Job Hunting

"Ah? Really?" Yuzhen instinctively voiced his doubt.

He wasn't a sensory ninja and basically had no ability to sense the chakra of third-party ninjas. Therefore, he could only judge whether the other party had cast a genjutsu on him based on the feedback from his own mind.

But right now, he hadn't received any feedback at all.

"Look at my eyes. Do you think I'm joking?"

Uchiha Nanami was extremely surprised by Yuzhen's apparent "ignoring" of her genjutsu.

Although her Sharingan wasn't of the genjutsu type, as a standard Uchiha, her attainments in genjutsu were certainly not poor.

Uchiha Nanami wasn't particularly conceited about her genjutsu, nor did she think she could rely on it to overcome every obstacle. However...

If someone fell victim to her genjutsu and then instantly broke free of it, she would consider that perfectly normal. It would be a case of her making a move and the other person countering it—entirely reasonable.

But Yuzhen's reaction seemed to say that her genjutsu simply hadn't taken effect at all. She had never encountered such a situation before.

If genjutsu was a "pitfall trap" set by the caster, then under normal circumstances, a ninja dealt with a genjutsu crisis by first falling into the pit and then climbing back out. But Yuzhen? The pit was clearly right there, yet he could walk straight past it as if on level ground.

That defied common sense.

Yet chakra was hardly such an inflexible thing.

After his White Zetsu Transformation, Yuzhen had very likely been crouching at the bottom of the largest and deepest pit imaginable. To dig a small pit within that one, he would first have to dig through the earth's core.

Thus, while responding to Yuzhen's question, Uchiha Nanami even released the same genjutsu again. The result was that Yuzhen still showed no reaction whatsoever.

"All right, then... can you switch to a stronger genjutsu?"

Yuzhen secretly let out a sigh of relief. The fact that he hadn't been affected by the genjutsu meant that his earlier guess had been confirmed to a certain extent.

Since ordinary genjutsu had no effect on him, he naturally ought to try a stronger one. Thus, he made a new request.

"...Fine."

Uchiha Nanami felt somewhat competitive in the face of this unreasonable situation. She activated her Sharingan while forming hand seals with both hands, using a fairly powerful genjutsu.

Yuzhen's eyes were exceptionally clear. He stared at her Sharingan with complete concentration. Seeing Nanami keep both eyes wide open without blinking, seemingly straining them hard, he even wanted to ask whether her eyes were dry.

"Still no effect?"

This time, Uchiha Nanami used a powerful mental-control genjutsu. In theory, her chakra should have invaded the target's mind and yanked out whatever information she wanted. Yet now, she felt as if she had invaded an empty space, pulling out nothing but loneliness.

What was going on? Had the study of genjutsu control ceased to exist?

After this genjutsu likewise "failed," Uchiha Nanami gritted her teeth. The Three Tomoe in her eyes began to rotate slowly, soon transforming into a more complicated pattern...

She had activated her Mangekyō Sharingan.

With the enhancement of these eyes, even an unremarkable genjutsu would produce the most supreme mental-control effect. However...

Yuzhen blinked and said, "Fascinating. They even look enough to make one's heart tremble. As expected of the Sharingan among the Sharingan."

These eyes represented both power and risk. When they fixed their gaze on someone, they truly made every ninja involuntarily feel a sense of dread, as if their life and death were being held in another person's hands.

"Why didn't my ocular power take effect?"

"How would I know? It's your ocular power, after all. You should ask yourself that question."

Yuzhen had gotten the answer he wanted. Genjutsu had once been the method he feared most, but now he could finally relax. What an excellent Sharingan genjutsu. It's made me even more clear-headed.

Uchiha Nanami deactivated her Mangekyō and looked thoughtfully at Yuzhen. She felt that his identity and origins were certainly extraordinary, and that he seemed to be concealing some kind of secret.

Anyone who could calmly face the Mangekyō Sharingan could not possibly be an ordinary ninja.

But that was only natural. Anyone capable of gathering a group of wandering ninjas in the shinobi world would always have something hidden about them. Perhaps it was an unknown past, perhaps a breathtaking plan, perhaps some sinister trick that outsiders knew nothing about, or perhaps...

A secret technique unheard of before.

Uchiha Nanami was intensely curious about how Yuzhen resisted genjutsu. However, a question concerning one's trump card was something she could never ask outright.

She wanted to ask but couldn't, and was nearly driven to scratch her ears and cheeks. Yet Yuzhen simply brushed off his clothes and left, hiding his achievements and reputation.

The next day, the two groups began merging in a small woodland.

Given how weak the Fuma Clan still was, Yuzhen proposed mixed formations for both sides, with the goal of enabling one-on-one "assistance" within small units as much as possible. In truth, he was simply disrupting the Fuma Clan's organizational structure and reorganizing them into squads.

Yuzhen's approach was perfectly normal, even completely aboveboard.

Forming little cliques was unacceptable. Everyone banding together for warmth was what true banding together for warmth meant.

As for Clan Leader Fūma Kotarō, Yuzhen made him his second-in-command, giving him a status roughly equal to Morinaga Kenshin and Hayasaka Ryunosuke.

Although there were only a little over fifty people—the equivalent of two middle-school classes—reorganizing them together was still quite time-consuming and laborious. They lingered there for an entire day and spent another night before finally restoring order and setting out again.

With their numbers more than doubling, Yuzhen's supplies naturally began to run short. They could no longer travel while avoiding towns as they had before. Instead, they had to actively move toward towns.

