Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 3 Katsu Saburo

On the other side of Kyoto in the [-]th century, in the morning two days later...

The owner of this mansion came to the storeroom from the main house. He was going to pick out a few precious tea utensils today as gifts for bribes when he went to Edo.

No way!At present, Tanuma Yiji is the chief senior officer of the shogunate, and if he wants to get things done, he must pay bribes; on the Edo side, if you ask someone from the government to do things, it will be no fun if you don't spend money.

Wait until this master locks the warehouse door... that damn thief!Originally, the house was very safe, and no one had ever broken into it.But after the intruder incident in the early hours of the previous day, he added another large lock to the door of the warehouse the next day.Fortunately, after careful inventory, he found that nothing was missing.However, he still plans to invite craftsmen to build a stronger warehouse in a few days and transfer all his belongings there.

The door was opened.

It was empty inside, not a single box.

"Hey? I went to the wrong house again, this is my memory." The owner shook his head and whispered, he turned and walked out the door.

wrong! ! !

He looked at the key in his hand and the big lock in the other hand. The master turned around suddenly and rushed into the warehouse.

This is my storeroom, what about my stuff? ! ! !

On the street not far away, a few pedestrians who were passing by the mansion suddenly heard a long roar from the mansion, and the voice had a sadness and sorrow that they had never heard before. .Several pedestrians were startled, so they speeded up and walked away.

A few days later, the big businessman, who was famous in Kyoto, Osaka and Edo, hanged himself.

As a samurai, the 19-year-old Katsuzaburo is still very ideal.

He has practiced martial arts since childhood, and his goal is to make his martial arts surpass his predecessors, such as Liusheng, such as Miyamoto and so on.

It's a pity that he was born at an untimely time, and the world has been peaceful for nearly 200 years.So Katsusaburo could only be a small accountant in charge of bookkeeping in the feudal lord's mansion.

But Sheng Saburo is not reconciled.To this end, he informed his superiors of his thoughts, resigned from his post, and prepared to travel around the island country, looking for famous teachers, in order to sharpen his swordsmanship.

As a result, as soon as he left Omi, he heard the news of the eruption of Iwagi Mountain from a passerby.

Katsuzaburo was a good-hearted samurai, so he planned to rush to the Hirosaki Domain as soon as possible after he was done with his own affairs, to see if he had the opportunity to help the disaster-stricken areas to do what he could.

He's been out of luck along the way.

Katsu Saburo arrived in Edo first, but as soon as he arrived, his luggage and belongings were stolen in the castle town, and he only had [-] Kanei Tongbao left on him.
Katsu Saburo quickly reported to the official, but you must know that in this era of Edo City, there were a total of hundreds of thousands of residents living in the two towns of South and North, and there were only fifty people and forces in the two towns of the North and South (Police Section). long) and two hundred concentric (ordinary police officers).Although the shogunate also recruited a lot of "Queen's Wen" (assistant police), who will take you seriously if you don't pay for it.

The lost property could not be recovered for a while, so he could only live in a martial arts gym and work for others to make a living.

Three months passed by the time I finally managed to collect enough money to travel to the Hirosaki Domain.During the period, the Tongxin of the Institute only found a few clothes that Katsuzaburo had stolen; as for the stolen money, don't even think about it.

Katsu Saburo saw that the clothes were not his own, he understood that he was just looking for some clothes to prevaricate himself.But what can we do?Under the eyes of the general, the people who practiced at least acted in a pretentious manner.

Fortunately, Sheng Saburo's sword was not stolen, otherwise it would be embarrassing.

When the time came to early July, the volcano on Mt. Asama, three hundred miles west of Edo, erupted.Fifty-five villages at the northern foot of Mount Asama were affected, and several of them were completely destroyed.

There was a westerly wind blowing in the sky at that time, so the volcanic ash flew to the east and southeast, and even Edo, which was far away, dropped an inch of dust.

When the volcanic ash came, the price of rice in various grain shops soared, and the people in the city complained.

The owner of the martial arts hall, where Katsuzaburo worked part-time, also sympathized with him, and persuaded him to return to Omi as soon as possible.

