Wine and Meat Rot Behind Vermilion Gates, While Frozen Bones Lie by the Road

Inside the grand hall, gold and jade chimed against each other, the fragrance of wine and meat hung in the air, and the dazzling luxury made it seem like an earthly paradise.

Yet beyond the ten-zhang-high vermilion walls of the Daimyō Mansion lay an entirely different world.

The first heavy snow since winter began was mercilessly sweeping across the vast lands of the Land of Fire.

At a single order from the Daimyō Mansion, taxes throughout the Land of Fire had surged by thirty percent within mere days, all to cover the shortfall from the "trade route taxes" and "ceded mineral veins" promised to the Four Great Ninja Villages.

The granary doors of the local authorities were shut tight. Inside, mountains of old grain had piled up, even giving off a faint sour stench of decay.

Yet not a single grain of rice was permitted to be distributed to the disaster-stricken refugees.

In the slums of the Capital City's outer district, the biting wind cut through the endless night like blades.

A barely clothed woman curled up in the corner of a dilapidated temple that leaked cold air, clutching a gaunt child tightly in her arms.

She tried to warm the child with her own icy body heat, but the tiny body had long since stiffened like a block of ice.

"My child..."

The woman's cracked lips trembled. She no longer had the strength even to cry; only the murky tears flowing from the corners of her eyes quickly froze into frost upon her cheeks.

Less than ten paces away, several refugee corpses that had died from cold and hunger had already frozen together with the snow.

Two emaciated wild dogs, their eyes bloodshot, tore savagely at the bodies, refusing to yield over a scrap of human flesh crusted with