Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 146 Betting everything, there is no turning back!

After Asahina Yasunaga and Sakai Tadamoto agreed to seek help together, they felt that they could not just sit there and wait for reinforcements, otherwise it would be embarrassing for them when the reinforcements arrived. So they decided to continue the attack, or at least pretend to continue the attack.

It's just that it's too difficult to storm a city by force, and it would be doubly difficult if the defenders had a strong will to fight. They also didn't want to use their flesh and blood to fight concrete. However, Japan's siege methods at this time were limited to a few methods, such as "fire attack", "water attack", "ground attack", and "bribing insiders to break into the city".

A fire attack was obviously impossible. The enemy's enclosure was not one of those made of earth and wood like the ones built by ordinary wealthy families. No matter whether a large number of flaming arrows were shot in or oil was directly poured on it to set it on fire, at most they would only burn some unimportant things like the bamboo sheds that served as shelter from arrows, and they would not be able to do anything to the enemy.

Water attack is not an option either. Although there is a river nearby, even if we store water and attack downstream, we still cannot reach the enemy's city. Even if we manage to reach it, how high a water flow would be needed to flood the enemy's high city?

Bribing an insider was even more unnecessary, as they had no idea who to bribe. The other side had so many people, and after asking around, they only knew the name of one warrior, Yuanye himself. There was no way they could bribe him to open the city gates personally.

If we could just bribe him and let him go away, there would be no need to go through so much trouble.

In the end, they discussed it over and over again but could not come up with any new ideas, so they could only try a "ground attack" - digging trenches all the way to see if they could dig down the enemy's wall, or see if they could build a slope of earth in front of the opposite wall and rush up to the top of the city along the slope.

Of course, they decided this, but they didn't hold much hope for this tactic. They felt that the possibility of success was slim, but they just didn't want to sit around doing nothing.

And it's not their fault that they couldn't think of a solution. Before large-caliber artillery appeared on the battlefield, anyone who attacked a city would have a splitting headache. Even the Mongols had suffered many defeats in front of the strong cities of the Southern Song Dynasty, and even a Khan had died. The actual fighting power of the Imagawa and Matsudaira families was not even comparable to a single hair of the Mongols, or was barely equivalent to a single hair of the Mongols. It was really painful for them to face Yuanye.

We cannot say that they are unwise and unintelligent; this is a crime not caused by war.

After they had repaired the camp for a day, they urged the miscellaneous soldiers brought by the Chita clan to dig a ditch. They first dug a horizontal ditch and piled up earth to cover the camp, and then dug vertically forward step by step until they reached the enemy's wall.

Yuanye was not in a hurry after discovering it. The distance was too far for him to interfere. Besides, since the other side was willing to carry out civil engineering work, it was just right. He opened a small door on the sheep wall near the "Stone City" side. This "Stone City" was designed specifically for grabbing land and was not intended to be inhabited in the future. Only a very small door was opened at the back, making it inconvenient to enter and exit.

Therefore, he opened another door in the sheep wall next to the "Stone City" and let the construction team go out from here and start building another sheep wall close to the city wall. Then, after this sheep wall was built, he could consider building another urn city between the double city walls.

By the way, he also planned to dig a few deep trenches in front of the city and pour concrete in advance to cheer the enemy up and let them dig to their heart's content.

Asahina Yasunaga and Sakai Tadashi naturally could not allow this, and while urging the Chita clan to carry out engineering works, they sent out a small team to stop them. The two sides returned to their original fighting mode - the Imagawa family and the Matsudaira family launched sneak attacks, while the Haruno's arquebusiers were in a dominant position, and with their extremely advantageous range, they formed groups of five or ten arquebuses and concentrated their fire on the opponent's lower-level samurai.

Sakai Tadamoto watched for two days and became numb. He completely understood why Asahina Yasunaga could not stop the enemy from building the wall. For every enemy killed or injured on his side, three or four people would be killed or injured on average. They were all lower-level samurai and guards who were extremely good at shooting. He could not afford to replace them.