In this situation, it is said that if Katsu Saburo is an ordinary person, he will go home quickly; but who is Katsu Saburo, he is a person with lofty goals.Besides, there is no one in his family anymore, his parents died two years ago, otherwise he would not dare to resign his post in the domain to travel.

Therefore, Katsuzaburo decided to move forward according to the previous goal and set off towards the Hirosaki Domain.

What Katsuzaburō didn't know was that the Hirosaki Domain under the Tsugaru family's rule was already in chaos.

After the eruption of Mount Iwaki in March of that year, messengers from all over the world came to Hirosaki Castle, so the head of the Tsugaru family, Tsugaru Shinning, also sent a messenger to the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo.

It is said that the Hirosaki Domain under the rule of the Tsugaru family was not rich in the first place.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; in the Momoyama period, Guanbai Hideyoshi recognized the Tsugaru clan as a daimyo, and the territorial income was only 4 shi; The high number remains unchanged, which can be described as a poor one.

The Tsugaru family was so poor that they could borrow money everywhere, so they couldn't help themselves.On the side of the Edo shogunate, Tanuma Yiji, a senior middle schooler, has been devastated by the disasters in various places caused by the "Mountain Lee Wind" last year.

Therefore, the shogunate replied to the messenger that it was to store food and keep it.In other words, the general can't take care of you here, just take care of yourself.

It was against this background that Zhao Xin took his servants, Toshiro and his wife, and dozens of hungry people who were willing to take refuge after being rescued on the road. On the way to the south, they met Katsu Saburo who fainted on the side of the road.

This time his knife is really lost!

In the ten days since he met Zhao Xin, Li Ji felt more and more that it was the right choice for him to take his wife to join Zhao Xin.

On their way southward, they saw many peasants who had fled and died in large numbers by the roadside.Some died of starvation, some were frozen to death because of the cold weather, most of them were the elderly, women and children, and there were also adult men.

Only people like Li Ji, under the leadership of Zhao Xin, have no worries all the way, they can cook porridge every day to satisfy their hunger, and occasionally Zhao Xin also asks Zhi Nai to cook rice to eat.

If it's just these, it's fine. In the eyes of Li Ji and his wife, Lord Zhao Xin is a god!

They have seen with their own eyes that Mr. Zhao Xin is "doing it" after turning to the big tree every time. Soon, a box of rice in that kind of transparent bag appeared on the ground, along with salt, soy sauce and various delicious pickles. Meat and pickles.

This made Li Ji's jaw in surprise almost dropped to the ground!He and Shinai decided to keep this secret for Lord Zhao Xin.

As servants of God, Rikichi and Shino feel that they are different from others. As a result, they can drink one bowl of porridge more than others, and eat two more slices of cured meat.

Although the fleeing team has expanded to more than 30 people, the matter of serving Zhao Xin and distributing rations has been tightly controlled by Li Ji and Zhi Nai, and no one else is allowed to intervene.

The actions of Li Ji and his wife made Zhao Xin wonder whether to laugh or cry.

In good conscience, the two couples were very thoughtful in their service, and when they were eating, drinking, and even washing their faces and brushing their teeth, Shino bowed their heads to serve.But Zhao Xin felt awkward. When Zhi Nai shyly offered to wait for him to rest one night, Zhao Xin was stupid, and he quickly waved his hand to refuse.

Well, Shino felt hurt at the time.

God, the appearance of the rural women in the island country at this time...

Even though Tian Liji was very proud to mention that Zhi was a famous beauty in the villages around Iwaki Mountain, Liji was very satisfied to be able to marry her.

But in Zhao Xin's opinion, fuck your legs.Zhi Nai is less than 1.5 meters tall and looks like a malnourished big-headed doll. She is still a beauty!

One day he casually asked about Zhi Nai's age, only to find out that the girl had just turned 17 this year.

The refugees who came here along the way were not taller than 1.6 meters!Most people are around 1.5 meters.This made Zhao Xin feel like a teacher taking a group of junior high school students on an outing.

