In the Third Raikage's eyes, the rest was secondary. The important thing was that an Uzumaki had willingly entered Kumogakure. As long as Uzumaki Maki agreed to settle down, marry, and bear children, that alone was enough to please him.
Because Hyuga Akira had already set a precedent, the Raikage did not pin especially high hopes on Maki. His only disappointment was that she was a woman. If she had been a man, she could have fathered more children in a shorter time, and Kumogakure would not have had to wait so long to build an Uzumaki line of its own.
He quickly arranged a residence for Uzumaki Maki and handed both her housing and her future work over to the ANBU. At that point, the matter no longer had much to do with Chiba Shun. He had just turned to leave when the Third Raikage called him back.
After settling Maki's affairs, the Raikage fixed his gaze on Shun and said, "Tell me everything about this mission. Leave nothing out."
Shun coughed lightly. He had been waiting for that question.
He recounted the entire operation in detail, from leaving the village to crossing enemy territory, placing particular emphasis on the fights they had encountered and on Kakuzu's sudden appearance. At the end, he casually mentioned that he had spent three hundred thousand ryo nursing Uzumaki Maki's body back to health.
That number was, of course, an exaggeration. He had not merely padded the expense. He had doubled it with a straight face.
The Third Raikage did not suspect a thing. He nodded once, then immediately recorded the mission as Rank A and set the reward at six hundred thousand ryo.
Shun nearly laughed out loud on the spot. In his original estimate, he had expected at most one hundred and fifty thousand for the mission itself, plus reimbursement for roughly three hundred thousand in expenses. Even counting the bodies and scraps of battlefield loot he had brought back, four hundred fifty thousand should already have been the absolute upper limit.
Instead, the Third Raikage had waved his hand and doubled the padded figure without blinking. That kind of generosity made Shun feel as if the sky had suddenly brightened.
The Raikage then questioned him further about Kakuzu and about the Seven-Tails, both of which were important enough to draw the attention of every Kage in the great villages. Strangely, he did not ask a single word about the Sound Village. That omission alone told Shun everything he needed to know: in the Raikage's eyes, that chaos simply wasn't worth remembering.
Once the report was over, the Third Raikage suddenly said, "The matter of the Hyuga branch family has been exposed. Konoha's higher-ups are aware of what happened. The arrangement in Sunrise Town, in the Land of the Moon, can't continue."
His eyes narrowed. "Do you have any other way to keep the Hyuga branch family's bloodline going?"
Shun froze. "We were exposed?"
He immediately frowned and asked, "What happened to Akira Hyuga and the others? And how did Konoha react?"
The Third Raikage's expression cooled. "Including Hyuga Akira, I estimate every Hyuga branch family member who went to the Land of the Moon has been executed by the Caged Bird Seal."
He continued, "You had not yet left the village when it happened. The news only reached us late. I learned of it when I received a protest from Konoha. Hiruzen Sarutobi demanded that we hand over every Hyuga bloodline we possess. I refused him."
Shun was not surprised by that refusal. There had never been a world in which the Third Raikage would surrender such a treasure. He exhaled slowly and said, "Then this route is probably closed for good."
"Konoha won't just guard against us now. They'll guard against every great village. The Hyuga branch family won't be allowed to leave the Land of Fire so easily anymore."
He thought a moment, then added, "They may start sending out more women instead. And if they send men, they'll likely impose strict limits on where they can go and how long they can remain outside the Land of Fire."
The Third Raikage considered it, then let the matter go. His hopes had not been high to begin with. In truth, he had already harvested far more than he had expected.
Shun, however, still had questions. "How many Hyuga bloodlines are there in the village now?" he asked.
"Four are already born," the Raikage replied. "Another twenty-three are still in the womb. One of those pregnancies is twins. If nothing goes wrong, then in another five or six months, Kumogakure will have twenty-eight Hyuga bloodlines."
That number was more than Shun had expected. It was enough to form the beginnings of a clan. Enough, at least, to make the effort worthwhile.
Still, one thing bothered him. "Do the newborns' eyes also have impurities?"
The Third Raikage nodded. "All of them have the Byakugan. All of them also have impurities. The amount differs from child to child. It's probably related to the purity of the father's bloodline."
Shun lowered his eyes in thought. "Even if their bloodlines are imperfect, that doesn't mean there's no future. If they train hard and the line continues, the next generation may have a chance to produce a pure Byakugan."
That aligned with the Third Raikage's own thinking. Since Shun had already admitted there was no realistic way to pull more branch family members out now, the Raikage was ready to dismiss him. Before he could, however, Shun asked one last question.
"Raikage-sama… how exactly were Akira Hyuga and the others exposed? It couldn't have leaked from our side, could it?"
"No," the Third Raikage said. "I've already had it investigated. It wasn't us. This affair caused quite a stir in Konoha, so the information was easy enough to gather."
What followed was uglier than Shun had imagined.
As more and more branch family members slipped away to the Land of the Moon, one of them began to crack. He had traveled there several times, yet had never managed to leave behind a child. Anxiety gnawed at him. His state of mind shifted. Eventually, he revealed a flaw in front of a guard from the Hyuga main house.
