Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 82 If you can’t find the monkey, you can find his wife first!

Aman pondered for a long time, wanting to kill the thief but unable to do so. Just as he was about to ask Yuanye if he had any other clues, he saw that he was also stroking his chin and frowning in thought.

He has been doing this action frequently recently, mainly because his chin was uncomfortable from manual shaving in ancient times, and he couldn't help but want to touch it. Ah Man has a strong learning ability and loves to imitate him, so she learned it subconsciously. But she didn't feel anything when she touched her chin for a while just now. Seeing that he was touching it vigorously, she couldn't help but become curious, so she leaned over to touch his chin - her chin felt like Ah Qing's butt, smooth, and she didn't know what his chin felt like.

There must be something wonderful about it, otherwise he wouldn't be touching it all the time. She also wants to try the feel of it!
Yuanye opened her claws with a "snap" and glared at her - How dare a mere servant like you touch the chin of the lord?
There should be a limit to leniency. Let’s work on it until we are old enough to write it down!

Ah Man was a little unhappy that he didn't find the person, but seeing that he was very worried, he didn't bother with him. He just cared about the business first: "You have been thinking about it for so long, do you have any other clues? If there is, I will go there again! I am also very annoyed that I can't find anyone. I can't do anything else!"

"Don't worry, let me think about it!" Yuanye actually had some ideas, but his thoughts were interrupted by the wild boy Aman, so he could only think about it again.

There must have been a person named Monkey in history, but we can't find him now... He didn't farm in the village, and he wasn't a member of Oda Danmasatada's family, so we have to look for him from other aspects. For example, after the Battle of Okehazama, he was given the name "Kinoshita Tokichiro" by Oda Nobunaga, so "Kinoshita" was his family name.

Theoretically speaking, a family name cannot be chosen randomly, especially since the family name "Kinoshita" existed in the Japanese Warring States Period. Oda Nobunaga couldn't just force Monkey to join a certain family with a wave of his hand - such behavior could easily cause misunderstandings from others, and there would be suspicion that he wanted to send his own retainers to forcibly inherit the Kinoshita family.

Yuanye thought of this and asked Aman, "Are there any people from the Kinoshita family in Owari? Is the Kinoshita family powerful?"

Ah Man was stunned for a moment, not understanding why he was asking this, but he immediately answered, "Of course there are no Kinoshita family members in Owari now. Isn't it that the family line has died out? The house we live in now used to belong to the Kinoshita family!"

After being reminded by her, Yuanye remembered that the original owner of this house was really named Kinoshita, and he had been killed by an accidental cannon discharge by Oda Nobunaga.

He patted his head, punished himself, and quickly asked, "So there are no other Kinoshita families in Owari?"

"There shouldn't be any, at least I haven't heard of them." Aman was very familiar with family heritage and said directly, "The Kinoshita family is active mainly in the Kinki area, and there are more people in Kyoto. There won't be many in a remote place like Owari. I'm quite surprised to find one here."

Yuanye nodded slowly, and recalled what Oruki Seibei said when he moved in. It seemed that the Kinoshita family was indeed extinct, leaving only two young daughters. They were going to wait for the two daughters to grow up and recruit sons to continue the family name...

Could it be that Oda Nobunaga assigned the monkey to marry one of the two sisters and restore the family name of the Owari Kinoshita family?
Doesn’t that mean that one of the two sisters is Ningning, the future “one of the three ladies of the Warring States Period”?

Did I live in Ningning's house? Was I planning to renovate her ancestral home?

It’s a small world, I never thought of it before...

Yuanye thought about it for a while and felt that this was very likely, but he needed to verify it. He immediately instructed Aman: "Go find out where the two daughters of the Kinoshita family are and find out about their situation! Be detailed!"

