It was late spring in Konoha Year Eight.
The British Continent, "New London" camp.
The rainforest's dampness mingled with the smell of soil and fermenting vegetation, hanging thick and sticky in the air. Compared with Konoha's still slightly chilly spring, it was already hot enough here to make sweat bead down people's backs.
The few sturdiest wooden buildings in the center of camp were the Governor's Residence-that was what Yutian called them. In the largest room, the Shadow Clone "Yinglang" stood before a spread-out hide map covered in crooked drawings. Yutian and his men had mapped it out bit by bit, marking rivers, hills, forests, and tribal settlements reasonably clearly.
Two years. Starting from nothing.
"How many people do we have here altogether now?" the Shadow Clone "Yinglang" asked. His voice was the same as the original's, but held less of Konoha's gloom and more of the restless heat bred in the rainforest.
Yutian stood beside him, his skin tanned a dark red, his gaze far sharper and steadier than it had been in Konoha. "My lord, counting myself and the two groups secretly brought over through the 'gate' afterward, we have twenty-three of our own people from the Uchiha. Every one of them is absolutely reliable, and arrangements for their families are being made in stages."
"As for the natives who've submitted, six tribes of various sizes have joined us. Altogether... there are around seven hundred people under our authority. As for those scattered through the forest who haven't been counted, that's hard to say."
Over seven hundred. The Shadow Clone "Yinglang" nodded. Gathering over seven hundred people who would follow orders in a wilderness like this within two years was not slow progress. Those twenty-three "insiders" were the bones, the eyes, the handles of the blades gripped in