"Snap out of it, you idiot!"
Minato called out to Nawaki, who had been daydreaming. Startled, Nawaki blinked and snapped back to reality.
Seeing that both Minato and Xin were focused on the sea, he quickly stood up to take a look.
When he noticed the two small black dots on the horizon, growing larger with each passing moment, his face darkened.
"Is that the Mist Village's ship?"
"Almost certainly. Mist Village's shinobi regularly patrol the surrounding seas. Each patrol lasts anywhere from three to seven days. In some cases, it can stretch to half a month or more."
A missing patrol unit would definitely raise alarms in Mist Village. Even more so because the leader of that missing unit was none other than Fuguki Suikazan, one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, and he had been carrying Samehada, a blade of utmost importance to the village.
In other words, it might be acceptable for people to go missing, but not the weapon. The sword was far more valuable than its wielder. If someone were lost, Mist Village could always find a new shinobi to inherit Samehada, but if the weapon itself were lost, it would leave the Seven Ninja Swordsmen one sword short.
And what would happen to their fearsome reputation if they had only six swords?
"The Seven Ninja Swordsmen? More like the Six," people would scoff, which would drive Mist Village crazy.
On one of the Mist Village's warships, Yagura's face grew grim as he confirmed that the team led by Fuguki Suikazan had not returned.
This could only mean two things: they had either defected or encountered an enemy far stronger than anticipated and been annihilated.
Yagura wasn't just making wild guesses. Ever since the Third Mizukage initiated the Bloody Mist Era, Mist Village had earned the highest defection rate among the Five Great Shinobi Villages a fact no other village could compete with.
Even Konoha, despite its internal political struggles, couldn't compare to the chaos in Mist Village.
While the Uchiha Clan had clashed with Konoha for decades, ultimately leading to their massacre, Mist Village had seen numerous bloodline-limit clans wiped out in internal conflicts, long before the Fifth Mizukage, Mei Terumi, ever took power.
Thanks to the Third Mizukage's oppressive policies, the rate of shinobi defecting from Mist Village was higher than anywhere else.
In other villages, if you failed a mission, you might lose credit or receive a minor punishment. But in Mist Village? The moment you returned to the village, death awaited you.
It was no wonder so many shinobi chose to flee.
Strangely enough, when Yagura sought out the Hozuki Clan to summon Samehada back, the summoning failed.
Between defection and death, Yagura was more inclined to believe that Fuguki Suikazan had been killed. But an investigation was still necessary to confirm what had happened.