Chapter 109: Chapter 109: People who are starving to death are no different from livestock
Chapter 109: People who are starving to death are no different from livestock
In the Amegakure Village shrouded in rain, there are several towers.
And at the top of the tallest tower, a scarred Rain Ninja arrived.
Looking at the silent iron door in front of him, the scarred Rain Ninja still had anger on his face. He stretched out his hand and knocked heavily on the iron door.
Boom! Boom!
"Yoshitaka?"
After a while, he heard an old voice coming from inside the door, asking and answering himself: "Come in."
The scarred man called "Yoshitaka" was stunned, and with a light push he actually pushed the iron door open.
Click.
Yoshitaka pushed the door open and looked up, then he saw a figure in front of the window.
The turbulent rain flowed down the window, leaving winding and branching traces.
A slight dripping sound was heard constantly. Dead leaves were blown onto the window by the strong wind, wetting and sticking to the glass like paper.
"Ha~"
The old man standing in front of the window retracted his gaze, blew a breath of white air into his hands to warm them up, and muttered softly: "Sure enough, in this kind of weather, you should eat hot pot to warm yourself up."
After saying that, he walked to the living room which had no decorative furniture and sat down next to the square kotatsu.
Then he waved to the scarred Rain Ninja in front of the door and said jokingly, "Why are you standing there like an idiot? Close the door quickly, my old bones can't stand the cold."
Hearing this, Yoshitaka suddenly came back to his senses, feeling a slight chill. He couldn't help but tighten his clothes, closed the door and walked in.
Click.
After closing the door, Yoshitaka walked to the kotatsu with a sullen face, and immediately felt a gentle warmth, and the anger in his heart inexplicably subsided a lot.
"This thing is not common in the Land of Rain."
The old man lowered his head and fiddled with the kotatsu, lowered his eyelids and smiled kindly, "His Highness the Daimyo got two sets and specially left one for me."
There was a small grill on the kotatsu table with a sukiyaki pot on it and the broth was bubbling.
Yoshitaka stood there without saying a word, just staring in silence.
He saw the old man throwing the cross-shaped mushrooms and neatly cutting the meat cubes into the pot. The fresh vegetables were also thrown into the soup.
"Lord Musashi!"
He subconsciously clenched his fists and asked in a deep voice, "The relief food we bought with our own money was exchanged by those damn merchants and nobles for bran and brown rice for livestock. Did you know about this?"
Bran is the outer shell removed from rice grains, such as husks, bran and other useless discarded materials.
Brown rice is rice that has been husked but still has the cortex and germ, but the rice they want to buy is rice that has been completely husked!
"…So that's why." The old man called "Musashi" put down the cup in his hand and whispered, "If that's the case, then I know."
"You know? You know they are selling inferior goods as good ones?"
Hearing this, looking at the leader of the Amegakure Village in front of him, an old man whom he once admired very much, Yoshitaka's anger rose up and he asked: "Then why did you just sit there and do nothing? Those bastards should be hung up and beaten to death!"
"That Hanzo guy is still trying to win people's hearts and minds, and even paid out of his own pocket to buy relief food for the refugees. Now people outside are praising his wisdom! You, don't you care at all..."
Facing the questioning from his right-hand man, Musashi took a sip of tea slowly and asked calmly: "Then do you know how much bran and brown rice can be exchanged for one pound of polished rice?"
Faced with the inexplicable question, Yoshitaka was subconsciously stunned for a moment, frowned and said: "Of course I know that the price of one pound of polished rice can buy three pounds of bran and brown rice."
At this point, he raised his eyebrows again and said angrily: "But, even if it's bran and brown rice, they've taken one-third! Moreover, that stuff is for animals to eat, not for humans! You..."
"Hey, don't be so angry." Before Yoshitaka could finish his words, Musashi suddenly patted the table, interrupting him and said with a smile, "Come on, let's eat together to warm up our bodies."
Yoshitaka choked when he was interrupted, and his brows were almost twisted into a knot.
But looking at the old man's clear eyes, he suppressed his anger and sat down.
"Yoshitaka." Musashi took a few pieces of meat from the hot pot and put them in Yoshitaka's bowl while whispering, "Have you ever seen someone die from eating dirt?"
Yoshitaka froze in mid-air after hearing this, and blurted out, "What?"
Eating dirt and bloating to death?
"Look, you haven't seen it before. You haven't even seen the bark of a tree being eaten away. You think the civilians are miserable enough now."
Musashi said to himself, "I have survived from the end of the Sengoku era to the present day. When I was young, I fought with samurai from all over the world with just a sword. From the age of thirteen to sixty, I fought more than a hundred times without losing a single battle."
