118: Military spending cut in half? The Wind Country Daimyo replacement package is now available

The snowstorms of the Land of Iron ultimately couldn't blow into the deserts of the Land of Wind.

At the entrance of Hidden Sand Village, people swarmed, and cheers almost overturned the towering rock walls.

When Kazekage Rasa's iconic straw hat appeared at the end of their vision, the emotions suppressed for three years erupted.

The Third Ninja World War, Sunagakure didn't lose for the first time, though they didn't win either.

The war ended in a way no one expected, and for Sunagakure, who had always been defeated in the past, this was already a monumental victory.

Children waved crude wooden shuriken, women held precious clear water, and the elders' faces were etched with relief in every wrinkle.

Rasa walked among the crowd, enjoying the long-lost adoration, yet the huge stone in his heart had not fully settled.

He subconsciously glanced at his side.

Tang Yan followed unhurriedly, seemingly oblivious to the surrounding fervor, like an irrelevant traveler.

A child running at the very front excitedly tried to rush towards the Kazekage, but when he got within three steps of Tang Yan, his mother quickly pulled him back, scolding him in a low voice.

The villagers' gazes would always inadvertently sweep over Tang Yan, then quickly move away.

Awe and curiosity ultimately settled into an instinctive distance.

Rasa knew that behind every preferential clause of this miraculous peace agreement stood the shadow of this young man.

"Lord Kazekage! You've worked hard!"

"Hero of Hidden Sand Village!"

Praise surged like a tide, yet precisely bypassed Tang Yan.

He was like the eye of a storm, calm, yet no one dared to approach him.

The bonfire of the celebration feast had not yet extinguished, and the steaming hot satay was still giving off heat, but a gilded letter from the Land of Wind's Daimyo's mansion extinguished all the flames.

Inside the Kazekage's office, the atmosphere was heavy.

Rasa slammed the letter onto the table, his fingertips slightly white from the force.

"Bastard!"

Maki snatched the letter, scanning it at a glance, the veins on his neck bulging one by one.

"Cut in half?! How dare he! The war just ended!"

The letter was politely worded, but every line exuded sickening arrogance.

The Daimyo, citing "ineffective war, wasted national treasury," believed that Hidden Sand Village no longer needed to maintain such a large military, and decided to directly halve the annual financial allocation.

"Kicking the donkey after it's done its work..." Ebizo's aged voice carried a chill. "They're truly skilled at this trick."

Granny Chiyo folded her arms and snorted coldly, not speaking, but her calloused fingers, holding a teacup, gently tapped the cup's rim, making a rhythmic soft sound.

"Lord Kazekage, we can't endure this anymore!" Maki's fists clenched, cracking. "The peace we earned with our lives isn't for him to squander like this! Give me a squad of Anbu, I'll make him understand that Ninja are not pawns to be manipulated at will!"

"Silence!" Rasa reprimanded, "Threaten the Daimyo with force? Maki, do you want Hidden Sand Village to bear the crime of rebellion?"

He paused, his voice filled with weariness: "Do you want Iwagakure and Konoha to find an excuse to unite against us?"

Maki's neck turned crimson, but he couldn't utter a single word.

This was politics.

It was the dirtiest and most helpless rule of the Ninja World.

Rasa wearily pinched the bridge of his nose, "I will personally go to the Daimyo's mansion and negotiate with him."

The elders were worried, but they couldn't think of a better solution.

This emergency meeting ended hastily in a humiliating silence.

Everyone left, only Tang Yan remained seated in the shadows of the corner, methodically wiping a poisoned senbon.

Under the light, the tip of the senbon glowed with a faint blue light.

Rasa looked at him and suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion.

"Do you think I'm ridiculous?"

Tang Yan stopped his movements, looked up, his eyes appearing exceptionally calm in the shadows.

"Ninja, who wield world-destroying power, are the masters of the world. Yet they are throttled by an ordinary person far away in the capital, utterly powerless."

He put away the senbon, stood up, and brushed past Rasa.

"What's ridiculous isn't you, it's this rule."

The outcome of the negotiation was even worse than expected.

When Rasa returned from the Daimyo's mansion, he seemed to have been drained of all his spirit; Sunagakure's finances were already on the verge of collapse, and this was undoubtedly adding insult to injury.

That night, in the capital city of the Land of Wind.

The Daimyo's mansion was brightly lit, and the security was even tighter than during wartime.

Above the high walls, sensory Ninja patrolled back and forth, and every corner was set with detection barriers.

The Daimyo lay on a luxurious bed made of golden nanmu, sleeping soundly.

He dreamed of completely controlling Hidden Sand Village, with the proud Kazekage Rasa kneeling on the ground, respectfully fanning him with his iconic straw hat.

He even laughed in his dream.

He didn't know that, directly above him on the roof beam, an owl smaller than a palm was silently hanging upside down.

Its dark eyes, unlike any bird's, clearly reflected the Daimyo's chubby sleeping face.

Then, it blinked silently.

[Owl · Stealth].

Its body had no Chakra fluctuations, like an exquisite wooden carving, quietly hanging upside down in the shadow of the roof beam.

As the sensory Ninja patrolling below yawned and swapped shifts with a companion.

At [Owl · Stealth]'s ankle, a hidden weapon compartment smaller than a fingernail silently opened.

