.165. With the number of ways I have come, I will only go all the way (2)

One Hundred and Sixty-Five, I only go all the way (2)

The end of the road

This is Ms. Zena's most intuitive understanding of her current situation after reading the interrogation records.

There is not enough troops, there is not enough food, there is no ammunition reserve, no fortresses to defend, no fleets that can carry legions...worse, there is no time to rectify and prepare for war

——Seventy thousand officials have already poured out of the Kyoto nest and poured out like a flood

So, how much time will it take before this flood flows to your feet?

Based on her understanding of this country, Ms. Zena roughly knew that if you walk the most spacious and flat Tokaido from Kyoto to Edo, it would take about two thousand miles to travel. There are fifty-three post stations along the way, collectively known as the "Fifty-three post stations of Tokaido".

However, although there are 53 inns along the way, this journey does not actually take 53 days. In fact, due to the large passenger and cargo flow and the good road conditions, even if you walk completely, it only takes about twenty days for ordinary people to go from Kyoto to Edo. If you can ride a horse, take a car or take a boat, it may be shortened to about seven or eight days.

Of course, the speed of the army's attack is incomparable to the speed of the travelers walking, but the premise is that someone is willing to block the attack halfway. However, in the chaos of the shogunate system collapsed and the shogun generals blatantly surrendered, and the official army had the right to be righteous, Ms. Zena did not think that the remaining princes along the way still had the courage to continue to resist-they could not even suppress the violence and civil unrest in their territory.

Therefore, Ms. Zena estimated that at most one month, the colonial authorities of the Far East of the Naserel Empire, which had been painstakingly run by Admiral Perry for 30 years, would face the terrible fate of being uprooted after his death.

However, as a soldier, even if he is a soldier with some lack of professional qualities, Feili also has another view on the problem.

——In many cases, those most dangerous times are often the moment of operation.

In fact, if he had not felt that the situation was still possible, but had been completely desperate about the prospect of the war, and had already removed the key components from the floating city, he could have left the mess of the island country without caring about it, and carefully seized the time to repair the Xiangrui battleship engine, and then searched for some supplies randomly, and took the entire Giant Bear Legion on board and slipped away.

As for the interrogation record full of bad news that I took out before, it is actually just an art of negotiation.

Generally speaking, if you want to hide your mistakes in front of your boss and escape punishment, then the most common way is to suppress and then promote, first praise and then criticize, and find a way to start with a good news, whether true or false, to offset the indignation and bitterness that the bad news behind will inevitably bring to your boss - just like the layer of sugar coated outside a pill...

If you want to gain more authority, position and funding from your boss, then you must first be scared. Specifically, no matter what dangers there are, you must report as exaggeratedly as possible. If you make up for dangers, you must also make "artistic reports". The more exaggerated you are, the better the more alarmist you are. Then you can paint yourself responsible for dealing with these dangers as a glorious and upright look that is turning the tide, or simply boast about yourself as a super warrior fighting despair...

Of course, after scaring your boss, you should also give up some hope appropriately to keep their appetites so as not to backfire and make the other party really completely discouraged, so you choose to give up...

"...How to say this? The scale of the eastern expedition launched by the imperial court is indeed a fatal threat to us. If it is not handled properly, it will be completely doomed. But on the other hand, this is not a wonderful opportunity to reverse the passive situation... In the previous series of bad news, there are also one or two inconspicuous good news."

He touched his nose, conceived the words, and said hesitantly, "...I wonder if you have noticed this message written on the interrogation record: After hearing the news of the imperial court's large-scale eastern expedition, the "foul-many" and "non-human" untouchables who had originally set up camps in Tokaido's various vassals and fled east one after another to seek protection. Moreover, the thousands of people with the fastest journey had already arrived outside Edo..."

"...What is this good news?" Zena asked back with some surprise, "...it's just that there are 30,000 more mouths and we need relief."

