The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 242 Miyamoto Musashi
The first day of the first lunar month in the third year of Taichang, Guangning, Liaodong.

In the lobby of the general's mansion, Zu Dashou, the general of Guangning, sat at the top seat, followed by Zu Dabi, Zu Dale and Zu Dacheng. All three wore the uniforms of lieutenant generals and guerrilla officers, with an arrogant look on their faces.

Several deputy generals and the head servants stood in the distance, with wine, meat, tea and food placed on the coffee tables around them. After the two maids filled everyone's glasses with wine, they hurriedly retreated.

Everyone's eyes fell on Zu Dashou, waiting for the Liaoxi general to speak.

Zu Dashou, dressed in military uniform, suddenly stood up from his seat and said with a ferocious look on his face:
"Liu Zhaosun, that scoundrel, wasn't satisfied with annexing Liaodong and is now eyeing Liaoxi. I'm not Li Rubai or Ding Bi, so I won't let him succeed."

After saying that, he picked up the wine jug, took a sip, and looked at Zu Dabi beside him.

"Second brother, has Grandpa Zeng returned?"

Zu Dabi shook his head and thought for a while before saying:
"I have sent fifty elite servants to ambush on the official road from Fushun to Guangning. Report back immediately if you have any news about Eunuch Zeng."

"Fifty servants are not enough, send more!"

Zu Dashou slammed the wine pot heavily on the table. The brothers remained expressionless and raised their glasses to drink.

After the bloody battle of Hunhe, in order to check the power of Kaiyuan, the imperial court tacitly allowed the Zu family to grow in western Liaoning and sent huge Liao tributes to Guangning Fuzhou every year. The power of the Zu family in western Liaoning expanded rapidly.

Zu Dashou's brothers, nephews and nephews served as chief officials in Ningyuan, Jinzhou and other places, and the Zu family had extensive influence in western Liaoning.

"Eunuch Zeng is the emperor's man and must not be touched. No matter how many people they killed in Kaiyuan, we must protect him and get him out of Liaoxi safely so that we can talk to the capital later."

Everyone nodded, and Zu Dashou continued:
"Next spring, the thief Liu will attack us. We used to be able to count on the Later Jin to contain this thief, but now that the Jiannu have been destroyed, this thief has no worries and has become bolder. We are now isolated and helpless, so we can only rely on the court. I will have Censor Zhang submit more memorials and have Elder Fang explain to the emperor the role of Liaoxi in protecting the capital. If Liaoxi falls, the capital will be in danger. I will have the Ministry of War mobilize more elite troops from Jizhou and Xuanda to join us in resisting the thief Liu and destroying the Kaiyuan army at the gates of Guangning. Of course, to get these gentlemen to help, we will have to spend more money."

After Zu Dashou finished speaking, he discussed it with several of his brothers, and finally decided to pool 50,000 taels of silver to bribe officials in Beijing.

Zu Dale clapped his hands and laughed, praising:
"That's perfect! The imperial court should be more anxious than we are. Liu Zhaosun is about to cut off the canal in Shandong. This bastard is quite ambitious. We are determined not to go to the capital and will only obey orders. The emperor will have to rely on us and send troops to reinforce us! Even the civil officials will be unable to control us in the future! Hahaha!"

The generals in the room burst into laughter.

Zu Dashou chuckled twice and put down the wine jug.

He has been through many battles, is alert and good at judging the situation. He is neither as useless as Li Rubai, nor as greedy as Ding Bi.

In the past two years, Liaoxi has maintained a delicate balance between the Later Jin and Kaiyuan.

However, General Zu is not a peace-loving person. He is just waiting for the opportunity.

He had a good grasp of Emperor Taichang's psychology. The emperor was full of doubts about Liaozhen, but he didn't dare to break off relations completely. This was because in Liaodong, there was an existence even more brutal than the Jiannu, and that was Kaiyuan.

In order to prove its worth to the imperial court, at the instruction of Zu Dashou, Liaozhen often had frictions with the Kaiyuan army, and soldiers and civilians from both sides often fought to death in Fushun and other places.

Under Zu Dashou's operation, in the second year of Taichang, the court distributed most of the Liao salary to Liaoxi, which had nothing to do with the Jiannu, and only gave 100,000 taels to the Kaiyuan army that fought bloody battles.

Zu Dashou took the money from the court, but he was not idle.

In the bloody battles of Hunhe and Hetuala, Liaozhen stabbed Kaiyuan in the back twice, trying to take advantage of the situation, but was finally met with a resolute counterattack from the Kaiyuan army and did not gain any advantage.

After its rise, Kaiyuan pursued a policy of active expansion.

