Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 244 Hollow Ear Insect Plague
In this era, as summer fades into autumn, Wanjin is about to enter the harvest season.

The rice paddies resemble a gilded scroll painting, with layers of plump, drooping rice ears rolling down the ridges, turning the paddy dikes into amber waves. A gentle breeze sweeps by, and the rice waves ripple with tiny golden light, the rustling sound carrying the unique sweetness of the new rice flowing through the moist air.

Just by looking at this scene, one can tell that this year will definitely be a bumper year for Wanjin.

It wasn't easy. First, we withstood two consecutive years of natural disasters, then we resettled a large number of veterans in the countryside, replacing the status of powerful warriors, popularizing iron farm tools, actively promoting seedling cultivation and composting techniques, and organizing the construction of water conservancy projects during the off-season. This year, we implemented the household contract responsibility system. After four years of hard work, we have finally achieved results.

The process was certainly difficult, with countless troubles, both big and small. Countless people from the plains down were heartbroken, and there were even bloodshed and sacrifices. But it was all worth it in the end. The largest group on the Chita Peninsula began to slowly become wealthy.

In addition, agricultural taxes in Wanjin were not high, and land use rights were mostly transferred to private ownership. Miscellaneous annual tributes such as bamboo and feathers were no longer levied, greatly reducing the burden on agricultural workers. The Chita Peninsula was filled with jubilation.

Amidst this jubilation, the "international students" from Ezo Island were also brought from afar. The hostel staff warmly welcomed them, even installing makeshift air conditioners in their accommodations and classrooms to ensure their relative comfort as they embarked on their studies for one, three, or even five years, according to their age.

Incidentally, Haruno also set up an Ainu language class in Wanjin, with intelligence personnel transferred back from Ezo Island and these "international students" serving as teachers, to continue cultivating "foreign language" talents for the general public.

In the future, Wanjin will have many interactions with the Ainu people, so it's always good to prepare early.

Aman did want to come back and actively applied, but there weren't many people in Wanjin who could be "troublemakers" in such a faraway place, so she could only make do with staying there for a while longer.

However, as the first batch of "junior high school students" in Wanjin graduated (those who skipped grades were all in their twenties or thirties), Yuanye added another batch of people to teach the Ainu people in order to improve their technological level. The Ainu people were indeed a bit weak, and their overall technological level had a kind of beauty from before Christ. Some tribes even looked a bit like matriarchal clans. Their thinking was too strange, and it was very troublesome to cooperate with them.

While we're at it, let's also take the opportunity to map out the southwestern part of Ezo Island, look for minerals, and prepare in advance for the possibility of road repairs and port construction in the future.

The expansion and preparation for war of the Wanjin Army also proceeded smoothly. The best of the best were selected, and more than 2,000 outstanding young people selected from the workshops completed their recruit training and were assigned to various units. Together with more than 700 activists selected from the militia system, the number of Wanjin Army personnel increased to more than 5,600.

The Wanjin navy also continued to develop, with four more "O-Atake copper-skinned ships" added. Three of these ships completed sea trials and all training courses, gaining initial long-range combat capabilities. In addition, the number of auxiliary combat ships, such as the Guanshan and Xiaozhao ships, reached more than 140, and more than 20 special vessels, such as horse-drawn boats, were also accumulated.

Everything is proceeding according to plan. Wanjin has gathered all his strength and is just waiting to deliver a powerful punch.

Yuanye has done everything he could. His goal is clear: to improve himself and weaken the enemy in secret. But whether the saying "He who plans in the temple wins" is true or not still needs to be tested in actual combat.

Now, he's just waiting for trouble to break out on the Ise Peninsula.

…………

The Chita Peninsula and the Ise Peninsula face each other across the sea. The Chita Peninsula is about to enter the harvest season, and the Ise Peninsula is naturally also preparing for the autumn harvest. However, unlike the jubilation on the Chita Peninsula, the air pressure here is very low.

"How is this going?"

Katsuji Yasuda was the magistrate of the Kitabatake family, and was mainly responsible for collecting annual tribute from villages in the Kamiki and Ikeno villages of Kasuzu district.

Of course, as a close retainer of the Kitabatake family, he did not do any specific chores. He was only responsible for liaising with grassroots personnel such as village officials. They would usually take the initiative to communicate according to the rules. However, this year was different. When it was time to determine the handover time, not a single village came.

He found it strange that anyone would dare to resist paying tribute in these two counties, which were the core territory of the Kitabatake clan. He thought they were just asking for trouble. So he left the city and went to the countryside to take a look. He was shocked by what he saw.

He had heard that bamboo flowering might indicate a natural disaster, and he thought it would be like a few years ago, with typhoons arriving early and sweeping across the land one after another, leaving no time to harvest. But after being worried for a while, he found that this year the weather was favorable, and at most the summer would be a bit hotter than usual. It didn't look like there was going to be a disaster at all.

He thought it was a rumor. After all, people say that bamboo flowering means disaster, but very few people have actually seen bamboo flowering. It's all just a legend passed down from the past, and it's just old farmers muttering about it. Maybe... it's just a coincidence?
Most of the Kitabatake family shared similar thoughts with him. They were all a bit worried when the bamboo first started flowering, and some people even started stockpiling food. But the weather has been normal ever since, and that trend has long since died down. Those who stockpiled food have become the cowards that everyone laughs at.

But now that the autumn harvest is just around the corner, when Yasuda Katsuji came to the village, he found that it was in complete chaos. The rice had formed ears as usual, but many ears were empty and shriveled, and the grains inside were dry, thin, and dark in color, completely different from normal plump grains.