"...You are actually right, Ms. Zena." Feili nodded politely, "... But what I saw was not only 30,000 mouths that needed to eat, but also 30,000 pairs of hands holding weapons... Ms. Zena, they are not lambs that bow their heads and are slaughtered obediently, but wolves who have temporarily lost their unified cooperation."

After hearing such a statement, Ms. Zena was also confused. As a local, Ryuki Mitsui immediately reacted. After Feili and she exchanged some obscure and subtle messages with each other, Ryuki Mitsui quickly threw a knowing look.

"... Then let's talk about what you want to get and what we can provide you with."

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The next morning, Feiri, with hundreds of defeated soldiers who had temporarily collected and some supplies that had been taken out of the rubble, left the Yokohama Concession, which was ruined by the ruins, and headed to another larger ruin zone - Edo Castle Town, which was just burned by a fire not long ago.

For him personally, the results of last night's negotiation were very favorable.

In order to coordinate and command, Mitsui Ryuki officially handed over the command of the city management team and various miscellaneous armed forces, and Feili took over temporarily to ensure the smooth operation of his own camp's military orders. Ms. Zena also made a guarantee that the Giant Bear Legion would consent to the Giant Bear Legion to recruit any personnel in the concession and any materials in the concession. The warehouses and castles within the remaining controlled areas of the old shogunate were also uniformly assigned to him for use at will.

But despite this, the situation on all aspects of the island he needs to face is still quite serious, and there is a tendency to continue to deteriorate further - this is the conclusion drawn after Feiri set off for Edo and observed it along the way.

Although most of Oedo Hachihachi Town was destroyed by fire and there was no sign of reconstruction so far, the city was large and the territory was large. Many marginal blocks still survived far from the city center and the harbor. With the large number of refugees in the remaining blocks of Edo Castle, the population became increasingly dense among the remaining towns and towns, showing a deformed "prosperity".

In this market, there are no farmers who come to sell vegetables, fruits, chickens, ducks, fish and shrimps, and there are no vendors selling candy and pastries and cooked food. Instead, a guy is selling grilled mice on the meat fork. What is shocking is that he actually shouted loudly: "Where are the freshest mice that I caught this morning? Which one is sold for ten cents? Come and buy them."

What is even more shocking is that the roasted mice were put out in the blink of an eye and were sold out by hungry people...

——————————————————————————————

In the neighborhood where the urban management team is headquartered, Feili saw the last few grain and food stores in the city that can still be opened. The doors of these stores were all tied with barbed wire, piled up sandbags and chest walls, and arranged soldiers with live ammunition to stand guard.

As for the price on the wooden board, it is even more amazing - brown rice is 500 cents per liter, taro is 300 cents per liter, and sweet potatoes are 200 cents per liter; a jar of radish can be bought for a jar of sauce, and a yellow-orange golden jury (gold coin) can be exchanged for a basket of salted fish.

As for "luxury goods" such as rice wine, miso, and salted fish, they are marked as "current price".

Although the price is so terrifying, buyers are still in a constant stream.

Many haggard and withered men and women lined up in long lines at the door of each store. Other miserable and helpless poor people could only stand at the entrance of the nearby dark alley, biting their fingers with gloomy expressions to watch from afar.

"...The food price has tripled again... Could it be that there is no food transported into the city recently?" Feiri turned his head and asked Tadao Kuroshima.

"... There is still a little, but it's pitifully rare." The new urban management team leader nodded and admitted, "... A few days ago, the remnants of the party remnants occupied Nikko Toshoku Palace, cutting off two roads from Edo Castle to the northern Sendai Basilica and the northwest Echigo Plain. Tokaido was violent, and merchants selling food had long disappeared. The sea route could not be restored due to the burning of Edo Port.

Therefore, after losing the supply of the last two rice production areas in the north, hundreds of thousands of mouths in Edo could only count on the harvest of the farms in the suburbs. However, this year the Kanto Plain was drought, and the rice harvest was pitiful, and we had to stockpile part of it as military rations... so the price of grain in the city rose all the way."

"... Then what will you do with Miss Mitsui Ryuki?"

