Clop! Clop!
Amid the crisp sound of hoofbeats came a burst of noisy shouting.
"Pant! Boss, pant! Aren't we there yet? I-I feel like I'm dying of exhaustion!"
"You got tired like a dog after walking just a few steps after getting off the horse. Looks like your usual training still isn't enough. How about we double it when we get back?"
"Ah?! I-I'm not tired! Who said I was tired?!"
Yahiko panted heavily as he walked. Compared to him, Yun Chuan and Nagato, who remained on horseback, were far more leisurely.
It had already been three days since they crossed the border and entered the Land of Fire.
"Idiot, stop complaining. If Big Brother hadn't drawn Konoha's people away, we wouldn't even have made it across the Land of Fire's border. Then we'd have had no choice but to take a ship and detour around the Land of Fire by water."
"But with your pathetic constitution, you'd definitely puke yourself unconscious after a few days on a ship. It's almost a shame I missed getting to see that."
Perhaps he was trying to vent his stress, or perhaps he simply disliked Yahiko.
Nagato rode alongside Yahiko, tossing out sarcastic remarks that made Yahiko glare furiously at him.
But before he could retort—
With a shrill neigh, Yun Chuan, dressed in ordinary clothes, pulled tight on the reins, and the horse beneath him came to a stop.
Seeing Yun Chuan, who had been leading the way, suddenly stop, Yahiko instinctively looked ahead. His face immediately lit up with tearful joy. "Waaah! After walking all day, we finally found a village!"
Not far ahead of them, the endless wild grass and tangled woods gave way to a small road stretching into the distance.
They could vaguely make out the outlines of several buildings, all thatched cottages with earthen stone walls and straw roofs to keep out the rain, carrying a distinctly simple, old-fashioned air.
The most conspicuous and out-of-place structure was a tall building, with a massive dome and buttresses, built entirely from brick and stone. Yun Chuan gave it a second look.
With the powerful vision granted by his Jōgan, he could see a symbol on that building.
It seemed to be a circle containing a triangle?
Apart from that, both sides of the road were lined with vast stretches of abandoned fields, where several thin, short figures could vaguely be seen.
They all wore short shirts and held iron shovels, apparently filling the fields with soil.
As soon as Yun Chuan's group stepped onto the path, those people looked up at them.
"Hey!" Yahiko hopped and waved at them, shouting, "Sir, could we borrow a room to rest in?"
Yun Chuan did not stop his rash behavior, merely narrowing his eyes as he looked at the distant figures.
Seemingly hearing him, three people walked over.
"I am the village chief. May I ask where you have come from?"
The leader was an old man leaning on a cane. He appeared to be in his forties or fifties, his aged face covered in wrinkles, though his smile and tone were quite kind.
However, Nagato frowned when he saw them.
These people seemed to be in much better condition than the refugees from the Land of Rain.
Their faces were all rosy, nothing like ordinary refugees, who were sallow, emaciated, and skin and bones.
But according to everything they had seen and heard along the way, this should have been the border of the Land of Hot Water.
Neither protected by the Land of Fire nor welcomed by the Land of Hot Water, how could they still have enough to eat amid the current chaos of the ninja world?
"..."
Although Nagato noticed plenty of suspicious details, he did not believe Big Brother had missed them. Since Big Brother had said nothing, he tacitly chose to remain silent as well.
"Sir, we came from the Land of Fire and wish to head to a port in the Land of Hot Water."
Yun Chuan patted Yahiko, who was about to speak, and said apologetically in a gentle tone, "This child is simply rather reckless by nature. I hope you will not take offense at his rudeness."
"May I ask how much farther it is to the port?"
"The port? It's quite far." The old man shook his head, pointed eastward, and sighed. "Even on horseback, it will probably take you a day or two. The nearest village is still half a day away, and the road is not easy to travel."
After saying that, he paused, looked at Yun Chuan's group, and smiled. "I see you have two children with you, so you probably aren't bad people. If you don't mind, you may stay at my home for the night and leave when it gets light tomorrow."
They could stay the night?
No more sleeping in trees?
Yahiko's eyes lit up at those words.
But his recent training had clearly paid off. Rather than agreeing on his own as he would have before, he looked up at Yun Chuan expectantly.
