Ryusei's first thought, the next second, after hearing all of this, was why they didn't simply cut down the nearest and biggest prey, the Daimyo himself.
But then he realized the Daimyo wasn't exactly a lamb.
Who benefited most from his existence? Konoha.
The village that couldn't finance itself without a noble's treasury, especially during wars. It has no idea how to run a country politically and economically like the Daimyo's court could.
And in turn, the Daimyo needed Konoha's supernatural shinobi power.
They were smart enough to understand that forcing the Daimyo was impossible.
Not because he had powerful shinobi, those six were probably the strongest around him, but because Konoha's eyes never left his side.
ROOT, hidden agents, ANBU with Byakugan, messengers, and spies of every kind. If they tried anything reckless, it would be discovered sooner or later, and they would be erased.
Yes, Daimyo commanded the largest army in the world, a force that could drown even the greatest shinobi given time.
But time was a luxury he never had; before his soldiers marched a single day, he could be assassinated a hundred times, by Konoha or their enemies.
That balance also kept both sides in check.
It also explained why the Daimyo tolerated the countless spies from Konoha around him.
They reassured Konoha, and they shielded him from rogue shinobi like those six or foreign assassins, hoping to throw the land into chaos or seize power for themselves.
In the end, Ryusei had to admit, it was smart of them not to let greed and annoyance at the man drive them into an impulsive strike at the Daimyo.
Ryusei also understood what the Daimyo had in mind when he recruited the six.
They were talents from the most prestigious clan in the world, people the Daimyo could never touch in ordinary times.
By taking them in young, he could build loyalty slowly.
Even if Tobirama or Hiruzen felt offended that he moved without asking, it was still within his rights and didn't break any standing agreements.
For him, the gain was obvious: six powerful guards who doubled as leverage against Konoha and as a last shield against enemy shinobi before Konoha's reinforcements ever arrived.
He likely treated them with the utmost respect, granting them trust, tasks of secrecy, as seen how easily they knew about the top secret info about massive gold shipments like this.
They were probably paid well and even lived comfortably under him.
But he still drew the short lot, because among those six was Ryusei's uncle, the de facto leader.
Ryusei felt like he already understood his mindset a little, and his ambition and his strength likely made him the unofficial ring-leader of the small group.
By now, he was an Elite Jōnin-level shinobi in strength, who felt like he was wasting his life, and long service at a lord's side had worn thin on his pride.
To him, it wasn't loyalty anymore; it was humiliation, the life of a watchdog, something unfitting for a great Senju.
Worse, the Daimyo had never once acted on behalf of the Senju cause, always bowing to Konoha's shadow.
Over the years, resentment turned into ambition, and ambition into treachery.
It wasn't hard to guess what the uncle promised the others.
With that kind of gold, they could carve out their own little domain, declare themselves lords, take wives and concubines by the dozens, and claim it was for the sake of reviving the clan.
To Ryusei, that sounded less like revival and more like greed, yet he didn't find it wrong.
That was how most humans operated anyway.
Why hide behind ideals when you had power and the chance to use it?
In their place, he would have done the same.
Still, even as he smirked at the thought, Ryusei couldn't ignore the holes in their plan he discovered after a short silence.
From a practical, deductive view, it was bound to collapse sooner or later.
But Ryusei didn't press on the flaws he had already seen. First, he needed to make sense of their current situation. So he asked,
"You slipped away from the Daimyo's confidential task just to snatch this gold? You didn't rob the shipment you were assigned to guard because you planned to use that trust to gather even more in the future, right?"
The man gave a short laugh. "Not bad. I left a shadow clone with the caravan, along with those two friends, and rushed here once I had the information. I tracked the caravan through my sensing, but only when I closed in and struck at that girl did I realize who you were. Your chakra gave you away. You're not bad either. Better than I was back then. What's more surprising is that Konoha let you live this long…"
Ryusei answered calmly, "It's harder for them to erase a child than it is an older generation. I won't pretend it was all my own doing. I only barely escaped an attack a month ago thanks to some tricks. I expect there will be more attempts sooner or later. Anyway, can you tell me exactly what task the Daimyo entrusted to you? And how does my current mission tie into him? All we were told was that a merchant's caravan was moving valuables toward the capital, though we suspected something was off. Can you clear that up?"
He asked not just out of curiosity but because he needed to understand both their positions before deciding on his next move, and whether some of his ideas for this group were even possible.
Kazuo closed his eyes briefly, sensing that his clones were still holding the three escorts in place. Only then did he begin explaining.
"The Daimyo's confidential mission wasn't as clean as it sounded. A minor noble bribed him with an astronomical sum of gold, hoping to buy his support in a dispute with a rival. To cover it, the noble falsified his yearly report, which meant Konoha was technically cheated out of its rightful share that should have gone through the Daimyo's central office."
