Owari Yumeki Golden Day.

"There seems to be a cold epidemic at the Osaka construction site, and hundreds have already died." This last piece of news did make Shichibei's heart stir.

It's common knowledge that the flu can kill people. The Spanish flu during World War I killed over 20 million people, a number comparable to the Black Death.

Even in the 21st century, more than 50,000 people in the United States still die each year from influenza and its complications.

In this era of scarce medical resources, especially on a construction site, if someone gets the flu without care or rest, it's no wonder it spreads everywhere and causes deaths.

Furthermore, there is another difference: the original town laborers were generally stronger than the able-bodied men conscripted from the villages by the Eastern Kingdom.

This can be seen in "Rickshaw Boy". Although Xiangzi was just a "stinky rickshaw puller", he often ate various kinds of pork and beef offal, and he did not lack rice and flour. His nutrition was actually quite adequate. Meanwhile, farmers at the same time, let alone farmers, even small landlords with hundreds of acres of land, might not be able to eat meat even once a year.

In large cities, the cost of acquiring various goods is lower than in villages. Furthermore, the income of urban laborers is often positively correlated with prices, and their earnings are generally sufficient to feed themselves. Wen San, from the novel *The Flames of War in Beiping*, is a typical example.

The hired laborers from the city were all taken by Nobuo to the construction site of Todai-ji Temple in Nara. Although the able-bodied farmers conscripted from various places were not necessarily weak and sickly, they were indeed not as strong and robust as those who had worked as hired laborers in towns for many years.

When the flu strikes, it really does cause a huge number of people to fall ill.

It's pitiful, but what can be done? Shichibei is powerless to help either. Tokugawa Ieyasu had already risked his life to plead for him before Nobukatsu reluctantly allowed the Osaka construction to rest for a few days. Now, what reason could they possibly give to stop the Osaka construction?

Moreover, the flu is something that really can't be controlled in a short period of time. The only way to completely solve the problem is to bring Osaka University of Technology to a complete halt.

Is it possible? No, it's impossible.

Hearing that dozens of samurai from the Five Great Families had died at the Osaka construction site, and that over a hundred civilians conscripted to Osaka had also perished, Niwa Nagahide was secretly delighted. The time to close the net was almost here.

The five daimyo's savings are now almost completely depleted, and their troops are exhausted. With spring planting just around the corner, the peasant soldiers under their command will certainly be unwilling to join them in raising an army, or they will choose to enter the city and defend it to the death.

How could their few rotten sweet potatoes and bird eggs compare to the thousands of samurai and standing army that Niwa Nagahide had fought against over decades? Add a groom and a flag bearer to each samurai, and a foot soldier with a junior officer, and you could assemble a force of 15,000 in just two hours.

Let's get started!

The best approach would definitely be to behead them first, luring the five daimyo to Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle. Kill them first, then wipe out the core samurai who came with them, and finally divide your forces to besiege the castle and kill any remaining remnants.

In this way, the 200,000 koku of land could become the direct territory of the Niwa clan. This would not only be enough to reward the Niwa samurai for this incident, but would also greatly increase Niwa Nagahide's direct territory.

Without further ado, Niwa Nagahide invited his younger brother Niwa Hideshige, along with key retainers such as Eguchi Masayoshi, Sakai Naomasa, Otani Motohide, Toda Katsunari, and Mizoguchi Hidekatsu, to announce his plan.

The senior retainers, of course, had no objections and all expressed their agreement. To be fair, Niwa Nagahide was actually quite stingy. His younger brother, Niwa Hideshige, only received a paltry 5,000 koku, while the others were roughly the same, fluctuating between 2,000 and 3,000 koku.

From the time he was actually granted 250,000 kilos in Kitasho, Echizen, to the 300,000 kilos transferred to Kurokawa-no-tsu in Aizu, his territory did not increase significantly, so naturally everyone's territory could not have increased dramatically.

