I assembled the strongest swordsman group.

My grandson did not lie.

Before long, Nishino sensed the presence of a human beside him.

He turned his head and looked ahead, and the darkness in front of him seemed to wriggle.

Immediately afterwards, three samurai with swords at their waists stepped out of the darkness and approached Nishino and my grandson.

Nishino raised his gaze and carefully examined the faces of the three people.

The samurai standing in the middle and on the right were both middle-aged men over forty.

The only one standing on the left was a young man, around 20 years old.

The two middle-aged men had kind faces, but the young man always had a furrowed brow and a cynical expression.

"My grandson, it's been a long time!"

The middle-aged man standing in the middle laughed heartily.

"Mr. Ebina, we're in the same boat."

My grandson returned the greeting with a respectful bow.

At this moment, the middle-aged man standing on the right asked impatiently:

"My grandson, is this Mr. Hosojiro Nishino?"

"Yes, this is Hokuban-sada-cho-kai-doshin, Nishino Hosojiro. Nishino-kun, these three are all my comrades."

The middle-aged man stood up straight and said politely:

"Nishino-kun, nice to meet you. My name is Ye Zong, a veteran of the sea."

The older man standing on the right picked up the conversation:

"I am Ichinose Nobuyuki, nice to meet you."

Both Ebina and Ichinose had an enthusiastic demeanor.

In contrast, the young man's attitude was much more indifferent.

"Akutsu Shujiro."

After coldly giving his name, he fell silent.

Of course, Nishino was even more indifferent in his reaction.

"Nishino Hosejiro."

He also gave his name and then fell silent.

Ebina and the others didn't take Nishino's indifferent attitude to heart.

Ebina asked my grandson:

"My grandson, let's get straight to the point. Since you and Nishino are both here, it means the plan has succeeded, right?"

My grandson nodded.

"Yes, I found this in Rakshasa's bedroom."

After saying that, my grandson took out a letter from his pocket.

"This letter perfectly matches the intelligence we recently obtained."

Ebina took the envelope, pulled out the letter, and Ichinose and Akutsu leaned over to read the contents of the letter together.

When the three of them looked away from the letter, a relieved smile appeared on their faces.

Ebina breathed a sigh of relief:

"My grandson-kun, Nishino-kun, you two have done a great job!"

Ignoring Ebina's praise, Nishino reached out for the letter.

What exactly was written in this letter that could elicit such strange expressions from the traitors of the Great Salt Party? With this in mind, Nishino scanned the words on the letter page by page.

However... the further he looked down, the more his brows furrowed.

The letter contained nothing meaningful; it was simply someone... the person who wrote the letter, complaining to the Rakshasa.

The gist of it is that he is too busy to handle everything and lacks truly capable people under his command, so he requests that the Rakshasa send more people to him.

There is no other information.

The person who wrote this letter was very cautious; no place names appeared in the letter, and the only personal name mentioned was the code name Rakshasa.

"What is the value of this letter?"

Nishino couldn't help but ask.

********

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This volume is almost over, and Qing Deng has already surpassed his own limits. If all goes well, volume two will be successfully completed by the end of this month!

Here's a sneak peek at the title and opening lines of Volume 3: "Clouds Rise and Dragons Rise, Transforming into Kings and Lords."

Qingdeng is about to step onto a bigger stage!

Chapter 447 The Meeting Between Tachibana Aoto and Tachibana Takayuki! [5200]

"It's just a letter with no content at all, what's so funny about it?" Nishino thought to himself.

"Hmm... how should I put it..."

Ebina lowered his head and pondered, appearing to be deep in thought.

At this moment, Ichinose interjected:

"To put it simply—just recently, we discovered that a clerk named Phoenix House Yataro had ties with the Fazhu Party. And the handwriting of this clerk is exactly the same as the handwriting in this letter."

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Ichinose adopted a contemptuous tone when mentioning the word "Zhazashi".

The surname contains the character "屋" (wū)... a very typical surname of a merchant.

The "Rules of the Military Family" stipulate that members of the military family are not allowed to engage in business.

