Gu Moran picked up a piece of crispy pork and put it into Gu Moli's bowl.
Eat more meat, talk less.
"Brother, you're so good to me, hee hee."
Seeing that her brother only served her food, Gu Moli finally felt a little happier. She picked up the piece of crispy pork and took a bite. The outer skin was crispy, and the inside was coated with hot oil. The taste was actually not bad.
On the other side.
The Shogun's residence in Wa.
The ground is shaking again.
This isn't the first time.
A month ago, a crack appeared in the seabed of the Kii Peninsula, and the entire island shook violently for three days and three nights.
On the first day, half of the trees on the mountain fell, the stream turned yellow, and the riverbed was completely blocked by silt.
The next day, the tsunami struck.
How high were the waves? The fishermen who survived later gestured for a long time and said that they were two zhang (about 6.6 meters) higher than the tallest old pine tree at the entrance of the village.
When the waves crashed ashore, all thirty-seven villages along the coast, along with the rice seeds that had just been planted in the fields, were swept into the sea.
On the third day, the volcano began to erupt.
Smoke billowed into the sky, and ashes drifted for miles, landing in a thick layer on the rice paddies, suffocating the rice that hadn't even had a chance to head.
Half of Wa's food supply was gone just like that.
Seven days after the earthquake, the Emperor and his high-ranking officials held a closed-door meeting. The room was noisy all day, and in the end, two orders were issued.
The first order was to reduce supplies.
The rations of the lower-ranking infantry were cut in half, from two meals of thin porridge a day to one meal a day.
The second order: seal their mouths.
No one is allowed to discuss the famine; violators will be beheaded.
These two orders were issued and remained in effect for eight days.
He couldn't control himself by the ninth day.
In the infantry battalion of Chikuzen County, there was an infantry squad leader named Tanaka, who was in his thirties and came from a farming family.
The earthquake buried his meager two acres of land completely. He was in the army and couldn't go home.
Because of the famine, the neighbors looted all the stored grain, and the wife couldn't bear it and died at home.
When he went back to collect the body, it was already stiff, and he was still clutching half a handful of wild grass roots in his hand.
Tanaka buried his wife and returned to the army camp, thinking that at least he could make a living.
Now, they can't even afford to eat rice.
Left with no other option, he led his eighty foot soldiers, who, like him, had neither land nor food, to the gate of the daimyo's granary to beg for grain.
The daimyo of Wa was a regional lord, and the samurai under his command were all his retainers.
All I saw was...
Eighty people lined up and knelt at the entrance of the rice granary, their foreheads pounding against the muddy ground with a loud thud.
"Please open the granaries and distribute grain!"
"Please open the granaries and distribute grain!"
Nobody paid any attention to them.
I prayed for three days in a row.
Finally, a samurai appeared.
The leader was named Ichijō Shinpei, and he had two swords at his waist, one long and one short, with gleaming copper sheaths.
Without even glancing at Tanaka, he drew his sword and beheaded the first two men in the row.
"You bastards! You lowly commoners don't deserve to eat!"
The blood from the knife splattered onto the muddy ground, leaving two dark red streaks.
Ichijō Shinpei sheathed his sword and walked back.
Tanaka was stunned, then stood up.
Two of the brothers I brought with me have been killed in one fell swoop?
Who could tolerate this?
He was clutching a broken wooden rafter he had dug out of the rubble, with half a rusty iron nail still attached to the end of the rafter.
Ichijō Shinpei.
The wooden rafter, along with the iron nail, smashed into the back of his head, and the nail became embedded in his skull.
Then, the scene became even more chaotic.
Dozens of foot soldiers, who had been starving for three days, clutched wooden sticks, stones, hoes, and carrying poles.
A quarter of an hour of chaotic fighting followed.
They finally stormed into the rice granary.
The door to the granary was flung open, and the grain inside was piled up to the rafters.
The white rice was stacked neatly, bag after bag, with the bag openings tied up securely.
Tanaka stood in front of the grain pile and stared at it for a long time.
The broken wooden rafter in his hand slowly drooped down, its end resting on the ground.
My hands are shaking.
