A few minutes later the Takigakure ninja was suspended from a tree trunk by silk threads, feet dangling, body covered in blood.
He was still breathing, but barely, the life draining out of him in slow increments.
"The brain, the heart, the major meridians. The principle is overextension. Not just the chakra output either, even the electromagnetic activity of the brain is elevated.
His mental capacity has been enhanced alongside the chakra explosion. Unfortunately, his base ability wasn't sufficient to draw out the hero water's full potential.
What it actually does is improve overall technique efficiency rather than simply amplifying raw output. And emotionally, there are signs of losing control near the end."
Yuji's voice carried the particular quality of someone thinking out loud while examining something interesting.
The birds above the tree line startled and scattered.
The Takigakure ninja's legs stopped moving.
"The heart's meridians are central to chakra generation. This liquid acts primarily as a stimulant to that system. Kakuzu's Earth Grudge Fear operates on the same underlying principle, and so does Sasori's puppet core approach, though the puppet core is considerably more delicate and difficult to work with.
Kakuzu uses himself as the vessel, which makes the control relatively direct."
He paused.
"It would have been useful if he had lasted a bit longer."
Some rustling followed. He appeared to be doing something with the bodies.
After a while, Yuji emerged from the mountain forest carrying two corpses, his black traveling clothes showing damage. The ground behind him was scattered with dead sparrows. He moved quickly.
A secret technique specialist from Takigakure was worth something to the right buyer, even with the body in its current condition.
That had been the reason his eyes lit up when he recognized what he was dealing with. The hero water itself held no appeal for him after actually studying a sample, the side effects disqualified it for his purposes regardless of what it could do temporarily.
As a strategic reserve it would be valuable to the village someday, but not yet, and not through this channel.
The secret technique itself was more interesting, but he lacked the Yin Release ability to extract and preserve it properly. The ninja's brain likely carried some form of protective seal against exactly that kind of intrusion anyway.
The residual ninjutsu information available through other means would be limited.
His current situation made bringing any of this back to the village inadvisable. Later, when the village's internal structure had been reshaped and stabilized, there would be time to think about acquiring ninjutsu resources and talent from across the ninja world to strengthen Sunagakure's overall capability.
For now, he kept moving.
He pushed hard over the following days and returned to the Land of Wind's Exchange Shop location without stopping to rest in any meaningful way. Other shops in the Four Great Nations were closer, but the safer route was the familiar one.
The old broker stared when the man in black walked back in carrying two bodies.
He had not expected to see him again this quickly, let alone with results. The travel time alone accounted for most of the interval. Which meant the moment the target was located, the strike had followed immediately, and the extraction had been clean enough to produce two intact bodies despite Takigakure interception.
He paid without extended discussion, a chest of money as was customary.
"The noble's body is fine. The Takigakure ninja has been stitched up, that was you. He had a secret technique, but there's no guarantee anyone will want the body given the condition."
Yuji was counting the cash and didn't look up. "Whatever it sells for, I'll take half."
"I'll see what I can do."
"Good."
The old man began moving the bodies to the processing room as the wall closed behind Yuji's departing back.
A thought surfaced after the man was gone. The skill level, the efficiency, the methodology. A rogue ninja from the Hidden Sand Village was not an impossible explanation.
Yuji's next destination was the Land of Stone, situated between the Land of Wind and the Land of Earth. The war between those two great nations had played out mostly near the Land of Birds, leaving this small country relatively untouched by the worst of the conflict.
The Land of Stone's Daimyo had managed something genuinely difficult, keeping his small country out of the buffer zone dynamic that had consumed similar nations during the war.
He had maintained warm relations with both the Land of Wind and the Land of Earth simultaneously, visiting both Daimyos regularly before the conflict broke out, moving in the social circles that shaped political decisions at the country level.
The result was a nation that had emerged from two consecutive world wars largely intact.
None of that stopped Yuji from making his move. Diplomatic relations with the Land of Wind were not relevant when no one knew who was responsible. Money was the priority. Everything else was secondary.
In Sunagakure, things had developed as he had anticipated.
Rasa had not held back.
With the Daimyo's new funds allocated to military development, and with the lessons of the previous war's failures fresh in the Third Kazekage's thinking, a large-scale combat exercise had been organized.
Rasa was placed in overall command. Personnel were drawn from across departments, including Nohara Murashi and Fukushima Oka.
Sasori had been assigned as an observer, responsible for reporting daily training results to the senior officials.
In the exercise, Murashi and Fukushima Oka both served as squad leaders. Their performance did not satisfy Rasa. He said so clearly, in front of the assembled Sunagakure shinobi, multiple times, pointing out their shortcomings in mission execution by name.
It cost both of them face in front of the entire force.
The pre-existing tension between the three had been significant already. After this, it was considerably worse. Ninja discipline kept Murashi and Fukushima Oka from responding openly. They absorbed it and said nothing.
When Sasori's report reached Yuji through letter, it also noted that in his official reporting to the senior officials, Sasori had specifically emphasized that the two were performing below standard.
In reality, neither had executed anything incorrectly. The standards Rasa was holding them to were simply beyond their current level, and Rasa understood that perfectly well.
His framing had been deliberate, since these two were supposedly the village's beloved future talents, celebrated by the villagers, their performance naturally had to be exceptional. If it wasn't, they were failing the expectations placed on them.
The conflict was close to breaking open.
What actually occupied Yuji's attention in the letter was something else. A piece of information circulating among the senior officials. The Daimyo had indicated that he might reduce the Hidden Sand Village's military configuration when he judged it necessary.
In plain terms, cutting the number of ninja.
Yuji read that and found himself genuinely uncertain whether the Daimyo was simply uninformed or something worse. The Hidden Sand Village and the Land of Wind were the same entity in any practical sense.
Degrading the village's military capability degraded the country's security in direct proportion. The principle was elementary.
And yet the future Daimyo of the Land of Wind had done exactly this in the original story.
There was a more charitable reading, that the Daimyo simply had very little money left and this was a financial constraint rather than a deliberate policy choice. That would be understandable.
Yuji destroyed the letter.
"Having someone who knows nothing about war issuing instructions from above," he said quietly to the empty room, "is genuinely uncomfortable. After the village's restructuring, the Daimyo will need to be addressed as well."