Volume 1: Stormy Weather on the Island Chapter 28: Close Your Eyes When It's Dark If you encounter a situation where you can't see the chapter images, please press F5 to refresh once. The tea party ended, and after everyone finished eating snacks, they were all in high spirits.

  Hokō's Hokō stood up straight, holding a fan and performed an energetic dance in front of everyone. After the crowd burst into laughter, several people set up archery targets in the courtyard and took turns shooting arrows to compete with each other.

  Archery was both a form of entertainment and a means of practicing marksmanship for warriors. The Japanese bow, known as "yumi", is one of the longest and largest bows in the world, with an average length of over 2 meters. A notable feature of the Japanese bow is its asymmetrical shape, with the upper limb being longer than the lower limb, and the grip located at about two-thirds of the way up from the bottom. This design is said to be convenient for shooting while on horseback.

  However, the range of such a large bow is far from ideal. The reason is that this bow mostly uses direct shooting, rather than adopting the throwing method like most archers in this era, such as English longbowmen, to shoot out a parabolic trajectory. Therefore, when iron cannons with longer range and stronger penetration appeared, they became popular among warriors, and the status of bows and arrows declined greatly.

  But as a martial family, both Takeda Katsuyori and Sanada Yukimura had been practicing archery since childhood. Li Xiao could only have an attitude of learning, just treating it as a hobby, anyway his gun skills were already famous in the Takeda family, and he didn't care about his archery skills.

  After shooting arrows, Takeda Nobukatsu, Mochizuki Shigenaga and Sanada Yukimasa felt that they had enjoyed themselves enough and all asked to take their leave.

  Li Xiao had another plan in mind, and he opened his mouth to persuade them to stay. He proposed that they play a game together. The game was from the Ming country where Li Xiao was from, and it was very popular. It was called "Close Your Eyes When It's Dark". As soon as Ueda Shigenaga and others heard that the game came from the Ming country, they were immediately interested. So, they decided to stay in Gao Yuan City for the night.

  To make up the number, Li Xiao went to great lengths to bring in Yamamoto Kanetsugu from Tenguzuka and invited several other young warriors.

  Then Li Xiao took a stack of slips, the slips were written with loyal ministers and treacherous ministers, and let Takeda Shingen and others draw. By Li Xiao himself as the cutter, four treacherous ministers were selected, and the remaining eight people became loyal ministers. After that, Li Xiao explained the game rules to them in detail.

  The traitor's task is to kill all the loyal ministers, and every time a loyal minister is killed, everyone discusses together and finally chooses a 'suspect' for execution, and then the game continues. Until either all the loyal ministers are killed or all the traitors are executed by the loyal ministers, the outcome is decided.

  In fact, this killing game was something Li Xiao used to play with classmates at bars, which can greatly exercise one's observation skills, logical thinking, language expression, psychological quality and acting ability.

  Then Li Xiao shouted "Hei Bai Qi Yan" (Black and White Seven Eyes), everyone closed their eyes, and the four people who drew the traitor cards opened their eyes to exchange glances and decide which loyal minister to kill first. After playing a few rounds and getting familiar with the game rules, everyone quickly got into it and had a great time shouting "Hao Wan" (good play).

  At the end of each round, the loyal and treacherous cards are redrawn. In the killing game, those with shallower minds and less cunning are more likely to be identified as traitors, while those with poor judgment and observation skills are more likely to mistakenly kill 'good people'.

  People like Wang Yue and Bao Kechang often make wrong judgments or are seen through.

  Of course, Li Xiao is still most looking forward to the battle between Yamamoto Kansuke and Sanada Masayuki, two of the strongest strategists in the Takeda clan.

  Every time Yamamoto Kanbei judges who is a treacherous minister, his unparalleled insight and logical analysis ability always make the actor playing the role of the treacherous minister frightened, and Li Xiao feels more reverence for his ability.

  In fact, when it comes to the contrast between appearance and reality, Shinoda Masayuki's acting skills are excellent whether he plays a treacherous minister or a loyal one. Adding his mature and stable demeanor beyond his years, as well as his calm psychological quality, Li Xiao appreciates him more and more.

  In the match, there were many exciting collisions between Yamamoto Kansuke and Sanada Yukimura. Li Xiao could see that even Yamamoto Kansuke had begun to appreciate Sanada Yukimura more and more. Seeing this, Li Xiao was secretly delighted. In the end, Li Xiao was also substituted out of the game, but relying on his many years of experience playing killing games, he managed to turn the situation around, performing just as well as Yamamoto Kansuke and Sanada Yukimura.

