Ren had fought battles for half his life, so naturally he was entitled to enjoy himself.
However, compared to his carefree and pleasure-filled situation, Kozuki Oden's side was having a much rougher time.
In the original story, this guy had single-handedly stormed the Shogun's castle intending to take down Orochi because Lady Toki had been targeted for assassination, which clouded his judgment with rage. Now that Tenraku Toki had become Ren's woman, that particular incident had never happened.
Furthermore, his wife hadn't fallen ill before the voyage to Laugh Tale, and there was no unexpected situation of an early return to Wano Country.
So Oden followed Hyogoro's arrangement and, at the appointed time, went to meet the group of samurai.
Setting everything else aside, Hyogoro and Shimotsuki Yasuie had gathered a surprising amount of strength during this period. Several hundred samurai had assembled together, including the original daughter of Amatsuki Tempura.
She was a purple-haired woman with a bold and swaggering appearance. She wore a kimono that exposed one shoulder, her chest wrapped in bandages, and a tattoo was visible on the exposed shoulder.
It was said that her martial arts skills were no inferior to her father's.
With the Amatsuki clan, Hyogoro, and Oden's retainers combined, they were already quite a formidable force.
The strongest among them, Kaido, was at best on par with Kozuki Oden. Kurozumi Orochi, while also quite powerful, could be subdued if two or three people worked together.
This force naturally couldn't match the combined alliance of Orochi and Kaido. After all, through these years of development, Kaido's Beasts Pirates had been growing constantly.
The Beasts Pirates now had no fewer than a thousand combat members. Although most were cannon fodder, they couldn't be taken too lightly. In the New World, while fighters at the All-Star and Tobi Roppo level were hard to come by, those at the Shinuchi level could still be found in abundance.
Setting aside Kaido's forces, the power Orochi controlled was also considerable.
The samurai of the Flower Capital were essentially all under his personal control. Looking at it now, even the yakuza bosses of each region had become Orochi's lapdogs. Calculating this way, the enemy's forces were likely about ten times those of Oden's group.
"The situation is still far from optimistic." Amatsuki sighed. But judging by her expression, just knowing that Oden had returned was enough to make her happy.
"Actually, I think the other samurai aren't worth worrying about at all." Hyogoro said.
"Those people may be submitting to Orochi right now, but if we can eliminate Orochi, they'll likely lose their will to fight."
At the end of the day, the key was always just Orochi and Kaido.
"Oden, you spent so many years overseas. How much do you know about this Kaido fellow?" Yasuie asked.
"Kaido? I fought him once."
"He's a very powerful enemy."
"We were evenly matched at the time." Oden said gravely.
Though he had grown far stronger since then, who could say that Kaido hadn't grown stronger as well?
"He actually fought you to a standstill." The others were all astonished. Oden's strength was something they had witnessed from long ago.
He was a monster-like existence from the very moment he was born!
What they didn't know was that monsters like this were practically a dime a dozen on the seas.
Killing a giant bear with a boulder at age four?
Sorry, that really didn't amount to much. It paled in comparison to Charlotte Linlin destroying a Giant village at age five. Kaido himself was the same, becoming a war machine at just ten or so years old.
A giant bear? In their eyes, it wasn't even worth calling a snack.
"Why not just go and force him to give up the Shogun title?" someone asked.
"Back then, Orochi promised in front of everyone that as long as Lord Oden returned, he would voluntarily hand the position of Shogun back."
"Are you serious? If it were Orochi before he shed his disguise, I might believe he'd do something like that."
"But now..." another person sneered.
"If Orochi truly intended to give up the Shogun's seat, he wouldn't have schemed this extensively."
"Even the yakuza bosses of every region are his bought-and-paid-for pawns."
"He's no longer ruling through reputation, but through sheer military force!" Yasuie declared.
In truth, Orochi had stopped concealing his behavior several years ago. The entire Wano Country was now practically living in misery. Many commoners couldn't even afford to eat.
The old nobility had been completely suppressed. The new nobility consisted entirely of Kaido and Orochi's cronies, who indulged in extravagant pleasure daily, squandering over ninety percent of the nation's wealth, and then levied brutally harsh taxes on the impoverished citizens.
Of course, while Orochi appeared to be living lavishly, most of the accumulated wealth was actually still stored in the Shogun's castle, or had been transformed into Inazuma's wealth in another form.
He was like a massive corrupt official, just waiting for Ren to strike him down and transfer that wealth into Ren's hands.
But in reality, Ren didn't particularly value the wealth Orochi had extorted from the people. After all, in Wano Country, outside of Kuri, the commoners themselves had very little money. Even if they were squeezed completely dry, it wouldn't amount to much.
Once Ren became Shogun, his first order of business would certainly be to redistribute the wealth Orochi had plundered.
But money couldn't fill empty stomachs. Afterward, the villagers who suddenly had money would still need to spend it buying grain from Kuri. The money would just go round and round, ultimately returning to Ren's hands.
By comparison, it was actually Kaido's mining of the Seastone deposits that pained Ren more.
That guy, say what you will, was a prodigious wastrel when it came to spending. He approached the mining with absolutely no moderation. Fortunately, with their level of production capability, they couldn't actually extract that much.
Oden and the others were truly at their wits' end, but they desperately needed a confrontation and a victory.
Previously, with Kozuki Oden still absent, they had been suppressed to the point where they didn't even dare to show their faces. But now that Kozuki Oden had returned, if they continued to hide so pathetically, then what was the point of having him?
Hyogoro and Shimotsuki Yasuie understood this as well, so after careful deliberation, they devised a plan.
"Now isn't the time for a decisive battle with Orochi and his forces. We need to increase our numbers first, at the very least." Hyogoro said loudly.
"But some people have completely lost the courage to fight back."
"The samurai we can gather are only this many."
"At most, we can add the army that Kuri promised to support... but that still won't be enough, will it?"
The people below spoke up one after another.
"There are actually many more people willing to support us. They just don't dare to stand up." Amatsuki said.
She knew many people were suffering under Orochi's oppression, but those ordinary folk simply had no power to resist.
But then Hyogoro exchanged a glance with Yasuie before saying, "No, actually we have many more samurai willing to fight back!"
"It's just that these people have all been captured and thrown into the Udon quarry."
"You don't mean... a prison break?"
[
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