Nara Hideyuki walked into the organization's archives.
After Yūshin and Shichimi returned, Hideyuki—who had been on high-intensity duty for a while—finally got a chance to rest... Ninja work like oxen and horses, yet apparently they too can get scheduled time off.
Places that store documents are somewhere most ninja might never set foot in their entire lives—the vast majority have no interest in pure textual materials.
But Nara Hideyuki was different. As someone sharp-minded, far-sighted, and good at thinking, he would naturally pay attention to the organization's overall situation, surrounding hostile circumstances, and such matters.
Since The Fireflies organization currently stored materials of little value—even the quantity of written documents wasn't much—the archives had nothing particularly confidential. Basically, any ninja within the organization could come browse.
However, as mentioned earlier, essentially no one would come here to "read books" when they had nothing better to do.
Nara Hideyuki flipped through file after file. When he set down one document and picked up another scroll, he suddenly froze.
This scroll recorded Yūshin's overview of puppet techniques.
Since Yūshin hadn't studied puppet techniques deeply, the scroll's content lacked detail—it merely described puppet techniques' definition, development directions, application scenarios, and other broad aspects.
However, for some intelligent people, details were actually secondary. As long as they had specific conceptual guidance, they could perfectly fill in the remaining details themselves.
After transplanting the Cursed Grudge Fear secret technique, Nara Hideyuki had been the fastest to master it. Now seeing puppet techniques... Shadow Imitation Technique, Cursed Grudge Fear secret technique, plus puppet techniques—Nara Hideyuki felt he had formed an indissoluble bond with "strings."
Indeed, as they say, one thing leads to another. Nara Hideyuki was very interested in puppet techniques.
You could say his parents hadn't chosen his name wrongly—Hideyuki truly lived up to his name, and it seemed he would soon be able to show off.
This was a good thing. Limited by talent issues, most ninja in the organization lacked autonomous growth potential. Nara Hideyuki already had a solid foundation as a ninja, plus his aptitude for thinking and the various chaotic concepts he absorbed from the organization...
Simply put, he might well become a monster-level ninja in the future.
If Yūshin knew about this, he would definitely feel especially happy, because Nara Hideyuki would count as a powerhouse cultivated by The Fireflies organization itself.
What did this demonstrate? It showed the organization also had blood-producing capabilities.
Three days later, Lan awakened from her coma.
Feeling the emptiness and discomfort in her eye sockets, she fought against the splitting headache while struggling to adapt to being surrounded by darkness.
Though when previously imprisoned in the dungeon she had similarly been unable to see, she could still sense the brilliant colors of light then.
But now? She could only feel complete darkness.
However, immediately afterward, another kind of perceptual power surging from her body began spreading through the darkness. As she focused her attention on this sensation, the surrounding scene appeared in her mind in a more abstract yet still precise manner.
Is this a hospital room?
This feeling didn't come from nowhere. In fact, Lan had originally possessed strong sensory abilities. Now that she'd lost her Sharingan, her body began spontaneously adapting to this situation, unconsciously striving to compensate for the loss of vision.
The chakra that once flowed toward her Mangekyō Sharingan had nowhere to go, so it began spreading throughout her limbs and body.
The direct manifestation was that her sensory abilities improved by several orders of magnitude.
In short, she had lost her vision but strengthened her overall perceptual capabilities.
"This is good."
Lan secretly breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn't afraid of losing her Sharingan, but was very worried about losing her qualifications as a ninja—after all, no one wanted to become useless.
More importantly, this organization had rescued her from the Uchiha Clan. They didn't even care that she'd lost her Sharingan. The more this was the case, the more she needed to work hard to repay them. Therefore, she needed to recover her former strength as much as possible.
A blind ninja was by no means a useless ninja.
"Someone's coming—one is... Yūshin, the other is?"
After quite a while, Yūshin and Chihori entered the hospital room.
"Oh, you're awake? How do you feel?" Yūshin noticed Lan had regained consciousness and greeted her.
"Yes... I feel alright..." Lan said.
She was immensely grateful for Yūshin's life-risking rescue operation, but didn't know how to express this feeling.
Just like how she clearly felt terrible now, but could only say "alright."
