The Land of Grass.
The border.
Only a handful of people wandered the streets in the early morning, most of them dressed in rags. There were few shops along the road, and even the vendors' cries sounded feeble. One glance was enough to see how ruined this country was.
Gua and his parents arrived in a town on the very edge of the Land of Grass.
They had only reached the outskirts of the Land of Earth, so doubling back had taken them just one night.
They had traveled through the night.
Still, now that they had reached a town, they could stay at an inn and get some rest.
They might be Shinobi, but that did not mean they would suffer for no reason.
Their family was not wealthy, but they did have a little saved up. It was the money Uchiha Oyama and Uchiha Nai had set aside for Gua's future marriage.
That no longer mattered now, though.
They would get settled first.
Finding a wife could wait. Gua was still young.
So although they were on the run, they were not so destitute that they had to sleep on the streets.
They only looked a little bedraggled because they had rushed all the way from Konoha.
Now that they could not enter the Land of Earth, they could only settle temporarily in the Land of Grass.
That meant they had to find an inn.
Afterward, they would look into renting a house so the three of them would have somewhere to stay.
"Stay here. Don't wander off. I'll see if there's an inn."
His father, Dashan, left him with those words and went with his mother, Nai, to look for an inn, leaving Gua sitting alone on a roadside rock to rest.
Gua wanted to say he