CHAPTER 236: CHAPTER 168: THE FATHER-IN-LAW WAS NOT SAVED

Harano left a small squad camped around Moyu, while sending word back to the old base, preparing to transfer the population behind them via the Kisogawa River system. Then, the main force crossed the Kisogawa and kept advancing, officially entering the borders of Minoh.

The internal focus of Minoh was entirely on the father-son struggle between the Saito clan at this point. Along the way, local clan leaders, seeing this unknown army from afar, all closed their gates and readied their defenses. Yet no one dared to attack or obstruct them—they just let them charge straight in.

A day later, the Wanjin Army arrived at the Changliang River, taking advantage of the night to storm a village called "Yuheiping" and seize control of this river crossing.

At this point, most of Harano’s vanguard mission was complete: the march route was largely cleared. But the final task—attempting to rendezvous with Saito Dosan—was still unfulfilled. At the moment, he couldn’t determine Saito Dosan’s whereabouts; Dosan, chased pathetically by his own son, was constantly on the move.

Ah Man had been anxious for days, terribly worried about her grandpa. She personally led people deep into Minoh to gather intel, hoping to find both Saito Dosan and her grandfather at once.

Lacking any precise intelligence, Harano temporarily went to ground at the river crossing, and, while he was at it, rounded up the villagers of Yuheiping for transfer back toward Moyu—he figured this wasn’t really an evil deed. This village was much like Hibi Village: the commoners were all skin and bones, not living great lives at all. At least in New Wanjin they’d get enough to eat. At worst, the Yuheiping villagers might cry and wail for a while, but time would prove everything.

He pulled another job in Minoh—besides eliminating a few clan faction members, he rounded up over five hundred men, women, and children and sent them back. But the very next day, he received two bad pieces of news:

The first was an urgent report Ah Man had sent: Minoh was in total chaos, Saito Dosan had never been a popular guy, and now that he was down, everyone, human or not, wanted to come kick him while he was down. The whole of Minoh led by Saito Yoshitada had united against him, determined to get rid of this calamity. They had assembled over seventeen thousand men—allegedly a fifty-thousand-strong army—encircling him from all sides.

The second bad news: the Wanjin Army had apparently been spotted by Saito Yoshitada, and identified as the Oda Family’s vanguard. Saito Yoshitada reacted quickly, ordering nearby clan leaders to try to retake Yuheiping or at least the ferry. But the clan he sent was pretty weak, only about three hundred strong, and were blasted off by a hundred-odd Wanjin musketeers stationed at the riverbank. Their will to fight was clearly lacking.

The second piece of bad news didn’t worry Harano much. He didn’t have the population or land to go up against great daimyos like the Imagawa or Oda families, but among the clan leaders he was top-tier. As long as Saito Yoshitada didn’t bring his main force, these local clans had no chance of kicking him out. But the first bad news...

The enemy had at least seventeen thousand men, while he and Oda Nobunaga combined barely amounted to a fraction of that—and now he only had four hundred plus at hand. How was he supposed to rendezvous with Saito Dosan?

The situation was at least twice as bad as he had expected. He didn’t even dare cross the river now.

Sure, in a legendary wuxia novel, four hundred beating seventeen thousand might be possible; in a web novel, it’d be expected. But he’d really traveled to this world—he only had one life, and scraping up this bit of capital had been hell, with plenty of humiliation along the way, so...

Let Oda Nobunaga deal with this! He was out!

For his big brother-in-law, he’d already done plenty by being the brother-in-law charging ahead. If anybody was going to take the hit, the big brother-in-law could do it himself!

Harano immediately told Maeda Toshie to personally urge Oda Nobunaga to hurry, and if Oda Nobunaga was actually willing to face Saito Yoshitada’s seventeen thousand troops with his own five thousand, then Harano could bring his four hundred or so to help and maybe draw away a thousand. Any more and it was impossible—most of this Wanjin force was seeds for the future; he couldn’t afford to lose too many.

For now, he grew much more cautious, scattering plenty of pickets and sentries afar to avoid being ambushed by a larger force, and constantly sending people to prod Oda Nobunaga to get a move on. At the same time, he hadn’t forgotten his own mission in Minoh, diverting most of his men to actively assault several local clans—partly to avoid their attacks, but also to give them some relief by reducing their population burden.

His target this time was to bring back at least two thousand people—that was way more important than Saito Dosan’s little life.

......

Harano waited impatiently for Oda Nobunaga to hurry and bring his main force. A major battle involving over twenty thousand was just too much for his current capabilities—he couldn’t handle it. But after another two days, Oda Nobunaga still hadn’t arrived, and Saito Dosan had run out of road, caught by that unfilial son Saito Yoshitada near Crane Mountain.

"Saito Dosan’s dead..." Ah Man wiped the bloody smears off her little face, took the water handed over by Ah Qing and downed two cups, then grabbed a rice ball and stuffed it in her mouth, mumbling, "Died miserably. His nose got cut off, his head was cut off too, carried by two different people to claim credit—really couldn’t die any worse, not a scrap of dignity left!"

