CHAPTER 138: CHAPTER 89 HIRATA MASAHIDE CUT HIS BELLY

"He’s beyond saving, just put him out of his misery!"

Harano’s face was exhausted and numb as he lifted open an Ashigaru’s abdominal wound and took a look. When he saw the trauma had reached the lungs, saw the Ashigaru’s twisted face, his struggle to breathe, the bloody froth bubbling out of his mouth—even pink blood bubbles—he gave the death sentence then and there.

Two other equally weary grunts silently carried the Ashigaru out, while yet another blood-soaked Ashigaru was carried in.

Ten days ago, Oda Nobunaga called for a full mobilization. This time, plenty of local clans had no excuse left and were forced to join in. Oda Nobunaga scraped together over four thousand men and rushed to the Bai Chuan Pass, trying to launch a preemptive strike against the Imagawa family. Instead, the Imagawa family pulled a preemptive strike of their own. The casualties were catastrophic.

As a result, the wounded streamed in non-stop, and most were heavily injured—just in one morning, nearly a hundred people died here. With blood on both his hands, he figured he might as well change his name to "Bloody-Handed Butcher Divine Doctor."

His "main tent" reeked of blood; the heat was so unbearable that the stench was turning into rot. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed everywhere. Chunks of flesh and broken limbs were scattered about. One look inside would have you thinking you’d walked into a cannibal’s inn—enough to film a horror movie.

He, at least, was used to it by now and couldn’t even smell it anymore. Ah Man stormed in, nearly knocked out flat by the stench, gagged a few times after glancing around, then finally clamped her nose and said, "Is it really this bad in here?!"

Harano ignored her pointless question. In this era, the badly wounded rarely made it, especially in this godawful weather. Maggots in wounds tomorrow would surprise no one. Most of them probably wouldn’t make it.

He kept working with his hands, and casually asked, "So what’s the situation? Did you find out anything?"

"It’s a mess. No one knows how many wounded, but at least a thousand dead. Oda Nobunaga’s taken another serious hit!" Ah Man stopped with the small talk and sighed, "I heard a detachment tried to cross the Baishui River at night, but got ambushed by the Imagawa. The Grand General died on the spot, the Samurai Generals went down one after another, and of over five hundred men only a couple dozen made it back alive.

The battle’s not going well at Chongyuan City either. Oda Nobunaga led the main force to meet the Imagawa, way outnumbered, and failed to get backup for a flanking attack as planned. In the end, he had to leave four or five hundred corpses on the field just to barely make it back."

"We lost?"

"We lost."

Harano looked down at the young Ashigaru under his hands—who had just breathed his last. "Bloody-Handed Butcher Divine Doctor" score: +1. With a sigh, he waved for the corpse to be carried off, and then shook his head slowly. There had to be something off about where he transmigrated; he’d been here this long and hadn’t seen Oda Nobunaga win even once.

Fought a raid by the Matsudaira family—got routed.

Clashed with Yamaguchi Keiji—forced to retreat, so a minor loss.

Now fighting the Imagawa family—another crushing defeat.

All in all, other than winning the Oda Family civil war in Qingzhou, he hadn’t won a thing. Current record: 1:3. Kind of the textbook inside player, fumbling every outside war.

This really doesn’t feel like "Japan’s Warring States History’s Number One," it’s just too damn miserable!

He sighed again and didn’t say more. There was nothing he could do about what happened on the battlefield. He could only take money and do his job, so he kept doing his "Medical Magistrate" gig, patching up the wounded for a full day and night before barely wrapping up.

After he finally collapsed into a deep sleep, Ah Man came barreling in again to give him two pieces of news:

First, the bad news: Chongyuan City had fallen. The Ogasawara Family’s patriarch Ooyama Kangping died on the spot. The Imagawa family refused the rest of the Ogasawara’s offer to surrender and accept their allegiance. The Ogasawara Family was wiped out entirely.

The other piece wasn’t really any better. After taking Chongyuan City, Imagawa still wasn’t satisfied and started moving toward Ogawa Castle. Looked like they were going to keep pushing and lay siege there.

Harano pulled out a map. Ogawa Castle was southwest of Chongyuan City. If it fell, let alone Chita County—Chongyuan City gone meant Chita County leaving Dan Zhengzhong’s control was just a matter of time. But with Ogawa Castle in trouble, it wasn’t just about Chita anymore; if Imagawa broke through, they could swing from the south and attack Atsuta Port directly.

If Atsuta Port fell, that would be half of Dan Zhengzhong’s root gone. It looked like the fighting was far from over—could even last till the autumn harvest.

Turned out his crow’s mouth hit the mark for once—the war really did drag all the way to the eve of the autumn harvest.

Imagawa wasn’t about to let up. They wanted nothing less than to crush their great western enemy, Oda Danjo Chonosuke, and swallow all of Owari. Nobunaga was backed into a corner; after the defeat, he didn’t even have enough troops and had to beg for reinforcements from his father-in-law, Saito Dosan, borrowing over a thousand elite soldiers under the command of Ando Shouji.

He also had to lower his head to his mother, Lady Tsuchida, and his younger brother, Oda Shinsei, borrowing another thousand men with Katsuyori Shibata from Mosen Castle. The three forces joined up and, after several desperate battles with the Imagawa, barely managed to scrape out at least a draw, instead of a total defeat.