He remembered his wife's body. He searched the entire house, turning over the stove, the rice jar, and the cloth bags hanging from the rafters. In the end, he only found half a bowl of moldy wheat bran.
I heard that she died from eating wheat bran. After eating it, she had a sharp pain in her stomach that lasted all night, and she passed away before dawn.
In the rice granary of Daming, there was so much grain that it couldn't be stored, and some bags were even infested with insects at the bottom.
Within ten days, the infantry of seven counties on Kyushu Island had all rebelled.
Farmers, fishermen, carpenters—all the lowest-ranking foot soldiers—joined forces and killed eleven daimyo's retainers, burned six rice granaries, and chopped off the heads of more than twenty samurai, hanging them at the city gate.
The Emperor was furious and ordered troops to be dispatched to suppress the rebellion.
But where can we get the troops?
The sheer number of these infantrymen was terrifying.
Finally, the Emperor and his generals discussed the matter for three days and three nights, burning twenty catties of lamp oil and exchanging eighteen pots of tea, before finally coming up with a solution.
Four words: Shifting the blame eastward.
The Wa regent, Ōtanigi Akahisamitsu, pointed his fan at the southern tip of the peninsula on the nautical chart.
" Goryeo "
"Tell those mobs that it was a shaman from Goryeo who cursed us, causing the earthquake and tsunami."
Someone nearby muttered, "Can they really believe that?"
Ōtanigi Akahisamitsu closed his fan and tapped the table.
"These starving idiots are so easy to fool."
"Drive them all onto the ships and let them plunder grain in Goryeo. If they succeed, it's theirs. If they fail..."
He paused, tapping the fan twice against his palm.
"It's better to die outside than to die in our home."
Soon, 18,000 infantrymen were herded onto the ships.
The boats were old; some even had their masts temporarily attached, creaking and rattling in the wind.
There was not enough water and dry food.
Each person was only equipped with a knife, a bamboo armor, and a cloth bag containing three days' worth of rations.
Three days.
In other words, if these people could not reach the coast of Goryeo within three days, they would die of thirst at sea.
But the Emperor and his allies didn't care.
Busanpo, at the southern tip of Goryeo.
A thick fog rolled in at sea.
Kim Sang-won, the captain of the Goryeo guarding the port, stood on the watchtower, holding a bamboo scouting tube and looking out at the sea.
The fog is too thick; visibility is poor.
He put down the sniper rifle and asked the adjutant beside him.
Are there any merchant ships coming into port today?
"No. They said the clearance documents for this month haven't been approved yet, so the merchant ships are waiting outside."
Kim Sang-won hummed in agreement and then picked up the bamboo peephole to take another look.
There are shadows in the fog.
A whole area.
They surged towards us from the fog, densely packed together, like insects.
His hand trembled slightly.
The sniffer fell onto the wooden planks of the watchtower with a thud.
"This is bad, prepare for war."
His voice was a little hoarse.
"What?"
"I said prepare for war! All the Wa ships have arrived!!"
He turned and shouted downstairs.
"Light the signal fires! Everyone to the harbor embankment! Quickly!"
But as soon as he shouted, he knew it was too late.
The garrison at Busanpo numbered eight hundred men, with only one hundred and twenty archers.
The number of ships emerging from the fog on the opposite side was simply too many to count.
When the first ships crashed into the harbor breakwater, the archers drew their bows taut.
The arrow was shot out, and someone fell off the boat into the water, thrashed about for a couple of moments, and then lay still.
But the ships behind didn't stop.
One after another, they crashed into the harbor embankment.
The bow of the boat was smashed, and people crawled out from the broken planks, stepping on their companions' shoulders to rush ashore.
The person in front was shot down by an arrow, and the person behind stepped on him to continue climbing.
These people had expressionless faces, but each one was more ferocious than the last.
They weren't fearless; they were simply starving.
Kim Sang-won was as anxious as an ant on a hot pan.
"Damn it! What are you doing? Wa and Goryeo are allies, allies!"
"You Wa dogs! You even kill our Goryeo brothers?"
[I don't know much about the history of everyday life, I just did some research and made this up, so just take it as entertainment.]