Yellow Springs Ghost Mound

Internal strife within the Yuan Clan was acceptable; though resources might be distributed unevenly among various factions, it was all kept within the family, and could be negotiated over time.

However, if other nations sought to bleed the Land of Fire dry, that was something the Yuan Clan could not tolerate.

According to intelligence from the Heavenly Fire Cult, not only had Yuan Benxiong dispatched the Twelve Guardian Ninja to monitor Watanabe Kenfu, but even Yuan Jiuxiong, who had just retired to enjoy his twilight years, had begun to make moves.

The Heavenly Fire Cult had not hidden news of Yuan Jiuxiong from Touma, the ninja holding the Sect Leader's token; this could be considered a minor bug in the Heavenly Fire Cult's operations.

The surveillance personnel sent by Yuan Jiuxiong were ninjas temporarily hired from Kairan Village. The reason they were not hired from nearby Konoha was, on one hand, because Konoha was currently undergoing war mobilization and could not spare any elite operatives.

On the other hand, the famous ninjas within Konoha all had more or less tangled connections with various nobles in the capital, and there was no guarantee that information wouldn't leak to the ears of Watanabe Kenfu.

According to the Heavenly Fire Cult's preliminary investigation into Watanabe Kenfu, the identity of this current Minister of Finance as a citizen of the Land of Rivers was also highly suspect.

Following the address provided on his original refugee application form, they found absolutely no trace of the so-called Mitu Village in the Land of Rivers.

In fact, even the battlefield scavengers wandering the nearby areas had never heard of such a village; they only managed to infer a name, "Mitu," based on the phonetic similarity.

This so-called "Mitu" was not a village at all, but a refugee organization where many war refugees had gathered to form a group similar to traveling merchants.

They did not stay in one place for long, but wandered between various nations, doing a bit of small-scale barter trade on the side to maintain their livelihood.

Following this lead further, they actually found the "Mitu" caravan that had just entered the Land of Tea, and from within the caravan, they obtained information regarding this Watanabe Kenfu.

He was not only not a citizen of the Land of Rivers, nor a war refugee; he was actually a member of the Onizuka Clan, a noble family from the Land of Demons, and had once been a candidate for the title of Daimyo.

It was just that during the clan's internal election, he narrowly lost to the current Daimyo of the Land of Demons and was forced to take his family into exile overseas.

However, people with both ability and ambition are rarely content with a life of exile, and this Onizuka Kenichi was no exception. He had secretly contacted Moryo, the demon sealed within the Land of Demons, and attempted to steal a portion of Moryo's power, gaining the special ability to manipulate the human mind.

When he originally infiltrated the "Mitu" organization, it wasn't to find like-minded partners, but because he had his eyes on the many remnants of fallen ninja clans within the organization, intending to use Moryo's power to control them for his own purposes.

Unfortunately, several members of the Uzumaki Clan and the Tsuchigumo Clan had just joined the "Mitu" organization.

Moryo had been countered by onmyoji a thousand years ago, and the ninja clans whose sealing techniques had evolved from those onmyoji naturally countered him as well. Before Onizuka Kenichi could make a large-scale move, he was beaten out by the ninjas of the Uzumaki and Tsuchigumo clans.

In fact, the "Mitu" organization had planned to hunt down Onizuka Kenichi, but by that time, he had already completed a total transformation, becoming a refugee who married into the Sugiyama Clan, a noble family in the capital of the Land of Fire. The "Mitu" organization's intelligence capabilities were limited, and they simply failed to find him.

Since they knew of Onizuka Kenichi's abilities and had found the corresponding means to counter him, why had the Yuan Clan been so slow to act?

That was because Onizuka Kenichi had already completely seized control of the Sugiyama Clan and, using their connections and channels, had established ties with three other noble families.

Attempting to move directly against Onizuka Kenichi, who had four noble families supporting him from behind, was no simple matter for the Yuan Clan.

One must realize that the overall strength of the five great noble families in the capital was very balanced; just because the Yuan Clan occupied the position of Daimyo did not mean they could boss the other nobles around.

In particular, the Sugiyama Clan occupied many important positions in the military; to move against them meant facing pressure from the army.

While the Yuan Clan had significant forces under their command, and many who could guarantee their loyalty, these forces could not guarantee the Yuan Clan's absolute safety when faced with an army equipped with large quantities of firearms.

Although current firearms remained at the level of 16th-century flintlock weapons from Earth, with enough equipment, the role of chakra would be greatly diminished.

Perhaps with enough reaction time, a Genin would have a high probability of using natural neural reflexes to dodge a lead ball flying from a hundred meters away.

However, breech-loading explosive cannons with the power of three or five explosive tags and a range exceeding a thousand meters were enough to threaten the life of a Genin.

Not to mention, while technology hadn't advanced, chakra could bring greater productivity to the ninja world; the ninja world possessed giant cannons with larger calibers and chamber pressures. A single shell could turn everything within a ten-meter radius—man or beast—into dust.

Therefore, until Onizuka Kenichi exposed himself and the Yuan Clan obtained a complete chain of evidence, they could not easily strike at him.

The person who came to negotiate with Onizuka Kenichi was not the Minister of Finance of the Land of Demons. According to intelligence gathered by the Heavenly Fire Cult, this person was very likely the leader of the "Yomi Sect," which had just been established in the Northern Territories—a rogue ninja who called himself "Yomotsu," but whose real name was Ota Yokokawa.

This Ota Yokokawa had also taken many missions at the Bounty Exchange with a decent completion rate. He was skilled in Earth Release ninjutsu and was suspected of having intricate ties to Iwagakure in the Land of Earth.

The Heavenly Fire Cult had not uncovered his specific identity; after all, no matter how strong their intelligence capabilities were, they did not have the power to plant eyes and ears inside the Tsuchikage's office.

For a ninja specializing in Earth Release with the strength of a Jonin like Ota Yokokawa, even if detailed identity records existed, they were likely kept within the Tsuchikage's office.

Looking at Ota Yokokawa's current catatonic state, if nothing went wrong, his will had been seized by Moryo's mental manipulation ability.

In order to gain a deeper understanding of Moryo's abilities, Touma sent a letter to Mion via a ninja hawk.

Coincidentally, at this time, the Kanmi Team where Mion was located had just finished their mission and disbanded to head home, and Mion had found a detailed description of Moryo within the Kurama Clan's library.

It is worth mentioning that the Kanmi Team's instructor was named Mitarashi Kanmi, the father of Mitarashi Mochi and Azuki.

This had been arranged through a temporary trade between the Kurama Clan and the Mitarashi Clan. It was because the Kurama Clan had seen the hope of their Kekkei Genkai stabilizing during the competition that they intended to entrust this genius—the only one in the family who had awakened the Kekkei Genkai without showing signs of the bloodline disease—to Mitarashi Kanmi.

The Mitarashi Clan had also seen the possibility of advancing their family secret techniques during the battle between Mochi and Mion, so the two clans hit it off immediately and applied to the Hokage's office to change the student assignments.

Only ninja clans could pull off such maneuvers, and since both the Mitarashi and Kurama clans were stable supporters of the Sarutobi clan, their entanglement posed no political risk to the Hokage. If this had been proposed by the Uchiha or Senju, it certainly wouldn't have been so easy.

It was a pity that Mion's two little friends, Mebuki and Tsume, were not assigned to the same team.

Mebuki was assigned to Tsunade's team, becoming Tsunade's first female disciple, while Tsume was assigned to the Kato Team, becoming a disciple of Dan Katō. This was a new change that did not appear in the original story!