"...What else can I do? Rice cannot fall from the sky. The current princes are hoarding grain, and it is difficult to spend money to purchase. What's more, we have no money at all, even if we want to develop marine fishery, the port terminal in Edo Castle was completely burned down. I don't know how many broken ships are calm in the port area. Ordinary fishing boats cannot rely on the shore at all. Just wading through water and transporting is extremely troublesome..."

Tadao Kuroshima shrugged and replied, "...Anyway, you have wiped out the Nikko Toshoku Rebel Party, and the business road leading to Echizen and Sendai should be restored in a while."

"...But the Kyoto court's Eastern Expedition Army is about to come, and the most elite Satsuma Shimazu family army is to go from Echigo, and then plan to go directly to Aizu and Sendai, sweeping across the entire Tohoku Ouha area..."

Feiri also rolled her eyes, "...I can make a bet with you that as long as the Shimazu army striker enters Echigo, the Tohoku family that are willing to sell grain to Edo will immediately stop trading and will no longer let a grain of rice or a piece of taro flow into Edo. Your original reserve grain has been almost destroyed in the Edo fire and the rampage of Yokohama floating city. In recent times, there will definitely be no more food to be collected.

When these hundreds of thousands of hungry people start to make trouble, what should you do? Can you suppress it? Can you afford relief?

What's more, you have to take the main force of the urban management team to fight with me to fight various eastern expeditions, and the problems in the rear will be even more serious. And there is also the problem of plague that needs to be solved..."

"... Then what do you think you should do?" Tadao Kuroshima muttered quite depressedly, "I'll listen to your great opinions."

"...Since the mess in Edo Castle can no longer be controlled, then just don't worry about it."

Feili replied clearly, "......... Such a broken city that has been burned down has not only no geographical location to defend, but also hundreds of thousands of people have to bear the burden of diet and medicine. We have no capital to maintain such huge consumption at all.

If you drag down so unhappily and continue to sit on this powder barrel and refuse to move your butt, and wait until these hungry people who can't eat get angry, or even the last army is infected with a fatal plague, then even if you regret it, it will be too late.

In order to avoid being dragged to death by this mess, I suggest that I immediately give up Edo Castle, which has become useless, and take the army, officials and the remaining possessions to other nearby cities to establish a new temporary capital to save expenses. As for Edo... Since even the government has moved away, even if the citizens have the energy to cause trouble, they will lose their partner. If they don’t have much time, they should be dispersed..."

“…But if this is the case, the plague will spread to all parts of the island.”

Tadao Kuroshima protested with some angrily, "...At that time, it will not only be a matter of tens of thousands of deaths from illness or hundreds of thousands of people, but millions of people will die."

"...what is there? Even if Edo can control the source of the disease, the imperial court's gang of slaughtered men who only kill and buried will create more corpses and more violent plagues. In fact, some terrible plagues have already spread in the Gyeonggi area where the war is most severe. And the imperial court's three-way eastward army will bring the disease to every vassal state in Kanto. It would be useless to manage an Edo city well..."

Feiri just blinked at this and retorted quite sarcastically.

With the serious injury and sleep of Buddha Shakyamuni, all monks and nuns in this country lost their magic power and could no longer perform treatment techniques. The entire country seemed to have become AIDS patients and lost most of the ability to resist epidemics.

What's even more terrible is that the increasingly fierce and turbulent civil war has created countless sources for the outbreak of the plague... Before finding a new alternative medical system, the spread of infectious diseases across the country is inevitable - this is not a problem that any force can curb and solve, but an unprecedented disaster that requires all forces to sit down and join forces to deal with... But the problem is that everyone seems to think it is more important to cut down their opponents in the chaos...

Feili also thinks so. Although his views are sometimes too selfish, they are always very realistic.

"... Please remember that you are not saviors, and after the idiot general Tokugawa Iemini resigned, even the legal government is no longer the one who is now just a group of rebellions that were ordered by the Kyoto court. As a rebellion against the system, it is already quite conscientious that you have to foolishly take the initiative to bear the extra burden for the court?"
Chapter completed!