Chapter 204 - 141: Is Our Lives Not Lives?

After the Imagawa army launched a large-scale harassing operation that very day, they completely quieted down. Their casualties were too high, morale took too heavy a hit, and it simply wasn’t worth the cost, especially since the enemy’s castle-building work was barely affected. The enemy’s construction crews were resolute—minor casualties weren’t enough to scare them off. They resumed work not long after fighting ceased, even cheering loudly. Their morale was soaring—Harano had employed the "money-slinging" tactic, handing out bonuses on the spot and announcing that anyone working on the frontlines enjoyed the same status as soldiers and would receive soldier-level pay. After the battle, those with merit would get priority for induction into the military, matchmaking, and first pick for the use rights over farmland and houses. Yes, Harano was now using a kind of alternative "state ownership of land"—that is, land, as the most basic and important means of production, nominally all belonged to him. He allocated usage rights to others and defended those rights from encroachment. At the same time, usage rights could not be traded, and only if certain specific conditions were met could he buy them back at a high price or compensate and assign better land; no one else had that privilege. He wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do, but for now this was how the Wanjin land policy would be run. He’d deal with any issues later. Thus ended the first day. Asahina Taisuke had suffered a major setback, so the next day he changed tactics, sending out small squads of samurai from the Lang Faction, experts in archery, to snipe with stealth arrows, hoping to inflict maximum casualties on the enemy construction teams while minimizing his own losses. But he hadn’t expected the enemy, after defending for a whole day, seemed to have learned a thing or two themselves, and simultaneously switched up their own tactics. They started using five-man iron cannon squads to focus fire—always targeting the samurai—easy targets, since samurai in these times went out of their way to be noticed, wearing all sorts of ridiculous helmets. It was impossible not to recognize them. Both sides shot at each other for another whole day. The Wanjin Army lost over a dozen construction workers and two iron gunners, while the Imagawa army lost sixteen lower-ranked samurai, with even more severely wounded. But the Imagawa quickly managed to turn things around at night. Night-time construction needed lighting, putting one side in the light and the other in darkness—the Imagawa soldiers hid in the shadows and scored several sneaky kills, shooting dead or wounding several construction workers without suffering any losses themselves, forcing Harano to halt all night and late evening construction work. But he wasn’t one to simply swallow a loss—he copied their methods, immediately organizing a counterattack. He sent out a small squad with iron cannons to sneak out of the city and raid the Imagawa encampment, crawling up incredibly close before suddenly opening fire, launching a fierce bombardment on the ashigaru’s camp. The ashigaru were immediately thrown into chaos—howling, panicking, rolling and scrambling everywhere, the entire camp in turmoil—with well over a hundred dying in the confusion and dozens more disappearing. Asahina Taisuke had no choice but to switch to defense, quickly repairing and reinforcing his camp barricades so that Harano wouldn’t get a taste for this and try it again. And so, the two sides went back and forth, settling into a temporary stalemate. Harano saw that the enemy didn’t dare launch a large-scale assault and lacked the courage to go all-out, so he resumed castle construction—though the pace dropped by more than half. When the rock fortress at the port behind them was finished, he brought up several more construction teams, started work section by section, and the speed finally got back to just about acceptable. For now, Asahina Taisuke had no answer for the city-held enemy. He could only watch as the enemy’s sheep-wall stretched longer and higher. More than once, he nearly decided to launch an all-out assault, even if it was only to smash up the enemy’s works and the growing sheep-wall. But he couldn’t bear to lose so many of his own Lang Faction members, so he just couldn’t steel himself to give the order. All he could do was constantly urge the Matsudaira family to hurry over with reinforcements. The Matsudaira were obedient enough. Ten days later, the Matsudaira troops stationed farther north at the Bai Chuan Pass arrived as quickly as possible, led by the Grand General Yakai Chiyomoto, bringing over seven hundred of the Lang Faction with them. After all, the Matsudaira had suffered far more at the hands of the Oda Danjo Chonosuke family, and were extremely wary of Oda Nobunaga’s plan to "retake" Chita County. It was easy to attack Sanhe from here—they really didn’t want to have the Oda Danjo Chonosuke family as neighbors again. So putting in heavy troops was a no-brainer—these seven hundred Lang Faction were nearly all the manpower the Matsudaira family had outside Sanhe. But when Yakai Chiyomoto reached the battlefield, he was completely baffled by what he saw. After a long pause, gripping the hilt of his sword, he asked Asahina Taisuke, "Lord Asahina, what is the deal with this wall?" He’d heard rumors of the enemy’s situation before arriving, but what he saw was nothing like he’d been told. He’d been led to believe the enemy just had three scattered rock forts in the mountains and by the river, and one lonely Stone City. What he found instead was the enemy had already built a tall wall, linking it all together—the front was completely sealed off, and work was still going strong. From afar, he could see crowds of enemy soldiers working merrily, reinforcing and elevating the wall’s top. Yakai Chiyomoto couldn’t comprehend what he was witnessing. If Asahina Taisuke weren’t with the Imagawa family, and the Asahina Family’s patriarch wasn’t an elder in Imagawa, Yakai Chiyomoto would already have drawn his blade and hacked him down—this was the stuff of epic-level fools. How had this clown become Grand General? He’d stood by and watched the enemy build a fortress, and let them finish it to this ridiculous extent! This was practically a crime—he should be executed by military law! Asahina Taisuke was speechless, but didn’t want to take the fall as the incompetent one. After a silence, he sighed, "Lord Yakai, you don’t understand. The enemy has a strong