Most of those who went into business were commoners or "former commoners" who changed their place of origin to samurai through various means.

Most commoners do not have surnames, so merchants with a certain amount of wealth often use their shop names as their family names.

People with the surname "XXwu" are basically children of merchants.

Nishino's eyebrows twitched suddenly, and he muttered:

"Zhacha...?!"

Satsushi – a general term for a special type of merchant in Edo period.

For the million residents of Edo... especially the samurai of Edo, the Satsushi was a terrifying presence.

The samurai's salary was called "roku".

Depending on one's status, there are three types of "official salary"—knowledge and action, rice support, and gold.

"Knowledge and Action" refers to the fiefdom granted to the emperor.

For example, "a hundred thousand shi of rice" means that the total rice production of the territory one owns is one hundred thousand shi.

Those who possess the ability to know how to act are invariably high-ranking samurai, such as daimyo of feudal lords and Ōmi-hatamoto.

"Rice support" was basically the way mid-ranking samurai received their salaries. As the name suggests, it meant receiving rice directly.

Whether it was Aoto, the captain of the Fire Thief Division, or Abiko, or Nishino, a mere magistrate, their annual stipends were all stipends made from rice.

The distribution of the rice subsidy is not a one-time event, but rather occurs three times a year at relatively fixed times.

Taking a salary of 100 pyo as an example: 25 pyo are paid in spring, 25 pyo in summer, and the remaining 50 pyo in winter.

This method of distributing funds in installments is called "qie mi".

Samurai who could receive stipends were roughly equivalent to the middle class in modern times.

The amount of rice given as support is approximately between 30 and 400 taels.

After paying taxes, 100 taels of rice can be exchanged for about 18 taels of gold.

In other words, the annual income of a samurai who could receive rice subsidies ranged from approximately 5 to 72 taels of gold.

This was an income level that everyone envied during the Edo period.

"Give Gold" – just from the name, you can tell that this payment method is to directly distribute cash.

The samurai who received the money were all lower-ranking samurai from the lower social class.

The lowest-ranking samurai could only receive 3 ryo and 1 fen per year.

One fen is equivalent to one-quarter of an liang.

These samurai, who received only 3 ryo and 1 fen per year, were contemptuously called "San-ichi samurai".

The living standards of the "Trinity Samurai" can only be described as appalling. Forget about getting married and having children, they could barely support themselves. Their living standards were basically equivalent to those of poor peasants.

The Trinity warriors, who were often starving and poorly clothed, even went so far as to eavesdrop on sexual acts outside inns because they couldn't afford the cheapest brothels, becoming a laughingstock for a time.

The economy during the Edo period adopted a "rice standard," meaning that the price of rice was the benchmark for pricing all commodities.

Simply put, rice in the Edo period was equivalent to gold in the 21st century; it was a true hard currency.

Whether they were "Knowledgeable Warriors" or "Rice-Supporting Warriors," they all had to exchange their tribute and stipends for currency in order to maintain their daily livelihood.

It's impossible to carry a bag of rice every day and use the primitive method of "bartering" to buy daily necessities such as firewood, oil, and salt.

Therefore, the samurai who possessed knowledge of how to conduct themselves and received rice subsidies naturally sought ways to exchange the rice for money and then use the money to buy goods.

As a result, a special type of merchant emerged that specialized in dealing with tributes from daimyo and stipends for samurai, such as the "Zhazashi" in Edo and the "Kurayashiki" and "Kakeya" in Osaka.

"Zha" was a samurai's certificate for receiving his rice rations, and the recipient's name was carved into a bamboo strip with a knife. In Japanese, the word "za" means "to insert" or "to plug," so the name "Zhaza" means that.

These merchants used money to buy rice from the samurai, and then collected the rice and sold it to rice merchants.

When the samurai exchanged rice for money, they naturally had to pay a certain handling fee.

Taking the Edo-era yasha (officials in charge of purchasing rice) as an example: the yasha charged 1 sen (a unit of currency) for every 100 taels (a unit of weight) of rice.