Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 235 Maybe, we really can give it a try!
The wintering grounds of the Zhair tribe are located in the hilly area on the west side.

Aman took off his cumbersome fur coat and climbed up a small hill with the old hunter Zhapinong. In the distance, they could see a small river.

At this time, Ezo Island was still in late winter, and the river had not yet thawed. Some shivering "Wajin" commoners were dragging wooden sleds along the ice to transport things to the riverbank.

It has all sorts of random things, but most of them are bulky items like taro, radishes, logging and digging tools.

There were also some warriors in the riverside camp carrying longbows and wearing full armor, but their warmth was much better than that of the commoners who were pulling sleds, as they wrapped themselves up tightly in various furs.

After observing cautiously for a moment, Aman asked the old hunter Zhapinong, "Is this... the 'Wajin' people planning to settle here?"

She had brought valuable goods, but few people in the valley greeted her. She learned that traces of the "He people" had been discovered nearby, and the old and young people in the valley were having a meeting to discuss how to deal with them. The old hunter, Zhapinong, also looked grim and immediately ran over to investigate, so she followed.

Looking back now, it seems that the Kakizaki family was using the river channels at the end of winter to quickly transport resources for land reclamation. Once spring arrived on Ezo Island and the land thawed, they would start large-scale construction by felling trees and taking soil locally.

According to samurai custom, they would first build a sturdy house, providing basic shelter and defense, and then build a stockade around it, burn the land along the river, clear out wild animals, and cultivate farmland.

In a year or two, this place will become a new village, and we can go back to supplying blood and paying annual tribute to the Kakizaki family.

"Yes, these 'people' are here again..."

The old hunter, Zapinong, grew increasingly grim. He was also very familiar with the samurai's tactics for expanding their territory, and he even knew how those "Wa people" in the distance had come to be.

As the saying goes, "A small temple has a lot of evil spirits, and a shallow pond has many turtles."

The northeastern region of Honshu is very barren and underdeveloped at this time, but the major and minor lords of the Nanbu, Ando, ​​Tozawa, Shiba, Waki, and Kasai families continued to fight each other year after year, creating a large number of ronin who ruined their families.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the Kakizaki family offered a deal: if any ronin could gather a group of commoners and build a village, the Kakizaki family would recognize their land ownership and acknowledge them as vassals of the Kakizaki family.

Thanks to this policy, many lower-ranking samurai who couldn't make it on Honshu Island have come to Ezo Island for various reasons, hoping to make a comeback. They also tried to lure commoners from Honshu Island to come and reclaim land, offering them land as their condition—as long as commoners were willing to come and reclaim land, these local samurai would also give them some land.

In those days, even a small piece of land was enough to drive people to their deaths. Moreover, the Tohoku region of Japan was plagued by years of civil war and exorbitant taxes. Many famine-stricken farmers who could not afford to pay their annual tributes were willing to fight to the death to see if they could defy fate.

Therefore, every year in late winter and early spring, the Kakizaki family would advance their territory far to the east and north, without suffering much loss. After all, even if they failed, it was only the foreign ronin and the farmers they had tricked into fleeing the tribute who died. The Kakizaki family would not suffer any serious damage and sometimes they could even make a small profit, picking up some people and property for free.

Now, the new immigrant village of the "He Ren" has advanced to a place not far from the wintering grounds of the Zhaier tribe. The two sides can barely be considered neighbors. Even though there is still some distance now, in two or three years at most, the new immigrant village will cross the wintering valley of the Zhaier people. The Zhaier people can forget about returning in the fall to store food, avoid the wind and snow, and have a safe winter.

Even after large-scale burning of the land and the clearing of farmland around the river, it remains a question whether the Zaire people will still be able to gather enough berries and wild vegetables, and catch enough wild animals and fish in this area.

The old hunter Zhapinong was an indigenous person who had a lot of dealings with the "He people." After all, he often went to the "He people's villages" to exchange furs and meat for salt and iron. He could be considered a "wise man" in the Zhaier tribe. Just thinking about the future, the veins on his rough hands holding the birch bow bulged.

Aman wasn't really angry because it didn't concern her. She had been watching the samurai fight each other since she was a child, and she was used to it, even taking it for granted.

