Chapter 214: Divine Artifact!
“This boat is OK. The money spent on Okabe is worth it.”

Aman stood on the top of the ship’s tower of the “Chita”, the largest ship in Wanjin, looking at the vast Ise Bay, feeling the sea breeze on his face, and spoke with great satisfaction.

The main thing is that this huge ship wrapped in layers of “money” is golden and gorgeous. Even if it has a vulgar atmosphere of a nouveau riche, it still fits her aesthetic very well.

Moreover, Okabe Igen is worthy of being an old carpenter whose name will be left in history. He built this ship quite well. Even though Aman does not know carpentry or ship building, after sailing around the ship for a few laps, he can still feel that the spatial structure of the ship is very reasonable, the various tools on the ship are quite ingenious, and the ship’s driving is very stable.

Maybe it’s because of the attention to detail, a feeling that is hard to describe in words, but Aman felt that this boat was more comfortable than any other boat she had ever been on.

“It’s really worth the money!”

Yuanye was also quite satisfied with the final results submitted by Okabe Yiyan. Anyway, even if he were to do it, his work would never reach the level of “Chitahao” – principles and process technology are two different things. Knowing the principles can enable one to make physical objects across industries and produce them on a large scale, which is only possible in time-travel novels.

Just like many people can explain the principles of wind tunnels and atomic bombs, but if you let them oversee their construction or ask them how to handle a certain detail, they will definitely roll their eyes.

The Wanjin navy was also very excited to get the new warships. Under the command of chief instructor Yu Da, they were constantly conducting various tests, accelerating and decelerating from time to time, or signaling to the Guan ships and Xiaozao ships that were accompanying them, directing them to cooperate in their actions in order to put the warships into actual combat as soon as possible.

Yuanye didn’t care about them and just sat on the ship’s deck as a “mascot”, allowing the Wanjin navy to wander around in Ise Bay.

By the next morning (it had dropped anchor at night and did not sail at night), the Chita had sailed all the way to the west side of Ise Bay and saw the Ise Peninsula. Only then did Yuanye become interested again.

Currently, there are four major samurai forces on the Ise Peninsula, namely the Kitabatake family, the Miyoshi family, the Hatakeyama family and the Rokkaku family.

The Rokkaku family does not need to worry too much, as it only occupies a small amount of territory at the base of the peninsula and has a weak presence on the peninsula. As for the other three families, the Kitabatake family controls northern Ise and is a neighbor across the sea from the Harano family;
The Miyoshi family controlled a large area of the plain in the central part of the peninsula, while the Hatakeyama family controlled the rest.

These three families were considered powerful daimyo during the Warring States Period in Japan.

Especially the Miyoshi family, which is currently in its heyday, controls Kinki, and owns the eight provinces of Yamashiro, Settsu, Kawachi, Izumi, Tamba, and Harima. It also actually holds the real power of the Muromachi shogunate and is the “deputy shogun” of the shogunate. If Harano history remembers correctly, in the future the Miyoshi family will hack the swordsman shogun of the Ashikaga family to death, and will be regarded as the terminator of the Muromachi shogunate era.

The second strongest family, the Hatakeyama family, is not easy to mess with either. Its core territory is in Nishi-Ise, facing Shikoku Island. It is one of the controllers of the Seto Inland Sea shipping routes. Its navy is very strong and it is very rich, but it is the type who makes a fortune in silence and has little interest in disputes on land. Its reputation in history is average.

The weakest clan was the Kitabata clan, and it was this weakest clan in history… About seven years later, Oda Nobunaga wanted to take over northern Ise, and mobilized fifty to seventy thousand men and fought for a long time but failed to succeed. In the end, he could only force the Kitabata clan to accept Oda Nobuo as their adopted son and heir, which was only a disguised submission.

Harano is now somewhat interested in the Kitabatake family in northern Ise. After all, he is now imprisoned on the Chita Peninsula by Oda Nobunaga and Matsudaira Motoyasu. Unless he breaks off relations with them completely, he cannot get out. The only way out is to cross the sea to seek a way out.

