Prime Minister Bizen

Hide's house, who returned to his mansion separately from Yamatomon and Yamanaka Tomotoshi, immediately wrote a letter and sent it to Kanto, asking Tsusue Sannojo, who had already returned, to follow up on the docking with Yamanaka Tomotoshi.

With Yamanaka Tomotoshi's reminder, Tian Hai was blacklisted by Xiu's side, but he was unwilling to go to see her again.

While Xiujia was communicating with Yamanaka Tomotoshi, Kato Kiyomasa, who was far away in North Korea, had just repelled the invading Jurchen tribe from the north with the city defense of Xianxing.

Due to the retreat of the Japanese army in the face of the Jurchen tribe, there has been news that the Ming army in other states and counties is in full swing.Despite the antagonism with the Joseon Kingdom, the nobles in many places in Hamgyong Province still stood in the camp against Japanese pirates in time as in history.

Fortunately, Xiujia's rule in Hamgyong Province and Gangwon Province was not ruled by hundreds of years. There were speculators who wanted to go back, and naturally there were rebels who stood firmly on the side of the Japanese army.

In particular, the people of Hamgyong-do had more or less hatred for the Jurchens, and stood on the same front as the Japanese army in resisting the invasion of the Jurchen foreign enemies.

If it weren't for the help of these North Korean people, Kato Kiyomasa would have run away a long time ago, how could he really listen to the nonsense of the Xiu family and continue to garrison in Hamgyong Road.So the situation Kato Kiyoshi is facing now is much better than in history.

As soon as he returned to the government office where he lived and unloaded his clothes, he heard someone report that there was a clipper ship coming from Japan to send him news.

Kato Kiyomasa, who was in a foreign country, was eager to know the information about Japan, and immediately called someone over, but what he received was a letter from Toyotomi Hideji.

The content of the letter was also very simple, asking him to go to the Ming Dynasty to negotiate a peace first. There was only one requirement, that is, all the Japanese troops retreated.

Kato Kiyomasa, who had been tired of staying in North Korea for a long time, heard the news like a long drought and rain. He jumped up from his seat and said to the outside without even changing his blood-stained clothes, "Find me some meetings." Koreans who speak Tang come, and I will go to Cheorwon to find Ming people myself!"

Fortunately, the retainers around him stopped him in time, saying that he could send a retainer to contact him. As for Kato Kiyomasa, he is a former general of the army, so how could he fall into danger so easily.

Kato Kiyomasa thought so deeply, so he called Kuki Hirolong to let him contact the Ming army first.

The Miao character Kuki is rare in Japan. Kuki Hirotaka is also Kuki Yoshitaka's nephew. He is the commander of the navy under Kato Kiyomasa and often participates in his foreign diplomatic work.

However, two days after Kato Kiyomasa dispatched Kuki Hiroyuki, Kato Kiyomasa who was stationed in Hamheung received news that another ship was docking at Yokoma Port in the south. Toyotomi Xiuzhen, a member of the minister's family, arrived face to face.

Kato Kiyomasa is not familiar with the relationship between Toyotomi Hidetada, but he can't stand it because he is Toyotomi's pro-vassal daimyo, and there is a 250 million shi Toyotomi Hideya behind him.Kato Kiyomasa has to be taken care of for him.

Xiuzhen also intends to take the initiative to win the relationship with her adjutant Kato Kiyomasa, so she is invited to participate in the banquet prepared by Kato Kiyomasa.

Speaking of the banquet, because it is located at the forefront, the dishes are somewhat shabby, but it can be seen that Kato Kiyoshi prepared it with care.

The two first talked about the past with each other, and Kato Kiyomasa immediately began to ask him about what happened in Japan recently.

The emissary of Hideji before told Kato Kiyomasa some things, but because of his low status, he said a lot of things that were not important.And now the person sitting across from him is one of the top 20 daimyos in Japan, so he must know the inside story.

In Xiuzhen's mouth, the Xiu family is an honest person who does not serve her own selfish desires, but only wants to protect the world of the Toyotomi family.When he heard that the Xiu family led troops into Luo to stop the western and eastern armies from continuing to attack, Kato Kiyomasa, who was full of enthusiasm, said "OK" several times.

The image of Xiujia in Xiuzhen's mouth is different from the image of Xiujia in the mouth of Xiuci envoys a few days ago, but both of them expressed their approval for their performance of maintaining peace.

Xiuzhen then talked about the reason why she came to North Korea. When she heard that she was sent to North Korea by the five big bosses to preside over the peace talks, Kato Kiyomasa laughed and said, "Your Majesty Koriyama, please do not disturb me. The letter, and contacted the Ming Dynasty first."

