Among the relatives and friends in the Imperial Guard Hall, Saito is one of the people who has been with Aoto the longest, and is also the one who has fought alongside Aoto the most.

Saito is leaving... Of course Aoto can't bear to leave him.

However, Saito is also a very stubborn and straightforward person.

He insists that if Qingdeng no longer needs his protection, if he continues to receive Qingdeng's salary as a bodyguard, it will be a complete fraud - he does not want to accept such an unexpected reward.

There was no other way. In order to retain Saito, Qingto had to change his mind.

The trial health hall has been booming recently, but with the increasing number of new apprentices, the number of teachers has begun to be a bit insufficient.

So Aoto and Kondo worked together and decided to invite Saito to be their teacher's representative at the Imperial Academy.

Although Saito's swordsmanship style has no external influences, in the field of swordsmanship, no matter what style it is, there are quite a lot of things in common.

For example: the sword-holding postures in the upper, middle and lower sections, how to draw and retract the sword, how to draw blood...these contents are common in every school.

Saito is fully capable of teaching these basic kendo skills.

Shusuke, Kondo and the others were also reluctant to let go of Saito, so they all went into battle and beat Saito hard.

In the end, Saito finally succumbed to the "saturation offensive" of Qingnobo and others.

Ever since—even though Saito was no longer Seito's bodyguard, he continued to live in the Imperial Guard Hall as a "diner and teacher of the Imperial Guard Hall".

In the past, Qingnobo would lead Saito, Nagakura, and Harada to the monastery every working day.

But now, all the gang leaders are gone, the bodyguards have resigned, and he has to go to the yamen where the thieves were reformed alone - thinking of this, Qingdeng feels a little lonely inexplicably.

…

…

The air is filled with the refreshing smell unique to autumn.

Under the high blue sky, Mount Fuji in the distance silently overlooked the people who began to shuttle busily through the towns of Edo.

Compared with summer, the sunlight that permeates the streets is white and soft under the smudge of early autumn.

While walking at a leisurely pace, Qingdeng looked around with interest at the street scenes that were different from what he was used to seeing in the past due to the change in his route to work.

Compared with other government departments, the Huofu Thieves Kaiyuan has a very interesting feature, that is, the location of their yamen is not fixed.

Generally speaking, whoever is the current commander-in-chief of the Huofu Thieves Reform, then this person's residence is the new Yamen of the Huofu Thieves Reform.

Unless there are some very special circumstances, the general commander of the Huofu Thief Kaiyuan will basically change every year. Therefore, the yamen of the Huofu Thieves Kaiyuan will also change every year.

This year the Yamen is located in the east of the city, but next year it may be moved to the west.

From its establishment to the present, the history of Huo Fu Thieves Kai is only over a hundred years old.

As a result, in the mere hundred years of its history, the Huofu Bandits have had more than two hundred chief commanders...

The commander-in-chief changes clothes more frequently than the Yoshihara oiran. This is not the most speechless part of the organizational structure changed by the fire thieves.

What makes people feel even more ridiculous than "frequently changing the commander-in-chief" is that there is often more than one commander-in-chief for the Huo Fu Thieves!

Only in very rare circumstances will the Fire Pay Rogue version only have one commander in chief.

Most of the time, there will be at least two top leaders in the Huo Fu Thieves game.

The current Fire Thief Kai has two top officers at the same time: Kurosawa Atsushi and Okubo Tadashi.

These two people are respectively the 240th generation and the 241st generation commander-in-chief of the Huo Fu Thief Kai.

The status of these two people is completely equal, there is no distinction between superior and inferior, and there is no detailed division of functions. They both have the same rights and obligations.

Not only do the brains of an army change frequently, but they often have two or even three brains at the same time... This kind of thing seems ridiculous at first glance, but it is actually full of insidious political wisdom.

According to legend, Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun who founded the Edo shogunate, once said: The secret of running a country is to keep the peasants half-dead.

The shogunate structure built by Tokugawa Ieyasu and his descendants and continued to this day has understood this sentence to the extreme.

During the more than two hundred years that the Edo shogunate ruled Japan, not only the farmers were tortured to death, but also the merchants, craftsmen, ordinary samurai, and feudal lords were manipulated to death.

Huo Fu Thieves is a microcosm of the officialdom of the shogunate.

In fact, the chiefs of almost all agencies and departments of the Edo Shogunate were held by several people at the same time, and they were replaced very frequently. It was normal to change them once a year or several times a year.

The reason for doing this is to torment the officials and warriors.