"Huh?" Ah Man was confused again. Wasn't he looking for someone who looked like a monkey? Why did he start looking for the two daughters of the Kinoshita family? This was too crazy, wasn't it? Could it be that Ah Qing didn't like that second-hand donkey, or that second-hand donkey was so skilled that he could sneak into the house every night and kick his head despite Ah Qing's strict defense?
This shouldn't be!
She really couldn't understand what Yuanye was thinking, and asked in confusion: "Why? Why do you want to go find the two daughters of the Kinoshita family again? What is your relationship with them? What do you want to do with them?"

Yuanye was holding it in for a while, but he really couldn't explain it. He could only sigh deeply, looking distressed, and remain silent.

"Okay, okay, stop sighing, I'll be there soon!" Ah Man was convinced when she saw him like this. Yuan Ye sighed at her with a sad face, and she felt uncomfortable, as if she owed him a lot of money and hadn't paid him back. She felt deeply guilty and would be uncomfortable if she didn't do something for him.

She gave in, turned around and walked away without asking any more questions, but she kept muttering as she walked, "Today is really like a dung beetle eating bean buns, it's so weird! What the hell is going on?"

…………Aman spent another whole day, went out to inquire, and mobilized her former "drinking and eating friends" to help. Soon, she got a complete set of information about the two sisters of the Kinoshita family. She hurried back home, wiped the sweat from her head, and began to report to Yuanye: "They have been found. They are now in Furuno Castle. Their adoptive father is Asano Nagakatsu. The older one is called Ni Ni, and the younger one is called A Cheng."

After she finished her report, she sat down on the ground and shouted to Yayoi to get her some water. She was really exhausted in the past half month, and she had to eat two chickens tonight to make up for it - stew one for the soup and fry one for the meat, and enjoy it to her heart's content!
Yuanye savored the pronunciation of "Ni Ni" and felt that the Chinese character could be written as "Ning Ning", so it was most likely her. She would be the future "Kitamando", the "Onii-chu Taiko" of the Toyotomi family, and one of the three giants who would control the world in the future.

After tasting the tea, he looked at A-man again, and quickly showed respect to her. He personally held a book to fan her, and personally took the tea brought by Yayoi and handed it to her, but asked, "So, Mrs. Kinoshita's family is the Asano family?"

"That's not the case! Burp!" Ah Man gulped down three glasses of water, his stomach rumbling, and he burped as he said, "Mrs. Kinoshita's family is the Binyuan family, but the Binyuan family is very poor, and they have so many children that they can no longer raise them, so they sent them to the Asano family as adopted daughters, but..."

"But what?"

"But I heard that Asano Nagakatsu asked for it himself, and it seems that he spent a lot of money, and it seems that he got the permission from Oda Nobunaga in private, but this is just gossip, I can't guarantee its accuracy." Aman answered, and hesitated for a moment, "When the two Kinoshita sisters came to the Akirahara family, they had a sum of money on them, probably from the sale of the house, at least part of it. I heard that the money disappeared after they arrived at the Akirahara family, and some people said that the two Kinoshita sisters lived very poorly in the Akirahara family at that time, and were arranged to live in the woodshed, but this is also gossip, and it is hard to say whether it is accurate or not."

"So are the two sisters living well in the Asano family now?"

"They are living very well!" Ah Man inquired very carefully, and all the rice he had eaten was not in vain. "Asano Nagakatsu is a good person by nature, and his social status is not bad. You have met him before. He was a general in the military, with a high salary and many rewards. He has no children, so he loves the two sisters as if they were his own daughters. I heard that the two sisters are now very outstanding, and many families are considering marrying them."

Yuanye nodded slowly, feeling that everything was now connected.

When Oda Nobunaga was playing with a cannon, it accidentally went off and hit the thigh of his retainer Kinoshita. It didn't look serious at the time, so Oda Nobunaga probably didn't take it a big deal and let Kinoshita recover on his own. As a result, Kinoshita died for unknown reasons more than 20 days later. The retainers who supported him immediately became furious and felt that this lord was a good-for-nothing and wanted to get rid of him. Oda Nobunaga probably had a rebellious mentality and didn't pay any attention to the affairs of the Kinoshita family at that time.