At first, Xiuzhen was very happy to have such a deputy who would make preparations in advance.But Xiuzhen was trained by the Xiu family before setting off, so she naturally knew how to handle the bottom line of Ming and North Korea.

But what Kato Kiyomasa said next made him a little restless.

I just heard Kato Kiyomasa say, "To be honest, I don't want to stay in North Korea for a moment. Compared with the Ming Dynasty, they will accept such sincere conditions sooner."

Xiuzhen was already slightly drunk, and she was playing haha ​​with Kato Kiyomasa.

But when they heard the "conditions", they suddenly shuddered, and some did not respond and said, "Conditions? What conditions?"

"Naturally, it is the condition for us to fully withdraw our troops in exchange for the peace of the Three Kingdoms." Kato Kiyomasa said as a matter of course.

After hearing this answer, Xiuzhen asked in shock, "Who told you this!"

"Your Highness Gifu sent someone to see you off!" Seeing the change on Xiuzhen's face, Kato Kiyomasa asked in surprise, "Why, is there any problem?"

"There's a big problem!" At this moment, Xiuzhen was completely drunk, and she confided in Xiujia's confession to herself and Kato Kiyomasa when she was in Osaka.

Although Kato Kiyomasa was familiar with Hideya in the past, it is absolutely impossible to say that they have a good relationship.This may also be because he himself, as a faction directly under Hideyoshi, has a personal filter.

But when he heard that the Xiu family presided over the peace talks to protect the Toyotomi family's world, his view of the Xiu family changed greatly.

Now I heard Xiuzhen relay the plan of the Xiu family, and heard that he wanted to protect Hideyoshi's victory against North Korea as much as possible, thinking that this was to protect Hideyoshi's last face.

After listening to Xiuzhen's explanation, Kato Kiyomasa was at a loss for words, feeling that Hideyoshi's defense against Hideka before was purely superfluous.

"His Royal Highness Guan Bai, a person's ambition will not change with the amount of knowledge and practice, we still have to see the person's original heart." Kato Kiyomasa sighed.

But this moment is not the time for him to be emotional. With a flexible mind, he can naturally see the difference in the plans of Toyotomi Hideji and the Hideka. He even wonders why his childhood companion turned into such a conspiracy!
"I'm the deputy envoy of the peace talks. If the peace talks get in the way, won't I be hated by the other daimyos?" Kato Kiyomasa said angrily, "I treat Gifu as my brother, but I didn't expect him to plot against me!"

Before, Kato Kiyoshi had never met Xiuzhen, and before hearing Xiuzhen explain the situation of the Three Kingdoms, he didn't feel that the letter sent by Xiuci was inappropriate.

For the sake of the Korean War, Kato Kiyomasa thought that there was no other way, and being able to completely withdraw the army and maintain the peace of the three countries was already the best result.

But after hearing about the Xiu family's plan from Xiuzhen, combined with Xiuci's sending a human-seat clipper to deliver a letter 3 days in advance, making him eager to contact the Ming envoy first, this is unusual no matter how you look at it.

You must know that Xiuzhen is the confirmed envoy, and Osaka has also granted Xiuzhen full authority. If you, Xiuci, have any opinions, why don't you directly raise them in the evaluation, and send someone to come over later to make a difference from Xiuzhen?
Looking at it this way, if you say that Xiuci said it unintentionally, everyone will believe it!
As the deputy envoy, Kato Kiyomasa was not willing to fall into the intrigue of the upper echelons. Toyotomi's family's good was his own good in Takana, and if he was successful in negotiating peace, he might be rewarded.

On the contrary, if the final peace negotiation fails due to her own reasons, Xiuzhen will not speak for herself, and Xiuci is also very likely to push it to the ground. This means that she has to take the blame for herself!

Although Kato Kiyomasa is smarter than Fukushima Masamori, he still has a clear love and hate personality.After all of this, Kato Kiyoshi was so upright that he was kidnapped by the envoy of Hideji to torture him severely.

But he is a messenger, what is Xiuci's plan, even the insider of the letter has not read it.

He himself even has the same view of Hideo as Kato Kiyomasa, thinking that he is a loyal samurai who is dedicated to the public.What kind of information can you get from such a small person?

Feeling that things had changed, Xiuzhen and Kato Kiyomasa no longer had the slightest desire to continue eating.

After a discussion between the two, Kato Kiyoshi organized an army in Hamgyong-do to counter push Jurchen, so as to provide Xiuzhen with a peripheral advantage in the peace talks, and Xiuzhen was responsible for taking the knowledge that Xiujia told him to go Shangju, go to negotiate with Zhengshi of Ming Dynasty.

Liu Ting had already received a letter from the general of the Cheorwon Ming Army saying that the Japanese army wanted peace talks.He sent someone to send a letter back to Daming early in the morning. Zhao Zhigao, the chief assistant of the cabinet at that time, played a memorial to Emperor Wanli about the withdrawal of troops due to domestic and foreign difficulties.