Or you could call it a minor loss—Ogawa Castle was held, but Yamaguchi Keiji launched a surprise attack and seized Dagao City.

When autumn harvest rolled around, Oda Nobunaga had barely managed to hold on to the vital ground—Atsuta Port was safe for now—but he lost two major fortresses at the base of the Chita Peninsula. Chita County was completely out of his hands; every single local clan there switched to the Imagawa with no exceptions.

Nothing else to be done. He could only have five Rock Fortresses built by Nagami and Dagao cities and garrisoned them, going full defense against Imagawa and Yamaguchi Keiji. Strategic initiative: zero.

And so, Oda Danjo Chonosuke’s territory shrank by -25%, Oda Nobunaga’s personal prestige dropped -500, and with his lingering infamy as "the big idiot of Owari," who knows, maybe he was deep in the negatives by now.

At least the war was over for now. After more than seventy days, Harano dragged his battered body, covered in dust, and without even settling his medical fees with Oda Nobunaga, hurried back to Takeshige Manor before everyone else—Nobunaga losing this badly was bound to put him in a foul mood. Settlement for his pay could wait; no reason to provoke him now.

Back at Takeshige Manor, he did nothing—just rested for five or six days. Even then, he still didn’t feel back to normal, his chest weighed down as if a heavy stone sat on it, so much that even breathing felt suffocating.

According to Ah Man, that’s a normal reaction after seeing too many corpses; it’d go away in a while.

Harano figured she was probably right. Sure, he’d killed a couple of Matsudaira samurai before, but that was from far away, didn’t feel real at all—almost like playing a game. Nowhere near as many dead as he’d seen these past two months, nowhere near as many corpses he’d touched with his own hands. Feeling queasy and disgusted just seemed normal—humans have a built-in revulsion for corpses, it’s in the genes, nothing to be done about it.

Since it was genetic, he just stayed home and honestly focused on rest, dabbled with his fabric dyeing experiments, and otherwise enjoyed over a week of peace. Just as he finally started feeling okay—felt the knot inside finally easing—Ah Man came tumbling head over heels into his study and only managed to blurt out when she got to him, "You probably won’t believe this—something big’s happened again!"

Harano was speechless. He’d just finished two months surrounded by blood and corpses, only just managed to digest all the horror, and now—what, another war? Couldn’t they have a couple days of quiet? At least wait until the autumn harvest is done!

He grabbed Ah Man off the floor, exasperated. "What now?"

"Well, you probably won’t believe me—Hirata Masahide committed seppuku!"

"Who?"

"Hirata Masahide!" Ah Man hadn’t expected that her habit of going to Nagano Castle’s castle town for some entertainment would end with overhearing this explosive gossip. She raced back as fast as she could to share, eyebrows practically jumping with excitement: "Oda Nobunaga’s Family Elder and teacher, Hirata Chikauji Masahide, committed seppuku in his own house today! It’s all over the castle town in Nagano. Everyone’s talking about it!"

Harano found it hard to believe: "Him? Why would he kill himself?"

"Nobody knows yet, but it’s definitely because of Oda Nobunaga!" Ah Man hadn’t managed to get more details—Hirata Masahide had just opened his guts, and the news had only just begun to spread. Nobody really knew what had happened yet. "Maybe he felt that Oda Nobunaga was just a hopeless case, trashing the legacy handed down by that old Tiger of Owari, Oda Nobuhide, and refusing to listen to any advice. Maybe he finally lost all hope, felt he’d failed as a teacher, and killed himself out of shame?"

She paused, thinking that didn’t sound quite right. After all, better to live on than die of shame—she’d never slit her own throat just for embarrassment. Then she thought, "Or maybe, since Dan Zhengzhong’s family lost so badly and handed over such a huge chunk of territory, someone needed to step up and take responsibility, so he did it for Oda Nobunaga—committed seppuku in advance to apologize, so other retainers wouldn’t blame Nobunaga further?"

Harano opened his mouth, but realized Ah Man had already covered every guess he had. He couldn’t come up with any new ideas. He seemed to vaguely recall from history that Hirata Masahide did indeed die by seppuku, but didn’t think it would be this soon—Nobunaga had only been Family Head for less than a year, and Masahide had already opened his belly.

Hirata Masahide dying wasn’t surprising, but dying this early really caught him off-guard.

For a moment, he felt he really was witnessing history. But Hirata Masahide’s death didn’t have much to do with him. After hearing the gossip, he didn’t dwell on it, just lamented to himself: this really was an age of turmoil. The dying just didn’t seem to stop.

Ah Man, though, was worked up—she loved a spectacle by nature. Having shared the day’s biggest story with Harano, she sat on the side, muttering about how Oda Nobunaga’s greatest backer among the household retainers was gone, so Nobunaga was probably doomed. Then, unable to sit still, she rushed off back to Nagano Castle to continue soaking up the drama and learning what fresh rumors others had come up with.

Harano let her go. He just remembered how, of the four major Family Elders whom the old Tiger of Owari Oda Nobuhide had left to support Nobunaga, only Lin Xiuzhen was left standing. Who knew what would happen to the Oda Danjo Chonosuke family next...