As a young samurai, the nineteen-year-old Katsuzaburo has not yet been ravaged by society, his edges and corners are still there, and he still has immature ideals.
He has been practicing martial arts since he was a child, and his goal is to make his martial arts surpass those of his predecessors, such as Yagyu, Miyamoto, etc. The problem is that the island society has been peaceful for nearly two hundred years since the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Katsuzaburo's life trajectory
If nothing unexpected happens, he will take over his father's position and work as a small accountant in charge of bookkeeping in the feudal lord's mansion until he retires, and then pass it on to his son.
But Katsuzaburo was unwilling to give in. For this reason, he explained his idea to his parents and obtained permission to travel around for two years before returning home to take over. Unexpectedly, he had just left Omi for more than ten days, and he learned about it from passers-by.
News about the eruption of Mount Iwaki volcano.
Katsuzaburo is a kind-hearted samurai. After finishing his own affairs, he plans to rush to Hirosaki Domain as soon as possible to see if he has a chance to do something within his power to help the disaster-stricken place.
This journey has been extremely unlucky.
He arrived in Edo first, but as soon as he arrived, his luggage and belongings were stolen in the castle town. He only had twenty Kanei Tongbao left on him. Fortunately, the sword was not stolen, otherwise he would have been very embarrassed.
Although I have reported to the police, I must know that in this era, there were hundreds of thousands of residents living in the northern and southern towns of Edo Castle, and the judicial offices of the northern and southern towns only had a total of 50 police officers (police section chiefs) and 200
Tongxin (ordinary police). Although the shogunate also recruited many "goyongwen" (assistant police officers), who will take you seriously if you don't pay for it?
The lost property could not be recovered for a while, so he stayed in a martial arts school and worked for people to make a living. When he finally managed to collect enough money to travel to Hirosaki Domain, three months passed. During this period, he only found his colleagues at the training center.
A few pieces of clothing were stolen from Katsuzaburo; as for the stolen money, don't even think about it.
As soon as Katsuzaburo saw that the clothes were not his, he understood that he had found some clothes at random to show off himself. But what could he do? Under the nose of the General, the office was at least pretending to do things.
In early July, the Mount Asama volcano erupted three hundred miles west of Edo. Fifty-five villages at the northern foot of Mount Asama were affected, and several of them were completely destroyed.
At that time, there was a westerly wind blowing in the sky, so the volcanic ash flew to the east and southeast. Even Edo, which was far away, fell an inch of dust.
When the volcanic ash drifted in, the price of rice in various grain stores suddenly soared, and complaints broke out among the people in the city.
The owner of the martial arts gym where Katsuzaburo worked also sympathized with him and advised him to return to Omi quickly, and also gave him some money as a gift.
Now that we are in this situation, if Katsusaburo is an ordinary person, he would go home quickly; but who is Katsusaburo? He is a person with lofty goals. Besides, there is no one in his family anymore. His parents passed away two years ago.
, otherwise he would not dare to resign his post in the feudal clan and go out to travel.
Therefore, Katsuzaburo decided to move forward according to his previous goal and set off towards Hirosaki Domain.
What Katsuzaburo didn't know was that the Hirosaki Domain under the rule of the Tsugaru family was already in chaos.
After the Iwakiyama volcano erupted in March of that year, messengers from all over came to Hirosaki Castle, so the head of the Tsugaru family, Tsugaru Nobuyin, also sent an urgent message to the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo.
It is said that the Hirosaki Domain under the rule of the Tsugaru family was not wealthy to begin with. The Tsugaru family was originally a retainer of the Nanbu clan, and took advantage of the internal chaos of the Nanbu clan to become independent. During the Momoyama period, Sekishiro Hideyoshi recognized the Tsugaru clan as a daimyo, and the income from the territory was only
There were 47,000 koku in total; by the time of the Tokugawa shogunate, the number of koku had remained unchanged, and it could be described as extremely poor.
The Tsugaru family was so poor that they had to borrow money from everywhere and were unable to provide disaster relief on their own. As for the Edo shogunate, Tanuma Yiji, a senior middle school student, was already distressed by the disasters caused by the "Yamalee Wind" in the previous year.
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Therefore, the shogunate's answer to the messenger was to store up food and defend yourself. In other words, the general can't take care of you anymore, so you can take care of yourself.
It was against this background that Zhao Xin took his servants Toshiyoshi Shino and his wife, as well as dozens of hungry people who were willing to take refuge after being rescued on the road. On their way south, they met Katsuzaburo who had fainted on the side of the road.
This time he really lost his knife!
In the past ten days or so since meeting Zhao Xin, Li Ji increasingly felt that it was the right choice for him to take his wife with him to seek refuge with Zhao Xin.
On their way south, they saw many fleeing farmers lying dead on the roadside in large numbers. Some died of starvation, and some were frozen to death due to the cold weather. Most of them were old people, women and children, and some were adult men.
Only people like Li Ji, under the leadership of Zhao Xin, had no worries along the way and could cook porridge every day to satisfy their hunger. Occasionally, Zhao Xin would ask Shino to make a meal of rice.
If that's all, that's all. In the eyes of Liji and his wife, Master Zhao Xin is a god!
They had seen with their own eyes that Mr. Zhao Xin always went to the big tree to "make it". Soon, a box of rice in a transparent bag appeared on the ground, along with salt, soy sauce and various delicious pickled foods.
Meat and pickles.
