Hirado Castle was the Eastern Isles' largest city for foreign trade, and the greatest asset supporting the Matsuura House's struggle for supremacy in the Eastern Isles' warring states.
Nearly half its permanent male residents were either samurai who owed direct allegiance to the Matsuura House or pirates secretly controlled by them... in other words, Japanese pirates.
The Age of Discovery and the age of oceanic exploration had only just begun, and the seas were still ruled by the law of the jungle. When a merchant ship spotted a fat sheep weaker than itself out on the water, changing flags, playing pirate, and making a windfall was a time-honored skill of every old sea dog of the era.
As one of the Eastern Isles' most active clans in the pursuit of maritime riches, the Matsuura House had naturally perfected the art of switching between merchant flags and skull-and-crossbones flags.
Their fate... was naturally all the more wretched.
Nearly half the men of Hirado Castle were executed through Yang Ge's method of making dogs tear into dogs. Their heads were piled into five trophy mounds over ten feet high at the harbor outside the city, while their corpses were pushed into the sea by the cartload, staining miles of coastal waters red...
Not only did the whole of Hirado Castle tremble beneath the shadow of the seventy-two demon-quelling warriors, but the foreign merchant ships docked at Hirado Port also fled without a trace in remarkably little time.
It was easy to foresee that rumors of the eastern nation's barbarity, bloodthirstiness, savagery, and cruelty would soon spread through the West. When those western brigands next set foot in that ancient eastern country, they would certainly be far more polite than before.
Next year's catch of fish in Hirado Castle would certainly be exceptionally