Hidden Mist Village Attacks

The shadow of Sunagakure's crushing defeat at Kikyō Mountain hung over the village like the heaviest Sandstorm. Before the humiliation of defeat had faded, astronomical war reparations and humiliating treaties that stripped away its rights had already become swords hanging over the entire village, constantly weighing on everyone's nerves.

To raise the first installment of reparations and maintain the village's most basic operations, the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa, had nearly exhausted himself. The treasury had long since been emptied, and mission allocations had been drastically reduced, leaving conventional income utterly incapable of covering the payment. With no other choice, he could only return to his old trade, venturing more frequently and deeper into the endless desert, relying on his Magnet Release Gold Dust Technique to painstakingly extract precious gold from the vast sea of sand.

He left early and returned late every day, sometimes failing to return for several days at a time. His figure grew ever more weary and solitary. The leader of an entire village had actually fallen to the point of personally working as a miner just to sustain the village's survival; the bitterness and helplessness behind it were beyond words. The village's defenses and patrol efforts were also severely affected. Many border outposts and coastal watch stations had become little more than empty shells due to serious shortages of manpower and funding.

But misfortune never came alone. Sunagakure's unprecedented weakness had not escaped the notice of other predators.

Far away in the Land of Water, after the Third Mizukage carefully studied the intelligence on the Battle of Kikyō Mountain, greed and coldness gleamed in the eyes hidden within the shadows. Sunagakure's main force had been wiped out, the Kazekage was busy mining gold, its interior was hollowed out, and morale was low—this was a heaven-sent opportunity! If