There was no helping it—she was a shut-in. Whether actively or passively secluded, she hadn't spoken more than a few sentences all year anyway.
Lan's eye sockets were wrapped round and round with bandages. Her figure was petite and frail, as if she'd been living with chronic malnutrition. Yūshin wanted to ask about her age, but felt it might be somewhat impolite... Though she looked young, if she was from the same generation as Shichimi, wouldn't the age question be rather awkward?
Well, things probably wouldn't be exaggerated to that extent, but her age range was roughly between Uchiha Orikawa and Uchiha Madara.
Yūshin seemed to understand her thoughts somewhat, so he said:
"Don't overthink things, and don't feel any psychological pressure. Based on rational judgment, currently you should focus primarily on healing and recovering your body. Thinking too deeply tends to drag down recovery...
"Any other matters can wait until after you're healed."
As he spoke, Yūshin placed his hand over her bandages, continuing to use medical ninjutsu to treat her injuries and soothe her spirit.
He wasn't any kind of professional medical ninja, but the medical conditions here were what they were, so he had to make do... Fortunately, due to external supplementation, Yūshin had sufficient chakra, so he could lavishly use medical ninjutsu.
While treating her, Yūshin glanced at Chihori beside him.
Chihori nodded and said: "Shichimi should be coming soon too, but I'll go notify her anyway."
In Kikyō Castle, Shichimi felt like a parental figure to Lan, so Lan awakening should be reported to Shichimi immediately.
Yūshin quickly ended this treatment session. Without waiting for Shichimi to arrive, he directly took his leave from the hospital room.
The result of gaining Earth nature transformation but not obtaining Wood Release abilities left Yūshin somewhat unable to let go. You know, a ninja's strength is like sailing against the current—not advancing means retreating.
So besides personal strength, what other ways were there to increase a ninja's combat power?
While Yūshin was racking his brains thinking, he suddenly remembered the war fan that could reflect ninjutsu, passed from Uchiha Tajima to Uchiha Madara.
Right! Special ninja tools or weapons could similarly increase a ninja's combat power.
So after leaving the hospital room, Yūshin immediately went to find Fūma Gorō.
It should be noted that the Fūma Clan's ninja tool production and manufacturing won through quantity. They made ordinary ninja tools, but with large output and excellent average quality, allowing them to market throughout the shinobi world. Though they were weapon masters, they weren't the kind of weapon masters Yūshin wanted.
Yūshin understood this point, so he wasn't asking Fūma Gorō for special ninja tools—he wanted to ask if he knew any information in this regard.
The result was that Yūshin hadn't found the wrong person. Fūma Gorō really did know something about this... After all, the Fūma Clan could barely be considered colleagues with those people, and colleagues naturally had to pay attention to industry developments.
"Lord Yūshin wants special ninja tools with greater power? Chakra blades and such?"
After Yūshin found Fūma Gorō and explained his requirements, Fūma Gorō accurately grasped his meaning.
"Preferably with even greater power and durability than chakra blades... In any case, I need the best kind of ninja tools."
Yūshin almost blurted out something like "find me the Six Paths ninja tools."
Fūma Gorō understood Yūshin's high requirements. After thinking carefully, he said:
"I know of a master who creates such ninja tools, but I don't know whether he has finished products on hand, or whether he's willing to sell powerful ninja tools...
"This person is called Kamizuki—Hōzuki Kamizuki. He's an eccentric old man who lives alone on a small island in the Eastern Sea.
"This person might very well meet your requirements, but he's very difficult to deal with. Whether he's willing to trade with others depends entirely on his mood."
"Hōzuki... the Hōzuki from the Hōzuki Clan?"
Yūshin repeated this weapon master's surname. For some reason, after learning of his background, he felt this master might be a true master—probably quite reliable.
As for his eccentric temperament and uncertain willingness to trade, heh—Yūshin, as an honest person, naturally preferred to follow rules.
But if the other party wasn't willing to follow trading rules, then Yūshin was prepared to start following "finding things" rules.
"Whether he actually comes from the Hōzuki Clan, I can't be certain, because he's indeed very reclusive and seems to have no contact with the Hōzuki Clan," Fūma Gorō added.