But judging from the distance at which he can currently engage in combat, to the east along the coastline are the Matsudaira, Imagawa, Hojo, and Uesugi families, none of which are easy to deal with at the moment. Even the Imagawa family is not easy to deal with. If the Three Kingdoms Alliance is triggered, even if the Imagawa, Takeda, and Hojo families beat him up, even if he can withstand it, a lot of his people will die. And to the west along the coastline are the Oda, Kitabatake, Hatakeyama, and Miyoshi families, and among them, only the Kitabatake family can be attacked.

Ah Man had been hanging out with him all day, and knew that he had been restless because of a certain plan. Seeing him staring at the coastline of Kitaiise in a trance, with green light in his eyes, Ah Man immediately started to nag, “Save your breath. The last time the Kitabatake family fought with the Miyoshi family, they dragged out more than 20,000 people to fight. If you count the reinforcements from the allies they called in, they have more than 30,000 people. We can’t do anything to them now.”

Previously, due to the expansion of its territory, Wanjin needed a large number of grassroots officials and was forced to retire many of its military officers and veterans. Currently, it has only more than 2,000 professional soldiers, which is not as good as the Battle of Okehazama. And with this little strength, it is not only a pipe dream but also too difficult to defeat 20,000 or 30,000 people and swallow up northern Ise.

“I’m just taking a look. For now… I don’t plan to do anything.”

Although Yuanye was stubborn, he had no intention of trying to defeat ten with one. Even if he could replicate the Xinwanjin landing battle, he did not have enough grassroots officials to control the new territory.

We can only look forward to the future…

Yuanye calmed down and decided to hold back on his growth, while the “Chita” ignored the surprise of the fishermen along the Kitabatake coast and sailed along the coastline of the Ise Peninsula all the way to the top of the Ise Peninsula, then crossed the Ise Bay diagonally again and returned to Shinwantsu, thus completing this sailing training.

Well, after passing the top of the Ise Peninsula, going west, we will enter the Seto Inland Sea. That place is a very popular place, with merchant ships coming and going, many islands and fortresses, pirates everywhere, and countless naval forces. Now with the strength of the “Chita” and several Kanbune and Kobayashi, it is better not to send food there, and that place is not a place that Wanjin can afford to provoke at the moment.

There is still a long way to go. Wanjin’s current strength is still not strong enough and it can still only be considered a small company.

…………Yuanye personally led the Wanjin navy to train hard, running around on the sea, firing all kinds of cannons and shooting, regardless of cost, hoping to quickly form a fighting force, and the new Wanjin city was also very lively.

It’s mainly about the iron workshop owners led by Hirashima Kichijiro.

They have collectively come back to life, and after obtaining large bank loan support and ordering ships, they are working at full capacity to build iron tools in the hope that they can fill their cargo ships again and again in the future, so that they can make as much money as possible by selling goods on this hard-earned voyage.

Otherwise, if we let Lord Nohara take us on a trip and come back only to sell a few thousand kilograms of ironware, wouldn’t that be stupid?

For this reason, they have even stopped considering the possibility of failure and have begun to desperately borrow money in private. They have also started to recruit workers abnormally during this period of industry downturn, and have offered very high salaries, just to store more goods.

It doesn’t matter. The Lord of Wanjin has already done this for them. If they fail, such as the ship sinks due to a storm, or they are beaten back on the way, they have nothing to complain about. They can only blame their bad luck. At that time, they don’t plan to cause trouble for Yuanye or Wanjin anymore. They can just jump into the sea and commit suicide hand in hand.

Life or death depends on this one!

If you pass this one, you will become bigger and stronger. If you fail, you will die!
The abnormal behavior of Kichijiro Hirashima and others caused quite a stir. The people of Wanjin had always thought that Lord Yuanye was a little too crazy and too kind, like a reincarnation of Bodhisattva. They did not expect that he could go one step further – in order to prevent the dozen or twenty small workshop owners in the territory from going bankrupt, he was willing to spend a huge amount of money to build a copper boat and personally escort them on a trip.

Since ancient times, Japan has never heard of such a thing. It is good enough for ordinary merchants, such lowly goods, not to be eaten alive by the lords, but they can actually get help from the superiors?
The “parliament” created by Yuanye also became an instant hit. Even though there were no newspapers in Xinwanjin City yet and information was not widely available, many people quickly turned their attention to this emerging thing and began to carefully study how Hirashima Kichijiro and his group of unlucky guys managed to turn their fortunes around with this thing.