A jet-black swallow-tailed dart quietly slid out.

There was no sound of it cutting through the air, not even a wisp of wind.

The dart was coated with the highly toxic tree sap known as "One-Line Throat," and to ensure absolute certainty, it was also mixed with a trace amount of Tang Clan's secret neurotoxin.

It precisely, gently, embedded itself behind the Daimyo's plump, soft ear.

The sleeping Daimyo's body merely twitched slightly, he let out a satisfied murmur, and then fell silent.

The lewd and smug smile on his face was forever frozen.

The next day, the news of the Daimyo's sudden death swept across the entire Land of Wind like a Level 12 sandstorm.

The official cause of death given was "sudden heart failure, peacefully passed away in his sleep."

But a strange rumor began to spread wildly among all social strata.

"Have you heard? The Daimyo was assassinated by a Ninja from Sunagakure!"

"Do you know who it was?"

"Who else could it be? It's that puppeteer named Tang Yan! The one called 'Ghost Lotus'!"

"That's right, no one else would have such guts."

The spearhead of the rumor, as if controlled by an invisible hand, pointed precisely at Tang Yan.

The Daimyo's eldest son was hastily enthroned amidst chaos and panic.

To display his authority to everyone, and to suppress doubts about the legitimacy of his succession, he made a decision that made all his strategists want to bang their heads against a wall.

He issued his first, and last, political decree.

"Hidden Sand Village has a severe militaristic tendency, which is a national calamity. To eradicate this stubborn disease, effective immediately, their annual military budget will be reduced to one-third of its original amount!"

When the news reached Hidden Sand Village, panic spread.

"It's over, it's completely over now!"

"Lord Kazekage is too weak! He should have listened to Lord Maki back then!" "This isn't about weakness, the country has always belonged to the Daimyo's family from the beginning."

"Are we, who just survived the battlefield, going to be forced to our deaths by our own people?"

Doubt and dissatisfaction, like a plague, spread throughout the Village.

Rasa's prestige also declined.

Three days later.

The new Daimyo, riding in his gold-inlaid, jade-encrusted, utterly luxurious carriage, escorted by over five hundred elite samurai, grandly set off to "inspect" the border.

He wanted everyone to see that the Land of Wind was still his family's domain.

The carriage traveled across an open stretch of desert.

Suddenly.

Boom—!

A blinding white light shot up into the sky from the center of the convoy, the violent explosion almost tearing eardrums, clearly audible tens of miles away.

The terrifying shockwave instantly flung the surrounding guards, men and horses alike, tearing them into pieces in mid-air.

When the smoke and dust cleared, only a massive, charred, vitrified crater remained on the ground.

The luxurious carriage, the new Daimyo, and all his entourage had vanished without a trace.

The scene was as clean as if a giant invisible hand had wiped it clean, leaving nothing but sand.

This time, the rumors spread even more wildly.

"It was definitely Tang Yan! Someone saw a fleeting puppet shadow in the distance!"

"It's terrifying, this new Daimyo only lasted three days..."

Maki found Tang Yan at the training ground. He watched Tang Yan leisurely adjusting a new puppet, his lips moved, wanting to ask something, but didn't know where to start.

Finally, he just uttered a few difficult words: "Everyone outside is going crazy."

Tang Yan didn't even look up, his hands still working.

"Don't admit it, don't explain it."

Maki was stunned, and then, a feeling of both exasperation and immense satisfaction surged within him. He heavily patted Tang Yan's shoulder, said nothing, turned, and left with a loud laugh.

The former Daimyo's second son was pushed onto the throne in extreme panic.

He looked at the "memorial portraits" of his father and elder brother, which had been hung for less than a week, his legs trembling like autumn leaves in the wind.

He didn't even dare to spend the night in his own mansion, changing his sleeping place every night, fearing that if he fell asleep, he would never wake up again.

On the day of his enthronement, he tremblingly stamped his first political decree amidst the complex gazes of his ministers.

"Restore Hidden Sand Village's original military budget... No! Increase it by an additional two-tenths on top of the original amount! As, as post-war recovery!"

As soon as the news broke, the entire nation was in an uproar.

Within Hidden Sand Village, all doubts instantly vanished.

The villagers' gazes towards Tang Yan completely changed.

It was a reverence mixed with extreme fear and pathological worship.

No one dared to publicly discuss him anymore, but the name "Ghost Lotus" became an untouchable taboo in everyone's hearts.

Night.

Tang Yan stood alone on the Village's highest lookout tower, overlooking the Village below where the lights were gradually dimming.

The evening breeze ruffled his jet-black short hair.

"The game of politics is actually very simple."

He murmured to the empty night sky.

"It's about communicating with your opponent in a language they understand. Making them realize that some people, some bottom lines, cannot be provoked."

What he didn't know was.

At the end of his vision, in a distant country, in a dark, damp underground base.

A man wearing an orange Uzumaki mask was looking at intelligence regarding the coup in the Land of Wind.

"Ghost Lotus... Tang Yan?"

Beside him, a figure with half its body made of white substance emerged from the ground, letting out a hoarse and eerie laugh.

"An interesting variable has appeared, Tobi."

"Investigate."

The masked man's voice was devoid of emotion, as cold as an abyss.

"I want to know everything about him, especially... his puppets."