The common people of the shinobi world really did not ask for much.
After a thousand years of war, all the common people wanted was for the nobles to stop making trouble and the shinobi to stop fighting. That alone would make it the best of times. Konoha might have been a mess in every other respect, but it could still meet such simple demands.
Better yet, Konoha went a step further. Not only did it stop causing trouble and waging war, it also gave them land, food, and education. The common people were practically being buried beneath one windfall after another, and all they could do was bawl with gratitude-
Heaven had finally shown mercy! The mighty shinobi had finally come to save them!
Those who felt this most keenly were the combat shinobi dispatched across the country to suppress bandits and nobles.
They had expected indifference or even hostility from the populace. After all, that had been the shinobi's reputation among ordinary people for centuries. Yet when they actually entered those regions ravaged by unrest, they were utterly astonished to find the locals welcoming them with applause!
These locals not only volunteered to provide food and lodging, sharing their precious rations with the combat shinobi, but eagerly served as guides, exposing every last secret of the local nobles and bandits.
With such wholehearted assistance, the combat shinobi sent out on these missions naturally completed them with ease. Being treated like the center of everyone's world also left them walking on air, as though they truly had become this land's great heroes. Their vanity was thoroughly satisfied.
But this was not difficult to understand at all. The people of the Land of Fire had had enough of this chaotic age. From the bottom of their hearts, they yearned for