Perhaps the rapid disintegration of the Niwa clan in history, with its retainers fleeing en masse, was related to Niwa Nagahide's refusal to distribute his territory to his subordinates. Neighboring clans like Kawamura and Hashiba had senior retainers with 30,000 to 50,000 koku of land, but the Niwa clan had none. It should be noted that the Takigawa clan even had Takigawa Masushige, who had branched out with 60,000 koku. In terms of stinginess, Niwa Nagahide was probably number one.

But things are different now. Nagahide's meaning is clear: kill the Five Great Lords of Power, and everyone's moral character will double. Naturally, everyone is full of enthusiasm and begins the work of tricking and killing the Five Great Lords of Power.

To lower the guard of the Five Daimyo, Niwa Nagahide deliberately pretended to conscript his personal samurai and able-bodied men to replace the Five Daimyo's personnel at the Osaka construction site. Of course, this contingent only went as far as the border and did not go too far.

Then came a pincer attack: Niwa Nagahide's main force marched from Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle in the west, while this force counterattacked from the south. The goal was to eliminate the castles and main forces of the five daimyo in a short time, achieving the unification of Aizu with 500,000 koku.

The five daimyo of Yoriki were quite pleased to receive news that Niwa's men had gone to the Osaka construction site to replace the workers. Spring planting was the time when manpower was most needed; Niwa Nagahide was truly shrewd.

Chapter 624 Aizu native Soichi Kui

Having confirmed that he had beheaded Tanakurago and his son, Mizoguchi Hidekatsu breathed a sigh of relief. His mission was now complete, and he could return to report to Niwa Nagahide.

Using the pretext of discussing replacing the laborers at Osaka University of Technology, Niwa Nagahide tricked the five daimyo into heading to Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle. After some deliberation, Niwa Nagahide decided to abandon his plan to wipe them out at the castle and instead adopt a strategy of ambush them en route.

Because if each person only brings two or three hundred guards and servants, then the five families together would have over a thousand people. With over a thousand people, a quantitative change could lead to a qualitative change, and they could lead any of the powerful daimyo out to fight.

If anyone breaks through, a nationwide uprising will be inevitable. So it's best to be cautious. Anyway, the Niwa family has a lot of men and horses, so we can try to split our forces into five groups to intercept and kill them.

If one handles the situation cleanly, one could even use the severed head as leverage to persuade the enemy city to open its gates. Theoretically, opening the gates without killing is possible, but in practice, each situation must be analyzed individually. Some people are timid, others are bold; their approaches to handling situations differ greatly.

Just as several servants were wiping the heads of the village father and son, a messenger arrived on horseback to inform Mizoguchi Hidekatsu. Mizoguchi Hidekatsu, thinking something had gone wrong, quickly gathered everyone. The messenger brought news that shocked him beyond measure.

Niwa Nagahide falls ill!

Didn't they say he was almost fully recovered? Just before setting off, Hidekatsu Mizoguchi even saw Nagahide Niwa. Overall, he seemed fine, except for a little shortness of breath. For someone to specifically send someone to say he was ill, he must have already been bedridden; if it were just minor discomfort, he wouldn't have done this.

Let's go, let's go back to Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle immediately. We can't care about alerting the enemy or anything else anymore. Niwa Nagahide is the backbone of the Niwa family. If something happens to him, then the entire Niwa family is in trouble.

Rushing back to Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle, they found that, as expected, three routes hadn't even been mobilized yet, but they had already received the notification. This was truly a mess; two were killed, and three were spared. How were they supposed to handle this?

What exactly is Niwa Nagahide's condition? When the high-ranking officials entered the residence, they learned that Niwa Nagahide had fallen into a coma, and his condition was progressing rapidly, with him barely breathing and exhaling more.

It's actually quite simple. The parasites in his body had already begun to multiply rapidly and spread throughout his body, starting to compress his internal organs. Although Niwa Nagahide expelled some tapeworms, he didn't completely get rid of them. He didn't take it to heart and continued eating sashimi.