This way of thinking, this historical imprint, has even influenced later generations—modern Japanese people seem very polite, and individuals are very courteous to each other, but this is only a facade. In order for their "small group" to survive, they are capable of anything, which is a kind of "small group-based egoism".

Such actions include poisoning food to increase company profits, cutting corners in production to maximize company profits, and discharging wastewater directly into rivers and seas to save money for the company—even committing crimes is acceptable to them…

There are far too many such cases, but the people who actually handle them don't feel any guilt, let alone consider it a crime, because it's done for the "collective" and has nothing to do with the individual. They just pick a representative from the "collective," give a casual bow, and that's it.

Aman was used to this kind of thing and didn't care about it. He just asked out of curiosity, "What are you planning to do? Are you going to leave here?"

She remembered that Yuanye had said that these people had been driven step by step from Kyushu Island to the southwest corner of Ezo Island over the past thousand years. Now that they could no longer stand in the southwest corner, she estimated that these people might continue to run east and north, into the interior of Ezo Island.

Yes, when she and Haruno passed by the area around Mount Fuji by sea, Haruno showed off her historical knowledge with great interest, saying that the name "Fuji" was given by the Ainu people, and that if nothing unexpected happened, the Ainu people would never be able to see this sacred mountain that had special significance to them again.

At the time, Aman had habitually questioned it, thinking that Yuanye was just making things up again. But now that she had learned the Ainu language, she discovered that "Mount Fuji" was indeed named by the Ainu people. "Fuji" is a transliteration, and in the Ainu language, it means "furnace." It is likely that the Ainu people in the past gave it this strange name because they saw that the active volcano was constantly spewing smoke.

The muscles on the old hunter Zhapinong's face twitched. The wounds from when he was young, scratched by a black bear, were red for a moment before the color slowly faded. He said dejectedly, "Yes, we can only leave. We... are no match for the 'Humans'."

"Not a match for them?" Aman glanced at the temporary camp again and judged that there were only one or two warriors, seven or eight Langdang members, and dozens of commoners. With the strength of the Zhaier tribe—a tribe of thousands of people—it would not be difficult for them to gather three or four hundred young men and women. It would not take more than five minutes to kill all of them.

The old hunter, Zhapinong, knew what she was thinking and shook his head: "It's easy to drive away these few dozen people, but they will soon bring more, the kind with iron armor. It will be difficult for us to kill them, so we can only give them the land."

Aman raised a small eyebrow to indicate her understanding.

Killing the unarmored with armor is indeed not much harder than killing a chicken. Throughout history, there have been countless instances of dozens of armored soldiers chasing and hacking at tens of thousands of peasants in plain clothes. It is not surprising at all, and it is a completely different matter from modern times.

In an era without firearms, or with inadequate firearms, humans had few effective ways to deal with a creature encased in a heavy iron shell weighing tens of kilograms; they could only be chased and run away.

As for those guys who say that I just need to grab a hammer and hit them once, and they'll be guaranteed to vomit blood and die instantly... those people should go and slide tackle tigers; that way, their deaths will be more dignified.

Aman could understand. After all, almost a hundred years ago, many Ainu tribes had united to drive out the Kakizaki family, but they were defeated by a few dozen heavily armored warriors and a few hundred Ueko-dō, even when surrounded by thousands of natives.

But she immediately asked curiously, "Don't you have any armor? After all these years, haven't you tried to get some heavy armor or something?"

The old hunter, Zhapinong, shook his head: "They won't sell to us. Even if they do sell us knives, they'll only sell short ones with small arrowheads... According to them, the blade can't be longer than a foot and a half, and the arrowhead can't be more than half an ounce. If it goes beyond the blacksmith's shop, we'll be punished." He paused, then sighed and added, "Actually, even if they were willing to sell, we don't have anything extra to exchange for such heavy armor."

"Can't we build them ourselves?" When Yuanye was penniless, he started building his own armored armed forces in order to save money, so Aman felt that this was not too difficult.

“We won’t,” the old hunter Zhapinong shook his head again.