He let that sink in before continuing. "The Daimyo only has twelve fighters worth calling shinobi. They are the famed Twelve Guardian Ninja. Three are on loan from Konoha, three were trained in his own guard corps, and the last six… are us. The amount was too large to move with ordinary guards. Konoha shinobi couldn't be used; if they escorted it, they could immediately notice the fraud. And the Daimyo's regular guards weren't strong enough. That left only us, his hidden Senju cards. So three of us were ordered to escort the bribe from the noble's secret deposit to one of the Daimyo's vaults. That was the confidential mission."
Kazuo's voice lowered. "But I left that mission midway. It wasn't far from here, and I travel faster than most at my level. More importantly, I had better information about this other shipment, the one you were assigned to guard."
Ryusei stayed silent, letting him continue.
"This caravan, too, was deeply tied to the Daimyo. Another minor noble had discovered a gold mine, ruling another local feudal fief, on his land. He didn't want Konoha knowing, especially with war taxes certain to rise once the next great war began, which looks like it would again after only a short break from the previous war; he also experienced these higher taxes himself deeply up until four years ago when it ended. So he arranged to send an initial bribe to the Daimyo, hoping to keep the mine off the record. He disguised it as a merchant caravan, handled by one of his own brothers-in-law, who was a real big-time merchant in this part of the Land of Fire. That's the shipment you were after."
A small smile crept across Kazuo's lips. "I just happened to know about this deal ahead of time. Taking it would give me the starting capital I needed to finally cut ties with the Daimyo."
After he finished, Ryusei thought it through slowly, hand on his chin. His recent dive into history books gave him context.
The Land of Fire wasn't an absolute monarchy.
The Daimyo wasn't some supreme ruler, but the wealthiest and most prestigious lord among many. His position was born out of Konoha's founding.
Hashirama had allowed one nearby feudal lord, who also happened to be the strongest one before and held the central territory near Konoha, to further prosper in Konoha's shadow, and the others eventually fell in line and created the new form of the Land of Fire, and that feudal lord became the Daimyo and his lineage became more noble.
The Daimyo became a unifying figure, a pivot in a standard feudal system older than the shinobi themselves.
His legitimacy rested on money and his relationship with Konoha. Every noble sent him yearly tribute, which he pooled into a central fund. A fraction went to Konoha for national defense every year, and more during wartime.
Beyond that, anyone, nobles, merchants, even the Daimyo himself, could commission shinobi missions from Konoha, provided they didn't threaten the Land of Fire's broader interests.
That was the second way that Konoha made money privately still.
But there was always another layer. Lesser lords fought among themselves constantly, their standing armies clashing unless outside wars forced them to unify.
To gain an advantage, they bribed the Daimyo. That's where the gold came in. A minor noble, desperate to crush a rival, falsified his yearly report and paid the Daimyo directly.
Since Konoha was entitled to a cut, their shinobi couldn't be used to escort it.
The Daimyo needed power strong enough to protect a fortune, but discreet enough not to reveal the fraud. That meant shinobi outside official channels, the six Senju.
The second case was even dirtier. Another noble discovered a gold mine on his lands.
Normally, a portion would go to the Daimyo's treasury, and through him, to Konoha. But with a new war looming, both would take far more than usual.
The pattern was clear. The Daimyo's growing central power, backed by Konoha's protection, let him act brazenly, skimming from his shinobi patrons while enriching himself and becoming more and more corrupt.
The Senju guards became his hidden trump cards, cleaning up bribe runs too large or too sensitive to entrust to anyone else.
And after enough such runs, they realized the truth: the 'trash weakling' Daimyo wasn't the only one entitled to luxury.
But then, why would nobles even bother bribing the Daimyo if he was just a hollow figurehead like fifty years ago, when Konoha and the Land of Fire first took shape?
The truth was simple: the Daimyo wasn't that weak anymore. His authority had grown, his jurisdiction over the minor territories expanding year by year.
His prestige was at its peak, both among nobles and commoners, bolstered by the image of a holy lineage tied to Konoha's founding.
Konoha had encouraged this centralization at first. A stronger Daimyo meant smoother revenue collection, at least in theory.
But Ryusei could see now that theory and reality had diverged. The Daimyo had grown bold, pushing boundaries, dipping his hands into bribes and fraud.
Yet he wasn't reckless; his fear of Konoha kept him from going too far, so he only dared these tricks in isolated, secret cases.
Not to mention, it was never easy to overturn a feudal system rooted in centuries of scattered local rule.
The old lineages still held near-absolute control over their lands, and a few decades of Konoha-backed centralization could only go so far.
In the end, the Daimyo was little more than a figurehead, just a slightly stronger one than before.