With the help of high-level spies, the armistice agreement between Konoha and the Sand Ninja was swiftly concluded in a manner that represented a mutual rush toward one another.
And that meant that, after securing victory on the battlefield, Soji had finally launched the second phase of his plan to annex the Land of Wind.
Although Director Yamada's report to his superiors had been written in grand and stirring terms, objectively speaking, annexing a force on the level of one of the Five Great Nations in Year 32 of Konoha still faced considerable obstacles...
Compared to the peaceful era when the original storyline began, the borders and spheres of influence among the nations of the shinobi world were still generally vague and disputed. Yet after more than thirty years of centralized rule, all sides had nevertheless established roughly defined national frameworks.
Under such circumstances, no matter how a foreign war aimed at violating another nation's sovereignty was packaged, it would inevitably bear all the negative debuffs of an aggressor.
Because this was far more than a military issue involving morale and manpower; it was also a political issue involving the cost of governance and international public opinion!
—Personal martial prowess alone, even if it could secure overwhelming victory on the battlefield, did not mean it could truly bring together the two largest and most powerful ninja villages among the Five Great Nations.
As had been said before, given the external conditions of the Second Shinobi World War, after Konoha annexed the Land of Wind, it would need the Sand Ninja to immediately feed back into the war effort as a viable force in order to handle the increasingly complex international situation! Rather than pointlessly saddling itself with a massive blood-draining burden that would constantly hold back the new organization from