Chapter 133: The enemies have become three!
“Bastard!” Takeda Hyōemon slammed his fist heavily onto the low table, feeling dizzy and a sweetness in his throat. He couldn’t even finish the latter half of his curse, “Damn Yuan Ye Family.”
He had originally thought the matter was over once the enemy abducted a village’s people. He only sent people to reinforce the enemy’s landing points, but it was useless. Less than a month later, the enemy returned, landing in a completely different, distant location. They marched rapidly and surrounded his village, openly transporting people. They didn’t even bother to blockade Takeda Castle anymore.
What was even more critical was that even though the enemy wasn’t blockading the castle, he didn’t dare to leave the city to engage in open combat or rescue the commoners abducted by the enemy.
He stewed in frustration for a while. There was nothing to say when one was outmatched. He could only take out some valuables and send an envoy, adopting a pleading posture to ask the enemy to show mercy. However, the envoy returned soon after. The enemy took none of the valuables and politely said, “If you want to negotiate, please go talk to Lord Kazusa-no-suke, Oda Nobunaga.”
Takeda Hyōemon was helpless upon hearing this. He could only watch as the enemy emptied another larger village, taking about five hundred people with them before boarding their ships to leave.
Takeda Hyōemon was so enraged he vomited blood again. He felt that the enemy arrived by ship, was unafraid of difficult terrain, and appeared and disappeared mysteriously. Defense was impossible. After all, he couldn’t keep all his villagers locked up in the city; fields still needed to be farmed. He quickly contacted his in-laws, explained the situation, and asked for their support. In this era, in-laws were usually reliable and would help each other. Seeing the Yuan Ye Family being beaten by outsiders, they all sent troops to support him. Soon, over five hundred followers gathered at Takeda Castle, awaiting Yuan Ye’s next raid.
At the same time, Takeda Hyōemon wrote a letter to his most important in-law, Hayashi Hidesada, hoping he would also think of a way to restrain the rampant Yuan Ye Family.
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Yuan Ye had no immediate plans to relocate more immigrants. He had just taken a large village, and these five hundred people would be enough for him to digest for a while. It would also take longer than last time to digest them, as the Labor Team and workshops were now full of newcomers. They couldn’t be sent to the barracks, and there weren’t enough job positions. Money and grain were also tight. He needed to find a way to expand the workshops, increase production, and improve infrastructure.
It would take at least two to three months before he could raid another village from the Takeda Family and abduct another batch of immigrants. By then, the scale of his territory should have expanded significantly, leading to another manpower shortage.
He sat on the deck, enjoying the sea breeze and the sunset, calculating how much the combat power of Wanjin would increase after digesting these people. Would it be enough to seize territory on the Chita Peninsula? Would it be enough to confront the Imagawa Family head-on? After some thought, he remembered something and turned to A Man, asking, “By the way, why hasn’t your grandfather arrived yet?”
A Man had openly declared her intention to “rebel” and take over as the leader of the Life Preservation Style. Logically, A Man’s grandfather should have rushed over like lightning from Mino and kicked his rebellious granddaughter into the sky. Yet, it had been almost four months. Even crawling, he should have arrived by now. Why hadn’t he appeared?
His expectations had been completely wasted!
A Man was eating roasted ship grubs. This was a delicacy unique to the era of wooden sea vessels. Legend had it that eating them increased luck and prevented drowning if one fell into the sea. It was a high-class tribute sent to Yuan Ye by Yu Da, the “temporary navy commander.” However, Yuan Ye wasn’t particularly fond of seafood, so it all went into A Man’s mouth.
She was happily eating when she suddenly heard Yuan Ye’s question. She didn’t care and casually replied, “He’s probably encountered something in Mino, or he’s taken on a difficult mission and can’t get away. I heard Mino isn’t very peaceful either. Anyway, we’ll just wait. He’ll come find me sooner or later. I’m his legitimate heir, and he’ll definitely rely on me for his retirement.”
“Alright!” Yuan Ye had no choice. He just felt a bit regretful that he couldn’t get A Man’s grandfather’s help in training the New Army. After all, according to A Man, her grandfather was very formidable. Even in his old age, with his stamina not what it used to be, he could still fight Shinshu Maru, and it was hard to say who would win. He was likely a Sword Master, someone Yuan Ye greatly admired and wished would help train the New Army’s spear and sword techniques.
Even if he refused to help train the New Army, having such a figure at home to guard the premises would be excellent. His delayed arrival was truly a pity.