"But it is precisely because of this that I realized that the victims who were about to starve to death were no longer considered human beings."
As soon as these words were spoken, Yoshitaka suddenly stood up with his eyes wide open, looking at the old man in disbelief.
Obviously, the Amegakure Village was able to get to where it is today because of the leadership of this old man!
So when other companions were leaning towards Hanzo, he chose to continue to stay with Lord Musashi.
But he never expected that such words would come out of Lord Musashi's mouth.
"Shocked?"
Musashi just smiled and shook his head, sighing: "Because you have never seen what it's like to be starving to death, and you have never seen the miserable reality after the outbreak of war. After all, you are just a ninja who does not do anything productive."
"What dignity, what decency, what animals eat, what people eat, those things are things you can only think about after you are full!"
"When people are hungry to a certain extent, they won't consider what to eat, let alone whether it tastes good or not, or even whether they can eat at all."
"As long as they can survive, they will eat anything, not to mention bran and rice, grass roots, tree bark, and soil!"
Musashi raised his head slightly and looked at Yoshitaka, his eyes deep as he said, "They will even exchange their children, and then..."
At this point, he suddenly paused, looked at Yoshitaka's pale face, shook his head and smiled bitterly, "One pound of refined rice can be exchanged for three pounds of bran and brown rice, which means that the money that could originally save one person can now save three people."
"Although they have no nutritional value and are even difficult to digest, they can fill the stomach and allow more people to live a few more days."
"Tell me, did I make a mistake in this deal?"
For a moment, Yoshitaka fell into a long silence, his mind becoming a mess.
He could only open his mouth unconsciously and stumbled back, "This... the money and food for disaster relief is not enough, why don't we ask His Highness the Daimyo for more..."
"Moreover, most of the limited relief money went into the pockets of those merchants..."
Hearing this, as if remembering something, a trace of sadness flashed in Musashi's eyes, and he smiled sarcastically and said, "Allocate more money and grain? Where will the money come from? The granary has long been an empty shell! Where will the grain come from? Are we going to continue to collect taxes?!"
"As for those profit-seeking merchants, how can they sell us food if we don't feed them? After all, they only took one-third of the food. The remaining two-thirds can still save one more person!"
"If there were no such bastard merchants as you mentioned, and no such bran and coarse rice as you mentioned for livestock to eat, then what you would see outside the city would not be skinny refugees, but a pile of gnawed bones!"
The only and most regretful thing for Musashi at this moment was that he had not figured out a way to grow food earlier and had not tried to get rid of his dependence on the big country earlier.
Hearing the old man's increasingly deep voice, Yoshitaka staggered back a few steps with a pale face, his mind went blank, and he shook his head and muttered: "How, how could it be like this, it turned out to be like this..."
"Then, the reason why you never rebelled against Sunagakure is because..."
Musashi slowly lowered his head, picked up a piece of meat from the pot, and said softly: "Do you think I want to stand by and watch? Do you think I want to be a coward?"
"I am Musashi, the former sword saint. I have defeated all those old guys from the Iron Kingdom. Even though I am old, I can still wield a sword."
"But, resistance? Revenge? How serious will the consequences be for just four light words or two light words?"
"Hanzo is still young, he can be arrogant and ambitious, but I can't. I am now the leader of the Amegakure Village, and I carry the lives of thousands of people on my shoulders. I can't gamble, and I can't win."
"Once the scale of the war continues to expand, it will no longer be just a passage like it is now. The Land of Rain will become a victim of the big countries and a target of their joint attack."
"'Revenge' is a luxury we cannot afford right now!"
In the Land of Rain right now, there is no other way out except to survive.
We can only survive until the end of the war, and then find a way to deal with it step by step.
But even if they want to survive, the prerequisite is that the big countries ignore them. Otherwise, once they are targeted, they won't even have the luxury of surviving...
BANG!!
Just when the two were distracted, the iron gate was suddenly pushed open.
"No, this is bad, Lord Musashi!"
A Rain Ninja rushed in and shouted in horror: "Sand Village! Sand Village is plundering again..."
At this point, he hurriedly shook his head and said in fear: "No, this time it was a massacre! Two villages, hundreds of people, all slaughtered by them!!"
"Hanzo, Lord Hanzo, upon receiving the news, took his men over there immediately to intercept the Sand Village troops!"
Musashi listened to all the news calmly, looked at the vegetables and meat rising and falling in the boiling pot, and whispered: "This day has finally come."
Destiny will always catch up with our slowing pace until we achieve the future it has chosen for us.
(End of this chapter)
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