I was a swordsman in ancient Japan

"Let's disband now."

"Let's go down and rest first."

"It's not too late to discuss the right candidate for the new Balrog."

Shuntaro's words caused many people present to ponder.

"Master Shuntaro is right." Shintaro said softly, "My heart is indeed in a mess right now and I can't think well, so let's do what Master Shuntaro said first, break up first, and let's take a rest."

"Yes, I agree."

"agree"

After the Jōnin made his statement, other people also expressed their agreement with Shuntaro's proposal to adjourn just now.

Edo, Yoshiwara

"Master Shirobei." Keimon, whose face and clothes were covered in black and white patches by the thick smoke, reported to Shirobei, "The flames have been successfully isolated."

"Yeah." Shirobei's tired face from just now finally showed a faint smile, "Very good. But don't be careless. Don't let your guard down until the flame is completely extinguished."

Keimon: "Yes!"

"Keimon, since the flames have been isolated now, you don't need to demolish the house anymore, do you?"

"Yes! It's no longer needed!"

"Then help me, there are still a lot of freshly dismantled wood to be cleaned up, let's move these wood out together."

"Yes!"

Shirobei is now at the forefront of fighting the fire.

Coincidentally, Shirobei had been working at the Shirobei club until late at night because of his busy schedule.

Considering that it was getting late at night, Shirobei simply stayed overnight in the clubhouse.

Because it was too late, or he was too lazy to walk home, Shirohei often did this kind of thing where he just rested overnight at his office.

Before the fire broke out, Shirobei was sleeping soundly in the clubhouse.

After learning that there was a fire in the west of Yoshihara, and the fire showed signs of getting out of control, Shirobei was so frightened that he lost sleep.

Quickly ordered the officials of the clubhouse who were still on duty to rush to the fire site at full speed, and at the same time they rushed to the front line of fire fighting.

Shirobei didn't even have time to put on clothes at the time, so he just rushed to the fire site in a yukata for sleeping.

After Shirohei led all the officials who were still on duty at the clubhouse to the fire site, the first batch of officials to eliminate the fire also arrived in Yoshiwara.

The officials of the town fire department are professional firefighters. They judged at a glance that the fire had spread, and it was impossible to force it out by manpower. They had to remove all nearby combustible objects and wait for it to extinguish naturally.

This is the most common and only useful fire fighting method in the face of large-scale fires in this era.

Due to the limited level of science and technology, people in this era do not have any very powerful fire extinguishing equipment.

If the fire is relatively severe, buckets and some crude watering devices can be used to extinguish the fire.

But if the fire gets bigger, there is no other way but to remove the flammable materials around the fire scene and create a barrier to let the flame go out naturally.

The biggest combustibles are naturally the houses made of wood and paper.

Therefore, once a large fire occurs, the scene seen at the fire scene is not that the officials of the town fire department used buckets and other objects to put out the fire.

Instead, the officials of the town fire department took a sledgehammer and a small cart to smash and demolish all the houses that had not been burned by the flames.

After judging that the fire could no longer be extinguished by force, the town firefighters who rushed to Yoshiwara immediately took out a sledgehammer and ran aggressively towards the houses around the fire scene.

And the officials of the clubhouse headed by Shirobei, naturally followed this group of professional "demolition personnel" to demolish the house.

Some strong and extraordinarily brave civilians also spontaneously joined the ranks of putting out fires and demolishing houses.

Shirobei's age is not such a big hammer, and he can't even swing it up and down three times.

Therefore, after Shirobei came to the front line of fire fighting, he only did the relatively simple work of moving the smashed wood to the small cart.

In fact, it doesn't matter if Shirobei doesn't do anything.

As the top boss of Shirobei Clubhouse, as long as he stands at the forefront of fire fighting, he can greatly boost the morale of the clubhouse officials.

Although all the houses around the fire site have been successfully demolished and the flames have been successfully isolated, there are still many house fragments that have just been demolished on the ground that need to be dealt with urgently.

So some of the people who were in charge of demolishing the house just now and still had some strength left turned into "cleaners".

In addition, some people who are exhausted are looking for a place to rest and recover their strength.

Just as Shirobei and Keimon were working together to move a huge wooden pillar onto the small cart next to it, a middle-aged, potbellied man ran towards Shirobei with a grunt.

"Master Shirobei! Finally found you!"

Shirobei knew this middle-aged man with a big belly.

He is the owner of Jianmei House.

"What's wrong?" Shirobei asked, "Why are you in such a panic?"

"Master Shirobei! It's not good!"

Seeing Umeya Higashi look around, he put his lips close to Shirobei's ear, lowered his volume, and whispered anxiously:

"Master Wind Chime is gone!"

"Disappeared?" Shiro Bingwei's eyes widened, "What's going on? What happened? Tell me clearly."

The disappearance of any wandering girl is an extremely serious event for the Shirobei clubhouse in charge of Yoshiwara.

This is the case for the disappearance of ordinary wandering girls, let alone the disappearance of the oiran.

When he heard the words "Taifu Furin is gone" from Miumeya's mouth, Shirobei's heartbeat immediately accelerated due to nervousness and shock.

"After learning that there was a fire, we immediately woke up all the wandering girls in Jianmei House and asked them to leave Jianmei House as soon as possible."

Seeing that the owner of Meiwu was crying, he looked like he was about to cry at any time.

