"Good morning, Xie Wen."
The next morning, Xie Wen took the cats off the Dudu. As soon as he entered the city, he saw a kindly-looking Inuarashi nodding to him in greeting.
"???"
Xie Wen stared at him in bewildered suspicion, wondering what had suddenly gotten into him this time.
But after simply greeting him, Inuarashi clasped his hands behind his back and wandered around the city, occasionally chatting with the nearby minks and sometimes stepping forward to help sort out some trouble...
He looked like a perfectly ordinary, helpful middle-aged man.
Had he... suddenly come around after that beating? Or had I knocked something loose in his head?
Xie Wen rubbed his chin, speculating.
In reality, Inuarashi really had come around, but not in the way Xie Wen imagined.
After all, the "Oden Virus" was not that easy to eradicate, and the Mink Tribe was notoriously single-minded. Even if it had not been Kozuki Oden, they would still have laid down their lives for friends they acknowledged.
What Inuarashi had finally realized was-
When Lord Oden had learned that he had been deceived, he had said, "Let past judgments stay in the past... Let's talk about the future."
So, even if things really were as Xie Wen had said, and Lord Oden's naive trust had led to Wano Country's current downfall, that did not affect their efforts to drive Kaido and Kurozumi Orochi out of Wano Country and reclaim the position of daimyo for Kozuki Momonosuke.
At the same time, he no longer insisted on securing Xie Wen and his companions' help, because even if only those few of them remained in the end, neither Inuarashi nor Cat Viper would back down or give up.
With their convictions strengthened further by this mindset, they could naturally face Xie Wen