The rain over the Land of Grass had ceased after only half a day, but the sky remained a bruised, heavy grey.
This town was the final stop before leaving the territory of the Hidden Grass—a bottleneck for merchants seeking to cross the great canyon bridge into other nations.
Where there is human traffic, there is demand; over the years of trade, this "Post Station Town" had grown into a hub.
While not as prosperous as the border towns in the Land of Fire, it followed the same rule: "The sparrow is small, but it possesses all five internal organs." It had everything—inns, eateries, and even red-light districts.
The rain had turned the unpaved roads into a quagmire of mud. Caravans crowded both sides of the street, and the air was thick with the shouting of traders and the smell of wet earth.
On the second floor of an inn at the edge of town, Shisui Aburame sat in his room.
He had checked in shortly after entering the town, ordered a meal, and called for a large tub of hot water to scrub the grime of travel from his body.
The food in border towns was never gourmet, but to Shisui, even mediocre rice was a luxury compared to the tasteless, nutrient-dense grit of military rations.
Now, dressed in a clean yukata, he sat cross-legged on the bed, looking like nothing more than a traveling youth.
He sipped warm water and finished the last tri-color dango from a bamboo skewer.
Reflecting on the day's journey, he recalled a second encounter following the three Grass ninja: a squad of five Hidden Stone (Iwagakure) shinobi. Operating near the border, they had—unsurprisingly—refused to let a "lone Waterfall Genin" pass without a fight.
The result had been predictable. He had subdued them effortlessly. Using his Stink-Blights, he had subjected them to deep hypnotic suggestion.
The intel he extracted was telling: while they were nominally looking for him, their true objective was to locate and intercept Orochimaru.
Shisui had connected the dots instantly. The Leaf had sent Orochimaru to hunt him, and someone had leaked Orochimaru's movements to the Stone.
Oddly, he felt no surprise.
After getting the intel from the Grass ninja earlier, Shisui had toyed with the idea of leaking information to the Stone himself to muddy the waters.
He had ultimately decided against it—haste leads to errors, and over-complicating a plan can turn a "finishing touch" into a "redundant failure."
He hadn't expected that someone within the Leaf—or rather, a certain "someone"—would perform so predictably, smoothing the path of his escape from the shadows.
As for the five Stone ninja, he hadn't killed them. Instead, he had implanted five Stink-Blights into their brains to maintain a steady release of pheromones for long-term hypnosis.
He had also hidden ten thousand dormant Erosion Bugs inside each of their bodies. His command to them was simple: return to a specific Stone border outpost.
The secret map of Stone deployments he had scavenged earlier had provided the perfect destination to make the "play" look authentic.
Just moments ago, he had sensed that the fifty thousand bugs had been neutralized.
"Now, the Stone, the Leaf, and the Grass should all believe I've taken the opportunity to slip into the Land of Earth," Shisui thought. He licked the last bit of sugar syrup from the bamboo skewer and tossed it into the trash.
"The chaos is set, the bait is taken. Time for the next step."
Shisui looked out the window. He noticed that many Grass ninja were being withdrawn from the town, regrouping to head out.
If his intuition was correct, the majority of the Hidden Grass forces were being shifted to the border to prevent the skirmish between the Leaf and the Stone from spilling over and turning their country into a fresh battlefield.
Once his long hair was dry, Shisui changed into a fresh set of clothes, donned the Takigawa Shu tactical vest, and adjusted his forehead protector. He stepped out of the inn and merged into the crowd.
He needed to find a small merchant caravan to join. Blending in with civilians was the most effective way to lower the guard of border sentries.
Due to the mud and the intensified searches by the Grass village, many caravans were stalled. Most were small-scale traders just trying to make a living.
Larger caravans had the wealth to bribe their way through or the strength of high-level bodyguards; the small ones were stuck, often forced to hire low-tier ninja from minor villages or wandering ronin.
Shisui did a circuit of the local camps. Most were either turning back toward the Land of Fire or preparing to risk the bridge to the Land of Earth once the fighting died down. Not a single one was headed toward the Land of Waterfall.
It made sense. Merchants follow profit. While the tension between the Stone and Leaf was high, that was a "ninja problem." To a merchant, the risk of war was simply a hurdle to overcome for the sake of the massive profits found in transporting scarce goods between warring nations.
To them, poverty was more terrifying than death. Poverty meant being unable to hire protection; it meant falling to the bottom of the social ladder to be exploited as a refugee.
That was a fate worse than a kunai to the throat.
As Shisui reached the town's western gate, he saw a commotion. Several servants were being shoved to the ground.
A modestly dressed merchant was being stepped on, pinned into the mud. He was kneeling, begging piteously, his plump frame drenched in sweat and his eyes filled with tears.
His oppressors were three wandering ronin. They were scruffy, clutching long katanas. One of them, a man of average build, held a ten-year-old boy by the scruff of the neck—clearly using the child as leverage against the merchant.
A daylight robbery?
No, this looked like an internal dispute. These ronin had likely been hired by the merchant.
Ronin were notorious for their lack of professional ethics. Coupled with the relentless checkpoints throughout the day, the pressure had reached a breaking point.
Not only were the merchants losing money to bribes, but the ronin themselves were being scrutinized by the patrolling ninja.
While they weren't famous, many were low-level criminals on local wanted posters. The sheer volume of ninja in the area had made them jumpy.
"Everyone knows the border is about to explode," one of the ronin spat. "Three powers are about to tear each other apart out there. The measly pay you offered isn't enough for us to throw our lives away."