No, a farmer named Wan Zuo who had just joined Zhao Xin for two days, saw a man lying on the side of the road.

"Hey, I'm still breathing. Come on someone." Wan Zuo stretched out his hand and found that the man was still breathing, so he hurriedly called for someone.

Two people came over, and everyone carried the person to the camp just built by the road.And the women of several peasant families have already cooked a large pot of rice porridge.

These refugees have just taken refuge recently, and Zhao Xin dare not let these people come up to eat dumplings.This will spoil the stomach and intestines, so these two days are all porridge and pickles.

But this has already made the refugees feel like they are living a fairy-like life. You must know that in the past two years, because of the freezing disaster and volcanic eruption, they all lived on the bark of wild vegetables, and they couldn't even eat tares.

After a few mouthfuls of hot porridge were fed into his mouth, Katsu Saburo, who had been in a coma for a day, woke up leisurely.

With the self-consciousness of the samurai, he instinctively reached out and touched the knife.

"Where's my knife?" he muttered.

"Hey, when we found you, we didn't see any knives." Wan Zuo, who was squatting aside and holding a big bowl to suck and drink porridge, heard it and replied.

"Huh? Could it be that you're still a samurai? What are samurai doing here?" Another farmer named Huyoshi had his brains. As soon as he heard that Katsu Saburo had a sword, he guessed that he might be a samurai.

Wan Zao took a bite of the crunchy pickle, took a big mouthful of porridge, and sighed contentedly.Then he said to Katsu Saburo: "Forget about the knife or not. I think you are hungry too. Drink the porridge first and then talk about the rest."

Katsuzaburō didn't say more after hearing the words, and slowly sat up.Weak, he took the porridge bowl from the woman who was feeding the porridge beside him, asked for a pair of chopsticks, and sat down to eat.

"Are you really a samurai?"

Katsu Saburo stopped talking, but Wan Zao, who was curious on the side, couldn't sit still.Holding a porridge bowl in one hand and a pickle like a radish in the other, he squatted down and rubbed a few steps before he came to Katsu Saburo.

"Looking at the way you eat, you really don't look like a farmer." Wan Zao looked Katsuzaburō up and down, and took another mouthful of porridge.

"You guys, why do you have any food? It's still polished rice." After taking a mouthful of porridge, Katsuzaburo noticed that the rice that cooked the porridge was not brown rice, but polished polished rice!
"Hey, we have met a noble person. Look, the person sitting over there is a noble person." Wan Zao pointed to a tree not far away with the pickled radish he was holding.

"He? He looks very young." Katsuzaburo followed Wan Zao's instructions, looked at Zhao Xin sitting under the tree, and said doubtfully.

Zhao Xin was also carrying a bowl of porridge, but his bowl was not big, and he was smiling and chatting with Liji and Shino beside him.

"Blessed by the Bodhisattva. I met the noble three days ago, otherwise our whole family would be a few corpses by the roadside now." Wan Zao sighed.

"How is your village?" Katsu Saburo asked.

"Don't mention it, it's all over. Everyone who could walk escaped, and there were a dozen or so who died of starvation." Another refugee interjected.

"Last year, old people and children starved to death. Those who survived are young and strong. I heard that some villages have already eaten people." Wan Zuo said with a pouted lip.

"Hey, don't scare me." A woman next to her exclaimed, causing more than a dozen eyes to look at her.

At this time, Zhao Xin also heard the discussion, so he put down the bowl, got up, and walked over.Li Ji and Shino also put down their porridge bowls and followed closely behind Zhao Xin.

"How is it? Are you full?"

Hearing Zhao Xin's question, everyone except Sheng Saburo hurriedly put down their bowls and knelt down on the ground.

Only one person said gratefully: "Thank you for your stay, and let us eat porridge made of polished rice. It's really a fairy-like day. Uuu..."

Saying that, the man actually started to cry.

Li Ji, who was behind Zhao Xin, said: "Mao help you to cry, no matter what you cry, it is a blessing for you to be taken in by the adults. When you are full, you can serve the adults well."

(End of this chapter)