  It seems that the entertainment life during the Warring States period was really dull, and these people from the Warring States had never played such an interesting game before. They were all immediately hooked. They played until nightfall, and everyone was still engrossed in the game under the lamp light. Finally, Li Xiao saw that everyone was familiar with the game, so he continued to complicate it by introducing the concept of guards.

  The samurai can open their eyes and decide to kill a person suspected of being a traitor. This makes the game more complex and fun, even Yamamoto Kanbei, who usually has a straight face, is very into it.

  That night, when everyone was exhausted and went back to their rooms to sleep, Li Xiao alone came to the bedroom of the castle owner, Takeda Shingen.

  At present, Takeda Shingen has not yet taken a wife, and he is also not fond of male love, so there are no young concubines to warm his bed. In the great hall of the Heavenly Guardian Pavilion, only he sleeps alone, with several attendants outside responsible for protecting his safety.

  "Lord of the castle, I have something to discuss with you." Li Xiao sat down cross-legged and spoke.

  Takeda Shōrei heard it was Li Xiao's voice and weakly said, "Whatever it is, let's talk about it tomorrow. I'm too excited from playing today, I'm tired."

  "It's an important matter."

  Takeda Shōtai heard Li Xiao say this, and he quickly got up from the bed, put on his clothes and said: "Sir, what's going on?" Between the two of them, Takeda Shōtai always addressed Li Xiao as "sir".

  "What do you think of Masayuki Sanada?" Li Xiao asked straightforwardly.

  Takeda Shingen thought for a moment and nodded, saying: "He is a talented person. Is it your intention to recruit him as my vassal?"

  "That's right, I think Sanada Yukimura's future strategy will not be inferior to his father's. Otherwise, why would I go to great lengths today to persuade Nobuyuki and the others to stay behind?" Li Xiao said so, and in fact it was true that in college, his main purpose of playing killer games with girls was to get their attention, but now he was forced to play with a group of Japanese warriors.

  "But I don't know what Sanada Yukimasa's intentions are. Moreover, we must also ask for his father's opinion." Takeda Katsuyori hesitated and said. Sanada Yukimasa's father was the head of the Sanada family, Sanada Yukitaka.

  Li Xiao had already considered this and spoke up, "It's easy to deal with Lord Sanada, he is an old acquaintance of Lord Yamamoto Kansuke. If we let Lord Yamamoto make an appearance, he will likely agree." Li Xiao suddenly felt that Yamamoto Kansuke assisting Takeda Shingen was a huge help. This man had served as the military advisor for Takeda Shingen's army for many years and had extensive connections. In the past, when Sanada Yukitaka lost all his territory to the Shinano daimyo Murakami Yoshikiyo, he had no choice but to temporarily take refuge in the castle of Aragaki in Kozuke Province under the protection of Nagao Masayori.

  Later, it was Yamamoto Kansuke who recommended Sanada Yukitaka to Takeda Shingen. Sanada Yukitaka had just entered the service of the Takeda family and later used his intelligence to cleverly obtain the Toshiba Castle, from which the Sanada clan received the favor of Takeda Shingen.

  Li Xiao continued: "Although there is Lord Yamamoto to deal with, I am worried that Sanada Yukimura himself will not agree. Although he is young, he has great ambitions and a long-term vision. With our current conditions, it's not easy to win him over."

  Takeda Shingen thought for a moment and said with a smile: "This is easy, let's promote him to be the commander of the ashigaru."

  "This is not enough."

  "Can you give me a higher salary?"

  "Not enough."

  "Grant me a few more famous swords and spears, how about it?"

  "Not enough."

  Li Xiao shook his head, it seems that Takeda Katsuyori still doesn't understand the extent of Sanada Yukimura's abilities.

  Li Xiao is now doing his best to help Takeda Katsuyori build his future vassal team. Takeda Katsuyori must quickly bring Sanada Yukimasa under his command, with his support, not only has he won over the Shinano Sanada family, but also gained a powerful helper.

  Sanada Masayuki, whether in military strategy or wisdom, is a person who will be counted as one of the top two in the Takeda family. With his joining, and also Li Xiao, Wakabayashi Kōsuke also willing to stand on the side of Shingen, this lineup is enough to rival the four senior retainers of Takeda Yoshinobu.

  Only in this way, when Takeda Katsuyori takes over the Takeda family in the future, there will be no danger of being manipulated by the four ministers.