There was no problem with infighting within the Yuan Clan. Though resources might not be distributed evenly among the various factions, they were still family, and they could work things out in time.
But if another country tried to bleed the Land of Fire dry, that was something the Yuan Clan could never accept.
According to the Heavenly Fire Cult's intelligence, Yuan Benxiong had sent the Twelve Guardian Ninja to keep an eye on Watanabe Kenfu, and even Yuan Jiuxiong, who had just retired home to enjoy his old age, had made a move.
The Heavenly Fire Cult hadn't hidden the news about Yuan Jiuxiong from Touma, the ninja carrying the cult leader's token. This was a minor bug in the way the Heavenly Fire Cult operated.
The people Yuan Jiuxiong had sent to spy on Kenfu were ninjas temporarily hired from Kairan Village. They hadn't been hired locally from Konoha because, for one thing, Konoha was currently mobilizing for war and couldn't spare any capable shinobi.
On the other hand, many of the well-known ninjas in Konoha had ties of one kind or another to nobles in the capital. There was no guarantee that word wouldn't reach Watanabe Kenfu.
The Heavenly Fire Cult's initial investigation into Watanabe Kenfu suggested that his claim to be from the Land of Rivers was also suspect.
When they followed the address on the refugee application he'd submitted at the time, they couldn't find the Mitu Village in the Land of Rivers that he claimed to be from.
Even the scavengers roaming the nearby battlefields had never heard of such a village. They'd only managed to piece together a name—Mitu—based on the sound of it.
This so-called Mitu wasn't a village at all, but a refugee organization. Many war refugees had gathered together and formed an organization like a merchant caravan.
They didn't stay in one place for long. Instead, they wandered between countries, doing a little bartering along the way to keep themselves fed.
Following this lead, they really did find Mitu's merchant caravan, which had just entered the Land of Tea. They learned about Watanabe Kenfu from the people in the caravan.
Not only was he no citizen of the Land of Rivers, he wasn't even a war refugee. He was a member of the Onizuka Clan, the family of the daimyo of the Land of Demons, and had once been a candidate for the position himself.
But he'd lost the clan's succession election to the current daimyo of the Land of Demons and had been forced to flee overseas with his family.
But people with both ability and ambition were rarely content with life in exile. Onizuka Kenichi was no exception. He had secretly contacted Moryo, the monster sealed away in the Land of Demons, and tried to steal some of its power. As a result, he'd gained the special ability to control people's minds.
He hadn't joined Mitu in search of like-minded companions. He'd set his sights on the many descendants of fallen shinobi clans in the organization, hoping to use Moryo's power to control them and make them serve him.
Unfortunately, several members of the Uzumaki Clan and the Tsuchigumo Clan had just joined Mitu.
Moryo had been held in check by onmyoji a thousand years ago. A thousand years later, the shinobi clans that had inherited their Sealing Jutsu were naturally just as effective against him. Before Onizuka Kenichi could make a large-scale move, he was driven out by ninjas from the Uzumaki and Tsuchigumo Clans.
Mitu had actually considered hunting Onizuka Kenichi down, but by then he had already changed his appearance and become a refugee who'd married into the Sugiyama Clan, one of the noble families in the capital of the Land of Fire. Mitu's intelligence network was limited, and they hadn't been able to find him.
Now that the Yuan Clan knew what Onizuka Kenichi could do and had found ways to counter him, why hadn't they acted yet?
Because Onizuka Kenichi had completely taken control of the Sugiyama Clan and used its connections to establish ties with three other noble families.
Directly moving against Onizuka Kenichi, who had the support of four noble families, wasn't easy for the Yuan Clan.
The five great noble families of the capital were evenly matched in overall strength. The Yuan Clan couldn't simply order the others around just because it held the position of daimyo.
The Sugiyama Clan in particular held many important military posts. Moving against them would mean facing pressure from the army.
The Yuan Clan had plenty of forces at its disposal, and many of them were unquestionably loyal. But against an army equipped with large numbers of firearms, even those forces couldn't guarantee the Yuan Clan's safety.
Though firearms were still at the level of sixteenth-century flintlocks from Earth in Touma's previous life, chakra's effectiveness would be greatly diminished once enough weapons were deployed.
Given enough time to react, a Genin would have a good chance of dodging a lead bullet fired from a hundred meters away through natural reflexes.
But breech-loading explosive shells, powerful enough to match three or five Explosive Tags and capable of traveling over a thousand meters, were more than enough to threaten a Genin's life.
Never mind that even though technology hadn't advanced, chakra gave the Shinobi World far greater productive capacity. The world had enormous cannons with even larger calibers and higher firing pressures. One shell could turn everything within a ten-meter radius—people and animals alike—to ash.
So, until Onizuka Kenichi's identity was exposed and the Yuan Clan had obtained a complete chain of evidence, they wouldn't dare move against him.
The person who'd come to negotiate with Onizuka Kenichi wasn't the finance minister of the Land of Demons. According to intelligence gathered by the Heavenly Fire Cult, he was most likely the leader of the Yomi Sect, a wandering ninja who called himself Yomotsu but was actually named Ota Yokokawa.
Ota Yokokawa had also taken plenty of jobs through the Bounty Exchange and had a good completion rate. He specialized in Earth Release rock-style jutsu and seemed to have deep ties to Iwagakure in the Land of Earth.
The Heavenly Fire Cult hadn't been able to uncover his exact identity. After all, no matter how good its intelligence network was, it didn't have the strength to plant informants in the Tsuchikage's office.
A Rock Release specialist like Ota Yokokawa, with the strength of an elite Jonin, might have detailed records kept in the Tsuchikage's office.
Looking at Ota Yokokawa's current catatonic state, he'd most likely had his will taken over by Moryo's ability to control minds.
To learn more about Moryo's abilities, Touma sent Mion a letter with a Ninja Hawk.
As it happened, Mion's Kanmi Team had just finished a mission and disbanded for the day. She had also found a detailed description of Moryo in the Kurama Clan's collection of books.
It was worth mentioning that the Kanmi Team's instructor was named Mitarashi Kanmi, the father of Mitarashi Mochi and Azuki.
This arrangement had been made as a temporary deal between the Kurama Clan and the Mitarashi Clan. After seeing the hope of reliably awakening their Kekkei Genkai during the competition, the Kurama Clan had decided to entrust their only genius who'd awakened the Kekkei Genkai without developing its accompanying illness to Mitarashi Kanmi.
The Mitarashi Clan had also seen the possibility of advancing its clan's secret techniques in the battle between Mochi and Mion. The two clans had hit it off, applied to the Hokage's office, and changed the students' team assignments.
Only shinobi clans could get away with a move like this. The Mitarashi and Kurama Clans were both staunch supporters of the Sarutobi Clan, so their cooperation posed no political risk to the Hokage. If the Uchiha and Senju Clans had proposed it, things wouldn't have been so easy.
Unfortunately, Mion's two best friends, Mebuki and Tsume, hadn't been assigned to the same teams.
Mebuki was assigned to Tsunade's team, becoming Tsunade's first female student, while Tsume was assigned to the Kato Team and became Dan Katō's student. This was a new development that hadn't appeared in the original story!
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