This surprised Liji's jaw and almost dropped to the ground! He and Shino decided to keep this secret for Mr. Zhao Xin.
As servants of God, Liji and Shino felt that they were different from others. As a result, they could drink one more bowl of porridge and eat two more slices of bacon than others.
Although the fleeing team has expanded to more than thirty people, Liji and Shino have been tightly controlling the distribution of rations to Zhao Xinhe, and no one else is allowed to interfere.
The actions of Liji and his wife made Zhao Xin dumbfounded.
Honestly speaking, the two of them were very attentive to their service. When they were eating, drinking, or even washing their faces and brushing their teeth, Shino was always there to serve him. But Zhao Xin felt awkward. One night, Shino shyly asked to wait on him to rest.
, Zhao Xin was dumbfounded, and he quickly waved his hand to refuse.
Well, Shino felt very hurt at the time.
Oh my God, the appearance of the rural women in the island country at this time...
Even one day Liji was very proud to mention that Shino was a famous beauty in the villages around Iwaki Mountain, and Liji was extremely satisfied to marry her.
But in Zhao Xin's opinion, screw your legs. Shino is not even 1.5 meters tall and looks like a malnourished big-headed doll. She is still a beauty!
One day he casually asked Shino's age and found out that the girl had just turned seventeen this year.
None of the refugees who came to seek refuge along the way was taller than 1.6 meters! Most of them were around 1.5 meters tall. This made Zhao Xin feel like a teacher taking a group of junior high school students on an outing.
No, a farmer named Wan Zao, who had just taken refuge with Zhao Xin for two days, saw a man lying on the roadside.
"Hey, he's still breathing. Someone, come here." Wan Zao reached out and found that the man was still breathing, so he quickly called for someone.
Two people came over, and together they carried the man to the camp that had just been set up by the road. Several women from farmers' families had already cooked a large pot of rice porridge.
These refugees had just recently taken refuge, and Zhao Xin did not dare to let these people eat dumplings. This would damage their stomachs, so he made porridge and pickles for the past two days.
But this already makes the refugees feel like they are living a fairy-like life. You must know that in the past two years, due to freezing disasters and volcanic eruptions, they have been relying on wild vegetables and bark, and they can't even eat tares.
With a few mouthfuls of hot porridge in his mouth, Katsuzaburo, who had been in a coma for a day, slowly woke up.
With the consciousness of a samurai, he instinctively reached out to touch the knife.
"Where's my knife?" he muttered.
"Here, when we found you, we didn't see any knife." Wan Zao, who was squatting aside and sipping porridge from a big bowl, heard this and replied.
"Huh? Could it be that you are still a samurai? What are you doing here as a samurai?" Another farmer named Huji was very smart. When he heard that Katsusaburo had a sword, he guessed that he might be a samurai.
Wan Zao took a bite of the crunchy pickles, took a big mouthful of porridge, and sighed with satisfaction. Then he said to Katsusaburo: "Don't worry about the knife or not. I think you are hungry too, so first
Let’s talk about other things after you’ve finished the porridge.”
After hearing this, Katsusaburo said no more and slowly sat up. Weak, he took the porridge bowl from the hand of the woman feeding him porridge, asked for a pair of chopsticks, sat cross-legged, and started eating.
"Are you really a samurai?"
Katsusaburo stopped talking, but Wan Zao, who was curious at the side, couldn't sit still. He was holding a porridge bowl in one hand and a pickle that looked like a radish in the other. He squatted down for a few steps and came to Katsusaburo's side.
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"Looking at the way you eat, you really don't look like a farmer." Wan Zao looked Katsaburo up and down and took another sip of porridge.
"You, how do you have food? It's still polished rice." After taking a bite of the porridge, Katsusaburo noticed that the rice used to cook the porridge was not brown rice, but polished polished rice!
"Hey, we have met a noble person. Look, the person sitting over there is the noble person." Wan Zao pointed to a tree not far away with the pickled radish he was holding.
"He? He looks very young." Shengsaburo followed Wan Zao's instructions and looked at Zhao Xin sitting under the tree, and said doubtfully.
Zhao Xin was also holding a bowl of porridge, but his bowl was not big. He was smiling and eating while chatting with Li Ji and Shino beside him.
"Bodhisattva bless you. I met the noble man three days ago, otherwise our whole family would be just a few corpses on the roadside now." Wan Zao sighed.
"How is your village?" Katsusaburo asked.
"Don't mention it, it's all over. Everyone who could walk escaped, and there were only a dozen or so people who starved to death." Another refugee interjected.
"Last year, old people and children began to starve to death. Those who survived were all young and strong. I heard that some villages were already cannibalized." Wan Zao curled his lips and said.
"Hey, don't scare me." A woman next to her exclaimed, causing more than a dozen people around her to look over.
At this time, Zhao Xin also heard the discussion, so he put down his bowl, stood up, and walked over. Liji and Shino also put down their porridge bowls and followed Zhao Xin closely.
"How's it going? Are you all full?"
Upon hearing Zhao Xin's question, everyone except Shengsaburo quickly put down their bowls and knelt on the ground.
Only one person was heard saying with tears of gratitude: "Thank you, sir, for taking us in and letting us eat porridge made from polished rice. It's really a fairy-like life. Wow..."
As he said that, the man actually started crying.
Li Ji behind Zhao Xin said: "Why are you crying, Maosuke? It's your blessing to be taken in by adults. Just eat and serve adults well."