A few days after setting out, the Kazekage and Chiyo returned from the Daimyo's estate with nothing.
The other senior officials had been waiting with considerable hope. The two of them came back empty-handed. The funding question was set aside for the time being.
Yuji had never actually counted on the Daimyo's money to open the market. His private earnings were sufficient for that purpose, though the rollout would move at a slower pace without additional capital.
If the Daimyo had been willing to invest, the pharmaceutical industry would have developed faster. He wasn't, so it wouldn't. That was fine.
A month later, a pharmacy opened in the Hidden Sand Village, the main storefront, specifically for the new medicines. Yuji spent time educating the villagers directly about the therapeutic effects of each product, giving people enough understanding to try them with some confidence.
The feedback from those who did was positive. The general atmosphere in the village around the whole development was one of genuine happiness, a welcome change after nearly two years of internal tension and friction.
Most villagers didn't yet grasp what the longer-term implications were. They simply felt that Yuji had done something good. That was enough for now.
The medicines began moving into clinical use at the hospital as well. Shiori, Yashamaru, and the others took on responsibility for training medical workers, building familiarity with the new product range across the staff.
Once the new industry was integrated into the village's operational rhythm, the senior officials took over direct oversight and Yuji found himself with time he hadn't had in years.
He had two things to do with it.
First, train. Push his Ninjutsu development as far as possible before the Third Ninja World War arrived.
Second, monitor the Third Kazekage's condition alongside Sasori, watching for signs of how the poison was progressing.
The Kazekage had recently developed noticeably more white hair, attributed by everyone to overwork. The first merchants who had left to sell the medicines on shorter routes had returned with market feedback. The results were not strong. Sales were slow.
Yuji was not surprised. New products required time for acceptance. Word of mouth needed to build. The process had its own rhythm and couldn't be forced. He had expected this.
The senior officials had not expected it. They had assumed medicine this effective would sell itself immediately, and the underwhelming early numbers had produced real anxiety. Everyone was analyzing the feedback data and searching for ways to improve the approach.
The Kazekage in particular seemed to be carrying the weight of it visibly, as though a mountain of gold was within sight but unreachable.
Yuji was unconcerned. Time was the only issue. There was nothing broken to fix.
"Water Release: Water Prison Technique."
At one of the village's training grounds, Yuji completed the hand seals and pushed chakra through them. White water surged around him and enclosed him in a spherical wall.
He reached out and touched the surface.
"The solidity isn't sufficient. The formation speed is also slow." He frowned. "Compared to what the Hidden Mist produce with this technique, there's still a clear gap. That's expected, this is another village's Ninjutsu.
Even with records and partial information, fully replicating a technique takes dedicated research and practice. And this particular technique doesn't have much strategic value for Sunagakure, so there's no reason to invest deeply in it."
The wall held around him as he thought through it.
Many techniques could be partially reconstructed through observation alone, reading the transformed chakra shape and working backward from the result.
But without complete technical information, even a skilled imitation might not capture what actually made the original effective. And being taught a technique directly still required time to polish the underlying details, because the power of most Ninjutsu came not just from raw chakra output but from specific internal mechanics.
The Water Prison, for instance, if the chakra flow within the wall's structure could be controlled to accelerate the water's circulation rate, the effectiveness of the technique against both trapped targets and external attacks would improve substantially.
That he had gotten this far in a short period owed something to his existing foundation, his Water Release affinity through Blood Manipulation, and the partial records the village had available.
Without those, the result would have taken considerably longer.
"Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique."
He pulled from memory, assembled the hand seal sequence as best he could from the information he had, and pushed chakra through it, trusting his accumulated technical experience to fill in the gaps.
The result was not a Great Waterfall. What came out of his mouth was a scattered, pressureless spray of water that dispersed almost immediately and accomplished nothing.
He stood in the residual mist for a moment.
"Without complete hand seal sequences and proper technical information, reconstructing a technique purely from having the same chakra affinity is genuinely difficult. Kakashi can do it because the Sharingan reads not just the hand seals but the underlying chakra operation in real time. He sees the whole mechanism, not just the surface."
He let out a quiet breath.
"The Uchiha ocular techniques really are monstrous."
"Yuji."
A figure had appeared at the edge of the training ground.
Yuji stopped and looked over. Arai, smiling slightly.
"Lord Kazekage wants to see you."
"Understood."
He fell into step beside Arai and they moved toward the main building together.
"How is it going?" Arai asked after a moment, casual in tone. He knew Yuji had been working through Water Release and Earth Release techniques recently.
"The chakra conversion is still unsteady. More practice will sort it out. Nothing serious."
Arai nodded. With Yuji's talent, techniques that weren't exceptionally complex would come in time.
The village's resources in Water and Earth Release were limited, mostly analyzed information and partial records, not comprehensive instruction. Wind Release was Sunagakure's strength, and unfortunately that was the one affinity Yuji currently couldn't access through chakra conversion.
"What does the Kazekage want?" Yuji asked.
"He wants to raise funds within the village to hire additional manpower for promoting the medicine. And he wants your opinion on the factory construction."
"Raise funds?"
Yuji's eyebrow moved.
"Not from the general population, just from the village's ninja."
"There's no need for any of that." Yuji said it plainly. "The medicine has only just started reaching the outside world. Results take time. Expecting them quickly would actually be strange, if sales suddenly exploded this early, that would be the unusual outcome, not the normal one."
"Lord Kazekage wants to change the village's situation as quickly as possible," Arai said, with a slight sigh.
Yuji glanced at him. "Want to make a bet?"
"What kind of bet?"
"After some time, the medicine revenue will start climbing. Once it reaches a meaningful level, the Daimyo will move to claim a share of it, not everything, but the larger portion. And Lord Kazekage will most likely accommodate him."
Arai stared at him.
"The pharmaceutical income at that stage still won't match what a major investment from the Daimyo could provide. So in the Kazekage's calculation, a large sum from the Daimyo beats uncertain market returns. That's how it will look to him and to some of the others."
Yuji kept walking.
"And it won't be the last time. The Daimyo will come back a second time. A third. Just watch."
He smiled and said nothing more.
He was describing something specific, the pattern of shortsightedness that would eventually produce Sunagakure's resource problems in the generation that followed, the same dynamic he had read clearly before any of this began.
He was also, in his own way, offering Arai a more accurate picture of the Kazekage they both served.
At this point, Yuji had stopped holding back with Arai.
Arai watched him move ahead and found himself standing still without quite deciding to stop.