"Contact the Third Tsuchikage. Tell him I wish to meet to discuss cooperation regarding medicinal resources."
"The Hidden Stone Village?" Chiyo and the others were stunned.
The Hidden Stone Village was currently fighting the Sand Village on the front lines. Although they had withdrawn some forces and the fighting between the two villages had become less intense than on other fronts, they were still active enemies. What was Yuji trying to accomplish?
"Although we were the ones who instigated this Great Ninja War, I never intended for the village to remain entangled in it from beginning to end. This war will last at least several more years, and the burden it places on every major ninja village will be even greater than the previous Great Ninja War.
It is entirely possible that by the time it ends, none of the villages will have much of anyone left."
He continued.
"My original plan was to set a one-year deadline, using medicinal resources to help the Sand Village extract itself from the conflict while profiting in the process.
But given how things have developed, it appears we will need to move that timeline forward by several months."
Chiyo and the others fell silent immediately.
Then it clicked.
Even though the Sand Village had been fighting fiercely against multiple enemies, they were not the only ones doing so. This Great Ninja War was a chaotic conflict involving all five great villages simultaneously, even more complicated than the previous one.
And by approaching the Hidden Stone Village with medicinal resources, the Sand Village could effectively give them wings.
The Hidden Stone Village's true enemies were Konoha and the Hidden Cloud Village, and the historical hatred between those parties ran far deeper than anything between the Stone Village and the Sand Village.
Onoki, if he was not foolish, would naturally understand how to weigh his options. And if the Hidden Stone Village applied even greater pressure to the Leaf Village and the Hidden Cloud Village, it would indirectly relieve the crisis facing the Sand Village considerably.
Yuji had accurately mapped the relationships and hatreds between the various ninja villages and could predict the movements of the broader power structure with precision. He understood exactly where each village stood and what they wanted.
Looking at the current situation, even selling medicinal resources to Konoha or the Hidden Cloud Village and forcing them to make concessions was highly unlikely to produce the kind of strategic relief the Sand Village needed.
The Hidden Stone Village's pressure was the mechanism that could actually change the balance.
The Hidden Stone Village's sudden troop withdrawal from the Sand Village border was not difficult to read. Onoki was planning to take advantage of the Third Raikage's death and the Hidden Cloud Village's temporary leaderless state to launch a major offensive. The timing was right, and Onoki was the most suitable partner available.
"We are joining forces with the Hidden Stone Village?" Ebizo said hesitantly.
"Not joining forces exactly. It is simply business. They get what they want, we get what we want. And what we want is not just money but strategic advantage. Having others risk their lives for us is better than having our own people die."
Ebizo smiled slightly despite himself.
"The Hidden Stone Village might agree to this, but for us to actually extract the Sand Village from this Great Ninja War entirely, I am afraid the situation has not yet deteriorated enough for that to be straightforward," another senior official said thoughtfully.
"It has not reached that point yet. But if it truly reaches a point of no return, even if the other parties do not want to make concessions, they will have no choice. War is complicated. The more fiercely the fighting between the villages intensifies, the harder it becomes for anyone to simply stop.
As time passes, the other four villages will all realize they are trapped in the quagmire of this war and cannot escape easily. At that point, we use our medicinal resources to negotiate with Konoha, the Hidden Cloud, and the Hidden Mist simultaneously, forcing each of them to make compromises.
Ninjutsu resources, bloodline limits, territorial concessions. Compared to the safety of their own villages and their own people, these things can be exchanged and ultimately set aside."
He paused.
"What I have wanted has never been simply money."
The more casually he said it, the more chills ran down everyone's spines.
They had never truly imagined that this seemingly young man had planned all of this in advance from the very beginning.
"But if that day comes and the other ninja villages join forces against us specifically..."
"If it reaches that point, they will be powerless to do so effectively. In this Great Ninja War, the only role the Sand Village needs to play is adding fuel to the fire. Not truly fighting anyone to the death."
He continued.
"The greater the damage the other villages sustain against each other, from another perspective, is that not equivalent to us growing stronger by comparison?"
Those listening inhaled sharply. Their eyelids twitched.
Could the situation actually be played this way?
The alliance with the Hidden Stone Village was merely a calculated maneuver, a performance designed to make enemies fight in ways that benefited the Sand Village.
As the war intensified, the Sand Village's medicinal resources would become increasingly indispensable to every party involved. To obtain those medicines, enemies might actually make real concessions.