The pressure is now affecting the internal organs; the previous shortness of breath was a sign that the trachea was being compressed. As for the barely perceptible lump in the abdomen, that's probably because the parasite eggs have grown into adult worms and started spreading.

If you take your medicine and detox properly, you might live for a few more years. But if you don't follow the doctor's orders, you'll just be lying on your bed waiting to die.

How to do?

The eldest son, Niwa Nagashige, was currently serving Oda Nobukatsu in Kyoto, so the only option left was the head of the family, Niwa Hideshige. Niwa Hideshige was also flustered; although he was extremely loyal to the Niwa family, he was ultimately lacking in ability.

At this time, what the Niwa family lacks is a leader. No matter what, you need to make a decision. With a decision, good or bad, everyone can go all out. Without a decision, hesitation and doubt can easily become a major problem.

After much deliberation, Niwa Hideshige decided to send someone to Kyoto to ask Niwa Nagashige for his opinion. Aizu is 700 kilometers away from Kyoto as the crow flies, and the actual route would be almost 1,000 kilometers. Even the fastest runners in a relay race would take more than half a month to complete a round trip.

What can we do? Decisiveness is something not everyone possesses. Even Yuan Shao next door was criticized for being shrewd but indecisive, which speaks volumes.

The people were at a loss, so much so that the armies that had been dispatched, entered the territory of Shimotsuke Province, and were preparing to turn around and attack the five daimyo were not immediately recalled, but were left to remain in place.

Aside from the Tanakura family, father and son, and Yoshitsugu Hatakeyama of Nihonmatsu, who were killed in the attack, the other three realized what had happened and retreated back to their castle. Only then did they realize they had been deceived; Niwa Nagahide was definitely planning to harm them and seize their family business.

We must immediately raise an army, defend the city, and at the same time send someone to appeal to Oda Nobukatsu. Historically, before the Kuroda clan attacked and killed the entire Utsunomiya clan in Buzen, Toyotomi Hideyoshi had to cooperate by pretending to offer a condition, namely, transferring 30,000 koku to a certain place in Iyo.

Only after the town of Shiroi rejected the request for the transfer of fiefdom did he openly and openly refuse the transfer, harboring rebellious intentions, and attack and kill the entire Shiroi Utsunomiya clan.

In matters like this, there needs to be a plausible reason to handle them in order to appease the public and prevent gossip from getting out of control. Nobukatsu only dared to privately promise Niwa Nagahide that he would annex the Five Great Militia, and did not dare to publicly endorse it.

Nobuo and Niwa Nagahide's plan was to first wipe out all five families, then create a fait accompli, and finally smear them. Since the dead can't appear in court to protest or explain, whatever Niwa Nagahide said would be accepted.

Unfortunately, the matter hasn't been resolved yet. Once a public appeal is filed, it will be submitted to Nobuo in the form of a lawsuit filed by the Wu family. This matter will be put on the scale. Some things are only slightly weighty before being weighed, but once they are, they can weigh a ton.

Unprovoked attacks and violence are also serious crimes.

Even if there were a reason, according to the laws of the samurai class, it must be reported to Oda Nobukatsu before any action can be taken. Now that the Niwa family has arbitrarily killed two families, they have already given others grounds for criticism and are completely in the wrong in the samurai class lawsuit.

We must appeal! We must appeal!

Before appealing, Suda Morihide raised an army. He immediately took Ashina Moritaka's younger brother, a boy who was only four or five years old this year. Claiming to inherit the Ashina family business, he named himself Ashina Moriyuki (Nikaido Yukiei) and used this as a banner to gather the former retainers of the Ashina family, as well as his own party of officials and others to raise an army.

At the same time, letters of appeal were sent to the feudal lords Date, Soma, Satake, and Mogami, requesting their support and assistance.

The five families and the powerful daimyo already possessed a combined strength of 200,000 koku, and the work of shaving the heads of former retainers of the Ashina clan was not yet finished. More importantly, this was a local battle, allowing them to call upon allies and bring along their entire forces.