He was only easily excitable; he was not so foolish that he could not distinguish priorities.
"We cannot disappoint the old gentleman's kind intentions." Without even looking at him, Yun Chuan smiled faintly and said, "Then we'll trouble you, sir."
And so, the four of them and their two horses headed toward the village.
"Sir, why are all the fields here abandoned?"
"Alas, tea trees used to grow here. But times are bad, and no one dares harvest them. If you harvest them, you must pay taxes, and the land rent takes sixty percent of the income. Once everything is calculated, you still end up having to pay out of your own pocket."
At those words, Yahiko, who had previously had no concept of such matters, once again looked toward Yun Chuan on horseback.
Especially as the old man continued to complain at length, Yahiko's understanding of Yun Chuan began to change.
Greedy landlords actually dared demand sixty percent of the harvest as rent!
Even ordinary landlords demanded forty percent of the harvest as land rent.
By comparison, Yun Chuan only took thirty percent. He was practically a philanthropist.
Moreover, nearly all landlords used large measures when taking grain in and small measures when giving it out. When lending grain to farmers, they used small measures to fill it, but when collecting rent, they used large ones.
Even if one was lucky enough to encounter a benevolent noble, that noble's household servants would still cheat them. In the end, there was not much difference.
For the first time, Yahiko felt Yun Chuan's "kindness" so deeply.
"By the way." The old man walked slowly as he casually asked, "May I ask what you are going to the port for?"
"Ah, it's a long story..."
Hearing Yun Chuan sigh emotionally, the old man assumed he intended to keep it brief. Smiling, he adopted a listening posture, only for Yun Chuan's tone to suddenly shift.
"Since it's a long story, let's not bring it up. But sir, what is your name?"
Huh?
At those words, Yahiko gave a strangled cough, tripped his left foot over his right, and nearly threw out his back.
He immediately looked up at Yun Chuan in horror, unable to believe that he could actually tell such a lame joke.
But wasn't this way of changing the subject a little too forced?
"..." The old man's smile froze as well, making his wrinkled face look rather comical.
But he quickly smiled again, shook his head, and said, "Your bearing makes it obvious that you are a noble, so please do not tease an old man like me. Everyone in the village calls me Uncle Koshiyama."
Yun Chuan smiled but gave no response. They continued all the way into the village, passing dozens of tightly shut houses before arriving at a fairly clean courtyard. The old man led them into a side room.
Other than two beds, there was nothing else in the room.
"I hope you have a pleasant night here."
The old man opened the door, turned to Yun Chuan, and revealed a sincere smile on his wrinkled face.
"And I hope you have sweet dreams tonight." Yun Chuan returned the same gentle smile.
Only after watching the old man close the door and slowly disappear did Yun Chuan shake his head and look around the room.
It seemed this was lodging specially reserved for outsiders staying temporarily.
Clearly, they were not the only outsiders who had stayed here.
As for those who came before them...
"Woohoo!"
Yahiko threw himself onto a bed and rolled around with a satisfied expression.
But in the next second, Yun Chuan lifted him by the collar.
"Can't you smell the stench of rot that even that perfume couldn't cover?"
Nagato mocked him, then walked to the bed and gently lifted it.
Yahiko, who had still been struggling, instinctively lowered his head. His pupils immediately contracted, and the foul stench rushing at him turned his face livid.
Beneath the bed was a hollow space.
It was piled full of ghastly pale skeletons. Several corpses had not even fully decomposed, and their shriveled, pallid faces could still vaguely be seen.
"Looks like we've come across a murder inn."
Yun Chuan chuckled and looked out the window.
In the distant wilderness, the sun was slowly sinking. Unlike the lofty feeling of a sun hanging in the sky, the red sun above the barren earth looked enormous, so enormous that it filled one with loneliness at a glance.
Its only backdrop was the boundless sky and endless earth. The sun descending toward the village looked like a giant grave pit sleeping within the land.
And that immensely tall stone building was the lonely tombstone standing over that grave pit.
That symbol...
"The Heretic God Cult?"
Yun Chuan murmured softly. With a thought, his consciousness sank deep into his mind.
Defeated Tsunade [Youth], probability trigger activated, obtained a new template Name: Carnage [Initial Symbiote] World: Marvel
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