The Ainu people have traditionally relied on gathering for survival, supplemented by fishing and hunting. They rarely needed armor, not even leather armor. Wild animals are afraid of getting hurt, and even fierce beasts generally wouldn't fight humans to the death. If they encountered a cornered beast like a wild boar or a bear, and were poked or slapped, the force of the attack would make it almost the same whether a human wore armor or not. In fact, it was better not to wear armor at all, as it would allow them to be more agile.

Tribal wars among the Ainu people are rare. Most Ainu tribes are far apart. They may have minor skirmishes occasionally over hunting grounds, but large-scale battles are very rare. They also have no need for armor.

Therefore, the Ainu people never learned armor-making technology, nor did they know how to smelt iron. Even the tanning of hides was something they learned from the "Wa people" nearly a hundred years ago, but only to sell the furs at a slightly higher price. They never actually went into the direction of making leather armor.

As a people, the Ainu were really weak! They had a large population, but they were scattered and fragmented, living in groups of about a thousand people. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to gather enough resources to support their tribes. Moreover, they lacked weapons, armor, and any skills necessary for survival. No wonder they were beaten all the way into the icy wilderness.

In a sense, they deserved it to some extent.

Aman understood the situation and saw that Zhapinong really looked disgusted, but she had been in contact with the Ainu people for half a year and knew that these people also had their merits.

Take this old hunter in front of me, for example. Although he seems to have a good temperament, he can really navigate through forests and mountains as if walking on flat ground. His survival skills in the wild are superb, and his archery skills are terrifyingly strong. He is a strongman who dares to hunt bears and wild boars alone. Normally, people wouldn't take such risks, but if he really put his mind to it, he has the ability to do so.

Even if they weren't fighting in formation, and everyone was just wearing simple clothes and hunting each other in the mountains and forests, no one in Wanjin could beat this old guy in a one-on-one situation, and he wouldn't stand much of a chance against other Ainu hunters either.

This is a group of people who grew up climbing ice and snow from childhood, hunting wild animals, and are the strong ones selected by nature through harsh environments.

In other words, if these Ainu hunters were given the means to overcome their equipment disadvantages and trained in discipline, they would be excellent warriors, not much less skilled than warriors who had trained in martial arts from childhood and made a living through war.

Aman pondered for a moment, feeling it was an opportunity, and asked the old hunter Zhapinong directly, "If you had armor, wouldn't you not need to run? Or would you need anything else? Enough knives, guns, arrows, cannons, gunpowder, and food?"

The old hunter, Zhapinong, was taken aback and asked in surprise, "You're willing to sell us armor? How much?"

"We have as many as you want!" Aman boasted first, but even with the advanced production system in Wanjin, there weren't many of these time-consuming and labor-intensive military weapons in stock. He quickly added, "We'll sell you a few dozen... uh, a hundred or so sets first. There shouldn't be any problem—these are genuine iron armors. Even a strong bow can't penetrate them at close range, and they can withstand most cannon fire from fifteen bays away. You'll likely survive."

"So many?" The old hunter Zhapinong was surprised again and couldn't help but reassess Wanjin's strength. After all, in those days only samurai could have a proper set of iron armor. More than a hundred heavily armored samurai were enough to dominate a place, and everyone would treat them with respect.

But he quickly hesitated again, “We might not have that many hides… no, we simply can’t afford that many armors.”

Their main product is fur, but fur doesn't fetch a good price on Ezo Island. An otter pelt is only worth about thirty mon, a deer pelt is fifty or sixty mon, a wolf pelt is around eighty mon, and bear and fox pelts are slightly better, selling for about three to five hundred mon, but they are scarce and whether you can get them depends a lot on luck.

A proper set of iron armor, complete with all parts, would cost over 100 strings of cash in Northeast China, which is about 90,000 cash. It would require about 3,000 otter pelts to obtain, and even bear or fox pelts would cost 100 or 200 pelts.

This is just one suit of armor. If you replaced it with a hundred suits of armor, even if you slaughtered and skinned all the wild animals around the Zhaier tribe, it still wouldn't be enough.