In a short while, more than 40,000 troops gathered. Inspired by this, the generals of Aizu abandoned their original plan to defend their castle and concentrated their forces to launch a fierce attack on Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle, which was halfway through its renovation, formerly known as Kurokawa Castle.

With half of the castle's troops transferred to the Shimotsu area, the Niwa army inside the castle was simply unable to hold out against the attack of more than 40,000 Ikki.

In such a critical situation, Niwa Nagahide died of illness!

Aizu Castle, which might have had a chance to hold out until reinforcements arrived, was now completely destroyed. Niwa Hideshige and the others cremated Niwa Nagahide's body and, carrying his ashes, broke through the siege and retreated to Echigo. In a short time, the entire Aizu became a "country of uprisings."

The generals unanimously supported Ashina Morio as daimyo and sent envoys to Kyoto again to express their willingness to surrender to Oda Nobukatsu, offering only 500,000 koku of rice to the Ashina family in Aizu.

When the first message arrived in Kyoto, only Niwa Nagashige received it. Since Niwa Nagahide was still alive, there was still a possibility that his illness could be treated. Therefore, the retainers only inquired about what to do next and whether to continue with the already established strategy.

Instead of ambush, a full-scale assault will be launched, first eliminating the two already killed. The remaining three will be dealt with through a combination of siege and intimidation, aiming to contain the unrest within a small area of ​​the territory. This way, external forces will not be involved, and the problem will remain an internal issue to be resolved internally.

If this strategy is not implemented, we ask the eldest son, Dan Yu Changshige, for an idea; they can also follow Dan Yu Changshige's method.

Fortunately, Niwa Nagashige was practically Oda Nobunaga's adopted son. He had received a relatively thorough education, and upon learning that the five powerful daimyo had only killed two, he immediately withdrew his troops to defend Aizu Castle, effectively alerting the enemy.

Report this to higher authorities!

He keenly sensed that things were spiraling out of control and that he had to report it to Oda Nobuo immediately to prevent the situation from escalating and becoming unmanageable, which would only lead to trouble for him later.

Oda Nobukatsu, whose mind was focused on the major construction projects in Osaka and Todai-ji Temple, initially didn't take the Aizu Incident too seriously. Mainly, Nobukatsu felt that Niwa Nagahide was a veteran retainer, whose skills and abilities were undeniably astute.

Even if he's sick now, dealing with a few minor troublemakers is a piece of cake. Even a starved camel is bigger than a horse, and a dead tiger still commands respect. Even if Niwa Nagahide is paralyzed and bedridden, he should be fine.

So Oda Nobukatsu simply replied, "Understood," and told the Niwa family to handle it themselves. In any case, Nobukatsu hadn't received any appeals; if you haven't received one, it means you don't know—that's an ironclad rule. Many leaders insist on having secretaries for this very reason: because handing something to a secretary doesn't mean it's handed to the leader.

This is well illustrated in the film *1942*. Li Peiji's materials were clearly in his bag, and Chiang Kai-shek was right across from him, but he didn't hand them over—that was the end of it. Later, handing them to Chen Bulei was utterly useless; Chen Bulei bluntly said that Li had been passively interfered with. Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek could continue to pretend he knew nothing of the Henan famine and continue conscripting men and requisitioning grain as usual.

A few days later, a second urgent report from Aizu arrived, and the situation had completely collapsed. The daimyo who had fled home had decided to raise an army to defend the castle and had sent messengers to appeal to Oda Nobukatsu, publicly appealing to him.

The Niwa clan did not intercept the envoy who came to appeal, nor did Niwa Nagashige make any prior arrangements in Kyoto, and Oda Nobuo believed that the situation was still under control.

Once the lawsuit arrives, the matter becomes extremely weighty.

Thus, the Oda clan's central leadership finally began discussing the matter. Since Oda Nobukatsu had vowed to rebuild the Great Buddha Hall and was already in Nara, he was not in Kyoto. The elders and young nobles could only discuss it first, and at the same time, they reached a decision: Niwa Nagashige could leave Kyoto to go to Aizu to assist Niwa Nagahide.

