On the other side, in Kyoto in the 18th century, in the morning two days later...
The owner of this mansion came to the warehouse from the main house. He was going to select some expensive tea utensils today to use as bribe gifts when he went to Edo.
No way! Nowadays, Tanuma Yiji is the chief veteran of the shogunate. If he wants to get things done, he must pay bribes. In Edo, if you ask people from the government to do things without spending money, there will be no chance.
Wait until the owner locks the warehouse door...that damn thief! Originally, this house was very safe and no one had ever broken into it. But after an intruder incident occurred in the early hours of the past few days, he added a large lock to the warehouse door the next day. Fortunately, after careful inventory, he found that nothing was missing. However, he was still planning to hire craftsmen to build a stronger warehouse in a few days and transfer all his belongings there.
The door was opened.
It was empty, not a single box.
"Huh? I went to the wrong house again, bad memory." The owner shook his head and whispered, then turned and walked out the door.
wrong! ! !
He looked at the key in his hand and then at the big lock in the other hand. The owner suddenly turned around and rushed into the warehouse.
This is my warehouse. Where are my things? ! ! !
On the street not far away, several pedestrians passing by the mansion suddenly heard a long roar coming from the mansion. The sound was shrill and plaintive that they had never heard before. . Several pedestrians were startled, so they quickened their pace and moved away.
A few days later, the great businessman, who was well-known in Kyoto, Osaka and Edo, hanged himself.
...
As a samurai, the nineteen-year-old Katsuzaburo is still very ideal.
He has practiced martial arts since he was a child, and his goal is to make his martial arts surpass those of his predecessors, such as Yagyu, Miyamoto and so on.
It's a pity that he was born at the wrong time, and the world has been at peace for nearly two hundred years. Therefore, Katsuzaburo could only work as a small accountant in charge of bookkeeping in the feudal lord's mansion.
But Katsusaburo was unwilling to give in. For this reason, he informed his superiors of his thoughts, resigned from his position, and prepared to travel around the island country to visit famous teachers in order to hone his sword skills.
As a result, as soon as we left Omi, we learned about the eruption of Mount Iwaki from passers-by.
Katsuzaburo was a samurai with a good heart, so he planned to rush to Hirosaki Domain as soon as possible after finishing his own business to see if he had a chance to do something within his power to help the disaster-stricken place.
He had been very unlucky along the way.
Katsuzaburo arrived in Edo first, but as soon as he arrived, his luggage and belongings were stolen in the castle town. He only had twenty Kanei Tongbao left on him...
Katsuzaburo quickly reported to the police, but you have to know that in this era, there were hundreds of thousands of residents living in the northern and southern towns of Edo Castle, and the judicial offices of the northern and southern towns only had a total of fifty people (Police Section) chief) and two hundred Tongxin (ordinary police officers). Although the shogunate also recruited many "goyongwen" (assistant police officers), if you don't pay, who will take you seriously?
The lost property could not be recovered for a while, so he could only live in a martial arts hall and work for others to make a living.
Three months had passed when they finally managed to get enough money to travel to Hirosaki Domain. During this period, the co-workers at the execution office only found a few stolen clothes of Katsuzaburo; as for the stolen money, they didn't even think about it.
As soon as Katsuzaburo saw that the clothes were not his, he understood that he had just found some random clothes to excuse himself. But what can be done? Under the General's nose, the practice office was at least pretending to be doing things.
Fortunately, Saburo Saburo's sword was not stolen, otherwise it would have been a huge embarrassment.
In early July, the volcano of Mount Asama erupted, three hundred miles west of Edo. Fifty-five villages at the northern foot of Mount Asama were affected, and several of them were completely destroyed.
At that time, there was a westerly wind blowing in the sky, so the volcanic ash flew to the east and southeast. Even Edo, which was far away, fell an inch of dust.
When the volcanic ash came, many people in Edo Castle didn't know what was happening. But when the news of the eruption of Mount Asama volcano came, the price of rice in various grain stores suddenly soared, and complaints spread among the people below the city.
The owner of the martial arts hall where Katsuzaburo worked also sympathized with him and advised him to return to Omi quickly, and also gave him some money as a gift.