When Sun Chuanting was in charge of Fushun, he was constantly in conflict with his ancestral family. Tenants from western Liaoning often fled to Fushun, and Sun Chuanting naturally refused to hand them over, leading to several armed conflicts between the two sides. At the time, Liu Zhaosun was busy fighting in Shandong, and the conflict between Kaiyuan and western Liaoning was not as prominent.

Now that the Jiannu have been destroyed, a decisive battle between Liaodong and Liaoxi is inevitable.

Zu Dashou certainly did not want to sit and wait for death, so he decided to attack Kaiyuan first.

After learning that Xinchang Gong and Pingliao Hou also had a feud, Liaoxi and Dongchang hit it off, and thus this undercover operation in Kaiyuan to assassinate Pingliao Hou took place.

Two months ago, Zu Dashou sent out twenty elite servants to cooperate with the Dongchang men in their operations.

After they arrived in Kaiyuan, they just wanted to gather intelligence and collect evidence of Liu Zhaosun's rebellion.

Later, as the killings increased, Eunuch Zeng simply cut off the source of the problem. On the one hand, he destroyed the plan of converting the Xia people into barbarians, and on the other hand, he prepared to assassinate Liu Zhaosun, causing chaos in Kaiyuan.

In the end, the situation got completely out of control, and the decisive battle between Liaoxi and Kaiyuan had to break out ahead of schedule.

Zu Dashou had reason to suspect that this was done intentionally by the barbarians in order to drag Liaoxi into the quagmire of fighting against Kaiyuan.

"Zu Dale, you go too, and bring more servants with you. This time we're not going to engage in a small fight, we're going to do it ruthlessly. If any Kaiyuan soldiers dare to pursue us, kill them all! Liu Zhaosun just defeated the Jiannu, and he's badly weakened. He can't fight again. We have to let him know that Liaoxi belongs to Zu's family, not to him!"

"It's time to settle our accounts with Kaiyuan."

~~~~~~
The outer sea of Bohai.

The sea finally calmed down after the storm. A Fujian ship fully loaded with cargo lay limply on the sea. When the wind blew occasionally, it could crawl towards the northwest with difficulty for a distance.

Only half of the mast of the Fu ship was left bare, and the sail on it, along with the brave guard, drifted away to an unknown destination.

The sailors took great effort to raise a piece of tattered canvas on the half mast. The canvas was also full of holes. Only when the wind was strong enough could the Fu ship move forward. Most of the time, it still relied on the people on the ship to row with wooden oars.

The hull was beaten by wind and waves, and countless tiny cracks appeared. Seawater poured in through the cracks, and the water at the bottom of the cabin was already higher than a person's calf.

The sailors were busy using tung oil and ash to make oil mud to block the gaps in the side of the ship, and finally worked together to scoop out the seawater. A group of strong men who looked like servants carried out boxes of heavy goods from the bottom of the cabin. Under the eyes of everyone full of regret, the goods were thrown into the sea to lighten the load of the Fu ship...
On the sea more than fifty miles southeast of the damaged Fu ship, another large ship was sailing from southeast to northwest.

This large ship was even larger, with three sails from bow to stern. The bow was the bowsprit, which extended forward obliquely and had a white soft sail hung on it. The stern was hung with a Portuguese square soft sail. The middle sail was basically the same as the mainsail that was blown away from the previous Fu ship.

On either side of the ship, three small Portuguese cannons were mounted a foot above the sea level. The bow was a "Yamato-style" vessel with wooden railings. This hybrid of Eastern and Western sailing vessels was a typical Japanese "red seal ship" of the 1th and th centuries. (Note )

On the red seal ship, several Japanese people dressed as samurai were walking back and forth on the deck. On the lookout high on the deck, a short Japanese sailor was holding a monocular telescope to observe the sea in the distance.

Miyamoto Musashi, wearing a black-patterned haori, holds a black folded fan tightly in his hand, his eyes slowly looking towards the sea in the west. The wild sword hanging on his belt is full of murderous aura, showing the owner's extraordinary past achievements.

"I have studied swordsmanship since I was young, and have traveled all over Japan, encountering warriors from various factions and fighting over sixty times without ever losing."

The two samurai following behind him nodded repeatedly. Both of them had read "The Book of Five Rings" written by Miyamoto and knew about the legendary experience of this legendary samurai.

According to Miyamoto's own description, when he was thirteen years old, he defeated Arima Kihei of the "Shinto-ryu" and later traveled to various feudal domains without encountering any rivals.

In the fifth year of Keicho, Miyamoto Musashi participated in the famous Battle of Sekigahara and served as a musketeer ashigaru (firearms soldier) in the musketry team of Ukita Hideie of the Western Army. He fought against Tokugawa Ieyasu and was defeated and exiled.

Unfortunately, such a (self-proclaimed) genius swordsman had to bow down to the shogunate like other samurai during the shogunate era. Relying on his many years of experience in duels, both real and fake, he joined the Hosokawa clan.

As Kaiwon commerce continued to expand in Korea, the fur and tea businesses of the Hosokawa clan in Seoul were severely squeezed. Last year, the amount of tax silver paid by merchants to the Hosokawa Daimyo was reduced by half.

Just after the New Year of the seventh year of Emperor Genwa (1621), the -year-old Miyamoto Musashi hurriedly boarded the red seal ship and went to Incheon to investigate the details of the Liaodong trading company with the Hosokawa family's elder (a senior official of the daimyo).

Miyamoto sat on a stool, gazing at the calm sea, recalling the scene of his decisive battle with Kojiro long ago.

The duel took place on Yanliu Island at noon. Kojiro arrived early, but Musashi hadn't shown up for a long time. As the sun was setting, Musashi finally arrived. Impatient, Kojiro drew his sword and rushed forward. Musashi, taking advantage of his restless energy, struck the enemy with one strike.

Fifty years of life are like a dream and an illusion.

Suddenly, the Japanese sailor on the lookout blew the horn.

There was a loud noise on the deck, and all the wanderers and sailors stood up.

"Ming Guo Fu Ship! The mast is broken!"

Miyamoto Musashi, who had been so elegant just now, immediately regained his pirate nature when he heard this. He jumped to the wheelhouse behind the deck in a few steps, raised his folding fan to block the sunlight, and looked in the direction the roninants pointed.

There is a faint black spot on the sea surface in the west, like the toad's blood on the body of a Nagasaki woman, which is fascinating.

Miyamoto Musashi laughed loudly and said to the two Japanese sailors at the helm:
"I can die, but I cannot abandon my reputation as a warrior!"

"Come closer and take a look!"

