"Oh! Buddha above, what are these heavenly soldiers of the Great Ming? They can defeat the Yuan bandits? They're actually that powerful?!"
"Mm... Hachiman Great Bodhisattva protect us! Even if all the warrior houses of the shogunate were added together, they could hardly stand against one finger of one hand of the Great Ming!... That is also why, a hundred years ago, the third shogun Yoshimitsu accepted investiture from the Ming Dynasty emperor, and as the 'King of Japan,' acknowledged himself a vassal to the Ming Dynasty..."
"Ah! Maitreya Buddha protect us! Even the Retired Emperor, incarnation of Maitreya Buddha, became a vassal to the king of the Ming Dynasty?!"
"Sukeichiro, the Son of Heaven of the Ming Dynasty isn't a king. He is an emperor who stands above kings, the true reincarnated body of Tathagata Buddha! In all under Heaven, there is only this one emperor. Before, there was also the ogre-king emperor of the Yuan bandits, but a hundred years ago, he was killed by the Ming Dynasty emperor's dispatched barbarian-subduing Great General Xu Da!..."
"Whoa! If the Ming Dynasty emperor could kill the Yuan bandit emperor, the ogre king, then he really is Tathagata Buddha reincarnated. Terribly powerful!..."
At the mention of the "colossal Great Ming" west across the sea from Wagoku, the monk-soldier Watanabe Masumi's face showed fear, his expression clearly somewhat complicated. He came from a warrior house in Kyushu, and unlike Murakami Suemichi and Sukeichiro, these two local warriors from Ezo Land, he knew full well how formidable the Ming Dynasty was. On the contrary, he was very clear on the Ming Dynasty's strength—a strength that crushed all of Wagoku beneath it!
"Buddha be my witness! Though the warrior houses across Kyushu organize plundering fleets, they usually only plunder Joseon, and rarely dare to