When it comes to their own interests, most people in this world are very smart, and it took these smart people less than two days to discover that the parliament could actually “command” senior internal affairs officials such as Endo Chiyo.

Or maybe it shouldn’t be called command, but rather being able to cry at the meeting and get some help from Endo Chiyo and others. For example, this time, it even alarmed Lord Nohara, forcing Lord Nohara to go there in person.

Something that can summon the Lord of Wanjin, if it were set in a Western fantasy setting, it would be a divine weapon!
After all, when it comes to destructive power, Yuanye is much stronger than the giant octopus!

As more and more people learned the news, more and more people coveted the “divine weapon”, and at the same time, the number of psychologically unbalanced people began to double – they were all old subordinates of Lord Nohara, why was it that only people like Kichijiro Hirashima could enjoy the privilege?
It would be fine if the person involved was Lord Aman. Lord Aman is said to have saved Lord Nohara more than a dozen times and was hit by more than 300 arrows for Lord Nohara. Everyone can understand that he enjoys some privileges. But who is Kichijiro Hirashima? He is not the only one who has dug ditches and washed iron sand for Wanjin. There are many people who are more senior than him, and those who have made greater contributions than him are countless.

This is not fair, I should also have a share of Lord Nohara’s favor!
With the support of Yuanye’s interest-free loans over the years, many private workshop owners have emerged in Wanjin. These people are relatively bold and quick-witted. They shamelessly ask around and carefully study the “rules of procedure”. It didn’t take long before they dug out the “parliamentarians” representing themselves and began to criticize these people – you are such a waste, look at Kichijiro Hirashima, who was brave enough to take the lead and saved the entire industry with a proposal!

Look at you again, is the only thing you can do but vote in favor?

What should we do in this industry?
What, it was your first time and you didn’t know what was going on, so you weren’t prepared?

Why was Hirashima Kichijiro prepared? Why was he able to propose a proposal and cry in public?
You are a waste, go and cry in the parliament. Lord Nohara wants to protect those people and take them to Hokuriku to sell goods across half of Japan, so he must take us with him!

The “parliamentarians” manually selected by Yuanye originally had a good reputation in various industries and were relatively calm and honest people, but this time they were badly cheated by Yuanye. Many of them suddenly became synonymous with “waste”. Their colleagues were very dissatisfied with them, and some even said privately that although Yuanye always had a discerning eye for people, he made a mistake this time and the parliamentarians he selected for their industry were totally unqualified.

The implication was that he should be the MP. If he were elected, he would surely cry his eyes out in the parliament, and Yuan Ye would be so distressed that he would take them all with him.

These new MPs were being scolded openly or secretly by their peers and had no choice but to go to the parliament building to submit meeting requests, giving a variety of reasons.

Some people imitated Kichijiro Hirashima and played the victim. For example, many wine houses in Wanjin suffered huge losses due to food control in the past two years. The relevant parliamentarians cried in front of Speaker Izumi Heiji and claimed that since they had brought Kichijiro Hirashima and others, if they didn’t take their wine industry with them, they would have no face to see anyone and could only hang themselves in front of the parliament gate.

There were also some who were trying to be nice, such as the Wanjin dyeing industry and the salt industry. They had not been unlucky before, and most of them had “state-owned” status, but they all expressed their support for His Highness Nohara’s “selling expedition”, and asked him to be sure to take them with him, or at least give them a chance to speak at the meeting.

Izumi Heiji was ecstatic. As an old man, he had been dreaming of establishing a collective self-governing village all his life. He admired the parliament that Yuanye had set up very much. He had originally been a little worried that this thing would fail, but he never expected that it would be so popular.

After he urgently contacted Yuanye, he immediately organized the “Second Meeting of the Xinwanjin City Council” and successfully passed a proposal for a large group of people to follow the fleet on the expedition.

All of a sudden, Xinwanjin became prosperous after experiencing a famine. The prices of various raw materials skyrocketed. Even the newly built workshop like Wanjin Shipyard was overwhelmed with orders and was forced to recruit workers urgently. Its scale increased day by day.

(End of this chapter)