Kurotaro raised his head and looked at the unbelievably beautiful woman in front of him.
I was momentarily stunned, forgetting what to say.
Behind her stood several teenagers, including a rebellious boy carrying a white dog on his back, craning his neck to peer towards the cave.
A gloomy boy, his collar covering half his face, silently surveyed his surroundings; and a little girl with Byakugan, looking at him with concern.
"You... you're not mountain gods?" Hei Dalang repeated blankly.
"We are ninjas from Konoha," the woman said, her tone patient and gentle. "I am Kurenai Yuhi. These are my three students: Kiba, Shino, and Hinata. We are here to—"
"Whoever you are!" Hei Dalang suddenly grabbed Hong's arm, his strength so great that Hong frowned slightly. "Please, please save my mother! I know I'm not human, I'll carry her up the mountain to die, but I have no other choice! We're out of food, and my wife is pregnant, I—"
"You abandoned your mother on the mountain?!"
Tooth reacted faster than his body, almost shouting it out.
He grabbed Hei Dalang by the collar, veins bulging on his forehead. Akamaru, perched on his head, barked twice at Hei Dalang, as if echoing its master's anger.
"She is your mother!"
"Fang!" Red grabbed Fang's arm, stopping him from continuing with a look.
He clenched his teeth and reluctantly let go, but his eyes remained fixed on Hei Dalang, as if he wanted to stare two holes through his face.
"Is your mother in the cave?" Hong asked.
Hei Dalang nodded, then slumped to the ground as if his bones had been removed.
Kurenai gave Hinata a wink, and Hinata immediately ran towards the cave. A moment later, she helped her elderly mother slowly emerge.
The elderly mother walked with difficulty, but her expression remained relatively calm, and she still tightly clutched the cloth bundle in her hand.
She walked up to Hei Dalang, bent down to help her son up, and wiped the blood from his forehead with her sleeve.
Hei Dalang grabbed his mother's wrist, his whole body trembling, but he couldn't utter a single word.
"You... you are the ninjas of Konoha?"
Hei Dalang's voice still trembled with sobs, but it was slightly calmer than before.
He released his mother's wrist and turned to face Hong.
"I've heard of Konoha. There used to be a peddler in the village who said that Konoha was the strongest ninja village in the Land of Fire, and that all the ninjas there listened to the Hokage. But the Hokage... the Hokage is too far away from us. We've never seen Konoha ninja here, never."
As he said this, he suddenly knelt down again. This time he didn't kowtow; he simply knelt on the ground, looking up at Hong, his eyes bloodshot.
"Ninja lords, can you please stand up for us?"
"Get up and talk first." Hong reached out to help him up, but Hei Dalang insisted on not getting up.
"Our village is called Dago Village), which is a funny name. Actually, it's not big at all, just a few dozen households."
The entire area within a radius of fifty li (approximately 25 kilometers) belongs to one person.
That man's name is Kira, and he lives in a big house on the other side of the mountain. We farm his land, use his water, and have to hand over 70% of our harvest to him.
"Seventy percent, sir! At most, an acre of land will yield two hundred catties of rice. After paying the grain tax, less than sixty catties will be left. We still have to save seeds. If we save enough for our own food, the family won't last until next spring."
His voice grew louder and louder, as if he had been holding it in for too long and was finally finding an outlet to vent.
"It's not that we haven't resisted. The year before last, the village chief led more than a dozen young men to confront Kira, saying that if the taxes weren't lowered, they would go to the capital to file a complaint."
And what happened? Kira hired a few rogue ninjas, and the village chief was beheaded on the spot.
Hei Dalang began to ramble on about how the nobleman Kira had bullied him and the village's tradition of disappearing into the shadows.
Ya's expression changed from anger to astonishment, and then from astonishment to silence.
He looked down at Akamaru at his feet. Akamaru whimpered and huddled down at his feet Fudo.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but found that he couldn't say anything at all.
Shino stood silently at the outermost edge of the group, his collar obscuring half his face, making his expression unreadable. However, a large number of Kikaichū poured out from his sleeves, crawling restlessly on the ground, revealing their owner's emotions.
Hinata stood beside her elderly mother, one hand supporting her arm, the fingertips of the other trembling slightly.
Hong was quite knowledgeable, but she never expected that the Land of Fire would have such a tradition of seclusion. She felt a surge of anger rising within her.
" Hei Dalang," she finally spoke, her voice not loud, but deep, "You said that no one in your village has ever heard of Hokage?"
"Never heard of him. We only know Kira. Kira is like God. He says how much grain to hand over, and that's the amount. He says who to kill, and that person dies."
Hong nodded, took out a scroll from behind her back, collapsed to the ground, and Hand Seals.
In Setsuna, a puff of white smoke rose from the storage scroll on the ground. Some food appeared on the scroll.
Hei Dalang stared wide-eyed at the food on the scroll.
He had never seen such a sumptuous meal, nor such a miraculous method.
For a moment, he couldn't help but wonder if the people in front of him were not ninjas, but the real mountain gods.
"Let's rest here for a bit."
Hong picked up a piece of dry food from the ground and handed it to Hei Dalang's mother, then handed her the water bottle as well.
The old man hesitated for a moment, but he couldn't resist the hunger in his stomach. He wiped his hands on his clothes and shakily accepted the snow-white flatbread.
Hei Dalang realized that these strange ninjas were genuinely offering him food, he finally stopped being polite and accepted it, swallowing it in large gulps.
The group rested for a while, and after the two had eaten and drunk their fill, they continued downhill toward the village.
The village is small, with dozens of mud-brick houses crookedly squeezed at the foot of the mountain. The mud walls are cracked with large holes, the thatched roofs are black and rotten, and some houses have collapsed halfway and are covered with tattered mats.
A naked child was squatting by the ditch, digging at something with a stick; he was digging for grass roots in the mud.
Hei Dalang quickly stepped forward, grabbed the naked child, and kicked him in the buttocks, telling him to get away.
He turned to Kurenai Yuhi and said.
"I'm so sorry, Ninja-sama. My family is quite poor."
Hei Dalang's wife heard the commotion outside and peeked out of the door. Upon seeing who it was, she immediately looked flustered.
"Gentlemen, we are truly out of food at home. Could we wait until the new harvest to hand over our grain?"