Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 243 Bamboo Blossoms

Aman quickly wrote a letter to Yuanye, informing him of his plans and requesting his support.

Yuan Ye had no objections. He had been misled by modern information and actually thought of the Ainu as a "nation". But after actually dealing with them, he realized that it was not like that at all - it was difficult to form alliances among these tribes, let alone get them to fight together.

With their current loosely organized structure, they can at most withstand the expansion of the Kakizaki family, or even only slow down their expansion. It's impossible for them to be driven away.

He pondered for a while and concluded that Aman's judgment was correct. He told her to just send the person over, and he would definitely make all the necessary preparations. After sending the letter, he would continue to rake in the money.

We have no choice but to expand; a major war is about to break out. The Wanjin Army needs to expand, aiming to increase the number of field troops to 5,000. At the same time, the Wanjin Navy cannot stop shipbuilding and personnel recruitment and training in order to protect trade. Military expenses alone are about to bankrupt Wanjin's finances.

Weapons, armor, vehicles, horses, clothing, food, and supplies needed for military operations—everything costs money; there's no way to cut corners, and we dare not actually try to save money.

Now we also have to wage an economic war of destruction against the daimyo on the Ise Peninsula, and we have to buy up a lot of things that we don’t need for the time being at high prices. We sold a lot of land to slightly alleviate the cash flow problem, but the financial pressure is still very high.

The worst part is that now he looks around and can't find any targets to fight off rich players to recover his losses, so he can only suffer alone.

Of course, they did manage to plunder a little. During the time that Yuanye led the Wanjin Army on the expedition, the Wanjin Navy was also busy, actively clearing out the scattered pirates on the Wanjin-Kanto-Tohoku route. They did manage to get some spoils, but those scattered pirates were basically no big deal. They were half fishermen and half thieves, and they were all poor guys. In reality, they didn't get much money.

Anyway, just endure it. In novels, war is very easy. The commander-in-chief gives an order and hundreds of thousands of troops go to war. But in reality, war is an extremely complex operation. It is a comprehensive test of the overall national strength and can drive a normal person to death.

For the next two months or so, he spent his time making money and urging preparations for war, or working with officers to develop tactical plans and make various contingency plans.

Everything was proceeding smoothly. Aqing, the "temporary head of the Eastern Depot," would regularly report to him on the situation inside and outside Wanjin. During this time, he casually mentioned, "According to reports, the bamboo in Suzuka and Kawaki districts of Ise Province has blossomed, causing some unrest among the local people."

As Haruno listened and stamped the documents, he looked up in surprise upon hearing this: "Oh, the bamboo on the Ise Peninsula is flowering? Is it only in these two districts? And there are all kinds of bamboo?"

Aqing paused, flipped through the intelligence summary, and said with a slight puzzlement, "The news that has been sent back so far... yes, only the survivors who went to these two places have sent back this news."

Yuanye paused for a moment, lost in thought.

It's rare for bamboo to flower on such a large scale; bamboo is a rather peculiar plant.

Bamboo is actually a type of grass, a woody grass, which is said to have existed since the dinosaur era—components of bamboo ancestor have been detected in dinosaur dung fossils. The reason bamboo evolved to grow at a rate 30 to 40 times faster than other plants, growing one to two meters taller per day and rapidly forming silica, is said to be to prevent herbivorous dinosaurs from eating the seedlings.

At the same time, its reproduction is also very interesting. It often takes decades or even hundreds of years to flower and bear fruit once, and the season is also uncertain. It can be spring, summer, autumn and winter. There are even historical records of bamboo flowering and bearing fruit generation after generation within two or three years.

Simply put, bamboo seems to be able to predict disasters, judging in some mysterious way whether the coming year will be good or bad, and whether there is a risk of mass extinction. If there is, it will decisively flower and bear fruit, scattering seeds everywhere to ensure that the population survives sudden natural disasters, and may even survive consecutive natural disasters, until the living environment improves.