~~~
Ulmisan Port, Ganghwa Island, Gyeonggi Province, North Korea.

On the embankment built of large gray stones, desolate capes and piers are interspersed.

In the misty spring fog, the water surface of the harbor shines like a rainbow. The harbor is full of merchant ships from Ming Dynasty, Japan, Annan and other places. Seagulls fly back and forth among the forest-like masts, appearing and disappearing from time to time.

The goat hats on the heads of the North Korean soldiers shone silver in the sunlight.

A group of Japanese merchants surrounded two tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed Portuguese as they walked down the deck. The sailors and coolies around them were used to seeing Westerners and didn't pay much attention to them.

However, one of the mixed-race girls, who had a graceful figure and extraordinary demeanor, caused a brief commotion among the men around her.

In the early 17th century, Catholicism was introduced to the peninsula as "Western learning" through the Korean mission to Beijing and subsequently spread.

But at this time, the feudal Li Dynasty adhered to the traditional vassal relationship with the Chinese Empire and pursued a policy of "no contact with other countries."

However, there are always exceptions. Under the temptation of huge profits, the scale of smuggling in North Korea is even greater than that of the neighboring Ming Dynasty.

"Dear Miss Fujiwara, we rescued that Ming man out of respect for your father, but he hasn't regained consciousness in several days. We have fulfilled our duties as gentlemen and will soon go ashore. The Koreans will not allow us to bring a man of unknown origin ashore."

When they boarded the sampan, a short and fat Portuguese man who looked like a captain with a red rosacea whispered to the mixed-race girl.

Behind him, on the deck of the Portuguese cargo ship, a group of black sailors were busy scrubbing the deck and masts.

"We're returning to Nagasaki from Korea. Saving people isn't an option. Furthermore, even if we could leave Ganghwa Island, we couldn't hide a Ming citizen of unknown origin. He's so big, and Nagasaki has strict inspections, as you know. I hope Miss can make a decision quickly and not cause us unnecessary trouble."

A Japanese samurai with a scar on his face and a calm expression urged from the side.

The mixed-race girl lowered her head and thought for a while. At this time, the Korean officials on the shore urged them to unload the cargo and inspect it quickly. Several minor officials were looking at the woman on the sampan with squinting eyes.

"Leave it to the Ming merchant, over there."

The mixed-race girl puffed out her chest and pointed at a Ming Dynasty ship transporting sea goods not far away.

"The ship owner is an old acquaintance of my father. He entrusted the big man to a Ming Dynasty ship and gave the boatman ten taels of silver, asking them to take him back to the Ming Dynasty."

Note:
1. Red seal ship: During the Momoyama and Edo periods in Japan, these ships held a "Red seal certificate for foreign sea crossings" and were allowed to travel to Southeast Asian countries such as Annan, Siam, Luzon, and Cambodia for trade activities. Some of these ships were pirate ships.

(End of this chapter)