It was not until the incident gradually died down that he began to feel a little sorry for his retainers - Oda Nobunaga was still good to his own people and could not be said to be too cruel, not to mention that he was only fourteen or fifteen years old at the time - probably wanting to make amends, he sent people to look for Kinoshita's relatives privately, and found out that the Kinoshita sisters were not living well, so he arranged for Asano Nagakatsu, a suitable person, to adopt them. It was a good arrangement - the elder sister could be used to resume the Kinoshita family name, and the younger sister could be used to recruit a son-in-law to inherit the Asano family name. It was a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone, and Asano Nagakatsu would not let his hard work be in vain.

And if you think about it carefully, in history, the relationship between Nene and Oda Nobunaga was indeed extraordinary. It seems that after Kinoshita Tokichiro became the lord of a city, he took concubines like crazy. The number of concubines was so large that Nene could not bear it anymore, so she sent a letter to Oda Nobunaga. Oda Nobunaga was furious and wrote a letter to scold the monkey as a "bald rat who can only see an inch of land in front of him". He also ordered that he didn't need to come to see him that year and let Nene come instead, just like a girl's family supporting her married daughter.

At the same time, Ningning seemed to have a very high status in the Kinoshita family. According to later documents, the maids often heard Ningning scolding monkeys, and even scolding the monkeys in Owari dialect until their faces turned red and they apologized proactively, showing great confidence.

So looking at it this way, Kinoshita Tokichiro is indeed very likely to be the son-in-law appointed by Oda Nobunaga to the Kinoshita family. As for why he is the son-in-law...

Yuanye sat around the desk and started grinding the mill again, stroking his chin and continuing his conspiracy theory - could it be that Oda Nobunaga was intentionally supporting him?
Oda Nobunaga wanted to establish a dictatorship in Owari. He hated Owari's "dual system" - the retainers of my retainers are not my retainers, and the subjects of my retainers are not my subjects. He wanted to control all the local powerful families in Owari. However, the local powerful families in Owari were not the kind of people who would sit there and wait for death. They would definitely resist openly or secretly.

This should be a long process. At this time, there is a need for someone who has nothing to do with the Owari clans to compete with them and to carry out various constraints. So Oda Nobunaga supported a group of grassroots samurai and wandering samurai such as Kinoshita Tokichiro and Akechi Mitsuhide?
In "Nobuo no Taiko 2", samurai from powerful families such as Shibata Katsuie and Sasa Narimasa would jump out to confront the monkey for no reason. Even though the monkey was polite to them, they still chased and confronted it. It is very likely because of this.

Of course, things in the game cannot be accurate, but in history, Monkey King was indeed hostile to people like Shibata Katsuie. After Oda Nobunaga died, they just fought with each other. It was obvious that they were two factions, so there should be no problem with this.

Oda Nobunaga needed grassroots people like Kinoshita Tokichiro, so in order to give him a legitimate samurai identity or to reduce opposition from the powerful families, it was not impossible to let him restore the Kinoshita family name and marry Nene.

As for the later saying that Kinoshita Tokichiro and Ningning were in a free love relationship... It seems unlikely that the daughter of a serious samurai, and the daughter of the head of the Asano family, was in a free love relationship with a grassroots Lang Gang! A 13-year-old girl and a 26-year-old man were in a free love relationship... This also sounds a bit fantasy and should not be very likely!
Yuanye thought about it and thought that it was almost certain. This was the case. He immediately became interested and said to Aman, "Accompany me to visit Lord Asano Nagakatsu tomorrow."

He is very curious about Ningning and wants to go see the real person tomorrow, as a kind of alternative archaeology. And since he can't find the monkey, he might as well find his wife first!

(End of this chapter)