lives.
Some of the newly recruited Ashigaru seemed to have softened their hearts and were a little shaken at the edge of the pit, but those samurai who were used to all this had long ignored it and just looked at it coldly. They scolded the vacillating ashigaru a few times, but they didn't worry about anything - after seeing this scene a few times, they would become numb. Everyone needs the process of growing up - these are troubled times.
In a pit closest to the high ground where Imagawa Yoshimoto and the others were, there was a woman holding her infant baby in her arms. She was digging at the dirt and trying hard to lift the baby to the ground. Her voice was not loud, but it was easy to distinguish, allowing Imagawa Yoshimoto to hear what she said clearly.
"Master, please, please take this baby in!"
"It's easy to feed her. She doesn't cry or fuss. She can survive with just a little feeding. She can be a maid or servant for you when she is raised!"
"Please, sir, the little money I saved is stuffed into the baby's clothes. You can take it with me! It's just a little baby, it's okay!"
"Please, sir, please, sir, if you can't help it, just pick her out and throw her away at someone's doorstep! From now on, it's up to her to make her own destiny!"
"Master, please do it, please do it, I beg you..."
·
After all, Imagawa Yoshimoto didn't even eat a bite of food.
"If I want to stop you from massacring the city, is it possible?" Imagawa Yoshimoto looked at Takeda Harunobu, who was enjoying a meal at the side.
"Impossible." Takeda Harunobu wolfed down a big mouthful of noodles and muttered vaguely, "If I stop now, where will my authority be? How will the world view me?"
"Where are the women and children left?" Imagawa Yoshimoto understood that Takeda Harunobu was telling the truth and took a step back very simply.
"No." Takeda Harunobu replied simply, "This is a matter for our Takeda family, and the prisoners are also prisoners of the Takeda family. How to deal with it is our business. Goro, you have always been well-educated, why should you cross the line?"
"Just keep the kids."
Imagawa Yoshimoto finally whispered.
"Give us Kai an extra half of sea salt every month." Takeda Harunobu filled half a bowl of noodles for himself as if nothing had happened.
"Okay." Imagawa Yoshimoto agreed, and then stood up.
"You can take the Imagawa family to pick up all the children. You can only pick up those that are no higher than the horse's belly." Takeda Harunobu added.
"Okay." Imagawa Yoshimoto put down the bowls and chopsticks and asked Hayasaka Nao, Kira Usei, and Tian Shen Kentaro to pass on the order.
"Then if you have such a bodhisattva heart, I will slaughter every city I encounter in the future, how can you still exchange half of the sea salt for each city?" Takeda Harunobu said sarcastically with a smile.
"People will always avoid things that are unacceptable." Imagawa Yoshimoto quoted Takeda Harunobu's words just now, "I hope Tora Chiyo will not push me to an unacceptable point."
"City massacre is a normal thing. Really, it's just the first time for you, Goro, so you feel a little uncomfortable. Every year, it is estimated that hundreds of cities are massacred. It's just that Uehara City happens to have more people and the scene is more spectacular. That's all." Takeda Harunobu paused, and then asked half-jokingly, "You won't break our alliance because of this, will you?"
"No, I am not a naive child. I cannot abandon my important alliance for the lives of strangers in Shinano City. To put it bluntly, I, a hypocrite, cannot be like a bad good person." Imagawa Yiyuan shook his head, but his eyes became a little weak:
"But I hope there will be such a bad guy, and I hope the Imagawa family can be led by him in the future,"
·
Imagawa Yoshimoto led the Imagawa family's samurai into the pit, and the Takeda family's samurai got out of the way. When the people who were waiting to die in the pit saw the sudden changes on the ground, they suddenly had hope of escaping from death, and they cheered gratefully to the Imagawa Army. Imagawa Yoshimoto looked at the joy on the faces of the people that seemed to burst out of despair, but had to extinguish it with his own hands.
"I can only take away children that are no higher than a horse's belly."
Imagawa Yoshimoto walked up to the woman who was desperately holding up the baby and said sadly in a deep voice.
There was a moment of dead silence in the pit, as if a pair of scissors had cut off the cheers and joy just now. The joy on the faces of the people was frozen at first, then gradually solidified, and then slowly faded away. In the end, only endless sadness and pain emerged. Nearly a thousand pairs of eyes seemed to have lost their color, and they were horrifyingly empty and dark. Witnessing the great joy, great sadness, loss and ensuing despair - it is simply the most cruel and inhumane torture for bystanders.