In fact, in the midst of Dingyou's rebellion, when the Japanese army had not yet withdrawn, and the Ming army and the Korean army were blocked by the Japanese army and could not advance an inch, the Ming court had already shown a defensive posture of retreating.

However, under the insistence of Emperor Wanli, he still insisted on the line of being unable to conquer the Japanese army, and did not choose to withdraw from North Korea.

Later, the Japanese army withdrew its troops from North Korea, and the news spread back to Ming Dynasty, and the Ming army was able to advance in three directions, which invisibly proved the correctness of Emperor Wanli's insistence.

Although the Ming Dynasty did not know what happened on the other side, it could be guessed that there was a crisis in Japan, otherwise the Japanese army would not withdraw so many people all at once.

After a lapse of 3 months, the news finally came back from Japan again, threatening that Sekibaku Hideyoshi had died 5 months ago, and all the major generals in Japan went back to fight for the position of Sekibaku.

This news was exciting enough, and Bing Ke wrote a letter to the incident stating that "Guan Bai is dead, and the Japanese army is bound to be in chaos. This is the 'Heaven's Extermination of Japanese Slaves' and asked Emperor Wanli to send additional reinforcements to North Korea, not only to wipe out the Japanese Japanese slaves in North Korea, It is even more important to cross the sea to attack the Japanese slave country and wipe out the Japanese pirates to establish an invincible achievement."

Just as Emperor Wanli insisted when everyone claimed to withdraw their troops before, now when most people said they wanted the Buddhas to attack, Emperor Wanli hesitated again.

He believes that the Japanese Guanbai died half a year ago, and the Japanese army has retreated for more than three months, but there are still Japanese slaves entrenched in North Korea, which shows that the Japanese slaves are withdrawing in a planned way.

Even in Gyeongsang-do, where the withdrawal of troops was more hasty, the Japanese cities along the coast were still strong, and the Ming army could not break through the attack for several months, which is enough to show the firm will of the Japanese pirates to station.

In the end, Emperor Wanli instructed Liu Ting, the Minister of War on the front line and the general soldier of North Korea, to try to contact the Japanese side, and the two sides sat down to discuss conditions.

Liu Ting received a letter from Xiu's family, and knew that Xiu's family really wanted to negotiate peace.The two of them had exterminated Nurhachi together before, which made Liu Ting quite impressed with this vigorous young man, so he also had a good impression of Xiuzhen.

After Liu Ting communicated with Xiuzhen, after listening to her recount some of Xiujia's views on the current situation (impossible to say all of them), he was even more amazed at Xiujia's strategic vision.

He wrote to Emperor Wanli saying, "Fortunately, the Xiu family and the Ming Dynasty are friendly. If they become enemies, the Ming army may only have Qi Hou as an enemy."

But Qi Jiguang has been dead for almost 10 years. Right now, the Ming Dynasty has internal and external troubles. Not long ago, the rioters in Henan cut off the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. How could the Ming Dynasty have the spare power to fight a national destiny war with Japan?

The content of Liu Ting's letter reveals that the idea of ​​​​retiring troops is actually already obvious.

I heard that the North Korean side, who will sit down to negotiate a peace tomorrow, felt betrayed, and some North Korean generals who were former volunteers publicly claimed that the Ming army had "broken their trust." They said that they could regain their homeland even without the Ming army.

The national pride of the Koreans was aroused in this situation, and some volunteer generals began to gather in an organized way to the border of Gangwon Province and Wacheng along the coast of Gyeongsang Province, trying to recover these two provinces.

Both the Ming army and the Korean court turned a blind eye to this behavior of the Korean rebels.

For the Ming army, if the North Korean army can regain territory on the battlefield, it will inevitably increase its momentum on the negotiating table.

For the Joseon Dynasty, these volunteer soldiers have become an unstable bomb for the ruling class. Since they can consume their strength, why not do it if they have the opportunity to regain the territory?

However, the result of the matter is that these North Korean troops with incomplete armor are not opponents of the Japanese army at all.

Even though they had an absolute advantage in numbers, the Japanese troops stationed in Wacheng still defeated the North Korean army, and even took advantage of the night to launch a surprise attack on the North Korean enemy at the foot of the mountain, defeating the North Korean army.

This is not a local failure. Seosan, Ulsan, Gaoyuan, Sacheon and other cities lost successively at almost the same time.On the Sacheon side, part of the Ming army also participated in the siege. As a result, the Ming army paid more than a thousand lives for this.

At the same time, news came from the direction of Hamkyong Road, saying that the Japanese army had recovered Hongyuan, Beiqing, Licheng, and Danchuan one after another, and it was likely to go north to attack Jizhou and further take Jingcheng.

