Chapter 6: Strategies for the Japanese Punishment (I)

Standing on the bow deck, the cold and humid sea breeze blows towards him, and the air smells of fish. Thinking of this time when I entered Beijing, Hong Chengchou's heart was a little ups and downs and he couldn't calm down for a long time.

"Old Hong, what do you think about this time going to Beijing?" Song Xiance appeared behind Hong Chengchou with a short body. Song Xiance looked old and ugly, and his actual age was similar to Hong Chengchou. He was just running around in the world, for the sake of making a living, so he became what he is now.

As long as they are not in a formal occasion, the names between the two are very casual and extremely intimate. After being with each other for so long, they have a bit of a similar smell.

"The emperor strongly advocates reform, and the court is probably all that you and I can understand in this year." Hong Chengchou said excitedly.

Song Xiance said: "Since the Emperor ascended the throne, I have always looked at my image at night and found a purple star in the north shining brightly, and many of the star rays next to me are eclipsed. My Ming Dynasty is expected to rejuvenate!"

"If the emperor is the lord of Zhongxing, you and I are all ministers of Zhongxing!" Hong Chengchou breathed a long sigh.

"Isn't the prosperity of the country what our scholars want?"

"Old Song, you are not young anymore. In the past, you were running around the world, and it was inconvenient to bring your family to the family. Now you are also a senior official of the court. Why are you still alone? Besides, you are no longer a Taoist priest." Hong Chengchou looked up and down at Song Xiance, worried about his lifelong affairs.

Song Xiance smiled bitterly and said, "Will there be any woman who likes our appearance and figure?"

"Why didn't you? The emperor issued an order to be a good person. As long as you don't dislike other people's background, there are a lot of women begging you to marry you. You don't have to worry about you sleeping in the willows outside." Hong Chengchou said with a smile.

Song Xiance smiled and said, "Let's talk about it when there is a suitable one. Such things are hard to come by."

"Okay, let's not talk about this, enter the cabin." Hong Chengchou laughed, and said it over and pulled Song Xiance into the cabin.

"Old Hong, tell me, who will the imperial court send to replace your position as commander of the Nanjing Military Region this time?" Song Xiance asked with a smile.

"What do you think?" Hong Chengchou smiled, glanced at Song Xiance, and pulled his eyes down again.

"It doesn't matter who takes this position, don't ruin our efforts." Song Xiance said worriedly.

"In the prosperous southeast, half of the taxes in the country are concentrated here. The court will definitely appoint a good general to take charge. You don't have to worry about this old Song." Hong Chengchou said slowly.

Hong Chengchou and Song Xiance were riding a sea boat of four hundred materials. They anchored on the twelfth lunar month and set sail from Fujian. They sailed on the sea for fourteen days before they arrived at Dagukou, Tianjin. After abandoning the boat, they took two days to arrive at the capital.

On the 28th day of the 12th lunar month, Hong Chengchou and Song Xiance had just settled in Xianliang Temple and received the order to enter the palace to meet the saint.

The two of them washed up a little, put on a new style of general dress, put on their epaulettes, and hurried to the Forbidden City.

"Minist Hong Chengchou, Song Xiance bowed to the emperor!"

"Two dear friends, please get up quickly!" Zhu Yinglong walked over with a smile and helped them up.

"I am all confused. I just want to summon you to Beijing, but I forgot that the New Year is approaching. I let my two beloved ministers leave their families and run to Beijing for the New Year. I am really insidious!" Zhu Yinglong said apologetically. He gave Hong Chengchou and Song Xianke an order to enter Beijing immediately, but he did not expect that Fujian was too far away from the capital. He came to Beijing in time, but he didn't have time to go back to have a reunion with his family.

"I am so lonely that I am nothing. I am afraid that I am a little unhappy if I have a wife and a concubine in my family." Song Xiance smiled and teased Hong Chengchou.

Hong Chengchou glared at Song Xiance slightly and thought to himself, Song Heizi is too ignorant of the occasion, how could he speak like this in front of the emperor?

Zhu Yinglong asked with a smile: "Hong Aiqing, is this the case?"

"No, Your Majesty, Chief of Staff Song is a joke!" Hong Chengchou said hurriedly.

"Okay, I'm summoning you to Beijing to discuss with you two. Let's put other matters aside for the time being." Zhu Yinglong said seriously.

"Please give me the order!" the two of them said in unison.

"What do you think of Japan by your two beloved ministers?" Zhu Yinglong ordered someone to see the seat and asked.

"This..." Hong Chengchou and Song Xiance looked at each other, and both sides saw a hint of surprise in each other's eyes. Obviously, they had never thought about this question at all, so they were not prepared at all.

"The land of Japan is barren and its resources are not abundant. There are many princes in the country and they often fight. The current shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu is the most powerful among the princes. The princes of all walks of life are basically obeying him. Japan has rarely been calm in recent years, and its national strength has developed rapidly..." After sorting out the information in his mind, Hong Chengchou revealed his information about Japan.

"What about the Japanese?" Zhu Yinglong asked lightly after hearing this.