"Eat slower!" Harano chided her, then couldn’t help but mutter under his breath, "Dead already, huh!"

He had expected as much—the Wanjin Army had seen downstream corpses floating in the Changliang River yesterday, suggesting a fierce battle had taken place upstream. He’d guessed then that Saito Dosan had either run out of steam or been encircled and had to turn and fight his son in a desperate last stand. The outcome wasn’t likely to be good, and sure enough...

He felt a complicated pang. Legend had it Dosan had started out as an oil merchant’s stepson, worked up from being a faction member or a clerk all the way to samurai and local clan boss, even expelling his own lord to become Japan’s first true "warlord daimyo." Nicknamed "The Viper of Minoh" for his slyness, it turned out his end was being murdered by his own son. That was something Harano had never imagined.

After a moment of reflection, Harano asked Ah Man, "How did the battle go? Did Saito Yoshitada take heavy losses?"

"Not small at all—Saito Dosan was tough!" Ah Man, who’d been starving for days, wolfed down one rice ball after another, still talking with her mouth full. She quickly recounted the battle for Harano and Ah Qing—she’d been pretending to be a corpse on the edge of the battlefield, watching as Saito Dosan met his end.

As for the course of the battle...

Saito Yoshitada truly lived up to his father’s viper legacy—determined to kill his own dad, he sent his family elder, Takenoshi Dojin, to storm Dosan’s main camp. Dosan, despite only having a little over two thousand, had loyal household retainers who’d followed him for years; they nearly managed a reversal against the odds. After slaying Takenoshi Dojin in the fighting, Dosan even led a counterattack against his son’s camp, trying to recreate the miracle of Kanazawa Pass—capture the leader and the enemy would collapse.

But the difference in numbers was just too big—almost eight to one—at that point, never mind the viper, even a dragon would have been stumped. In the end, Saito Dosan was cut down in the melee, and even on the battlefield there was a farcical brawl over who got credit.

Minoh clan head Nagai Chuzemon and Saito family retainer Kozakura Gen’ei both claimed to have killed the enemy’s grand general, and nearly drew swords over the privilege of cutting off the head. In the end, after the crowd talked them down, one cut off the nose, the other the head, and presented them separately to Saito Yoshitada—an uneasy split in honors.

Who knows what Saito Yoshitada felt as he gazed on his father’s mangled and decapitated corpse, or as he handed out rewards and tokens of gratitude to the "father slayers".

Must’ve been one hell of a feeling—not the sort the average person ever experiences.

Ah Man spoke briskly about Dosan’s death—she didn’t care one way or another. Harano was the same: as long as he knew the gist, that was enough. When she finished, he gently asked, "Did you find your grandpa... any trace?"

Ah Man had suspected her grandpa was with Dosan. After the battle, she risked sneaking onto the field several times to search, even catching some of Saito Yoshitada’s followers and interrogating them—which explained all the blood—but to no avail. She’d found nothing, and nobody had anything useful. Her grandpa was still missing.

Asked by Harano now, she gave up on her rice ball, grumbling in frustration, "No! That old man’s a damn fool. I told him to come find me. He could be living out his days in peace, but he wouldn’t listen, insisted on sticking with that stingy Dosan. Now see what happens... If he’s dead, well, that’s his own damn fault!"

But even as she said it, her brows drooped and she clearly was still worried—just venting—and Ah Qing beside her looked equally troubled, head bowed in silence.

Harano had no good solution—if Ah Man couldn’t find him, he certainly couldn’t—but after a moment’s thought, he tried to reassure her, "Maybe it’s good that you haven’t found him. That means your grandpa wasn’t actually traveling with Saito Dosan. Maybe he’s just being hunted by Saito Yoshitada’s people somewhere and forced to hide out. He could be safe for now."

Ah Man thought about it and figured he had a point. Her eyebrows drooped a bit less, but she still looked unhappy, muttering, "Anyway, I did my best. I was ready to drag him off the battlefield if I saw him—can’t say I was unfilial. Wherever he wants to hide now, it’s on him!"

She paused a moment, then turned to Ah Qing, muttering, "Forget that old bastard, always makes trouble. I have no energy now—you go check the nearby ferries, leave some code words, see if you can find those two little rascals."

Ah Qing nodded quietly—he understood she was just over-worried and talking tough, but she really did want to find her grandpa. He got up and left for the task.

Ah Man sighed again, her heart in an awful state. She had a bad feeling her old man was in trouble, but without any way to find him, she could only give up, flopped down in Harano’s camp, and was snoring in no time—after days of running around, she was exhausted.

Harano slipped off his jacket to cover her, and seeing the discomfort on her frowning face, gently massaged her brows flat.

Ah well, Oda Nobunaga’s father-in-law couldn’t be rescued, Ah Man’s grandpa couldn’t be found—the first Minoh war, really not all that smooth!