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The absence of a “senior tactical instructor” wouldn’t affect the overall situation. Despite his regret, Yuan Ye continued to advance his plans, diligently improving his strength. Upon returning, he shifted his focus back to internal affairs, extensively expanding the dye workshops, building and increasing production simultaneously to gain more disposable money and grain. The cloth he dyed with modern techniques sold very well. It went without saying that it was popular in fashionable places like Sakai and Kyoto, but it was even said to have reached the remote Hokuriku mountains. Because the cloth’s colors were bright and didn’t fade after repeated washing, it was widely welcomed locally. Even with a significant increase in production, there was no shortage of buyers.
At the same time, he continued to develop upstream industries. Since Wanjin suddenly had many more women, he organized a small textile workshop, set standards, and encouraged mutual cooperation so they could weave and dye their own cloth. This would save some cost on purchasing cloth and earn a little extra profit.
Of course, the main purpose was to provide job opportunities so these women could support themselves, making his life a little easier.
The New Army was also continuously being supplemented with new recruits. His initial goal was to bring the frontline combat force up to five hundred men. This way, in a defensive battle, as long as the Imagawa Family didn’t deploy over two thousand elite followers and a large number of rookie ashigaru on the Chita Peninsula, he was confident he could hold a small territory until the enemy ran out of resources and was forced to recognize his rule.
Then, about a month later, as autumn began, he received news that the various forces supporting Takeda Castle had dispersed. Those followers and ashigaru needed to return for the autumn harvest, and there was no way to keep them. So, he took the opportunity to launch another expedition. This time, however, he didn’t abduct many people. He merely haphazardly harvested Takeda Family’s grain and set a fire before returning. This was to prevent the Takeda Family from having too much grain and inviting people over for meals, which would affect his next abduction.
Meanwhile, A Man’s long-term efforts began to pay off. “Wanjin Eastern Depot” finally had a spy infiltrate the Hayashi Family. Although their identity was merely a follower of a low-ranking samurai family and they couldn’t access major affairs, they could indirectly gather internal news from the Hayashi Family. It was said that Hayashi Hidesada hated them even more. However, he was currently out of favor and had no influence within the Oda Danjō no Chū family. Even though his in-laws were being severely beaten, he could only endure it and had no immediate plans to act, nor did he intend to humiliate himself by talking to his enemies.
Yuan Ye paid him no mind and proceeded at his own pace. He organized a dedicated logistics unit and continued to expand the number of navy ships to ensure his troop deployment capability on the west side of the Chita Peninsula. He also began equipping the navy with matchlock guns to prevent future attacks from enemy navies.
The imitation of contemporary weapons was also proceeding in parallel. He began trial-producing a larger caliber matchlock gun, the “Type 1 Kuniguzure,” to replace cannons and enhance long-range strike capability and city attack capabilities.
By the time these tasks were completed, the typhoon season would be over. He launched another expedition against the Takeda Family. However, he didn’t expect the Takeda Family to go to great lengths this time. They managed to persuade their neighbors, the Ebina Family and the Oya Family, to muster nearly three hundred samurai followers and five to six hundred rookie ashigaru. Upon discovering his return to raid, they quickly gathered and pursued him all the way to the seaside, where a fierce battle erupted.
This was the first proper open-field battle since the establishment of the New Army. The New Army, consisting of three hundred men, along with over ten military police and more than forty armed sailors, faced the enemy’s “followers and ashigaru” of over eight hundred men. In the end, Yuan Ye’s side, with nine dead and over forty wounded, decisively defeated the enemy’s main body of followers, killing nearly two hundred of them on the spot. The enemy then collapsed entirely, with the rookie ashigaru fleeing home in a frenzy.
Yuan Ye decided to press his advantage and pursued the Oya Family, raiding one of their villages as well. Including the ashigaru captured along the way, he gathered over eight hundred people before retreating to the seaside to camp and slowly transport them back to Wanjin in batches.
From then on, his targets for raiding expanded from one to three. As the population within his territory grew, his assimilation capacity also increased. He began to visit these three families regularly, landing at random and abducting a batch of people. He only took entire families; those captured scattered were released, with instructions to gather their whole families for his next capture.
By the end of the lunar year, he had almost flattened a small stretch of coastline belonging to these three families in Ise Bay, entering and exiting as if it were his own home. The three family heads took turns vomiting blood, and the average population of their villagers decreased by 50%. Wanjin’s population officially surpassed the 4,500 mark, and Yuan Ye’s ragtag army finally reached over seven hundred men, with the five hundred frontline combat soldiers at full strength.
Yuan Ye finally deeply understood why samurai loved to fight when they had nothing else to do. Raiding was indeed more efficient than farming. However, he was temporarily satisfied. The main reason was that the remaining populations of these three families were concentrated in their cities, making them difficult to conquer for now. He temporarily quieted down and began to patiently await the opportune moment to acquire his true territory.