At this point, Kyoto still believed the situation was under control, but it was starting to spiral out of control. Therefore, they needed to send Niwa Nagashige to quickly resolve the matter.

The level of importance attached to it has indeed increased, but it's still not something they're truly committed to. Aizu is too far from the political center; even if a major upheaval occurs, it won't affect Kyoto. The attitude of these officials based in Kyoto is understandable.

Just when the ministers thought Aizu was nothing more than a minor incident, another "major event" occurred in Kyoto that distracted them.

Kazutada Takikawa died of illness.

The powerful daimyo of Ueno-no-Masahashi, with a fief of 468,000 koku, was Takikawa Ueno-no-suke Kazutada. He died of illness at the young age of seventeen.

Last year, after recovering from a cold, Takikawa Kazutada never seemed to fully recover. Although he appeared to be able to come out and perform his duties with difficulty, he remained sickly.

After the beginning of spring this year, he fell ill again. Everyone initially thought it was just a relapse of his cold illness, and that he would only need to rest for ten days or half a month and take some medicine. However, the illness progressed rapidly, and he passed away in the middle of the night after only three to five days in bed.

When the servants came to pay their respects in the morning, his body was already cold. Because Takigawa Kazutada was the lord of the Daikoku Domain and a candidate for the position of chief retainer, his death was given higher priority than the unrest that had occurred in Aizu.

After all, news of Niwa Nagahide's death hadn't reached Kyoto yet, so the Maohabashi Domain, where someone had died, was definitely more anxious. And it's worth noting that Takikawa Kazutada, though young, was quite capable; he already had a son who was over a year old.

As a major domain ranking among the top retainers of the Oda clan, the Takigawa family certainly cannot be changed. If even the Takigawa family were to change, the other Owari families would feel disheartened.

Takigawa Kazumasu handled countless messes and underhanded dealings for Oda Nobunaga. He served him faithfully and was a top-notch contributor.

"Takikawa Uenosuke has passed away!" Shichibei was shocked upon hearing the news. What will become of Takikawa Kazumasu now?

Takigawa Masushige has already separated to establish the Ashikaga Domain in Shimotsuke. Normally, it's not easy to inherit a domain that isn't a branch domain. But Takigawa Kazumasu's second son is only thirteen years old, Takigawa Kazutada's son is only one year old, and Takigawa Kazumasu is sixty-one years old. What will happen to the Mabuhashi Domain?

"Oh dear, really, really, really..." Shichibei never expected that something like this would happen in the Masahashi Domain.

As for Hiratsuka Tamehiro's claim about a minor disturbance in Aizu, Shichibei completely ignored it. "Niwa Nagahide isn't dead, is he? What's the rush?"

Immediately send someone to Kyoto to find out the situation in the Masahashi Domain. Whether to support the second son or the eldest grandson is a major issue. When Takigawa Kazumasu resigned last time, he did look very old. I estimate it's only a matter of three to five years.

At his age, neither the second son nor the eldest grandson could support him. And yet, the Umahashi area was a strategically vital location in Ueno, requiring a general to guard it.

After some thought, Shichibei decided to send another person to Masahashi Castle. It wasn't just to offer condolences, but also to express his stance. "Takigawa Kazumasu, make your bold decision. I'll definitely support the Takigawa clan of the Masahashi Domain's succession. Just let me know if you need anything."

Chapter 625 A Critically Ill Man Chooses His Heir

By the time Niwa Nagashige passed through Mino Ōgaki Castle and was considering whether to take the Tokaido or the Nakasendo, news of the defeat in Aizu had already been sent to Kyoto by fast horse.

Because Niwa Nagashige was in fact a hostage of the Niwa family in Kyoto, his departure from Kyoto was delayed for two or three days. In those two or three days, the Aizu Ikki had already breached Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle, and Niwa Hideshige and others fled to Echigo with Niwa Nagahide's ashes on their backs.

Huge changes!