At the same time, bamboo, as a species that has survived for tens of millions of years without being eliminated by nature, has become increasingly powerful. It has a strong ability to resist natural disasters and is not afraid of typhoons at all.

Therefore, when bamboo flowers, it usually foretells a major disaster.

Ancient people had also vaguely discovered this in their long agricultural life. After bamboo flowers, there is often some kind of natural disaster, such as flood or drought, and it is usually accompanied by plague or rat infestation. They directly regarded "bamboo flowering" as a very bad omen.

Of course, it is speculated that the plagues and rat infestations were not natural disasters predicted by bamboo. It is said that because bamboo flowers and fruits produce a large amount of bamboo rice, small animals such as rats suddenly have abundant food and can multiply rapidly. This caused the number of rats to suddenly increase seven or eight times three to five months after bamboo flowers. However, because the bamboo rice disappeared, they had nothing to eat and could only invade human territory to find food and drink, which caused large-scale rat infestations and plagues.

However, the ancients did not understand these things and attributed everything to bamboo flowering, which is indeed related to bamboo flowering.

Bamboo flowering is unpredictable. Even with natural replacement, such as when bamboo rhizomes age and their storage capacity decreases, and bamboo forests need to be naturally renewed, the flowering pattern is somewhat regular, but the timing varies considerably, usually by several years or even more than a decade. The area affected by different varieties is also not very wide. However, if a large area of ​​bamboo flowers in succession regardless of variety, it is most likely because the bamboo has judged that there is an unavoidable disaster ahead, and it believes that it is in danger of extinction.

that……

Is it because there happens to be a major natural disaster at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, such as flooding the Ise Peninsula, or a drought in October that causes the earth to crack, or is it because he instructed Wanjin to frantically acquire beneficial birds and insects on the Ise Peninsula?

If it's the latter, is bamboo, a plant, really that spiritual? Can it predict insect infestations in advance, or is it specifically targeting pests affecting crops like rice, buckwheat, and beans?
However, speaking of which, bamboo does seem to belong to the Poaceae family, and is closely related to rice and wheat... Haruno's thoughts wandered, his mind racing, and he couldn't figure out whether the "bamboo flowering" was related to him. He had been secretly harming the daimyo and powerful clans on the Ise Peninsula, and they were completely unaware, but the bamboo discovered it first. This seemed somewhat fantastical at first glance.

But in either case, this is good news for him, since he wasn't entirely sure whether his previous schemes would succeed.

If you spend a lot of money and effort for a year and it's all for nothing, and he still tries to fight against thirteen counties or even several kingdoms with only one county, then he'd be a bit of a fool. It would be better to spend all that money on the Wanjin Army.

He is now more confident, after all, signs have already appeared. He estimates that by the end of this year or early next year, the daimyo of the Ise Peninsula will have a hard time. It is unlikely that they will gather together to beat him up or even drive him into the sea. At the very least, they will be severely weakened and their mobilization capacity will drop several levels.

On the other hand, the fact that the bamboo, that stupid plant, bloomed without warning could very well have alerted the local powerful families, thwarting any malicious plans he might have been harboring.

However, even if they are now prepared, production cuts are inevitable, and their strength will ultimately suffer a considerable loss, but the impact on future amphibious operations should not be too great.

Yuan Ye stood there in a daze, his expression changing slightly, his brows sometimes furrowing and sometimes relaxing. Although A Qing was used to it, he was still puzzled, wondering where Yuan Ye's mind had wandered off to.

She didn't care whether the bamboo bloomed or not; she just felt a pang of heartache seeing Yuan Ye working day and night, always worrying about tactical training or frowning at the income and expenditure reports. Her little ears twitched, and not hearing anyone nearby, she leaned over, reached out, and gently smoothed Yuan Ye's brow, asking softly, "What's wrong?"

Yuan Ye snapped out of his reverie, took her small hand, and gently pulled her to sit beside him, smiling as he said, "Nothing, I just suddenly remembered something..."

