After reviewing the register, Yuji's first practical choice was the Daimyo class of smaller countries.
In the current ninja world, many minor nations operated as simple monarchies without any developed ninja infrastructure. Even those that maintained armies or hired rogue ninja had a fundamental ceiling on their combat capability that no amount of money could fully close.
Against that kind of protection, Yuji was confident in his ability to produce results cleanly.
The complication was political rather than tactical.
Small countries existed within a web of relationships with the major nations. The Five Great Villages maintained influence over many of them deliberately, both for the economic value of those relationships and for the strategic stability that client states provided.
Konoha's current reconstruction was drawing craftsmen and skilled workers from smaller nations precisely because those relationships made such requests possible.
A dead Daimyo in a country with strong ties to a major village was not simply a completed contract. It was a potential diplomatic incident with unpredictable downstream consequences.
Killing a Daimyo was manageable. The trouble that followed was not necessarily so.
The safer category was nobility within smaller countries, targets significant enough to carry real bounties but not so central to any nation's political structure that removing them would alarm a Great Village or destabilize a meaningful relationship.
One or two such targets carried no national implications. And not every small country maintained the kind of diplomatic ties that would produce serious complications.
His first selection was a noble named Uchiyama in the Land of Waterfalls.
The Land of Waterfalls was small but not weak. Takigakure possessed a Tailed Beast, which said something clear about the village's standing, receiving one from Hashirama at the first Five Kage Summit required a level of recognition that minor powers didn't achieve.
The country had also survived two consecutive world wars without suffering significant damage despite being physically located between the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth, which was a meaningful demonstration of competence.
Yuji had a working theory about who had posted the bounty. The Land of Mountains had made opportunistic moves against the Land of Fire during the recent war, only to be responded to by Takigakure and beaten badly enough that their national capacity had been significantly degraded.
They were well-behaved now, but the grievance against the Land of Waterfalls was obvious. A contracted hit on a Waterfalls noble, if it landed correctly, would draw Takigakure's suspicion toward the Land of Mountains naturally. The arrangement suited everyone who needed it to.
He knew the route to the Land of Waterfalls from previous travel. Through Amegakure and the Land of Grass.
When he entered Amegakure, what he found was different from what the wider world looked like.
Elsewhere, the end of the war had produced visible signs of normalization. Blockades had been lifted, trade had resumed, merchant caravans moved along the roads with increasing regularity, and the general atmosphere carried the tentative quality of people beginning to believe that the worst was over.
Amegakure carried none of that.
The chaos inside it had actually intensified since the war's end rather than settling. Traveling merchants from other countries were visibly avoiding the territory, taking longer routes around it rather than passing through.
The roads through Amegakure that should have benefited from the return of trade were quiet in a way that felt deliberate.
The situation inside Amegakure was close to what he had observed the first time, when he had traveled through with Arai and Sasori.
Local factions and rebel groups were fighting each other across the territory, and the end of the wider war had made things worse rather than better. Armed organizations that had sustained themselves on wartime conflict found their markets drying up elsewhere and drifted into Amegakure instead, drawn by the ongoing disorder.
The small territory had become a collection point for everything the peace had displaced.
Hanzo appeared to have essentially stepped back from active governance, leaving trusted subordinates to operate under his name.
The more those subordinates pressed the population, the more resistance emerged, which drew in more opportunistic armed groups, which expanded the disorder further. Yuji watched the pattern from the road and found it difficult to witness without some irritation.
Hanzo had started with genuine advantages. His strength was real, his authority was established, and if he had chosen to govern with real force and intent, the trajectory of Amegakure could have been entirely different.
People had different dispositions and different ideas about what they were doing with what they had been given.
A secondary thought surfaced. Madara's influence had been present in this region even then, operating from deeper in the background.
Whether what was happening now had some connection to that was difficult to determine without more information.
He took a detour on his way through, going to the lake where he and Arai and Sasori had stumbled across Jiraiya and Konan years ago. He looked for the dwelling where the three students had been living with Jiraiya nearby, but the search would have required more time than he had available. He gave it up.
Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan would have finished their time with Jiraiya approximately two years ago, parting ways with him after he had drawn out their potential and trained them into capable ninja. He hadn't taught them his own secret techniques. That wasn't the kind of instruction he provided.
Several days later Yuji settled into a town in the Land of Waterfalls, presenting himself as a traveling merchant with forged identification documents he had acquired along the way. He spent time confirming the layout of the target's estate before moving.
He went in late at night.
The compound had samurai guards positioned throughout, inside and outside the walls, with additional servants making the total several dozen people.
None of it presented a real obstacle at his speed. He didn't move immediately toward the target. He took his time moving through the estate first, collecting anything of value that wouldn't be immediately missed, before turning his attention toward the main courtyard.
Moonlight covered the grounds in dim silver. Outside the door of the noble's private quarters, a ninja sat cross-legged in meditation.
The ninja's eyes opened as something registered at the edge of his awareness.
A shadow was already passing him.
He reached for sound and found nothing there. His head separated from his shoulders and met the ground before any further thought developed.
The door to the noble's room swung open quietly. Inside, the man was deep in sleep.
Yuji walked in.