The Kazekage's Disappearance

Tsunade stayed in Takigakure for three years.

Over those three years, Takigakure seemed to become an object of observation for both her and Konoha.

Everything that happened in this village could be summed up in one word.

Madness.

Oguri Hayashi, the village's leader, had gone mad. Everyone in the village had gone mad.

Other than madness, Tsunade had no way to explain everything here that defied the common sense of the ninja world.

Oguri Hayashi decreed that everyone in Takigakure had to work unconditionally for the village for thirty hours every week.

He also decreed that once they had worked over two hundred hours for the village, they could exchange that labor for a Ninjutsu technique.

The threshold for obtaining Ninjutsu was outrageously low.

In Konoha, one had to complete countless missions for the village, undergo political evaluations, submit an application, and then wait to see whether the Hokage approved it before one could exchange it for a Ninjutsu technique with a C- to B-rank training difficulty.

As for A-rank Ninjutsu? You had better honestly find a master. Those were all secret techniques passed down to no one else. The Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu, an A-rank technique, not only had severe side effects but was also unsuitable for people with ordinary Chakra. Chidori and Rasengan were merely A-rank Ninjutsu as well!

It was precisely because of this that when Oguri Hayashi unconditionally taught the Shadow Clone Jutsu he knew to his subordinates, he easily won the hearts of his Genin. They were utterly loyal to Oguri Hayashi, who had taught them such a B-rank Ninjutsu without conditions.

Oguri Hayashi had naturally done so to improve their strength and, in turn, increase their teams' capabilities. It would greatly raise his chances of surviving on the battlefield.

On the other hand, he did not place much importance on the rules surrounding schools and secret manuals.

And in Takigakure, his ideas were carried out to the letter. Anyone who worked more than two hundred hours could exchange it for Ninjutsu.

Moreover, his Ninjutsu had no barriers whatsoever.

And his descriptions of Ninjutsu were incredibly bizarre.

So bizarre that Tsunade did not even know how she should describe his words to her teacher.

When it came to the Shadow Clone Jutsu and Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu, he was utterly unstinting. His introduction read: "Shadow Clone Jutsu: a difficult technique that lets one person do the work of two while farming."

"Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu: an extremely difficult technique that lets one person plant the entire village's fields."

"Lightning Release Body Cultivation Technique: a technique that trains your body until it is as strong as an ox, allowing one person to plow fields as effectively as an ox..."

There were countless analogies like that everywhere.

He simply wrote them on a sign and erected it at the village entrance. There was not only the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu and Lightning Release Body Cultivation Technique, but also Earth Release and Water Release.

As long as Oguri Hayashi knew it, he never hesitated to teach it to these villagers. That even included the My Style Martial Arts that he forced them to practice with him for an hour every morning.

This was a village where everyone practiced martial arts and Ninjutsu. In this village, obtaining Ninjutsu was not difficult in the slightest.

Yet there were no warriors here.

It was unbelievable. In the entire village, the only person who knew how to fight was Oguri Hayashi.

The only reason they cultivated Ninjutsu was to make their daily lives more convenient.

Those who cultivated Earth Release only wanted to build roads more conveniently. Those who cultivated Water Release only wanted to water things more conveniently. Those who cultivated taijutsu only wanted to plow fields and cut down trees more conveniently.

No one here cultivated Ninjutsu to kill enemies; they did it to live better. Yet because of that, they could cast Earth Release faster than ninja who specialized in Earth Release, and their bodies, tempered through years of taijutsu training, were stronger than those of taijutsu specialists.

They did not know how to fight at all. Aside from hunting, they had never fought any ninja. But precisely because of that, Tsunade found them truly terrifying.

Over the course of three years, Tsunade observed the village as cautiously as a cat. After an external road was opened two years ago, the village's population entered a period of rapid growth. Outsiders trickled into the village in family units, and its population gradually grew from forty or fifty people to around two hundred.

There were no spies among the outsiders. Tsunade understood that if she did not send word out herself, no spies would come to a village like this, because the village had no value whatsoever.

Without value, no one would waste a spy on it.

Takigakure did not resist newcomers at all, nor did it discriminate against them.

That lack of discrimination even extended to learning Ninjutsu.

This large group of ordinary people did not know how precious the Ninjutsu they were learning truly was. They only worked hard at it to gain greater convenience and productivity.

Instead, it was this attitude toward training, so different from that of ninja, that created the miracle of Takigakure.

In Takigakure, with its more than two hundred residents, everyone practiced Ninjutsu. That meant that most of them were essentially Genin.

Then, seventy or eighty of those with better aptitude became Chunin.

The number of Jonin was even more astonishing: there were more than twenty of them!

One had to know that Jonin were the backbone of a ninja village. Konoha only had around a hundred Jonin. The Land of Fire had only twelve Jonin protecting the Daimyo. Among the eighty-thousand-strong Allied Shinobi Forces that fought the White Zetsu in the future, only one in ten was a Chunin, making eight thousand Chunin. Of those eight thousand Chunin, only one in ten was a Jonin, making merely eight hundred Jonin. Divided among five nations, each country would average just over a hundred Jonin. That was already an extremely optimistic estimate. The more than twenty Jonin here already amounted to one-fifth of Konoha's total number of Jonin.

And Konoha's Jonin had the right to vote for the Hokage.

Of course, it was worth mentioning that all the "ninja" here referred to people with the corresponding Chakra.

In reality, there were no true ninja here. They had never received any formal ninja training, did not know the Transformation Jutsu, Clone Jutsu, and Substitution Jutsu or how to throw weapon tools, and knew neither tactics nor reconnaissance. Yet even this was enough to make Konoha drool with envy.

The facts proved that Oguri Hayashi was right. He had set no threshold for learning, but ordinary people had no interest whatsoever in the Transformation Jutsu, Clone Jutsu, and Substitution Jutsu. Hardly anyone even wanted to learn a technique like the Flying Thunder God. Most people preferred Ninjutsu that could help improve their lives.

The people here still used Ninjutsu, yet they seemed like people living in entirely different planes of existence.

For the first time, Tsunade understood that ninja could actually live this way.

But the arrival of one piece of news shattered the peace here.

The Kazekage had disappeared.

Oguri Hayashi naturally understood what this implied. He pushed open his door, stepped out of the room, and shouted, "Gather all the Jonin for me. I'm issuing orders."