Chapter 334 - 256: Boarding the Black Ship, Searching for the Magazine (Part 1)

Chapter 334: Chapter 256: Boarding the Black Ship, Searching for the Magazine (Part 1)

The cold, damp, salty sea wind felt like a blade against his skin. Even though he had smeared a thick layer of oil and wax on his face beforehand, Ichida Keizai still squinted as the wind hit him upon stepping out of the cabin, cursing under his breath.

’Damn this weather. Of all the luck, I’m stuck with the night watch again.’

Despite his dissatisfaction, he didn’t dare let it show. After all, his family had sacrificed nearly everything for him to join the navy and sail with this state-of-the-art fleet on its campaign of conquest.

As the scion of a fallen, low-ranking Warrior family, he carried the full weight of their expectations on his shoulders, so he couldn’t afford the slightest mistake.

His colleagues, who hailed from the more refined districts of Kyoto, mocked him for his humble origins and thick, rural accent. They deliberately ostracized him, which was how he ended up with so many consecutive night shifts. Even so, Ichida Keizai didn’t dare show a hint of displeasure.

Fortunately, after all this time, he had gradually grown accustomed to life at sea.

Besides, it wasn’t all bad. For one, the food was worlds apart from what he was used to.

Back home, to ensure he was physically fit enough for recruitment, his family had poured all their resources into his diet, guaranteeing him a meal of polished rice every day and a serving of meat every other day.

This seemingly modest diet was, in fact, an incredible luxury back in his village. Even though their region was renowned for its high-quality rice, many of the villagers went the entire year without eating a single grain, subsisting on coarse grains and wild vegetables instead.

This was because in recent years, to fund the Monarch’s grand ambitions, the villagers had all been forced to tighten their belts as nearly ninety percent of their harvest was confiscated.

The little that remained was not enough to live on, so they had to trade it at the market for coarser grains just to survive.

Meat was even scarcer; some villagers went their entire lives without ever tasting a proper piece of it.

Therefore, whenever Ichida Keizai picked up his bowl, full of rice and savory pork, he couldn’t help but feel a crushing sense of guilt.

When it was his time to eat, his sisters and cousins would all keep their distance, not daring to even come near.

This was because the clan head—his grandfather—had issued a strict order: this food was for him alone. Anyone else who dared touch a single bite would be severely punished.

That order, of course, included the clan head himself.

In fact, Ichida Keizai had seen with his own eyes how his grandfather’s teeth had been worn down by years of eating coarse grains. The pain kept him awake night after night, and he had wasted away with alarming speed.

But even so, the stubborn old man refused to reduce Ichida’s rations by even the smallest amount.

So, racked with guilt, he could only savor these "exquisite" meals by himself.

As a result, in his world, the greatest happiness imaginable was eating a bowl of rice mixed with pork lard.

But that entire worldview shattered after he endured countless hardships and was finally granted a special recruitment into the navy.

He discovered that the men in the navy didn’t eat mere polished rice, but a finely milled, high-grade "silver" rice. Furthermore, his new comrades wouldn’t touch pork, considering it fit only for the lowest dregs of society.

They ate only the finest fish, hauled up from the deep sea by fishermen, believing it to be the purest of foods.

Or they dined on Wagyu beef, meticulously grain-fed, each cut laced with a snowflake-like marbling he had never laid eyes on before.

For a Warrior from a small town like him, such things were beyond his wildest imagination.

This left him devastated for a long time. His mind replayed images of the villagers who toiled in the fields their whole lives yet never tasted the grain they grew. He thought of his grandfather, who was nothing but skin and bones, and his little sister, who wouldn’t dare approach him no matter how much her mouth watered with hunger.

He couldn’t understand how things had come to this. The Monarch had promised everyone a life of abundance, free from want.

So why was it that ever since the Monarch had declared this vision, life for the villagers had only gotten worse and worse?

It was a puzzle he could not solve, yet he dared not ask anyone. Any form of questioning directed at the Monarch was considered a crime, and this was especially true in the military.

He didn’t want his family’s sacrifices to be in vain, so he buried the question deep within his heart.

He now paced along the edge of the deck, carrying a large storm lantern. It burned kerosene and was fitted with a lens that focused the flame into a straight, powerful beam of light.

His duty was to prevent anyone from stealthily boarding the ship under the cover of darkness.

Ichida Keizai personally doubted any human could manage to board such a massive vessel in the pitch-black of night, but an order was an order. As a Warrior, it was his duty to carry it out to the letter.

He slowly made his way to the bow. As he looked up, the distant lights of the Huangpu Guard sparkled, resembling a giant jewel set into the coastline, a sight that stirred a deep yearning within him.

Ichida Keizai couldn’t help but recall the words of the esteemed prince at his enlistment ceremony.

Across the sea, the prince had declared, lay the rich and vast empire of Great Yan. It was a land of endless fertile fields and boundless resources. If they could just conquer it, every citizen of the East Sea would lead a life of plenty.

And the Huangpu Guard was the first, most crucial step.

The propaganda had painted the seaside city as a land paved with Gold, a place where even the common folk ate rice at every meal and meat every day.