Imagawa Yoshimoto's heartache was so severe that he had to start fantasizing to escape the guilt in his heart. He fancied himself a righteous and kind-hearted hero. No matter what the interests of the family are, no matter what the overall situation is, when seeing so many innocent people suffering, they are desperate and desperate to save them, and to stop the Takeda family's massacre. If Takeda Harunobu objects, he will even lead the Imagawa army to break the alliance and fight to the death with him to save these people.
However, this kind of self only exists in imagination. In reality, such a pure bad good person cannot survive, and will only be eliminated early in the troubled times. What remains are only ordinary people who have to put their kindness on the shelf in order to survive due to the cruel reality, and a few evil people who can trample their consciences unscrupulously and become invincible - of course, the evil people will be enshrined in the shrine after they succeed. People come to worship as if they are gods. Their stains will be wiped clean carefully, and they will be forgotten by people after more than a hundred years, leaving only the glorious images of heroes in troubled times - no one remembers how many people they killed, and the dead cannot speak anyway. . But the good people who truly resemble the benevolent images created by historians for the evil people have long since died in troubled times.
"Thank you, Master Samurai."
The voice of the woman in front of him interrupted Imagawa Yoshimoto's thoughts.
She lifted the child above her head and handed it to Imagawa Yoshimoto. After Imagawa Yoshimoto bent down and picked up the baby, the woman clasped her hands devoutly and knelt down to Imagawa Yoshimoto.
"Thank you, sir!"
"Thank you, sir!"
"Thank you, sir, for rescuing my baby!"
"You are truly the reincarnation of the Living Buddha!"
…
More and more people are giving away their children, accepting their fate of death, and placing their chances of life and all their thoughts and attachments on their children. The children clawed at the edge of the pit and refused to leave, wailing to say goodbye to their parents, but the parents no longer cried and just kept saying thank you to Imagawa Yoshimoto.
When death approaches desperately, what color will human beings take on? Imagawa Yoshimoto finally knows a thing or two.
After taking the children out of the pit, the Takeda family's samurai took up their positions again. They raised their shovels and threw huge piles of loess at the crowd, throwing up countless smoke and dust. Imagawa Yoshimoto watched with his own eyes as the mother who gave the child to her just now was gradually covered with loess, until the hand stretched out in despair no longer struggled. When the smoke and dust finally dissipated, the mourning also stopped. All that was left was a slightly raised wasteland, and only a few thousand insignificant lives disappeared.
How many people died? Imagawa Yoshimoto did not count. It doesn't matter whether it's 5,000 or 6,000. It's just a number anyway, a negligible number in the long history. In the history books of later generations, it will only become a few lines of ink on a page, as a mildly dissatisfied condemnation of Takeda Harunobu's atrocities. If Takeda Harunobu finally unified the world, this line of ink might not even exist.
But when this insignificant drop of ink falls on a person's head, it is like a stormy wave that sweeps the person into an endless abyss.
What if it falls on him? If the person standing in the pit just now was Ginkgo, Taiyuan Xuezhai, Wulang and the others, or myself...then I would feel so desperate.
Just thinking about it makes Imagawa Yoshimoto more and more miserable, and he yearns more and more for the existence of the hero he just imagined. He couldn't help but begin to outline a character for him in his mind - such a kind and righteous person must be a handsome young man, full of righteousness and gentleness; he would definitely not be different from those samurai who killed innocent people indiscriminately, and would not know how to shave. If you have a moon-like head, you will have a full head of black hair; what other characteristics will it have? What's unique about him that makes him different from others at a glance?
Imagawa Yoshimoto looked into the distance and saw a maple forest faintly visible among the mountains in the distance, surrounding the foothills.
Maybe he would have a shawl made of red leaves and wear it on his shoulders?
Could it be that the third brother was talking about the ferryman who will come to Suruga more than ten years later, the person named Yu Qiuping?
Thinking of this, Imagawa Yoshimoto himself laughed. Yes, how could there be such a person? This is just an unrealistic fantasy of those "hypocrites" who are unable to fight reality but still retain a conscience in the cruel and troubled times. They call for the existence of a hero to be the bad guy or true gentleman they want to be but cannot be, and to do the good things they want to be but cannot.
