Hozuki Castle
While turmoil stirred the world outside, the Land of Grass had quietly undergone a sweeping transformation.
On the third day after the smoke cleared over Kusagakure, the Tsuchigumo Clan's banners flew from every watchtower in the village.
Leaning on his wooden staff, En no Gyōja stood before the ruins of the ninja leader's residence, personally supervising the clan's craftsmen as they repaired the drainage channels cracked by the Tailed Beast Ball.
After their initial terror, the ordinary merchants and residents who belonged to neither Grass Fruit nor Grass Flower gradually grew accustomed to the Tsuchigumo Clan.
They discovered that their new rulers neither burned and killed nor looted. Instead, they brought large quantities of grain and medicine from house to house to reassure the people, who gradually began peeking through their tightly shut doors.
By then, Sōji had already left Kusagakure with Karin and the others, bound for Hozuki Castle.
That gray fortress stood on a sheer, isolated cliff at the northeastern edge of the Land of Grass, across the river from the Land of Waterfalls. It was the true final stroke of Sōji's journey to the Land of Grass.
Heading northeast from Kusagakure, the terrain gradually shifted from rolling hills to jagged, rocky mountains.
The autumn river surged through the gorge, its waters stained a dense, murky ocher by the yellow earth washed down from upstream.
Years of erosion had exposed layer upon layer of sedimentary rock along the cliffs on either bank, like a layered cake sliced open by a sharp blade.
"Just ahead!"
Sōji stood at the edge of a cliff, his Six Eyes piercing the thin mist over the river as he looked toward the solitary peak in the distance.
Hozuki Castle!
It stood atop a lone peak rising from the river's raging whirlpools,