Ever since Journey to the West (Volume One) hit the market, it had become a modest hit among ordinary villagers and lower- and middle-ranked ninja in Konoha.
It hadn't become the runaway bestseller Xian Yu had imagined.
Still, with the market opened by the first volume, the five hundred copies of Volume Two sold out quickly after hitting the shelves, with over a hundred gone in no time.
Most of the buyers were probably readers who had picked up the first volume and were waiting for the sequel.
After school at the Ninja Academy one day, Xian Yu went to the ninja tool shop run by the Shimura Clan.
"Xiao Yu, what a rare sight! What do you need? Are you looking for any ninja tools?" A middle-aged woman in the shop greeted Xian Yu with a warm smile.
Her name was Shimura Chikako, and she was married to his teacher, Shimura Xiong Yi.
In this world, women took their husbands' surnames after marriage, so young Xian Yu wasn't sure whether Shimura Chikako had been born into the Shimura Clan or married in from another clan.
After all, ever since the First, Senju Hashirama, had led the way in promoting intermarriage between clans and urging everyone to "come together as part of Konoha," the major clans in Konoha—aside from bloodline clans like the Uchiha and Hyuga—had stopped strictly restricting it, even if they hadn't gone as far as the Senju Clan.
"Aunt Chikako, I've got a batch of Special Military Ration Pills I'd like to sell through our shop." Xian Yu scratched his head.
As far as Xian Yu knew, the ninja tool shop his aunt ran also sold some lower-quality military ration pills.
It simply wasn't like the Nara Clan's shops, which specialized in medicine and stocked better-quality products.
Shimura Chikako looked surprised. "Special Military Ration Pills?"
"Yeah, these." As he spoke, Xian Yu took out a small bag of pills that looked much like ordinary military ration pills.
After obtaining the Spirit Rice that day and trying some cooked, Xian Yu had been amazed to discover that it didn't just stave off hunger—it also replenished chakra very effectively, even better than ordinary military ration pills.
Once he realized that, he spent the next few days figuring out how to turn Spirit Rice into Special Military Ration Pills.
At last, he finished making a small batch of thirty pills the day before.
There wasn't much to the process, really. Ordinary military ration pills were made from a blend of precious medicinal ingredients and processed using a special method. They restored physical stamina and replenished chakra gradually. Eating too many could cause immeasurable harm to the body. But on the battlefield, ninja had little choice. They had to take them even knowing it was like quenching their thirst with poison.
Xian Yu's Special Military Ration Pills, on the other hand, required no special skill. There was no need to consider the properties of various medicinal ingredients or how they interacted.
He simply mashed cooked Spirit Rice together with ordinary rice, then used some mild, health-promoting herbs to make a coating around the rice paste.
Making these thirty pills had only taken fifteen grains of Spirit Rice and a few blood-tonic herbs that cost next to nothing! Each pill contained just half a grain of Spirit Rice.
The Spirit Rice grains were about the same size as ordinary Northeastern rice. He'd weighed them precisely and found that a pound contained roughly six thousand grains.
If he ate it all himself, one grain a day would last him three hundred and thirty years!
It was a fortune!
Xian Yu, who'd once complained about not drawing a Zanpakutō, was now more than satisfied with this twenty-jin bag of Spirit Rice!
"Aunt Chikako, I developed these Special Military Ration Pills myself. Eating a lot of them won't harm the body at all, and taking them over a long period can even improve your constitution. They restore stamina and chakra about thirty percent better than ordinary military ration pills. The only downside is that if you eat too many when your stamina and chakra are already full, you'll get uncomfortably stuffed."
Xian Yu's little face turned serious. "Aunt Chikako, you can have this small batch first. You can get it tested and analyzed before selling it in the shop. As for the price, I remember ordinary military ration pills cost fifty-five ryō each. My ingredients cost more, so let's sell these for two hundred ryō apiece."
