Starting with rogue ninjas, building the insect kingdom.

Chapter 11 The Border Town Plays a Stable Role

The rain over the Land of Grass stopped after only half a day, but the sky remained overcast.

This is the last stop before leaving Kusagakure, as most of the people here are merchants who want to cross the canyon bridge to enter other countries.

Where there are people, there are needs.

Because of the long-term business activities, many people settled here, and it became known as the Post Station Town.

This place is similar to some border towns in the Land of Fire; it is not prosperous, but it has inns and restaurants of all sizes, including geisha houses. Though small, it has everything you need.

The rain made the already uneven road even muddier, and the roadside was crowded with caravans of merchants, with people coming and going, creating a noisy and chaotic scene.

On the second floor of an inn on the edge of town, Aburame Zhicheng sat in his room.

Not long ago, he entered the town, rented a room, ordered some food, and then ordered a large bucket of water to wash himself thoroughly.

The food in the border town wasn't very good. Although Yu Nu Zhicheng ate it with great difficulty, it was still much better than the tasteless and nutritious military rations.

At this moment, he was wearing a clean bathrobe and sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking like a young man who had come here for a trip, without any trace of a ninja.

He drank the warm water and ate the last tricolor meatball on the bamboo skewer.

Looking back on the day's journey, besides the three grass ninjas, he also encountered another group of people—Iwagakure ninjas.

There were five people on the other side operating near the border, and unsurprisingly, they did not choose to let him go.

As a result, they were easily subdued by him, and no one escaped. Afterwards, he used the stinky bugs to induce deep hypnosis.

He extracted information from them and learned that these people were ostensibly looking for him, but in reality, they were searching for and preparing to ambush Orochimaru.

Upon hearing this news, he quickly pieced together the details: Konoha had sent Orochimaru to hunt him down, but Orochimaru's whereabouts had been leaked to Iwagakure.

Surprisingly, he didn't feel the slightest bit surprised.

In fact, after receiving the information from the ninjas of the Land of Grass, he had already considered whether to tell the information to the Hidden Stone Village and have them send people over to disrupt the situation.

But in the end, he chose to give up: firstly, time was of the essence, and the more he did, the more mistakes he would make. If things went well, it would only be icing on the cake for his defection; if things went wrong, it would be superfluous.

What he didn't expect was that within Konoha, or rather, certain individuals continued to "perform steadily," which made his escape even smoother.

As for the five Iwagakure ninjas, he didn't kill them. Instead, he let five stinky bugs enter their brains and continuously release pheromones to achieve stable hypnosis.

Then, he hid 10,000 dormant corrosive insects inside each of them and gave them instructions to return to a border defense point in Iwagakure.

The Iwa ninja defense map he had obtained by chance came in handy, making the scene even more realistic.

However, just now, all 50,000 insects he had released were wiped out.

"Now, Iwagakure, Konoha, and Kusagakure probably all think I took this opportunity to infiltrate the Land of Earth."

With that thought in mind, Yu Nu Zhicheng licked the sugar syrup off the bamboo skewer and threw it into the trash can.

"Now that chaos has been created and the inducement has been successfully completed, it's time to move on to the next step."

Aburame Shisei looked out the window again and saw that many of the grass ninjas had been separated from the group and regrouped to leave the town.

If his prediction is correct, a large number of Grass Ninja will be transferred to the border between the two countries today. The purpose is to prevent a large-scale invasion by Konoha Ninja and Iwagakure Ninja, which would spread the war to the Land of Grass and turn it into a new battlefield.

After drying her dripping long hair, Aburame Shisei changed into a clean set of clothes, put on Takikawa Hide's vest, and donned her ninja tools and headband before leaving the inn and blending into the street.

Now he needs to find a suitable small merchant guild to infiltrate, which would greatly reduce the border ninjas' wariness.

Because of the rain and muddy roads, coupled with the increased search efforts of the Grass Village ninjas who set up checkpoints everywhere, even during the war, many caravans were still stranded here.

Most of those stranded here are small caravans trying to make a living. Large caravans employ strong ninjas who control more wealth, so they can easily pass through checkpoints; small caravans are different. Even if they employ ninjas, they only employ ninjas from small countries or wandering samurai.

Aburame Shisei strolled around in front of these caravans and found that most of them were either heading back to the Land of Fire or trying to cross the canyon bridge to enter the Land of Earth.

Not a single small merchant caravan wanted to travel to the Land of Waterfalls.

But thinking about it, it makes sense. Merchants are driven by profit. The current tension between the Land of Earth and the Land of Fire is only at the ninja level, and has no direct impact on merchants or daimyo.

Although the journey of merchants was more dangerous, as long as they were willing to take the risks and pull off a few big deals, transporting scarce and sought-after goods between the two countries, they could make a fortune and even rise to become a great merchant.

And what in this world is more terrible than poverty?

Poverty means being unable to afford to hire ninjas, poverty means falling into the lower class, becoming an object of exploitation, and eventually likely becoming a commoner, a peasant who is constantly on the run and living hand to mouth.

That was terrifying; it was worse than death.

Just then, at the crossroads of the town's west gate, several servants were knocked to the ground.

A simply dressed merchant was trampled in the mud. He knelt and pleaded desperately, his slightly plump body covered in sweat and his eyes filled with tears.

The people who oppressed them were three wandering samurai.

They weren't dressed very well, and they carried samurai swords. One of the wandering samurai, who wasn't particularly burly, was holding a boy of about ten years old in his hand. This boy was probably their bargaining chip to threaten the merchant.

Robbery in the street?

Of course not, this is an internal dispute.

Because these three wandering warriors and the merchant were originally together.

The wandering samurai had no professional ethics to begin with, and on this particular day, they were subjected to multiple interrogations.

Not only did the merchants spend a lot of money to smooth things over, but many wandering samurai were also targeted by ninjas.

Although they weren't famous, they were still wanted criminals listed on the bounty list. Normally, no one paid attention to them, since the bounties were too small and the warrants weren't very effective, making it difficult to notice them.

But there were just too many ninjas being investigated this time, and even though they weren't recognized, it made them feel uneasy.

"Everyone knows that chaos is about to break out on the border of the Land of Rock, and the three forces are about to clash there. This little bit of money is simply not enough for us brothers to risk our lives for you."