Uchiha Yoru did not rashly enter the village.
Instead, he hid on a nearby hill and waited until dawn. Only after confirming that no Sunagakure shinobi were moving around did he go to find the village chief who had issued the mission.
He presented the mission letter and his forehead protector, proving both his identity and his purpose. Only then did the old man's fear of a strange shinobi ease, and only then did he begin explaining the mission itself.
Jiusen Village was a small village that lived off logging.
The villagers' daily routine was to go up the mountain, cut timber, and bind the wood into rafts. When the water in the valley reached its calmest season, they would push the rafts into the river. The strongest men would then ride them downstream and sell the timber at the river's estuary.
The money from the timber was used to buy grain, salt, cloth, iron tools, and other necessities. These were loaded into small boats and dragged back to Jiusen Village by tracking lines.
That was how the village survived.
Because the slopes around Jiusen Village all tilted at more than thirty degrees, the village could only be built halfway up the mountain. There was no flat land at all for growing grain.
That made purchased food essential to the village's survival.
But this year, something had gone wrong with the river.
There simply wasn't enough water.
Along the route, there were at least a dozen sections the timber rafts could no longer pass.
The villagers had gone upstream and investigated more than a hundred li of riverway, but they still hadn't found the problem. Beyond that point, however, it was already beyond what ordinary villagers could manage.
So they had no choice but to seek the help of shinobi.
Though remote, Jiusen Village was not poor, nor were its people ignorant. They sent someone south to the estuary and used Konoha's local office there to post a mission.
But in truth—
This mission had problems.
Since it did not appear to involve combat with shinobi, it had only been classified as C-rank.
The reward had reached the upper end of C-rank at fifty thousand ryō, but the mission objective was not merely to find the problem—it was to solve it.
That meant the actual difficulty of the final objective was uncertain.
Even locating the problem might require scouting a huge area.
And the time required to finish the mission was impossible to estimate.
If the round-trip travel time was added in, the mission could easily take over ten days. Averaged out, the profit was far too low.
Forget higher-ranked shinobi—
Even newly graduated genin wouldn't want it.
To leave the village for over ten days, run thousands of li, and earn only fifty thousand ryō—
It simply wasn't worth it.
They could make several times that amount by staying in the village and doing the simplest missions.
So the mission had remained hanging there for several days without anyone taking it.
In the end, it was accepted by Uchiha Yoru, who had only wanted an excuse to slip out of the Land of Fire.
The truth was, he hadn't taken this mission too seriously either.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have gone to the Cat Castle first thing after leaving and then delayed another nine days before finally arriving at the mission site.
Still—
In front of the Jiusen Village chief, Yoru acted with perfect professionalism.
The Konoha forehead protector sat straight and proper on his brow.
The mission letter was kept neat and orderly.
And when he asked for information, his questions were exceptionally detailed.
When had the water level started to drop?
What had the villagers found during their search?
Had there been dead fish or animal corpses?
Had any unusual plants drifted down?
And from those answers—
A problem really did emerge.
Six days before the water level fell, there had been a minor earthquake.
Then a small mountain flood had broken out.
The flood itself had not been large, but the water had been unusually muddy, carrying with it large numbers of branches still covered in green leaves.
Even before beginning an on-site investigation, Yoru had already guessed the cause.
There was an eighty percent chance it was a landslide.
More precisely—
One of the tributaries feeding this river had likely been blocked by a landslide, reducing the flow.
At that point, whether the problem could be solved was another matter entirely.
That would depend on the exact terrain change.
If the landslide had formed a barrier lake, then as long as the damming material could be dismantled carefully, the problem could be resolved.
But if the terrain itself had changed—
If an entire mountain had shifted—
Then he would have no way to solve it.
After all, moving mountains was one of those heaven-shaking divine abilities, second only to plucking stars and seizing the moon.
It was the kind of great power Uchiha Yoru didn't even dare dream about.
If he had truly mastered such a divine art, would he still be worrying about building three burrows, plotting around Uchiha Shisui, and planning against the Third Hokage?
He—
No, not he.
It—
Would probably make the Third Hokage understand in the very next second that he was not Uchiha Yoru at all.
His true name was—
Patriotic Yoru.
…
The wild turn of his thoughts made Yoru realize that his heart-monkey was causing trouble again.
That, in turn, forced him to build a shelter first after leaving Jiusen Village and heading north along the river.
By the time he carefully dealt with the heart-monkey—defeating the baboon with golden fur and a blue face, turning it into nourishment for his spirit—
It was already the early hours of the next day.
Miwa Masayo was deeply worried.
"Yoru, it's taking you longer and longer to deal with the heart-monkey, and the intervals between each episode are getting shorter. Will there be a problem, meow?"
Looking refreshed, Yoru comforted the calico cat.
"Don't worry."
"I chose the path of pure natural energy as the method, with chakra as the technique."
"This is the trial I'm supposed to endure."
"Besides, the restlessness of the heart-monkey is also the source of my progress."
"The more frequently that damned monkey rebels—and the stronger it gets—the better my Foundation Establishment is going."
"Once I cross this hurdle, it'll be fine."
"Mmm. Hurry up and cross it, meow. The way you are now is really scary, meow."
"Thanks for the blessing."
"Come on. We've wasted too much time."
"We need to speed up now."
"Wasn't the mission not urgent, meow? Why are you suddenly in such a hurry?"
"Based on the information, the mission target may be a newly formed barrier lake."
"And something like that has a very high chance of becoming a timed natural disaster."
A barrier lake was a type of hazard unique to mountainous terrain.
When a landslide or debris flow blocked an existing river channel, water would begin to accumulate.
The original riverway would become a new lake.
If the dam blocking the river was made of solid stone, the lake could exist for a long time, forming a beautiful waterfall on the other side.
But that was rare.
Most barrier dams were made from mixed rubble—rock, gravel, mud, trees, and all kinds of debris. Their stability was impossible to guarantee.
Once the water level rose high enough, collapse was inevitable.
And when it broke—
The accumulated river water, mixed with all the dam's debris, would form a torrent far more terrifying than any mountain flood.
Places that had once been safe would suddenly be struck by the flood.
The resulting casualties were often severe.
Yoru was a little worried.
What if the mission wasn't finished yet—
And the employer got wiped out by the flood first?
He didn't care much about maintaining a one-hundred-percent mission completion rate.
But if dozens or even hundreds of innocent people died because of his delay—
That was a completely different matter from killing enemies who threatened his life.
Not to mention that he was already facing inner demons.
Who knew whether guilt might create a third heart-form ahead of time—
Or whether the heart-monkey might degenerate into a demon monkey?
His intuition told him very clearly—
That would be extremely dangerous.
Yoru no longer dared waste time.
He sprang forward and plunged into the deep mountain gorge, racing upstream along the river.
"Ahhh—!"
"I clearly came out here to avoid the war, so why is this turning into something even more troublesome than staying in Konoha?"
"Meowu?" Miwa Masayo tilted her head, then suddenly said, "I remember you saying something before, Yoru."
"Where the heart has desire, greed is born. And when greed is left unchecked, the body is driven into endless toil."
"… "
"Was it that sentence, meow?"
"You're right."
"I've been too greedy."
"It's because I want too much, because I'm trying to make everything perfect in one go, that I've pushed myself into this mess."
"Once this mission is finished, no matter what, I need to slow my pace."
"Miwa Masayo, after the mission is done, let's wander around and have some fun before heading back slowly."
"Okay, meow!"
Only three hours later—
Uchiha Yoru had already traveled nearly two hundred and sixty kilometers upstream.
Following the drying riverbed—
He found the source of the river's reduced flow.
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