The technology tree in the Naruto World was bizarre. They had wireless radios and all kinds of advanced medical equipment, even instruments for analyzing materials, yet they still sent messages with Ninja Hawks and gave orders by shouting... Xian Yu found it baffling.
Xian Yu wasn't worried that anyone would analyze the Spirit Rice. At worst, they'd find it contained some strange, energy-rich substance. As for copying it, he'd never believe it if someone could figure out the structure of cultivation-world Spirit Rice and reproduce it in the Naruto World!
And what if someone got jealous? What if they tried to harm him, or the village demanded his recipe for these "Special Military Ration Pills"?
Shimura Danzo would probably just sneer: I haven't taken anything from you, so you'd better not lay a hand on my kid.
Shimura Chikako took the matter seriously. "All right. I'll have someone test and analyze these pills right now. If they work as you say, two hundred ryō apiece really isn't expensive. It's actually a bargain."
Everything went even more smoothly than Xian Yu had expected. After professional members of the Shimura Clan tested and analyzed the pills, they accepted—astonishing as it was—that their clan's young master, who wasn't even six, had really developed an improved kind of military ration pill.
Taking large quantities of these pills wouldn't damage the body. In fact, after taking them for a few months, anyone would notice a clear increase in strength and a stronger physique! The effect was equivalent to a month of hard training!
The clan's higher-ups soon sent this astonishing news by specially trained Ninja Hawk to their clan leader, Danzo, who was away from the village on a mission. Once he received it, the few clan members in the know were ordered to keep quiet. Shimura Chikako and Xian Yu were also instructed to reserve these Special Military Ration Pills for Danzo's Anbu and the Shimura Clan's ninja. They were to claim that the pills were a secret remedy passed down through generations of the Shimura Clan, and sell only a small quantity in the shop to boost its reputation and draw in customers.
To keep the Spirit Rice a secret, the pills couldn't be made by anyone else. From then on, Xian Yu spent an hour every day in a cleared-out workroom, cooking rice and filling the pills. He produced around 450 to 500 a day.
Production was low and demand was high! The Special Military Ration Pills brought Xian Yu about three million ryō a month.
He also set aside one evening each week to write and update the next installment of Journey to the West.
Ninja were all very disciplined and rarely read this kind of light entertainment, but the original Journey to the West had still attracted plenty of ordinary villagers, some Genin, and students at the Ninja Academy. With a new installment coming out every week, monthly sales now held steady at around three hundred copies.
At a hundred ryō per copy, the book brought Xian Yu less than thirty thousand ryō a month after printing and consignment fees—nowhere near what he made from selling medicine.
But Xian Yu still kept up his weekly updates with enthusiasm.
Partly because, compared to selling military ration pills, Journey to the West was sustainable! Once he finished it, he could write Journey to the East. After that, he could write The Lotus Lantern... Once everyone understood the Three Realms, he could publish more mythology. Eventually, he could expand beyond Konoha to bookstores across the Land of Fire, and one day even reach other countries...
The other reason was simply that he enjoyed it. As he wrote, Xian Yu discovered that he loved the feeling of putting words on a page. His writing wasn't good yet—in fact, it was pretty bad—but he loved the process. He was already consciously working to improve his writing, and he believed he'd become a towering literary figure in the Naruto World one day. What confidence. JGP
The rest of his free time, aside from eating and sleeping, was spent training with Jiraiya and Orochimaru at the training grounds.
Life was... almost too full!
One grain of Spirit Rice could make two Special Military Ration Pills, and a pound of Spirit Rice contained around six thousand grains. That meant it could produce twelve thousand pills.
Xian Yu set aside half the Spirit Rice as ingredients for making military ration pills. Those ten pounds could ultimately make about 120,000 Special Military Ration Pills.
At two hundred ryō apiece, that added up to a whopping twenty-four million ryō!
Although his supply of Spirit Rice, the main ingredient, was limited, his current low production rate meant it would last for more than half a year.
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