Chapter 278: Playing Smash
"You were not visible anywhere during these two days of competition," Yuji said with a quiet smile, looking at Jiraiya as the Sand Village group departed the Land of Fire under his escort.
"My assigned task was simply to deliver your group safely to and from the village. I personally happened to be quite busy otherwise," Jiraiya replied, his own expression carrying a few more degrees of warmth than before, giving himself a thumbs up as he answered.
Although the Sand Village and Konoha had fought fiercely throughout the Third Great Ninja War, the atmosphere at the exchange gathering had shown a clear inclination toward warmer relations. And the Fourth Kazekage himself was not quite as overwhelmingly dominant in person as imagination had painted him. This had allowed Jiraiya to relax somewhat.
"Writing?" Yuji raised an eyebrow.
"Did Minato tell you?"
Jiraiya laughed. "Not bad. Do not let my appearance fool you. I happen to be a distinguished author."
Yuji looked at him once with unmistakable deliberate meaning.
"Regarding matters that involve me, you must have gone to ask that sage on Mount Myoboku."
At this sudden and direct question, Jiraiya stopped walking in an instant, his expression shifting.
"How is that?" Yuji said, watching Jiraiya's startled eyes, the corner of his mouth curving slightly.
"Nothing. How do you know about Mount Myoboku and the Great Toad Sage?" Jiraiya composed himself quickly and continued walking, forcing a calm tone.
"A secret," Yuji replied simply.
Jiraiya heard what he needed to hear. Yuji appeared to have a thorough understanding of Mount Myoboku, including the Great Toad Sage's prophetic abilities. Otherwise that question would never have come out the way it did.
But Jiraiya was confident that Yuji had not personally visited Mount Myoboku. If he had, Jiraiya would certainly have known about it.
"The Great Toad Sage can foresee certain things about the future, but it cannot see everything. If you want to know something specific about a particular person, the best approach is to meet it directly," Jiraiya said after a brief pause.
"Has The Great Toad Sage mentioned anything about your future recently?" Yuji asked.
"A secret," Jiraiya replied, turning the same two words back at him with a slight smirk.
Yuji heard this and did not press further.
Several days later, the Sand Village delegation crossed out of the Land of Fire and entered the Land of Rain. The group did not pause in the Land of Rain but traveled directly back through to the Land of Wind.
Yuji had too many things still requiring his attention.
This exchange gathering with Konoha, beyond the inter-village competition between newer generation fighters, had also seen Yuji and Minato, as respective Kage, advance several friendship-building initiatives between the two villages.
One was the possibility of Konoha sending people to the Sand Village to study. The other was the opening of a continuous trade route stretching from the Land of Wind through the Land of Rain and into the Land of Fire, allowing the people of both nations to engage in economic and cultural exchange.
For both the Sand Village and Konoha, this exchange gathering during the post-war period had been only a brief prelude to a larger shift.
But the easing of relations between the two great hidden villages clearly sent a signal to the rest of the ninja world.
It gave the ninja world a glimpse of peace as a possibility.
If even the Sand Village and Konoha could set aside their past grievances, other hostile forces and relationships might follow the example of these two villages, arranging their own diplomatic meetings, using conversation to secure benefits for themselves in ways that did not require further violence.
With all the major hidden villages and nations currently in the process of reconstruction or formulating new policies and governance frameworks, there was to some degree a need for external reference and inspiration.
After returning to the Sand Village, Yuji focused his attention on the gene-modifying medicine research while closely tracking the progress of the mountain-breaking and canal-building teams deployed to the surrounding countries. When they ran into problems, he provided preliminary solutions for them to work from.
Breaking through mountain barriers between neighboring countries and constructing waterway channels sounded straightforward in theory, but practical execution produced numerous complications. The mountain ranges capable of affecting climate circulation were naturally of enormous scale. Even with more personnel deployed and more detailed task planning, leveling or removing an entire mountain range outright was simply not feasible. Some ranges could not be meaningfully destroyed at all.
Furthermore, the neighboring countries had only agreed to terrain modifications within limits that did not cause excessive destruction. If mountain ranges were damaged on a large scale, the original terms of the cooperation agreements would be violated, and those countries would not permit the Sand Village to proceed freely with the work.
So before making any terrain changes, the Sand Village needed to conduct detailed geological surveys to precisely identify the key areas within each mountain range that were blocking climate circulation.
Beyond that, there were questions of upstream and downstream water routing and planning.
None of these practical problems could be resolved immediately. Every difficulty that arose required senior leadership to convene and work out a solution.
The Land of Rain's reconstruction and resource trade were equally complex ongoing matters.
Fortunately, none of this required Yuji to personally think through every problem himself. Many less critical matters were handled by Chiyo, Shimizu, and the other senior figures, relieving him of considerable pressure.
Under these ordinary day-to-day working conditions, time passed quickly.
Several months later, following Konoha's lead, the Hidden Stone Village also sent an invitation to the Sand Village, hoping to hold a similar exchange gathering for diplomatic purposes. The stated goal was also to encourage and motivate both villages' newer generation fighters.
Yuji naturally did not refuse, but this time he did not accompany the delegation personally. He wrote a personal letter to the Third Tsuchikage Onoki expressing his apologies and sent Chiyo and Shimizu to lead the group to the Hidden Stone Village.
The competitors participating in the gathering were again Pakura's group.
Fighters invited to participate in these exchange gatherings were naturally the village's priority cultivation targets. Such head-to-head competitions with same-generation fighters from other villages served multiple purposes simultaneously. They built practical combat experience and broadened horizons on one hand. On the other, they could be considered a form of reputation-building.
At minimum, winning matches built a name.
The current ninja world differed from the original story. After the Third Great Ninja War ended, the atmosphere was less charged with imminent conflict and peace had arrived earlier. For the successors of all the major villages, the stages available to demonstrate their abilities were relatively limited.
Head-to-head generational competitions between villages were quick and effective opportunities to establish reputations.
Less than half a month later, Shimizu's group returned.
Unlike the exchange gathering with Konoha which had been an even contest with wins and losses on both sides, this diplomatic engagement with the Hidden Stone Village showed the Sand Village holding a clear combat advantage across most divisions.
Only in the Chunin division did the Sand Village lose to the Hidden Stone Village.
Looking at Shimizu's report, the reason for losing to the Hidden Stone Village came down to one thing. The Hidden Stone's exceptional mastery of Earth Release combined with genuinely outstanding basic ninja capability.
Their Earth Release application was not the textbook conventional understanding of the technique. It incorporated variations and unconventional expressions, making the technique's deployment unpredictable in ways that amplified its effectiveness in actual combat. Mud, soft earth, clay, hardened earth, stone, rock, each with different properties exploited in different situations.
This was not a bloodline limit. It was simply a deep and specialized development of a single technique family, focused not on transforming its nature but on transforming its forms of expression.
The Hidden Stone's newer generation appeared to have inherited this specialty. Their methods were not as flashy as Konoha's various successors, but they had developed a distinct and powerful path that was characteristic of the Hidden Stone Village.
However, according to Shimizu's description, when he and the group were saying farewell, Onoki's expression was somewhat difficult to read.
The old man had most likely hoped this diplomatic exchange would boost the Hidden Stone's newer generation's reputation and simultaneously give the Sand Village a clearer picture of the Hidden Stone's talented fighters.
He had not anticipated that unlike the results against Konoha, this time it had gone the other way entirely.