"I personally took someone outside Taifu's room to wake Taifu up, but no matter how I called, Taifu didn't respond."

"After realizing that something was wrong, I led people into the Taifu's room."

"After entering the room, I realized that there was no one in the room, and the husband had disappeared."

"I've searched everywhere, but I can't find Taifu."

"No matter who you ask, everyone will say that they haven't seen Taifu."

"I asked Taifu's bald to check the room, and found that Taifu's clothes specially used to receive guests, as well as several headgears were missing."

The more Shirobei listened, the darker his face became.

Tonight, a fire broke out in Yoshihara first, and Taifu Fengling disappeared later.

Even the "battle-tested" Shirobei can't help but feel a strong sense of fatigue now.

"It's really not peaceful tonight." Shirobei frowned, and let out a long and tired sigh.

"Master Shirobei." Seeing that the face of Meiwu's owner was full of anxious sweat, "I suspect that the Taifu may have been kidnapped by someone, so hurry up and organize people to find the Taifu."

"Yeah. Keeimon." Shirobei turned his head to look at Keeimon beside him, "You go to the execution office to report to the officer. I'll take someone to see Umeya to see the situation."

"Yeah!" Keimon nodded vigorously, dropped the broken wooden pillar in his hand, and ran towards the direction of the Yoshihara gate.

Edo, Shiranui, Shuntaro's residence

After striding back to his residence, Shuntaro did not light the lamp, did not change his clothes, and at the same time did not take off the saber on his back.

After returning to the residence, I lay down directly on the tatami mat, facing the ceiling.

There are only faint sounds of insects around, which makes Shuntaro feel very comfortable.

Shintaro and the others had a messy and intense discussion just now, so noisy that Shuntaro couldn't even calm down and think.

After being in a quiet environment now, Shuntaro felt that his brain was gradually relaxing.

The messy balls of wool in my mind were combed one by one to form clear parallel lines.

Shuntaro prioritized the series of events that happened tonight.

The most urgent and urgent thing to do is to find out who killed the Balrog.

The biggest suspect at present is undoubtedly the Iga ninja who suddenly disappeared.

But Shuntaro didn't just foolishly believe that it was the Iga ninjas who killed Balrog.

There are too many people who have sufficient motivation to kill the Balrog.

It could be some ordinary ninja in the village who has been resenting Balrog for something.

It may be that some shogunate official who is not used to Shiranui bought the murder.

It could also be someone from the "Four Heavenly Kings".

Once the Balrog dies, the next Balrog must be chosen from the "Four Heavenly Kings".

Therefore, from the perspective of motivation, the three talents Shuntaro, Jitaro, and Shintaro are the most motivated to poison Balrog, especially Shuntaro who is the most likely to succeed Balrog.

It's just that no one in the village dares to say clearly that "the Four Heavenly Kings may also be the murderer who poisoned the Balrog".

The "Four Heavenly Kings" are the highest leaders in the village after the Balrog, and no one with any brains dare to suspect that the "Four Heavenly Kings" killed the Balrog.

Shuntaro guessed: There must be many people in the village who suspect that Balrog's death is related to someone among their "Four Heavenly Kings", but they dare not speak out and only dare to discuss it in private.

Arranging the people who have sufficient motivation to kill Balrog, it can be found that the group of Iga ninjas headed by Hannosuke have the least motivation to kill Balrog.

"It's really troublesome." Shuntaro sat up slowly from the tatami and muttered.

Shuntaro feels that the night can be so long after a long absence

Edo, somewhere

Taifu Fengchi felt a sound coming from a distance.

"As expected of the oiran of Yoshiwara, she is really pretty."

A voice came from afar.

"It's the first time I've seen such a beautiful woman."

The sound gradually approached.

"Tsk tsk tsk skin is so delicate."

Feel consciousness and strength gradually pouring out.

"Master Sennosuke, let's touch this oiran, let's touch her hand, and do nothing else."

The dark world shines into white light.

"Huh?" Taifu Fengling slowly opened his eyes as he regained consciousness.

As soon as she opened her eyes, Mrs. Fengling saw 4 youths standing in front of her.

These four youths were all wearing strange black clothes.

After glancing at the four black-clothed youths standing in front of her, Taifu Fengling began to look around.

This is a narrow room without any piece of furniture.

There are only tatami mats on the floor, and only one window too narrow to pass through is opened on the wall.

There is only one candle in the room emitting candle light, so the vision in the room is relatively dim.

Tai Fu looked down, and saw that his hands were tied behind his back, and his ankles were tightly tied together with hemp rope.

She was tightly bound by the hemp rope, and she was laid horizontally on the tatami, unable to move.

After Taifu woke up, the four young men in black standing in front of Taifu also noticed Taifu's awakening.

"Teacher." One of the four men in black, a young man with three tear moles under his left eye, walked slowly to Taifu Fengling, then knelt down on one knee, trying to keep his vision and Taifu Pingqi, "You're awake."

"Who are you?" The husband took a deep breath to calm himself down, and then questioned the "young man with tear mole" in a deep voice.

When questioning this "tear mole youth", memories before coma popped up in Taifu's mind bit by bit

When Yoshiwara's gate just closed

Edo, Yoshihara, Mimeya, Furin Taifu's room.

Taifu Fengchi usually falls asleep when Yoshihara's gate is closed when no guests order her.

After falling asleep for an unknown amount of time, the Taifu suddenly heard a faint noise.