citadel at their back, their morale is high, and they simply can’t be stopped. And the way they build—so easy, so fast, it’s impossible to halt them." He waved his hand to summon a few subordinates, who brought over a fragment of broken concrete. He had risked seven or eight lives during a night raid to snatch this "treasure," but there was no snatching any more. The enemy’s sheep-wall was closed up and had been built to a height no normal person could easily scale barehanded. Trying to grab this kind of "treasure" again was basically impossible. He signaled Yakai Chiyomoto to examine it, and Yakai, curiosity piqued, flipped over the concrete. He found it very hard and angular, barely different from normal stone, but within it he saw two broken lengths of bamboo, so snugly embedded in the "stone" that it looked as though they’d grown inside it naturally. Asahina Taisuke explained: "It’s a strange kind of mud. At first, it smashed apart with just a couple of blows, but after being brought back, it hardened within half a day to be as tough as stone. The enemy builds their wall layer by layer, like playing with mud." Mud? Yakai Chiyomoto drew a tachi from a household retainer standing nearby and struck the surface in a single blow—the blade sparked, and on the next few swings, even the sword broke, but the concrete itself remained unharmed. He too fell silent, unable for the moment to make sense of this... thing that seemed like magic. Seeing Yakai Chiyomoto finally understood the situation, Asahina Taisuke relaxed a bit and earnestly proposed, "Lord Yakai, the enemy’s methods are bizarre. I believe we can’t wait any longer—we must strike quickly and attack now. What do you think?" His tone was thoroughly sincere. Given the enemy’s pace of construction, wait a few more days and who knows what the wall would turn into. Now that their allies had arrived, he wanted to launch a full assault immediately—no more waiting. Yakai Chiyomoto understood his meaning halfway through—that Matsudaira was expected to lead the charge! But looking at the fortress, the sheep-wall, and the rock forts across the way, the only thing missing was a major river—this was even more extreme than the Bai Chuan Pass line. He really wanted to jab his broken sword straight into Asahina Taisuke’s chest—you Imagawa bastards arrived first, could’ve attacked, but no, you watched the enemy build their city. Now that it’s finished, you expect us to take the lead? Are our lives worth nothing to you? But he couldn’t say it out loud. Right now, the Matsudaira family was an Imagawa ally in name, but in reality a vassal. The current Matsudaira patriarch was still under house arrest in Shimizu Castle (also called Fuchu Castle or Shizuoka Castle). All Matsudaira affairs were basically dictated by the Imagawa. Even so, he really didn’t want to throw his head against those solid defenses. After a moment, he delicately asked, "Has your lordship spoken with that Harano Saburo?" In other words, he was hinting at whether Asahina Taisuke had tried to flip the enemy’s Grand General. Such things had many precedents—if the reward was high enough, local magnates could betray anyone, switching sides on the battlefield or even killing their own foster-lord was nothing unusual. Of course Asahina Taisuke had tried. He scowled and retorted, "I tried. No matter what we offered, that Harano Saburo wouldn’t budge. He has no samurai dignity, refuses to acknowledge himself as a retainer of the Oda Danjo Chonosuke family, keeps talking about wanting to move here and open up the land—nonsense! Says he wants to coexist ’harmoniously’ with us, promises that as long as we withdraw, before the Imagawa leaves Chita County, he’ll never expand outward, never take any action against the Bai Chuan Pass line—a pack of senseless blather, not the least bit sincere!" Yakai Chiyomoto thought that offer really wasn’t bad. Let the other side have this scrap of land; it didn’t matter. But he also understood Asahina Taisuke’s concerns—if roles were reversed, he wouldn’t trust the other side to keep their word either. Only if the other side completely withdrew from Chita Peninsula and handed it over would it be safe to relax. So, no deal. There had to be a fight! Yakai Chiyomoto gave up hope of avoiding it. Still, looking at the orderly defenses across the field, he felt a lingering chill. He turned and asked Asahina Taisuke, "What’s your plan of attack?" If they really meant to send the Matsudaira alone to die, charging the walls head-on, then he’d refuse to play along—or pretend to help, while giving no real effort! "Come, Lord Yakai, let’s go back and discuss in depth!" Asahina Taisuke was quite polite—he hadn’t intended to send the Matsudaira and Chita magnates to throw their lives away all by themselves. Even if he’d initially wanted Matsudaira to lead the charge with him picking up the pieces, that notion had faded. Now he was prepared to bleed a bit himself and attempt to take the enemy’s city in one bold stroke. After all, the enemy built fortifications incredibly quickly. If this went on unchecked, he could pour the entire Asahina Family fortune into it and might still fail to take the enemy’s stronghold. ...... Asahina Taisuke and Yakai Chiyomoto met privately for a long time and decided to launch an all-out night assault on the enemy’s city that very evening, hoping to settle it in a single night battle. Night fighting was feasible—Japan’s summer menu included copious fish, shellfish, and snails. Even in other seasons, fish and daikon were consumed quite often, so there were few cases of vitamin A deficiency, meaning almost no night-blindness, certainly less than in northern China. Night operations weren’t a problem—the only catch was that only trained ashigaru and Lang Faction could be deployed, as untrained ashigaru might get lost in the dark or just slip away and desert. Once the two had reached a private agreement, they called a war meeting, passed the decision along to the Chita magnates, and began preparations, which were greeted with bitter faces. At the same time, they sent out more troops to harass the Wanjin Army, engaging in daytime skirmishes—burning as much of the enemy’s strength as possible before nightfall. When night fell, all became quiet as both sides rested. It wasn’t until deep into the night that the mustered force of over three thousand men set out, pushing masses of bamboo and wooden fences, bringing a huge number of scaling ladders and lamp oil—sneaking out of the camps in pitch darkness and heading straight for the quietly looming "Stone City."