Although redundant officials and redundant personnel will lead to extremely low administrative efficiency, this can make the throne of the general conquering the barbarians quite stable.

If there are too many people in a department who can talk about issues, they will inevitably start arguing and kicking the ball when it comes to big or small issues.

The strength and energy of the officials were completely eroded in this endless wrangling and kicking the ball.

If the power of each person and department is dispersed, it will be difficult to form a joint force and pose a threat to the rule of the Tokugawa family.

Moreover, if each department has a bunch of talkers, it can also effectively alleviate the social pressure of "a large number of samurai have no official positions and become socially unstable elements".

Whether there are frequent changes of commanders, or there are multiple commanders...the purpose of these methods is simple and the same: to minimize the threat of the fire bandits to the Edo shogunate!

If the commander-in-chief is replaced frequently, "the soldiers will not know the generals, and the generals will not know the soldiers."

If there is more than one commander-in-chief, the internal divisions of the Huo Fu Thieves Kai will naturally form and it will be difficult to unite as one.

Therefore, these systems, which at first glance seem extremely absurd, are actually extremely vicious political games.

The Edo shogunate has been able to rule Japan for nearly 300 years, and has maintained general stability until now. Almost no vassal state has the strength to challenge the authority of the Edo shogunate - this series of extremely troublesome events left by Tokugawa Ieyasu and his descendants

system and governance ideas, which are indispensable.

The yamen that the Huofu Thief changed this year is Kurosawa Atsushi's mansion, which is located in the south of the city, quite far from the Imperial Guard Hall.

Qingnog always walked very quickly, but it took him nearly 40 minutes to finally see Kurosawa Atsushi's mansion... the government office that was converted into a house by the thieves.

Kurosawa Atsushi's mansion is quite luxurious and magnificent. Aomori looked to the left and then to the right - no matter which direction he looked, he could not see the end of the stone brick wall surrounding the mansion.

There were four soldiers wearing black clothes and holding long sticks standing guard at the spacious gate that could accommodate four adults entering and exiting side by side at the same time.

Qingdeng strode over, and the four sentries immediately raised their long sticks with nervous expressions on their faces.

But after seeing Qingden's squad leader uniform, the nervousness on their faces suddenly turned into confusion.

"The following is the captain of the third division who came to report today: Tachibana Aoden!"

Qingden took the initiative to announce his name to the sentries, and lifted up the hem of the haori on his right side, revealing a brand new seal hanging on his right waist - a black-and-silver seal that symbolized the Fire Bandits' changed captaincy.

cage.

In an instant, a small commotion broke out among the four sentries.

I saw them biting their ears in a low voice:

"This is the 'Nioh'... so young... He looks younger than my sister."

"You read that right, 'Nioh' is only 18 years old this year. He is indeed younger than your sister."

"Hey, stop chatting, it's more important to do business."

These four sentries should have received the news in advance that "the new captain of the third division will be here today", so after a brief period of shock and confusion, they quickly calmed down their minds and emotions and came forward to verify Qingdeng's identity.

.

Just when Qingdeng was patiently waiting for his identity to be confirmed——

"Aiya~~ Isn't this Niou? It's been a long time~~ Do you still remember me?"

A male voice with a long, strange tone at the end of each sentence suddenly sounded behind Qingdeng.

A familiar male voice... Qingdeng quickly turned back.

A young man with a delicate face and a soft smile on his lips, holding a knife on his waist in his left hand, and tucking his right hand into the lapel of his coat, walked towards Qingdeng with brisk steps.

Qingdeng immediately recognized who this young man was.

"My grandson..."

It was on the night that Sanako accompanied Sanako to the fireworks display that he had a chance encounter with the captain of the Fire Thieves Kaiyi Squadron and the leader of the 9th Division of the Advanced Iron Cannon Division. He was a rare genius detective: I

Grandson Chutaro!

In order to facilitate the work in the future, Qingdeng has searched for a lot of information in the recent period, done a lot of homework, and memorized the names of every person in the current command level of Huofu Thief.

The current command level of the Huo Fu Thieves is composed of 2 commanders and captains of 8 divisions. The list is as follows——

Commander-in-Chief: Kurosawa Atsushi, Okubo Tadashi.

First Division Captain: My grandson Chutaro

Second Division Captain: Kanazawa Chusuke

Captain of the Third Division: Tachibana Aoden

Captain of the Fourth Division: Mizushima Rensaburo

Captain of the fifth division: Suma Kimura

Captain of Division 6: Genzo Hosaka

Captain of the 7th Division: Masaki Tsuchida

Captain of Division 8: Nobuyoshi Kazama
To be continued...