Yuzhen wanted to buy supplies in a town and gather some information at the same time.

The genjutsu he had encountered earlier in "Big Brother Town" had been a type of mental interference. Some of what he experienced before breaking free of it had been real and some false, but fortunately, the money he had picked up was real.

The strange thing was that even with money, it was difficult to spend it. When Yuzhen had the group stop near a town and took two people into town to buy food, he hadn't expected the other party not to sell to them.

Yuzhen and the others were unfamiliar faces, and the grain merchants here only traded with people they knew... In a chaotic age, restricting one's trading partners wasn't entirely incomprehensible.

But the frustration of having money he couldn't spend left Yuzhen unbearably stifled. In a fit of anger, he almost activated "Pick" right there on the spot.

Fortunately, Yuzhen knew how to restrain himself. He found an opportunity, and after seeing other ninjas successfully make purchases, he secretly stole some of their chakra. Then, after transforming, he became a standard regular customer.

Yuzhen spent all his money and bought enough grain to last for several weeks.

While Yuzhen was finding a way to complete the transaction, the ninjas he had sent out gathered a useful piece of news... A daimyō in the west was urgently hiring a group of ninjas.

Some distance outside a certain town, in the ruins of an unremarkable village, stood the temporary camp of "Ashes."

After the food crisis had been eased, the people in the camp settled down.

At this moment, Yuzhen, Morinaga Kenshin, Hayasaka Ryunosuke, and Fūma Kotarō had gathered together to listen to information brought by a ninja.

"I heard that the Date Clan, the daimyō of Kikyo Castle in the west, is actively recruiting ninjas."

"Kikyo Castle... and the Date Clan?"

Yuzhen silently repeated the somewhat familiar place-name in his mind.

"What happened to the ninjas who originally belonged to them?" Morinaga Kenshin asked.

If a daimyō—or, more broadly, any secular power—wanted to establish itself in this era, it had to possess an affiliated armed force. In other words, it needed to win over a ninja faction.

Whether through top-down control or broader cooperation and patronage, the details didn't matter. They couldn't do without ninjas. Ninjas did not necessarily have daimyō, but daimyō definitely had ninjas.

"Apparently, they were wiped out by another ninja faction because of a mission conflict not long ago. So the Date Clan has effectively lost part of its military strength and urgently needs new forces to fill the gap." The ninja continued recounting the information he had gathered.

His intelligence was very general, but Yuzhen could hardly demand more. With their organization incomplete and their surroundings unfamiliar—leaving them practically blind—being able to learn this much was already quite good.

"It seems like a very good opportunity."

"But we might also face an enormous crisis because of it."

"There's nothing we can do about danger. Isn't that what being a ninja is all about?"

Yuzhen remained silent while the others assessed the potential benefits and hidden risks of going to the Date Clan to "apply for a job."

The logic was simple. Accepting employment from a daimyō meant carrying out the missions they assigned, and those missions could very well lead to sacrifices.

"But we're very weak right now. We basically have no ability to bear risks."

"But we're only ninjas. We can't escape the constraints we're bound by, or certain restrictions that have seeped into us unnoticed..."

"Only by shedding blood can we secure room to survive."

"No one can deny that."

All right, the topic was gradually becoming bitter.

Yuzhen merely listened in silence. He appeared to be weighing the pros and cons, but in fact, he hadn't thought that far.

He couldn't say that he would make sure no one ever had to sacrifice themselves again. That would be far too presumptuous, to the point of seeming hopelessly naive. In fact, even Hashirama Senju couldn't say something like that.

Even the "God of Shinobi" couldn't protect every member of his clan, let alone Yuzhen, who wasn't the "God of Shinobi" yet.

To survive in a chaotic age, ninjas could only rely on force. Since they had chosen this path, they would inevitably face victory and defeat.

Victory meant life, and defeat meant death. There was nothing difficult to understand about that, nor anything unacceptable.

Moreover, even if there were other things to rely on in this world, Yuzhen would only rely on his own strength, because strength was the only thing one could truly count on.

A ninja's life might seem worthless, but in this era, only ninjas were qualified to control their own fate. Precisely because ninjas were the most dangerous people, they were also the safest.

The logic was simple: only those capable of killing could protect themselves.

The daimyō controlled more resources and held the power to distribute them. They seemed to be the upper class above ninjas, but what about reality? The hand gripping the knife handle could be severed at any moment.

The basic situation in the shinobi world was this: different ninja factions were fighting each other relentlessly, while the entire ninja class had reached a fragile balance with the daimyō class that ruled over the common people.

The ninjas were busy going mad against other ninjas. They generally didn't go mad against the daimyō.

In theory, daimyō also wouldn't directly send ninjas to eliminate other daimyō, because no one could bear the potential risk of opening Pandora's box.

But with the wars growing increasingly severe, this political understanding probably wouldn't last much longer. Sooner or later, some self-proclaimed clever person would appear.

Those who held hammers always wanted to smash something with them.

As long as there was a button on the table, it would eventually be pressed.

Yuzhen understood well enough what it meant to be a ninja. He didn't participate in the discussion. Instead, he had now made up his mind: before starting his own business, he would first work for someone else.

After everyone had discussed things more or less thoroughly, he opened and closed his lips and said in a calm tone:

"Very well. Then let's set out..."

"To Kikyo Castle."

The decision was final.