Now that we are in this situation, if Katsusaburo were an ordinary person, he would have hurried back to Omi's house; but who is Katsusaburo? He is a person with lofty goals. Besides, there were no people left in his family. His parents had passed away two years ago, otherwise he would not have dared to resign from his position in the domain and travel.
Therefore, Katsuzaburo decided to move forward according to his previous goal and set off towards Hirosaki Domain.
What Katsuzaburo didn't know was that the Hirosaki Domain under the rule of the Tsugaru family was already in chaos.
After the Iwakiyama volcano erupted in March of that year, messengers from all over came to Hirosaki Castle, so the head of the Tsugaru family, Tsugaru Nobuyin, also sent messengers to the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo to report urgently.
It is said that the Hirosaki Domain under the rule of the Tsugaru family was not wealthy to begin with. The Tsugaru family was originally a retainer of the Nanbu clan, and took advantage of the internal chaos of the Nanbu clan to become independent. During the Momoyama period, Sekihaku Hideyoshi recognized the Tsugaru clan as a daimyo, and the territory's income totaled 47,000 koku. By the time of the Tokugawa shogunate, Shi The high number remains unchanged, which can be said to be a desperate situation.
The Tsugaru family was still so poor that they had to borrow money from everywhere and were unable to provide disaster relief on their own. On the side of the Edo shogunate, Tanuma Yiji, a senior middle school student, was already distressed by the disasters caused by the "Mountain Lee Wind" in various places last year.
Therefore, the shogunate responded to the messenger by accumulating food and defending himself. In other words, the general doesn't care about you anymore, just mind yourselves.
It was against this background that Zhao Xin took his servants Toshiyoshi Shino and his wife, as well as dozens of hungry people who were willing to take refuge after being rescued on the road. On their way south, they met Katsuzaburo who had fainted on the side of the road.
This time he really lost his knife!
In the past ten days or so since meeting Zhao Xin, Li Ji increasingly felt that it was the right choice for him to take his wife to seek refuge with Zhao Xin.
On their way south, they saw many fleeing farmers lying dead on the roadside in large numbers. Some people died of starvation, and some were frozen to death due to the cold weather. Most of them were old people, women and children, but there were also adult men.
Only people like Li Ji, under the leadership of Zhao Xin, had no worries along the way. They could cook porridge every day to satisfy their hunger. Occasionally, Zhao Xin would ask Shino to make a meal of rice.
If that's all, that's all. In the eyes of Li Ji and his wife, Master Zhao Xin is a god!
They had seen with their own eyes that Mr. Zhao Xin always went to the big tree to "make it". Soon, a box of rice in a transparent bag appeared on the ground, along with salt, soy sauce and various delicious pickled foods. Meat and pickles.
This made Li Ji's jaw almost drop to the ground in surprise! He and Shino decided to keep this secret for Mr. Zhao Xin.
As servants of God, Liji and Shino feel that they are different from others. As a result, they can drink one more bowl of porridge and eat two more slices of bacon than others.
Although the fleeing team has expanded to more than thirty people, the matter of serving Zhao Xinhe and distributing rations has been tightly controlled by Liji and Shino, and no one else is allowed to interfere.
The actions of Liji and his wife made Zhao Xin dumbfounded.
To be honest, the two of them were very attentive to their service. When they were eating, drinking, or even washing their faces and brushing their teeth, Shino was always bowing his head to serve. But Zhao Xin felt awkward, and one night when Shino shyly asked to help him rest, Zhao Xin was dumbfounded, and he quickly waved his hand to refuse.
Well, Shino was feeling hurt.
Oh my God, the appearance of the rural women in the island country at this time...
Even one day Liji was very proud to mention that Shino was a famous beauty in the villages around Iwaki Mountain, and Liji was extremely satisfied to marry her.
But in Zhao Xin's opinion, screw you. Shino is not even 1.5 meters tall and looks like a malnourished big-headed baby. She is still a beauty!
One day he casually asked Shino's age and found out that the girl had just turned seventeen this year.
None of the refugees who came to seek refuge along the way was taller than 1.6 meters! Most people are around 1.5 meters tall. This made Zhao Xin feel like a teacher taking a group of junior high school students on an outing.