But this was undeniably a dangerous strategy. If it was not managed carefully, it could easily spiral out of control. If Konoha, the Hidden Cloud, the Hidden Stone, and even the Hidden Mist all recovered their collective senses and decided to turn on the Sand Village simultaneously, the consequences would be catastrophic.
The most crucial condition for the plan's success was keeping the other villages enraged at each other before any of them could recover and reassess the bigger picture. It was dangerous.
But if it succeeded, the gains the village would extract from this Great Ninja War would be beyond imagination.
The figure in the white Kazekage robe moved swiftly out of the secret chamber, leaving the others exchanging bewildered glances.
"Lord Kazekage. He is truly something."
"Different times," Ebizo said quietly, his eyes narrowing as he exhaled slowly.
It was genuinely complicated.
These aspects of planning were things that even the senior officials had never seriously considered. What they typically concerned themselves with were battlefield-related matters and operational decisions. Nothing more strategically layered than that.
Such a profound scheme. One could only say that this Fourth Kazekage was remarkably comprehensive in his thinking. Compared to the potential returns, the plan, although risky, was absolutely worth the gamble. The possible gains were simply too high.
After leaving the secure chamber where Kimu and the others were being held, Yuji walked alone through the village, greeting villagers as he passed them. But his mind was occupied with the battle report that had arrived from the Land of Rivers the previous day.
Without him present on the front lines, Shimizu and Sasori were under enormous pressure. Even though before leaving he had provided Senzu Beans and the group healing ninjutsu scroll, and had helped several of Shimizu's senior military leaders develop a clearer understanding of how to fight against the Leaf Village army while gaining relevant battlefield experience, the situation had continued to deteriorate.
After the Leaf Village sent additional Uchiha and Hyuga clan members to the front, the Sand Village had suffered repeated defeats and considerable losses.
Judging from the battle reports, Minato's individual value on that battlefield alone was impossible to underestimate. Even Sasori could only restrain him rather than defeat him. In the sustained exchanges with Minato, Sasori had not gained any meaningful advantage.
Fortunately, for the time being, the village army could still resist the Leaf Village's offensive.
But if it dragged on, defeat was inevitable. That point could not be denied.
He could not quickly return to the battlefield right now because there were still too many things requiring his attention in the village. He had never particularly expected to become one of the Five Kage in quite this way.
Now that he was sitting in that position, the angle from which he approached his decisions and the thought process behind them needed to shift somewhat.
From what he carried in his memory, across the three battles that had eventually ended the Third Great Ninja War, including the Leaf Village's engagements, almost every village had reached a point where their capable fighters had been nearly exhausted.
In the final stages, Konoha had been reduced to sending Minato and Kakashi along with only a handful of other young fighters to destroy the Hidden Stone Village's supply routes. The Konoha front line defenses had been held by only a few ninja at a time. The other villages had not been doing significantly better.
Throughout all three wars, Minato had essentially traversed every battlefield. Konoha against Iwagakure, against the Hidden Mist, against the Hidden Cloud. His presence was felt everywhere.
This was precisely why the future fame of the Yellow Flash had resonated across the entire ninja world and made other villages deeply wary of him. It was also why he eventually rose to become the Fourth Hokage.
All of this demonstrated just how exorbitant the cost of this Great Ninja War was for every village involved.
The Sand Village already had the smallest population among the five great villages. If the war continued to its natural end, the population would dwindle even further. Even with the economic growth the pharmaceutical industry was generating, the population base could not keep pace, and a genuine recovery would be out of reach through money alone.
Therefore, from the very beginning, he had never intended to allow the village to lose too much of its fighting population in this war. Preserving a meaningful level of vitality, and then taking advantage of the sharp population decline in the other villages that this war would inevitably produce, he intended to push the Sand Village's birth rate as aggressively as possible.
After a few more years, even if the population could not surpass the Hidden Cloud or Hidden Leaf, it could at least reach rough parity with them.
The prerequisite for all of this was that during this period, his reform and management policies as Kazekage had to be implemented correctly.
And the most crucial point of everything was the second step of the plan.
Talent acquisition.
This was the most decisive step in the Sand Village's attempt at a complete transformation.
They were leveraging this exact moment, the turbulent wind created by the Great Ninja War itself, to create an opportunity that would not exist under any other circumstances.
While the other villages were fighting each other with everything they had and bleeding themselves dry, the Sand Village was using that chaos to its advantage.
Finding ways to aggressively draw in talent and create maximum disruption for the others in the process. The ninja world was in chaos, and someone needed to stir the situation even further while everyone else was distracted. The Sand Village intended to be exactly that someone.
...
STONES PLZZZ 💎