Warring States Survival Guide
Chapter 99 - 61: Green Jade Gourd_2

Chapter 99: Chapter 61: Green Jade Gourd_2

"Go ahead and make the trip, it shouldn’t be a big deal." Nozawa had weighed it all up, and figured he should go—it was mostly a case of the pros outweighing the cons.

Now that he’d fallen on hard times and ended up in Japan’s Warring States period—which, let’s be real, just the name "Warring States" gives away that the whole country will be a warzone sooner or later—even if he ran off elsewhere, he’d probably get sucked into the fighting anyway. Besides, if he wanted to get ahead, to build up wealth, living in Oda Nobunaga’s territory was definitely the best deal. If he could avoid running around, he’d rather not go wandering.

For example, the reason he dared to sell a batch of soy sauce every seven or eight days and make a killing, without fearing the shameless monks at Hosokawa Guanyin Temple coveting his "secret recipe," was because he was living in Takeshige Manor.

Living here, even if those Japanese monks got greedy and wanted to smash up his workshop or torture his "secret recipe" out of him, there was nothing they could do about it—they’d have to take down Oda Nobunaga’s estate first. And that maniac Nobunaga was no pushover. Unless the benefits were off the charts, the monks, no matter how greedy, wouldn’t dare to mess with him—once the profits really were that high, he’d have a whole gang of distributors by then, and plenty of subordinates. If the monks ever tried to raid his workshop, well, then it’d come down to an all-out brawl!

Trying to grow and get stronger is mostly tough in the early stages, but living in Oda Nobunaga’s domain made things a heck of a lot easier.

So as long as it wasn’t a matter of principle—like personal dignity or leaking modern scientific tech—if it was just working a job for Oda Nobunaga, then he didn’t really see what was so unacceptable about it.

And Oda Nobunaga was just paying him to be "Battlefield Hospital Director," staying in the rear, not sending him charging the front lines through a hail of arrows. He’d already made all the preparations, had a full suit of iron armor, Ah Man and Ah Qing fully armed, plus a fast horse—if the frontlines ever collapsed, he’d still have time to retreat from the back. Getting killed in action was highly unlikely.

What’s more, this was also his way to show his unique value. In this feudal era with no concept of human rights, people without value just got trampled into the mud or sent in as cannon fodder. You simply had to have unique value to protect your own autonomy.

So if he had to go, then go. No reason to turn it down.

He’d made his decision, and Ah Man didn’t care either—didn’t bother to fart out an opinion or anything. If Nozawa didn’t want to fight, she’d just run away with him. If Nozawa went to fight, she’d tag along to freeload and mess around.

Whatever, she didn’t care!

Compared to Nozawa, who grew up in peacetime, she was born straight into chaos and war—she’d gotten used to it ages ago, and her outlook was just to live one day at a time, super laid-back about things.

......

Nozawa headed home and immediately started organizing everyone to ready their weapons, pack up their belongings, and prepare to bring the whole family along for his new posting. He even planned to take the "dumb son" with him, intending to find an ox-cart and set up a moving bed for him—since wars in ancient times moved at a snail’s pace and who knows when they’d return, leaving Meng Ziqi and Yayoi at Takeshige Manor made him uneasy, so he figured he’d just bring everybody.

Ah Man, though, thought Meng Ziqi was nothing but a burden—all he ever did was lie around and drag Nozawa down. All Nozawa’s constant anxiety probably came more than half from worrying about Meng Ziqi, terrified he’d accidentally get him killed. Part of her wanted to suggest Nozawa just bury him and be done with it. But she could also sense that Meng Ziqi was really important to Nozawa, not just a friend, more like family, with a really deep bond. So she held her tongue—if her grandpa ended up like this, she wouldn’t bury him either, but would drag him along begging for food for as long as he could stay alive.

So she kept quiet, and also got Ah Qing to keep an extra eye on Meng Ziqi, just in case.

Once Nozawa had mostly settled things at home, the ashigaru allocated to him by Okurakiyebi were all organized and gathered outside his house. The magistrate assigned to assist him also came by, asking for instructions on what to do next and what supplies they should bring to Nagano Castle.

Nozawa didn’t stand on ceremony with Oda Nobunaga—after all, these were his household retainers and ashigaru. After a round of questions, he asked for a ton of ox carts, cloth, grain, fodder, and copper coins, then wrote up a document, signed and sealed it, and sent the magistrate, Maeshima Shichiro Hidechu, to register the items and move the inventory. Just as Maeshima was about to leave, something occurred to him, so he turned back and respectfully asked, "Lord Nozawa, shall we prepare squad and identification flags as well?"

"Identification flags?" Nozawa thought for a moment and decided they were necessary—to mark allies and foes. Otherwise, if he showed up looking all nondescript, the friendly troops might think he was sneaking in for a surprise attack and just clobber him right away, which would really suck. So he said, "Let’s prepare them too. Though, will there be time?"

"There’s time; if it’s not too many, painting and carving the wooden stamps for them will only take half an hour. We can load the carts while they’re being made," Maeshima replied, then asked again, "And Lord Nozawa’s family crest is...?"

At this, Ah Man immediately came over. She’d always been curious about Nozawa’s background, and she was an expert in clan badge study—just one look at the crest and she could probably track down his ancestors. But Nozawa didn’t have a family crest at all. He thought of maybe using Okurakiyebi’s, but there was no direct affiliation. Randomly making one up could easily get him lumped in with some other family, which would be a pain.

He thought for a bit, then grabbed a piece of paper and drew a slightly askew, simple gourd with an upturned mouth, labeling it blue, and handed it to Maeshima Shichiro. "Use this!"

Maeshima Shichiro immediately accepted the task and left. Meanwhile, Ah Man raised her skinny eyebrows thoughtfully and said, "A gourd crest, huh? So your ancestors were courtiers in the Heian era after all. Pretty noble family, huh!"

Now that she knew it was a gourd crest, things would be easy. She just had to ask around which family in the West Sea Road used a gourd crest, or whose ancestors were Heian era courtiers. She could basically pinpoint Nozawa’s original family, and with a bit more digging, probably figure out how he’d ended up sent to the East Sea Road.

Nozawa shot her a look, a bit bewildered. He’d only come up with the crest on the fly, thinking that since he was supposedly a doctor, and doctors in ancient times always hung up gourds, and not wanting random trouble from picking some other family’s crest, he just swiped a gourd from that monkey Hashiba Hideyoshi’s Thousand-Formed Gourd as a placeholder—Monkey Boy was a commoner and he dared to use a gourd as his horse marker, so a gourd definitely couldn’t cause any major trouble. But how’d it turn into a "gourd crest"?

He knew nothing about clan badge study. Not many modern Japanese people truly understood it, never mind him, a foreigner—so mostly he was just winging it. But things had gotten to this point, he could only play along and act like he hadn’t heard anything.

Anyway, he’d just roll with the gourd for now. If it didn’t work out, he’d swap it out later!