Before that moment, nobody had suspected anything. But once suspicion existed, the rest was simple. The Hyuga main family only needed to look. And once they looked, they found enough to chill their blood.
Within the span of a single year, an absurd number of Hyuga branch family men had left the Land of Fire for the Land of the Moon, the Land of Hot Water, and even the Land of Rice Fields. Some missions that had never required crossing borders before had suddenly been rerouted there for vague, flimsy reasons.
The Hyuga main family panicked. If the Byakugan had leaked, then the foundation of their authority would crack. Their power over the branch family existed because they were the protectors of the bloodline. If they could no longer keep it contained, why would Konoha continue tolerating their internal tyranny?
So the current Hyuga clan head, Hyuga Tokuhiro, used the Caged Bird Seal to force confessions from the branch family. Under the torment of the seal, no branch family member could withstand questioning for long. The truth came spilling out in pieces, then in torrents.
Konoha's leadership was alerted at once. Danzo, leading the hardliners as always, demanded that every branch family member who had ignored the village's interests be executed on the spot. He did not even bother to hide his bloodlust.
Hiruzen Sarutobi, as if playing the benevolent counterpart to Danzo's cruelty, then stepped in and said that the families of Akira Hyuga and the others could be spared, since they had known nothing. He dressed himself in mercy after Danzo had already sharpened the knife.
But what he left unsaid was obvious.
The Hyuga main family launched the Caged Bird Seal and killed every branch family member who had gone to the Land of the Moon, the Land of Hot Water, or the Land of Rice Fields within the past year. Then Danzo moved in immediately afterward and branded the surviving families with the Root seal, dragging them into his underground network.
The women of the Hyuga clan all possessed awakened Byakugan. Even if they were not first-rate fighters, they were still more than qualified to serve as reconnaissance ninjas. In the end, Danzo was the only one in Konoha who truly profited from the whole disaster.
After hearing that, Shun fell silent for a moment. Then he said, "Raikage-sama, I'll remember all of it. In the future, I'll tell the Hyuga children in our village exactly what happened."
The Third Raikage gave him a strange look.
At first he had not considered the matter from that angle at all. But the more he thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. If those children grew up knowing that the main family had slaughtered their fathers, uncles, and cousins with the Caged Bird Seal, then their sense of belonging to Kumogakure would grow even deeper.
Once again, entrusting the brainwashing of the Hyuga bloodline to Chiba Shun proved to be the right choice. Some of those children had not even been born yet, and already the Raikage could picture the shape of the hatred that would bind them to the village.
Under that peculiar, thoughtful gaze, Shun finally left the Raikage's office.
The next day, he brought the three children with him to the mission office and claimed the reward for the Uzumaki mission. The female chunin working the counter looked up after handing over the paperwork and said, "Lord Shun, you still have one unclaimed S-rank mission on record."
"Since it was earned during wartime, you can also choose to convert it into an A-rank ninjutsu. Would you like to exchange it now?"
Shun laughed. "No rush. First tell me how many B-rank and C-rank genjutsu the village has."
The chunin nodded and began checking the records.
While she counted, Shun casually took three hundred thousand ryo from the six hundred thousand he had just been paid and stuffed it into his ninja pouch. Then he turned to the three children and said in a low voice, "I reported to the Raikage that I spent three hundred thousand restoring Uzumaki Maki's body. This is the reimbursement."
The three children gaped at him. All of them knew roughly how much Maki had actually eaten, and all of them remembered how Shun had grimaced every time he paid. None of them had imagined he would pad the number that shamelessly.
Shun ignored their expressions. He set another one hundred and fifty thousand aside and said, "This is my captain's share. By the rules, I take half of what remains."
Then he divided the final one hundred and fifty thousand into three equal parts and handed each child fifty thousand ryo.
"You three split the rest. Fifty thousand each. Since you're still not official ninjas, your mission records won't be logged yet."
The three children held the money with dazed expressions, only then understanding why Shun had insisted they come with him.
Just then, the female chunin looked up from the ledger. "Lord Shun, I've finished counting. The village currently has four B-rank genjutsu and fifteen C-rank genjutsu."
Shun asked, "Same prices as ordinary ninjutsu?"
"Exactly the same," she replied. "Thirty thousand for a C-rank technique. One hundred thousand for a B-rank."
She hesitated, then asked with a half-suppressed smile, "You're not about to buy every one of them too, are you?"
Shun did the math in his head. Four B-rank genjutsu and fifteen C-rank genjutsu would cost eight hundred and fifty thousand ryo.
Before leaving the village, he had six hundred thousand on hand. Then had come the battles outside, the loot, the expenses, the reimbursement, and now this reward. Added together, he had enough to buy them all — in theory. In practice, if he spent every last ryo on scrolls, he would have nothing left to actually train them.
He clicked his tongue in annoyance. "I'm too poor again. Even if I buy all of them, I won't have the resources left to practice."
He tapped the counter once and said, "Start me with three C-rank genjutsu. I'll test whether I have the talent first."
The female chunin finally failed to suppress her amusement. "Understood," she said.