"The Japanese advocated the Bushido, and samurai were rampant in China. They emphasized loyalty to the emperor and the righteousness of the monarch and his subjects. They had "the unity of the monarch and his subjects" and "the unity of the father and son". The weak ministers saw the Japanese being crazy and inferior, believed in Buddhism and were bloody, and were bloodthirsty, and paid attention to etiquette and were barbaric and cruel; they bullied the weak and obedient to the strong, and were extremely greedy. This nation seemed to be bleeding from the bones of wild beasts!" Zheng Hongkui was a subordinate of Hong Chengchou, so Hong Chengchou naturally knew a lot of evaluations of the Japanese from him!

"Okay, well said, this is a nation of beasts!" Zhu Yinglong praised, and Hong Chengchou almost fully analyzed this extremely contradictory personality in the Japanese.

"Great Emperor, these are what Lieutenant General Zheng Hongkui said to Weichen. Weichen just said it according to his original words." Hong Chengchou said modestly.

"Well, this Zheng Hongkui is a talent. It seems that I was wrong to transfer him to the South China Sea Fleet?" Zhu Yinglong murmured to himself.

"Not to mention this, the two dear ministers still remember the hundreds of years of Japanese pirate rebellion during the Jiajing period of this dynasty?"

"How could I forget that it was the hundreds of years of Japanese pirate rebellion that caused the destruction of the seas of our Celestial Empire and even had to impose the maritime ban. It was the culprit!" Song Xiance said with hatred.

"Although the Japanese pirates' rebellion has now subsided, the country that has caused me a hundred years of shame to the Ming Dynasty is still there. Think about how many families of coastal people have been destroyed over the past hundred years, how many have been forced to move to the mainland, how many have died under the Japanese pirates' butcher knife, and even more, they have colluded with the Japanese pirates and harmed the people of the Ming Dynasty, and their hearts are punished. This is a blood debt, which will be repaid in blood in the future!" Zhu Yinglong said in a flash of murderous intent in his eyes.

Hong Chengchou and Song Xiance were both smart people. Although they were shocked, they were not the kind of pedantic people. The attack on Japan in the east was not done by Zhu Yinglong, the emperor, but Japan took on the natural dangers of the ocean, and no emperor has succeeded so far. But if the emperor really wanted to do this, no one could stop him.

"I want a strategy to suppress the Japanese. Two dear friends. This is my homework for you. The time is three days." Zhu Yinglong looked at the two people sitting below and smiled.

"I obey the order!" Hong Chengchou and Song Xiance looked at each other, stood up and bowed together.

Looking at the two of them leaving, Zhu Yinglong once again raised a meaningful smile on the corner of his mouth.

In Xianliang Temple, in a courtyard where the officials who came to Beijing lived, Hong Chengchou and Song Xiance had been staring at each other for two hours, and no one said anything and didn't know what to say.

"Old Song, the emperor asked us to write this "The Strategy for Pairing the Japanese". You are the military advisor, you are just making an idea!" Hong Chengchou pushed the paper and pen to Song Xiance.

"Old Hong, you are the commander-in-chief, I am the military advisor, your chief of staff. You will still write this "The Strategy for Pairing the Japanese"!" Song Xiance pushed the paper and pen back.

"You said, the emperor wouldn't really want to settle the small country in the east?" Hong Chengchou asked in a low voice.

Song Xiance sighed and said, "I can't say it well, either. Anyway, I think the emperor has no favoritism for that island country, maybe this is true."

"I have no fondness for those Japanese. I heard that the death of Ye Laoge tribe was related to the shogunate. Zheng Zhilong colluded with the Japanese samurai warriors to change. Those Japanese samurai were regular troops under the control of the shogunate." Hong Chengchou said carefully.

"Old Hong, do you think the emperor will let us fight against the Japanese? "Song Xiance suddenly became energetic, his eyes wider than bull's eyes, and he looked at Hong Chengchou's fair face without blinking.

Hong Chengchou's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately touched something, his eyebrows tugged and said, "It's not impossible."

"It's not impossible, it's definitely us!" Song Xiance's eyes dimmed in an instant. According to the two of them's current inference, this was already a decisive matter.

"What's wrong with us? Although the emperor is young and energetic, he will not follow his own wishes. There are several old masters from the Military Machine Pavilion below!" Hong Chengchou analyzed.

"What do you mean is the emperor planning a war in a few years or even more than ten years?" Song Xiance looked at Hong Chengchou with incredible eyes.

"By bypass the Military Pavilion, and directly summon you and me into the palace, asking me to enter the "Paishou of the Japanese Pairing Strategy". Old Song, the emperor is much further away than you and I think. It's really hard to imagine that he is still so young." Hong Chengchou said in surprise.

"The emperor is the emperor, so the emperor is naturally different from us ordinary people." Song Xiance said with a saint-like face.

"Old Song, with the current shogunate and the various princes, if you pacify Japan, how many soldiers, how much food and money do you need, and how long do you need?" Hong Chengchou asked.

"If you want to fight, a 100,000 or even less force can sweep across Japan in half a year. One million.5 million stones of grain and five million silver dragon yuan of military pay is the premise that a good general is the commander. If you want to occupy it, at least two hundred thousand army, five million stones of grain and twenty million silver dragon yuan of military pay is required." Song Xiance made a rough estimate.

"So much?" Hong Chengchou was shocked.

"This is fighting in a foreign country, and it is not comparable to its own territory. It is in a right place and has a harmonious relationship. If there are not so many, there is no way to continue this battle." Song Xiance smashed his mouth and said.

"What if we use war to support the war?" Hong Chengchou asked with his eyes staring at Song Xiance.
Chapter completed!