Yūshin nodded expressionlessly and slowly—understood. That meant he could freely find things without worrying about consequences.
"Reclusive? Reclusive is good."
Yūshin had reservations about beating up kindergarteners, but kicking around a nursing home didn't give him any psychological burden.
"Do you know the specific location of that small island?"
Fūma Gorō immediately saw through Yūshin's intentions. He wanted to remind him that some things couldn't be too irregular, but looking at Yūshin's clear eyes, he could only honestly report the location.
Yūshin was satisfied, but didn't rush to depart. He remained stationed at Kikyō Castle for half a month, both handling surrounding situations and waiting for Lan's condition to completely stabilize, before having the opportunity to go out shopping.
Additionally, there was an important reason preventing Yūshin from acting rashly—he wanted to further observe whether White Zetsu would come to Kikyō Castle because of Shichimi.
The result was half a month of nothing happening, so Yūshin relaxed.
What he didn't know was that because Black Zetsu and White Zetsu took this matter extremely seriously, they had been in a state of holding back from action... White Zetsu weren't inactive—they were preparing to hold back for something big.
Their previously instigated Uchiha internal strife event hadn't achieved the goal of making the Uchiha and Hagūgen Clans turn against each other. The conspiracy could be said to have been unsuccessful.
However, this wasn't any unforgivable error. Such things could be taken slowly, but what they planned to do next couldn't allow any failure.
Besides wanting to get some powerful weapons, Yūshin—temporarily unaware of these matters—was also plotting another thing.
After the Land of the River Source's situation stabilized, The Fireflies organization's development had reached a bottleneck. Originally, Yūshin's idea was to focus peacefully on internal development for a period, but only now did he discover this strategy was overly conservative.
Because the harassment from surrounding hostile forces was simply endless.
So eliminating enemies and conducting further expansion was actually an objective requirement that didn't depend on Yūshin's subjective will.
Once you develop to a certain scale and expand to a certain degree, you can only continue expanding. Wanting to quietly get rich is impossible.
If you're timid and hesitant, standing still, you can easily suffocate yourself.
This is probably what's called "once you start smoking, you have to keep burning."
So the next step—Yūshin would attack and destroy surrounding forces, expanding the Land of the River Source's ruling territory.
But after the Land of the River Source's territory expanded, longer borders would mean more hostile forces, so they'd have to continue expanding outward... Very unsolvable—reality forces people to progress.
Yūshin was fine, but the respectable Daimyō Kiyomizu Kiyosuke seemed to be singing songs while eating hotpot as he walked the broad road to donning the imperial robe.
Being skilled at surrender, he seemed to find it increasingly difficult to find suitable surrender opportunities. Optimistically speaking, he might be able to start preparing lines like "Why did I create the Land of Fire? I especially regret it. I was happiest when earning 79 ryō per month in Reitō Castle."
...
On the other side, after the sneaky little maneuvers ended, Uchiha Tajima had to meet with the Hagūgen Clan's leader.
They were both very dissatisfied with each other's behavior, but had to hold their noses and ignore each other's actions.
The Hagūgen Clan had lost quite a few people, but fortunately their objective had been achieved. If the intelligence was accurate, the point of disagreement between both sides had already disappeared... Regardless of how the objective was achieved, the question was whether it was achieved or not.
"Your behavior was too rash. How could you instigate invasion actions against the Uchiha? Originally our two sides maintained a relationship of mutual trust, but now cracks have appeared. How should this be mended?"
No matter what, accusations still had to be made—who told Uchiha Tajima he occupied the moral high ground?
The Hagūgen Clan was at fault first. Their leader said nothing, thinking who told you Uchiha to secretly control such a massive weapon? Our taking action was wrong, but don't you bear any responsibility?
He simply ignored such accusations, only discussing what to do next.
"It's merely slight cracks. Both our sides have the will to continue maintaining cooperative relations... so the matter is easily resolved."
"How to resolve it?"
"We'll just instigate another large-scale war operation with mutual trust and assistance that both sides participate in..."
"..."
This idea was quite terrible.
But it was still better than having no ideas at all.
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