Asahina Taicho was even more confused. He found that the other party's people who had sneaked out to work also put on armor and copied their bamboo and wooden fences to build a large number of them. They dragged them out at dawn to use as cover and dragged them back at dark. Even if they were forcibly burned, the other party didn't care, and they could still drag out new ones the next day. The exchanges between the two sides were worse than before.

They still couldn't stop the enemy from building new fortifications. They watched helplessly as a low sheep wall appeared in front of the enemy's city. Even the existing sheep walls on the enemy's two wings were being expanded with several more towers on them. They had only dug trenches and advanced a few dozen rooms and had not yet entered the enemy's best shooting range. The enemy was too lazy to pay attention to them.

I really don't bother with them, they haven't even come to harass me a few times, it feels very insulting.

For a moment, they wanted to slap themselves a few times, feeling that the "earth attack tactics" were extremely stupid, extremely stupid - the other side spent more than a month to build a solid city on a piece of wasteland, and also built an outrageous and genuine defense system. He was obviously a "super city-building master", and it was no exaggeration to say that he was the best city-building master in the world. Isn't it crazy for them to compete with him in digging earth and ditches?

At the same time, they didn't understand why Oda Nobunaga sent a "super city-building expert" like him to the Chita Peninsula. Wouldn't it be better to send him to the Shirakawaguchi front line?

With this man's miraculous ability to "turn mud into stone", if he were at the Shirakawaguchi front, he might have filled up the Shirakawa River by now, and then built this strange and solid rock fortress all the way forward, maybe he could even build it all the way into Mikawa Province.

Why didn't Oda Nobunaga do this?
These two people had really banged their heads against the city walls and knew that these city walls and rock fortresses were not just for show. After they came to their senses, they began to remember what Nohara had said before. They suspected that the "Nohara family" might indeed be an independent existence outside the Oda Danjotada family system, or at least had a great deal of autonomy, and Oda Nobunaga could not give orders whenever he wanted.

Asahina Yasunaga was curious and sent another messenger to ask Harano to swear that he was not a retainer of Oda Danmasatada's family. Harano did not care and swore in front of the messenger. He also happened to be having lunch and asked the messenger to bring back two grilled fish to express his willingness to live in harmony with the Imagawa family.

Asahina Yasunaga was slightly shaken, but after discussing with Sakai Tadamoto for a while, he still didn't dare to believe it completely. After all, the Oda family had just produced a guy who betrayed the covenant before the gods. Maybe the people of the Oda family just took the oath as a fart and didn't care whether they would have bad luck in the next life or not.

They did not mention the matter again, but maintained communication with Yuanye and sent envoys to return gifts. Then they were troubled by the fact that the enemy was obviously not afraid of earth attacks, so what should they do now? After much discussion, they still could not find a good solution. They could only bite the bullet and continue to dig forward, continue to fight for the slight possibility of success, and wait for reinforcements to see if they could attack again. …………

Asahina Yasunaga and Sakai Tadashi were feeling uncomfortable, and Harano was also feeling uncomfortable.

The small team of gendarmes that he asked Aman to leave in Wanjin and a team of coolies who were left behind to do the porter work suddenly escaped on the islanders' fishing boats, and Oda Nobunaga sent people to take over Wanjin.

He was helpless after receiving the news. He had been as careful as possible and waited for a good opportunity to take action, but he was unlucky. He did not expect that Oda Nobunaga would take Kiyosu Castle so easily. As a result, he only concealed it for more than a month, and his house had not been emptied yet, but he was discovered by Oda Nobunaga.

He rushed to the port and first comforted the coolies and gendarmes who had escaped after being squeezed like sardines. Then he asked the leader of the gendarmes, "Were we attacked?"

The leader of this military police team was Hata Saburo. He had fought in the Battle of Takeuchi-sho with Hara and had seen many storms. Even though he was running away in panic, he remained calm and immediately replied, "No, sir! We discovered the Oda family when they entered Wanjin Town. According to Lord Aman's orders, we evacuated immediately, but... there were not many ships transporting goods at the time, so we had to abandon all the goods and send people over."