Of course, this is based on prices on Ezo Island. In Owari, a tattered wolf pelt can sell for over a hundred mon, while a good quality wolf pelt can sell for three or four hundred mon. Bear and fox pelts, as long as they are in good condition, can easily sell for three to five kan. It just goes to show that prices in ancient times varied by region; something that sells for one mon here might sell for one kan there.

The same applies in modern times. When the United States sells airplanes and missiles to other countries, the price often starts at tens of millions of dollars. The nature of proper armored vehicles in this era is similar to that of modern fighter jets and missiles. They are the foundation of a nation. If a country cannot manufacture its own, it must purchase them at high prices.

Even in China, there have been instances where hundreds of millions of shirts were exchanged for a single airplane; it just goes to show that similar incidents are hard to avoid.

Aman knew, of course, that the Ainu people were all poor and had no habit of saving money. They would eat as much as they could today, finish everything, and then go out to search again tomorrow. If they couldn't find anything, they would go hungry, which was somewhat absurd.

Of course, now that the Ainu people have moved to Ezo Island, their lifestyle has changed somewhat. Autumn is a little better, and they know to hide some food in caves to prevent it from spoiling and save it for winter. This is probably because they learned a lesson from the time when a group of people froze and starved to death. But their nature hasn't changed much. They still don't have the habit of saving. If there's a real emergency, they can't take out anything. They are not good customers at all.

However, she wasn't worried about that and said directly, "It doesn't matter if you don't have money or furs, you still have people! You can exchange people for weapons and armor!"

The old hunter, Zhapinong, changed his expression slightly: "Humans? You want us to sell our tribesmen?"

Aman waved his hand casually: "Of course not. We are friends. How could I turn your people into servants? I, Aman, am a man of principle. I would never do such a disloyal and shameful thing!"
What I mean is, if you have any surplus young men, you can send them to Wanjin to work and earn money. Anyway, your place isn't any better, and many people go hungry. Why don't you come work for us... or help us fight?

We'll provide transportation. If one of you works for three to five years, you can probably get a new set of armor. Or you could get some dōmaru to make do; they're cheap, and one person can easily earn enough for a set in a year, plus you'll have enough to eat every day. Our leader is a generous man, spends money like water, treats money like it's nothing, almost like a fool. Right now, we in Wanjin can basically guarantee two meals a day, and we haven't heard of anyone starving to death in over a year. Your people definitely won't suffer if they go.”

"Work and fight for you... in exchange for armor?" The old hunter, who had lived most of his life, had never heard of such a strange thing before. He couldn't believe it and refused, instinctively trying to find a reason, "But if we have armor and weapons, our able-bodied men will also need to guard our territory, and we won't be able to go to your place..."

“I’ve already told you our leader is a generous man. It’s just a hundred or so sets of iron armor. I’ll give them to you first. If you really want to fight, you can send people to Wanjin after the battle. Or, you can send a small number of people to do the work as a deposit. Thirty or fifty, twenty or thirty people are fine. With my influence, no one will mind.”

As long as Aman can lure the Ainu people to Wanjin, no matter how many, she will have completed part of the mission. Moreover, she can incite the Ainu people and the Kakizaki family to fight, which is in line with Haruno's "troublemaker" strategy in the Kanto and Tohoku regions. Therefore, she is easy to talk to and very sincere.

Of course, if these friends don't treat her as a friend and dare to swindle her out of her goods, especially high-priced goods worth tens of thousands of coins, then don't blame her for going back to Yuanye and calling over a thousand people to arrest them all and send them back to serve hard labor—Wanjin's mines and tunnels are also short of people, but there are fewer and fewer criminals, so they are forced to offer extremely high salaries to hire people to do hard labor and take risks, so they don't have to worry about not having a place to house criminals.

The old hunter, Zhapinong, was tempted. The "He people" were closing in step by step, and the villages, big and small, were gradually extending inland. Even if his tribe was willing to hide, how long could they hide?
Are we supposed to go live in the territory of other tribes and compete with them for food?

In the past, they were at a disadvantage in battle and could not win at all, so they had to retreat step by step. But now, a man named Aman from Wanjin has suddenly appeared on Ezo Island and is willing to provide excellent armor and weapons on credit. So the Zhaier people are not without the courage to protect their land and food.

Maybe it's worth a try!
(End of this chapter)