Uchiha Ying Yue, Yamanaka Chinatsu, and Hyuga Ayane made their way toward a border town in the eastern part of the Land of Fire. Although the Land of Fire was one of the wealthiest countries in the Ninja World, what Uchiha Ying Yue saw along the way was a very different picture.
The poverty-stricken people in the towns and the dilapidated houses in the countryside alike showed how hard life was for ordinary people.
Even on this prosperous land, most of the wealth was plundered by nobles and lords, leaving ordinary people with barely any food or resources.
As Uchiha Ying Yue and the others walked, they spoke with the locals and learned that many families were struggling under the burden of taxes and their lord's oppression.
Whenever natural disasters struck and the fields fell barren, people could easily lose their livelihoods, forcing them to wander or even become bandits.
Even so, Uchiha Ying Yue could still feel these commoners' yearning for a better life, and their helplessness in the face of their circumstances.
At last, they arrived at the border town.
Their client was a merchant. He looked anxious and hurried over almost as soon as Uchiha Ying Yue and the others stepped through his doorway.
His daughter had suddenly disappeared a few days earlier, and hers was not an isolated case. People had been vanishing from the town one after another, most of them young women and ordinary citizens.
The merchant begged Ying Yue to help find his daughter.
After discussing the matter, Uchiha Ying Yue, Ayane, and Chinatsu decided to begin their investigation with the town's residents.
They soon discovered that the merchant's daughter was not the only one who had vanished. Many other ordinary people had suffered the same fate.
More and more evidence showed that