Well, Aqing is definitely over sixteen years old. He sent Aman, that chattering little light bulb, to Ezo Island to live like a savage. Some things naturally happened, and their relationship has taken a step further.

The two of them had finally gotten together. Yuan Ye gently hugged her, but A Qing was still a little shy. She used all her knowledge to the fullest, and her little ears twitched again. Only after making sure that no one would suddenly knock on the office door did she relax a little. She leaned gently on his shoulder and said, "You don't have to work so hard. We... are already very happy."

Her current life is comfortable, peaceful, and serene—a kind of happiness that Aqing never dared to dream of before. If she could have one more child, or a few more, she felt that living like this for the rest of her life would be the ultimate happiness in the world. At most, she would have the chance to avenge her parents and even the entire village in the future. She had no other desires in this life.

So she felt that was enough. They had almost everything they needed, and there was no need for Haruno to try to expand his territory or cross the sea to the Ise Peninsula to fight and kill. The two of them... well, and the Inu Princess, the three of them... uh, and also Aman who ate with them, the four of them could live like this for the rest of their lives.

Yuan Ye paused for a moment, then shook his head with a smile: "No, these days it's either advance or fall behind. If we don't move forward, we won't be able to keep our current lives."

Japan's Sengoku period was like a breeding ground for venomous insects, a bloody battlefield where some things couldn't be avoided. Even if you didn't eat others, they might want to eat you! Just like when he was hiding in Takeuchi-sou, he didn't provoke or offend anyone, but he made some money and lived a slightly better life. Then, the powerful clans of Owari started to have their eyes on him.

In this era, one can only grow stronger by devouring others. There are no good birds among the daimyo samurai; they are all poisonous snakes, scorpions, centipedes, and toads. If he doesn't train himself to become a crab and crush them all along the way, he won't have any chance of survival.

At the very least, as a human being, one should have the ability to fight back when danger is imminent, and at the very least, the strength to fight to the death while maintaining dignity.

Moreover, everyone should have something to strive for in life. He has his own plans, and he should do something with this opportunity. It's not enough to just live a happy little life.

Aqing didn't fully understand what he said, but she knew that what Yuanye said made sense. She could only raise her hand again to rub Yuanye's brow and whisper, "Then don't work too hard."

"It's not hard."

Yuan Ye didn't feel it was hard work. He was able to marry A Qing, so he hadn't wasted his bad luck in transmigrating. Besides, in modern times, his talent was only average. Even if he graduated from university, he would be nothing special and wouldn't have a chance to do anything great.

Aqing wasn't a talkative person. Even though she dared to take a bullet for Yuanye, she wasn't very sweet-talking. Hearing this, she didn't say anything more and just leaned against him. Yuanye also liked this quiet tenderness and let his mind go blank for a while.

Only when she heard footsteps coming from the corridor outside did Aqing suddenly turn around lightly and kneel back down opposite Yuanye. Yuanye, feeling a little guilty, quickly got back to the point and said to her, "Give an order to have the survivors operating in the Ise Province area report on the bamboo forest's flowering status and investigate whether the local powerful families have taken any famine preparedness measures. If so, find out the details of their famine preparedness."

He then picked up his pen and began writing orders, demanding that the civil affairs department increase the amount of miscellaneous grains collected from the Kanto and Tohoku regions, and that the standard for disaster preparedness grain reserves in Wanjin be raised, in order to prevent the situation where, if they occupy the territory on the Ise Peninsula in the future, the disaster is more severe than expected, and they themselves will have no food to eat.

Incidentally, he also issued another military order, giving another batch of casualty targets, demanding that the recruitment and training of new soldiers in Wanjin Army be accelerated, accelerated, and accelerated again, so as to complete the preparations for war as soon as possible.

Then all he could do was wait and see after the autumn harvest.

Anyway, he's determined to get to the Ise Peninsula. Hopefully, Takeko won't cause him too much trouble!
(End of this chapter)