Kazekage Ninja: The Rise of the Hidden Sand

A string of emergencies in Sunagakure allowed Jinghang’s wartime mobilization order to pass swiftly and without resistance. The hearing committee’s authority was suspended, and the entire village shifted into direct "military governance" under the command headquarters. The staff department’s telegraphs crackled nonstop; as one military order after another was issued, standing army units stationed across the land began boarding warships and converging on Sunagakure.

Acting Kazekage Rasa mobilized four thousand reserve shinobi to build a sprawling military camp at Tōryōguan, twenty kilometers east of Sunagakure, to house the incoming forces.

Meanwhile, the Hourglass Group, Silver Sand Pharmaceuticals, and the Moon Lake New District Agricultural Reclamation Base were all placed under "military control" by the logistics and equipment departments. All export orders had to be fulfilled within a month—after that, only domestic orders would be accepted. The Hourglass Group’s foreign branches (except those in the Land of Lightning) began taking inventory, gathering funds, and evacuating personnel, temporarily ceasing operations. Massive machines thundered to life, churning out and stockpiling food, ninja tools, medicine, and all manner of strategic supplies.

By rights, this should have been a golden age for war profiteers—but before you can get rich off a war, you have to survive the first round.

There’s really no choice in the matter. You can’t have the arms trade booming outside while your own shinobi don’t even have kunai to use. Don’t doubt it—this sort of thing actually happened during the Soviet-Afghan War. Afghan guerrillas wielded brand-new AK-47s straight from the Izhevsk arms factory, while Soviet soldiers had to make do with battered rifles, their rifling worn smooth, scavenged from fallen comrades. Why? Because the military reps at the arms factories could make four times the official procurement price by smuggling just one rifle. If you got issued a dusty Mosin-Nagant or PPSh from storage, that was already a mercy.

First, fill your own stockpiles—there’ll be plenty of chances to do business later.

And it wasn’t just Sunagakure. Konohagakure, Kumogakure, Iwagakure, even the far-flung Kirigakure across the sea were all frantically hoarding war supplies. For a time, the entire shinobi continent was gripped by a sense of impending doom, as if the clouds of war might descend at any moment.

The only oasis of peace was, surprisingly, the Yuexi Peninsula in the Land of Wind!

As the entertainment, gambling, and financial capital of the shinobi world—and Sunagakure’s own money vault—dignitaries and big shots from every country and village had snapped up real estate here. Thanks to its peninsular geography, it was easy to defend: simply close the Sand-Yue Expressway and the Yue-Tang Expressway (the route from Yuexi Peninsula to Yugakure), and the area becomes a sealed fortress. Both highway entrances were already fortified with Arhat Puppet Formations.

This turned Yuexi Peninsula into a magnet for political elites, minor daimyō, noble clans, and wealthy merchants—all flooding in with their families. The place was soon bursting at the seams, raking in more money than in peacetime. The rent for a single tiny room reached astronomical heights, and even then, there was no supply to meet the demand. Even Jinghang rented out his own villa to a tycoon from the Land of Lightning for fifty million ryō a month—exactly what it cost to build. (Think: the Shanghai International Settlement during the war.)