There were quite a few such rice ears, twenty or thirty out of every hundred plants. Some were even deformed, filled with fluffy material and failing to develop into grains. Yasuda Katsuji dug up more than ten plants, completely dumbfounded and unable to process what was happening. He angrily shouted at the village official and the old farmer following behind, "Speak! What's going on?! Why are the rice ears like this?!"

The people behind the village official shuddered, their faces ashen. The village official himself seemed a little dazed, muttering, "We... we don't know, sir. Before... everything was fine before. There was a rice locust plague in early summer. We removed the locusts leaf by leaf and replanted. It was fine then."

Besides...besides, rice grasshoppers also eat rice leaves, the rice ears...the rice ears shouldn't be like this."

He really didn't know what was going on. There was no precedent for this before, or rather, it had happened only occasionally. Some rice ears would produce empty ears, supposedly caused by a very tiny insect sucking the sap from the rice stalks. But there had never been so many of those unknown insects, and they had never harmed so many rice plants. This field was the best cared for, so it was considered lucky and not the worst affected. In some fields, more than 40% of the ears were empty, and the symptoms were even stranger, with the rice ears growing into scallion-like tubes.

"Don't know? How could we not know?! It must be because you didn't take good care of them!" Yasuda Katsuji poked at the rice stalks again, still unable to figure out what was going on, but he certainly couldn't take the blame for this.

This field is the Kitabatake family's "directly managed field." Every grain of rice in it must be handed over to the Kitabatake family. Moreover, according to the current land inspection system, regardless of whether there is a shortfall or not, this field must be counted as 320 shi (a unit of dry measure). If he cannot collect the harvest, it is his problem. Unless the higher-ups are willing to give orders for the entire farm to reduce or exempt the harvest, he will have to get 320 shi of rice from this paddy field and send it to the city.

At least, before important figures like the head of the Kitabatake family spoke, he would absolutely not dare to say anything like, "Since that's how it is, there's nothing we can do about it, let's just take what we have."

If things go wrong, these commoners will be fine, but it will be his turn to suffer.

The village official was aware of this, but the disaster was an undeniable reality, and he was truly helpless. He could only plead, "Sir, we really don't know what happened. This year... this year, could we..."

"No, not a single grain less, not 320 shi and 6 dou and 2 he!" Yasuda Katsuji refused to budge an inch. Even if he were willing to return to the city to explain the situation to his superiors, he would not back down now. Moreover, similar things had happened before when collecting annual tribute. These unruly people all said they couldn't come up with that much, but as long as you were ruthless enough to hang a few people at the village entrance, these unruly people would be terrified and desperately try to squeeze out the grain.

As for how they themselves will survive...

We can eat wild vegetables and fruits, anyway, there's never a shortage of troublemakers, so it doesn't matter if a few die.

Yasuda Katsuji was an old hand at collecting annual tribute. After a moment's thought, he realized that even if there was a disaster, it wouldn't be a big deal. He once again ordered the magistrate and villagers, "It was agreed before that the directly managed fields must be paid in full. If you don't have enough, you can make up the difference yourselves."

The villagers' faces grew even paler. In addition to the "directly managed fields" they were obligated to cultivate, each household also had a tenant field of varying sizes and fertility, but those fields had also been damaged by disasters. They were barely able to pay their annual tribute, let alone make up for the deficit in the "directly managed fields."

Moreover, they also need to eat. Even if it's not their turn to eat rice, they still need to use it to pay off the debts and interest owed to the temple from previous years, to repay the "cattle and rice money" during spring plowing, and to sell rice to buy some necessities. They also had to use rice to repay the feathers, wood, fish glue, and other items that were part of the annual tribute that the villagers had not had the time or energy to collect.

There are just too many places where rice costs money, and if these villagers were to use the little rice they have to make up for the deficit, they wouldn't be able to survive.

The village magistrate's expression shifted several times. A fierce glint flashed across his face as he, a retired foot soldier, wanted to utter a few harsh words, but this was a small village, and he was merely a member of the royal guard. Looking at the two swords at Yasuda Katsuji's waist, and then at the squad of foot soldiers he had brought, he could only lead his men to kneel down and plead, "Lord Yasuda, please, give us a way out... We'll lose over a hundred koku of that 320 koku. These people really can't raise that much. It's really not their fault this year..."

Yasuda Katsuji wasn't entirely heartless. After hesitating for a moment, he said in a low voice, "I'll go back and talk to Lord Hirado. I think we can reduce it a little, but there are many places in the city where we need rice and money, so we can't reduce it by much. As for the rest... you still have to make up the rest."

After he finished speaking, he thought for a moment and then said thoughtfully, "If that doesn't work, you can use coarse grains to make up for part of it."

Recently, the prices of buckwheat, beans, taro, and other grains in the Luling County area have risen considerably. It is said that someone by the sea is buying these grains, as well as large quantities of soybean oil, taro liquor, and other common rural goods. Considering how miserable these villagers are, he thought he would do a good deed and go back to beg his superiors to allow them to use beans and taro as payment. He could then press them into oil, brew them into liquor, and sell them by the sea. He figured he wouldn't lose much, and might even make a small profit.

This was his final act of mercy; otherwise, without rice, what would the samurai eat? How would they support their retainers? How would they acquire armor and weapons?

Without military force, they can't hold onto these fields; sooner or later, they'll fall into the hands of others. So...

The annual tribute cannot be refused; everyone must pay the annual tribute!
Yasuda Katsuji left with the final words, "You know the consequences of not being able to gather enough people, so you'd better watch out," before turning and leaving with his men. The village magistrate and villagers behind him looked even more ashen-faced, staring blankly at the fields.

(End of this chapter)