Wanjin, this place on the coast of Ise Bay facing the Pacific Ocean, had only just been nad a couple of days ago and didn’t have a single soul in sight.
Harano looked around at the desolate, silent surroundings, feeling the faintly salty sea breeze brush against his face, then glanced at the nearby stretch of fine sandy beach. He bent down, used his short knife to turn over the soil beneath his feet, pinched a small clump of blackish-gray dirt, examined it, and then let it slowly sift through his fingers.
Wasteland is wasteland—sure enough, the soil was terrible, a heavy clay that had poor aeration and drainage. Plant roots would struggle to access water and oxygen here; if you really wanted to farm, you’d have to dig out leaf mold from the forest, mix in sand and rocks in proper proportions, and then deep-plow and turn it over for a year or two before there was any hope of turning it into "paddy soil."
But that was fine; he hadn’t co here for land reclamation anyway. This was just an advance base—so long as they could develop without restrictions, that was good enough.
At the very least, no one would interfere with his charcoal-burning and Lang Faction recruitnt here.
As for safety issues...
For the ti being, that wasn’t a big concern. All the powerful clan leaders in the Lower Four Provinces of Owari had just taken a beating from Oda Nobunaga; it was unlikely, for at least three to five months, that anyone would be crazy enough to attack a project Nobunaga was heavily invested in.
This was a rare window of opportunity; he had to seize the ti, complete the restoration of work and production during this period, and gain even better self-preservation ability than before. Only then could he consider the next steps, consider the future.
As he surveyed the terrain and let his mind wander to random things, the people behind caught up. He turned his head and directly ordered, "Let’s set up camp here!"
Maeshima Shichiro looked around. This place was pretty good too—close to a water source and flat enough—so he imdiately called for the servants to circle up the wagons and start unloading. The newcors, Nakajou Heichiro and Marubashi Five Gates, the two Yoriki, led teams of Lang Faction mbers to fan out and scout for dangerous wild animals nearby under Harano’s instruction.
Harano, anwhile, took Akiyo and trudged on ahead, wanting to check out the little bay and pick a site to build a small dock—just big enough for a mid-sized ship for now.
This was essential. Without that ship, he wouldn’t be able to quickly acquire saltpeter...
Well, not quite accurate—he wouldn’t be able to acquire saltpeter quickly according to Plan A. He’d be forced to use Plan B, which was the saltpeter field extraction thod that first appeared in fourteenth-century France and beca popular in the mid-fifteenth century. That would require investing a lot of labor and materials to dig up li and excavate pits, making it impossible to focus on his own tasks in the short term—not a good trade-off.
Moreover, the saltpeter field thod was very easy to copy; if Oda Nobunaga sent his people to sneak a peek or two, they’d figure it out in no ti, which would greatly reduce Harano’s personal value and ss up his future plans.
So unless he really couldn’t et his deliveries and risked having his land repossessed by Oda Nobunaga, he didn’t want to fall back on Plan B. He still preferred to keep things complicated, so the key technology would stay in his own hands. That’s the main reason he wanted this barren land; as long as his needs were t, the amount of saltpeter Nobunaga wanted could almost certainly be supplied with just one ship.
Of course, whether to choose Plan A or Plan B—well, he’d have to wait and see, but there was no harm in getting started right away.
......
And so the grueling settler’s life began: Harano led his group of over a hundred people to wreak havoc on the wilderness—setting fire to clear land, removing brush, felling trees, driving off wild animals, leveling the ground, putting up shelters, and marking out spots for critical buildings like the soy sauce workshop, dye works, charcoal and li kilns, and irrigation channels.
After five or six days of hard work, the campsite was basically livable. He started thinking about getting the soy sauce workshop up and running first, to quickly restore cash flow and put more funds in hand so he could hire more craftsn and speed up construction.
That wasn’t much of a problem, since the requirents for a soy sauce workshop were pretty low, and both Maeshima Shichiro and the Momoi brothers were already experienced. He simply left them in charge of preparation, but just as he was working out the plans with the three of them on an empty plot of land, he suddenly noticed sothing was happening in the distance.
The Lang Faction on watch over there—borrowed from the Oda Family through Niwa Nagahide—had stopped two people and a cart, and it looked like a minor dispute was brewing.
Curious, he told the Maeshima trio to keep working and went over to take a look himself. As he got closer, he saw an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old, burly young man noisily demanding to see him, with a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old, small-sleeved girl at his side, and a battered handcart behind them loaded with so ragtag luggage and a heap of straw. Sticking out of the straw was a filthy little bare foot—one that looked oddly familiar...
It really was familiar. In the past, he’d often seen a certain soone pick at that very foot after als. He’d even spent ages after first coming here trying to persuade the owner of that foot to wash up before bed. The mory was deeply etched...
"Sir!"
He found himself staring dazedly at the dirty foot, his heart thumping faster and faster, everything feeling vaguely unreal. A Lang Faction mber noticed his arrival, turned quickly to greet him, and the burly young man’s eyes instantly locked onto him, giving him an up-and-down look before blurting out, a little bluntly, "You’re Harano Saburo?"
"That’s !"
Harano finally snapped back to himself and answered instinctively, heading toward the handcart. But the young man imdiately gripped his sword handle and called out, "Hold on, pay us the money you promised first!"
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