All kinds of signs gave Beijing an illusion that there are signs of increasing troops in Japan to North Korea.

At this time, another businessman brought news from Japan that the turmoil in Japan had subsided, and it was Hideyoshi's son, a daimyo named Toyotomi Hideiya, who came forward to broker talks between the two parties.

No one thought that Japan had clearly developed to the point where the eastern and western armies were confronting each other. As a third party daimyo, not only was he not greedy for that position in the end, but he became a loyal minister and good general who presided over the peace and maintenance of the young master.

Even Emperor Wanli, who was far away in Beijing, couldn't help but praise Xiujia for this news.

At the same time, Xiujia asked Xiuzhen to deliver the letter to Emperor Wanli at the right time. Emperor Wanli, who had read the letter, sent someone to find the "Feng Jianming" who had disclosed the information to the daimyo at the beginning. letters against handwriting.

Combined with the news that the Xiu family led troops to stabilize the country, he finally believed that the Xiu family was a benevolent and peaceful Japanese nobleman.He also believed that with Hideka in power, the daimyo and Japan would maintain the hard-won peace.

Emperor Wanli made up his mind, worried that other people would not understand what he meant, so he specially enlisted Wang Ji, the right servant of the Ministry of War who was injured in the 20th year of Wanli, to take charge of the peace talks with Japan.

After negotiations in Duolun and the participation of the North Korean side, the terms of the following peace talks were finally determined.

1. Japan, Ming Dynasty, and North Korea re-repaired. Japan became a vassal to the Ming Dynasty, and became a vassal with the North Korea.

2. Both Daming and North Korea should guarantee the exploration and cooperation trade between Japan and Daming, which should be exclusively operated by Xiujia.

3. From the date of signing the contract, Japan is willing to gradually withdraw its troops from North Korea.

4. Japan acquired the ownership of Jeju Island in North Korea, and the people on the island belonged to Japan, but the Ming Dynasty needed to station 2000 naval troops.

5. Japan needs to provide Daming with 800 Jeju army horses every year, and the daimyo uses equivalent silk, copper, famous wood, and tea as transaction equivalents.

6. The Japanese side exchanged all the cities of Gangwon-do and Gyeongsang-do in North Korea. The North Korean side needs to ensure the safety and integrity of Gangwon Maharaja and Hamgyong Maharaja.

Gangwon Dajun changed the title of King Gyeonggyeong (Gyeongju, Gyeongju) of North Hamgyong Province to King Hamgyong, and King Hamgyong changed the title of King Hamdeok (Hamheung, Deokwon) of South Hamgyong Province.

7. The Japanese side is not allowed to garrison troops in Hamgyong-do. North Korea, the Ming Dynasty (the Jurchen vassal), and the Japanese side have joint transactions and exchanges. Neither party can cross the border at will and obstruct it.

8. The Ming Dynasty needs to urge the Jurchen tribes who have entered Hamgyong Road to withdraw their troops. If they encounter resistance and disrespect, the three countries will jointly drive them away.

9. The Ming Dynasty issued an imperial edict to confer Toyotomi Hidetoshi as the king of Japan, and issued the imperial edict and golden seal of the Japanese king.Canonize Toyotomi Hideo's family as the Prime Minister of the Left, and issue the Silver Seal; Toyotomi Hideji is the Prime Minister of the Right, issue the Edict, and bestow the Silver Seal.

Tokugawa Ieyasu and Toyotomi Hidetada were the governors, and Asano Nagamasa, Maeda Toshiie, Toyotomi Hidehisa, Mori Terumoto, Kobayakawa Takakage, Uesugi Kagekatsu, and Toyotomi Hidekatsu were appointed as the governors;

16 people including Tachibana Muneshige, Kato Kiyomasa, Fukushima Masanori, Shimadzu Yoshihiro, and Tsutsui Sadaji were conferred as commanders; 45 people including Ishida Mitsunari, Otani Yoshitsugu, Kinoshita Isada, and Kimura Shigetsu were conferred as commanders; There are 225 households.

Japan's ownership of Jeju Island was entirely due to Xiuzhen's revelation to Daming of the good horses produced in Jeju.

With the weakening of the current Ming State's control over Mongolia, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain Ming State horses, and they will not give up any opportunity to import horses from other places.

Jeju Island is on the edge of Shandong, so it is very convenient to get horses from Jeju Island.

It is also because Jeju Island is on the edge of Shandong. Emperor Wanli was afraid that Japan would use this as a springboard to attack the Ming mainland, so he asked for the right to establish a garrison in Jeju.

As for the Xiu family's subsequent request for him to be the king and various officials, this was entirely intentional by the Xiu family, and he was laying the groundwork for his subsequent political operations.