The Land of Fire was the wealthiest of the Five Great Nations.
It was also the most powerful, and the Feudal Lord of the Land of Fire held the greatest sway among his peers.
But ever since the incident in the Land of Water across the sea several months earlier...
He had been unable to eat or sleep properly, terrified that his own Shinobi Village might rebel one day.
No matter how many troops he recruited lately, he could not feel any safer.
Besides, recruiting capable wandering samurai had not progressed as quickly as he had imagined.
In this world, traveling far from home was dangerous in itself.
After all, no one knew whether they might suddenly run into bandits along the road and get robbed.
Normally, anyone who encountered bandits had little chance of surviving.
And if they dared to resist, they were practically guaranteed to die.
If that were the only danger, traveling in groups would have made things much safer.
Even bandits had to weigh both sides' strength before committing a robbery.
But ever since those ghastly things had appeared more than a decade earlier, the world had become even more dangerous.
Although the places where supernatural incidents occurred were relatively few when measured against the entire world, and those incidents had not all happened at once.
As a result, most people did not know that hauntings were real. Still, after more than a decade, they had all heard some rumors.
People in this era were still deeply ignorant and readily believed in ghosts and spirits.
The moment they heard that somewhere was haunted, they were too frightened to go anywhere near it.
Wandering samurai, who were better informed than ordinary people, knew even more about these rumors.
Some had even encountered supernatural incidents themselves during their