"It's okay as long as no one is hurt. It doesn't matter if some things are lost. Your judgment is correct!" Yuanye first affirmed his achievement, and then asked in detail about the situation at that time. However, these gendarmes ran very fast. Before Oda Nobunaga's men found the small bay pier, they drove everyone onto the boat and paddled hard together, fearing that they would be detained. They ran very fast and there was not much information to provide.

Yuanye was not disappointed after asking. As long as there was no fighting, there was still room for easing. He was now facing the Imagawa family and the Matsudaira family in front, and he did not want to fight with the Oda family later. Oda Nobunaga had a navy, stationed in Shimazu and Atsuta. Although their strength was very average, it seemed that they only had seven or eight large-scale ships, but it was better not to provoke him at this time.

If they were really attacked from both sides, even if you think about it with your butt, it would not be a pleasant experience. Oda Nobunaga had a unique and rebellious personality, so it was difficult to predict how he would react.

At this point, Yuanye had no choice but to let Hata Saburo and the others go downstairs to have lunch and rest, and then quickly called Endo Chiyo, Maejima Juichiro and other internal affairs officials to check the supplies and see how much of the family property had been lost.

Because personnel, gunpowder, and volcanic ash cement were urgently needed at the beginning, and without them the city could not be built and would not stand, so they were put on the priority shipment list. Up to now, these have basically been transported, and only a small amount of leftovers are left, which will not affect the overall situation if lost.

However, because the transportation capacity for more than a month has been basically used to transport these urgently needed and bulky supplies, the second priority food also takes up a lot of space and must be transported with extra caution. After the initial storage of three months of rations, the subsequent transportation became intermittent, and front-line demand was given the first priority. As a result, it has not been transported until today, and there is a loss of about 15%.

Finally, there are the high-value materials that had been accumulated in the past, such as copper coins, cloth, leather, iron sand, charcoal, guano stone, cooked guano soil, etc. The transportation capacity allocated to these is even worse, and even if they are small in size, they can only be transported when there are gaps. It is estimated that at least 30% of them will be lost, and some may even lose more than 50%, or even be basically gone.

For example, a large amount of high-quality charcoal and stored guano, most of which are still in the warehouse and have never been transported to the warehouse.

After an emergency count of the supplies, Yuanye felt that it was still barely acceptable. After all, everything needed for the war had been rushed out, and the losses of money and the like... were just losses!

If the old doesn't go, the new won't come. If it doesn't work, he can rob Lin Xiuzhen's relatives in the future and ransack their homes to make up for it, and he won't suffer too much loss.

Of course, if Oda Nobunaga had discovered it a month later, all these things could have been transported here. However, the Oda family in Kiyosu was not strong enough and they broke into pieces at the first touch. He couldn't build his own ship now and had limited transportation capacity. It was already good enough to be able to transport them like this.

A'man, who was stationed at Beishanyan Fort, also received the news quickly and rushed over in a hurry. When he saw that so many valuables were missing from the house, he was so heartbroken that he couldn't breathe. He covered his chest as if he was having a heart attack. Yuanye quickly ordered A'qing to give her two breaths before he was able to rescue her.

While his place was in chaos, a small early morning boat paddled quickly to this nameless little port and brought them a handwritten order from Oda Nobunaga, requiring them to return to Wanjin immediately, or at least Yuanye himself should go back first, and other things could be discussed later.

After reading the letter, Yuanye did not refuse bluntly.

He had no personal grudge against Oda Nobunaga, and had always had a win-win and mutually beneficial relationship with him. There was no need to turn against him directly, and he wanted to delay the fight a little longer, so he immediately wrote a handwritten letter, claiming that he was in the midst of a fierce battle with the Imagawa and Matsudaira families and could not get away for the time being. He also wrote about some of the benefits of settling down on the Chita Peninsula, saying that it would at least disperse a lot of Imagawa family's troops.

Then, he sent the two powerful warriors sent by Oda Nobunaga and the letter onto the Kobana, and stood on the pier to watch them leave. He also instructed Endo Chiyo and others to make a contingency plan, prepare the boats, and be ready to sink them to the bottom of the sea at any time to block the waterway of this small bay.

He had no way out. For his own selfishness, for his freedom and dignity, he had gambled everything and didn't know if it was worth it.

(End of this chapter)