No, a farmer named Wan Zao, who had just taken refuge with Zhao Xin for two days, saw a man lying on the roadside.
"Hey, he's still breathing. Someone, come here." Wan Zao stretched out his hand and found that the man was still breathing, so he quickly called for someone.
Two people came over, and together they carried the man to the camp that had just been set up by the road. And several women from peasant families have already cooked a large pot of rice porridge.
These refugees had just recently taken refuge, and Zhao Xin did not dare to let these people come up to eat dumplings. This would damage the stomach and intestines, so I made porridge and pickles for the past two days.
But this already makes the refugees feel like they are living a fairy-like life. You must know that in the past two years, due to frost disasters and volcanic eruptions, they have been relying on wild vegetables and tree barks, and they have not even been able to eat barnyard grass.
After a few mouthfuls of hot porridge were fed into his mouth, Katsuzaburo, who had been in a coma for a day, slowly woke up.
With the consciousness of a samurai, he instinctively reached out to touch the knife.
"Where's my knife?" he muttered.
"Here, when we found you, we didn't see any knife." Wan Zao, who was squatting aside and sipping porridge from a big bowl, heard this and replied.
"Eh? Could it be that you are still a samurai? What are you doing here as a samurai?" Another farmer named Huji was very smart. When he heard that Katsusaburo had a sword, he guessed that he might be a samurai.
Wan Zao took a bite of the crunchy pickles, took a big mouthful of porridge, and sighed with satisfaction. Then he said to Katsusaburo: "Don't worry about the knife or not. I think you are hungry too, drink the porridge first and then talk about other things."
After hearing this, Katsuzaburo said no more and slowly sat up. Weak, he took the porridge bowl from the hand of the porridge-feeding woman on the side, asked for a pair of chopsticks, sat cross-legged and started eating.
"Are you really a samurai?"
Katsusaburo stopped talking, but Wan Zao, who was curious at the side, couldn't sit still. He was holding a porridge bowl in one hand and a pickle that looked like a radish in the other. He squatted down and took a few steps before arriving next to Katsuzaburo.
"Looking at the way you eat, you really don't look like a farmer." Wan Zao looked Katsaburo up and down and took another sip of porridge.
"You guys, how do you have food? It's still polished rice." After taking a bite of the porridge, Katsusaburo noticed that the rice used to cook the porridge was not brown rice, but polished polished rice!
"Hehe, we have met a noble person. Look, the person sitting over there is the noble person." Wan Zao pointed to a tree not far away with the pickled radish he was holding.
"He? He looks very young." Shengsaburo followed Wan Zao's instructions and looked at Zhao Xin sitting under the tree, and said doubtfully.
Zhao Xin was also holding a bowl of porridge, but his bowl was not big. He was smiling and eating while chatting with Li Ji and Shino beside him.
"Bodhisattva bless you. I met the noble man three days ago, otherwise our whole family would be just a few corpses on the roadside now." Wan Zao sighed.
"How is your village?" Katsusaburo asked.
"Don't mention it, it's all over. Everyone who could walk escaped, and there were only a dozen or so people who starved to death." Another refugee interjected.
"Last year, old people and children began to starve to death. Those who survived were all young and strong. I heard that some villages have already been cannibalized." Wan Zao curled his lips and said.
"Hey, don't scare me." A woman next to her exclaimed, causing more than a dozen people around her to look over.
At this time, Zhao Xin also heard the discussion, so he put down the bowl, stood up, and walked over. Li Ji and Shino also put down their porridge bowls and followed Zhao Xin closely.
"How's it going? Are you all full?"
Upon hearing Zhao Xin's question, everyone except Katsu Saburo quickly put down their bowls and knelt on the ground.
Only one person was heard saying with tears of gratitude: "Thank you, sir, for taking us in and letting us eat porridge made from polished rice. It's really a fairy-like day. Woo hoo..."
As he said that, the man actually started crying.
Li Ji behind Zhao Xin said: "Why are you crying, Maosuke? It's your blessing to be taken in by adults. Just eat and serve adults well."
