Sunagakure, evening. The streets were decorated with colorful lanterns.
Large swaths of pure white drapes—symbols of purity—covered the streets near the village center, while the ground was scattered with vibrant red flower petals.
At the village center, a wedding with distinctly Sunagakure characteristics was underway.
Inside the venue enclosed by drapes, numerous distinguished guests in lavish attire mingled with glasses clinking. The buffet-style wedding felt more like a showcase and social gala.
Near the center of the crowd, a middle-aged man in an elegant pure white robe and matching white turban greeted surrounding guests with refined grace—clearly one of the focal points of this social gathering.
However, he wasn't the wedding's host. Like everyone else, he was merely a guest.
Taking advantage of a lull as people around them toasted each other, the elegantly dressed woman beside the middle-aged man leaned close to his ear and whispered:
"Rinjin, this is the vacation you promised me?"
Hearing this, Rinjin—disguised as the refined middle-aged man—smiled warmly. His gaze swept the area imperceptibly as he lowered his voice:
"Darling, how is this not a vacation?!
There's wine to drink, entertainment to watch, and we can experience foreign customs up close. Isn't this relaxing enough?!"
Hearing this, Tsunade immediately felt her teeth itch with frustration.
This bastard Rinjin knew perfectly well she just wanted to find a nice place to test her luck gambling, yet he'd brought her to this boring place instead.
Muttering under her breath, Tsunade used Rinjin's body as cover to tug at the neckline of her low-cut dress, growing even more exasperated.
Who the hell designed this outfit—it's both sleazy and restrictive!
Meanwhile, a pot-bellied middle-aged man approached Rinjin with a smile, raising his wine glass slightly:
"Lord Kaza, wishing you well!"
Rinjin, using the alias Kaza, also raised his glass, lightly clinking it with the man's as he smiled back:
"Wishing you well, my shrewd and capable Chief Kubo!"
The two then exchanged a few pleasantries before Kubo returned to his own circle.
"Uncle Kubo, who was that refined gentleman you were just chatting with?"
In Kubo's small circle, a fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl with green-yellow streaked hair asked curiously.
Hearing this, Kubo smiled and playfully tapped the little girl's nose, explaining softly:
"Oh~ That's Lord Kaza, our village's Minister of Municipal Affairs.
I remember he should be from the Suna clan—a distant cousin of our newly appointed Fourth Kazekage.
But since he didn't inherit the Magnet Release bloodline limit, the family arranged for him to take a civilian administrative position."
"He got his position through family connections?" The girl, who had initially been interested in this cultured gentleman, immediately lost interest.
Hearing this, Kubo burst into laughter, affectionately tapping the girl's nose again.
"Don't underestimate Lord Kaza—his political skills and abilities are absolutely first-rate.
Not to mention distant examples, just take the recent reduction in our village's water fees—that was entirely his handiwork.
If Amegakure were so easy to deal with, they wouldn't have been choking us for so many years."
Hearing this, the girl smiled disdainfully to herself.
She was a ninja who admired powerful warriors with abundant martial virtue—like the newly appointed Fourth Kazekage.
While this Lord Kaza might be very capable, it wasn't the kind of capability she admired.
On the other side, Rinjin led a reluctant Tsunade as they wandered around, weaving through the crowd and chatting amiably with various high-ranking officials who held real power.
Ever since the Third Kazekage's mysterious disappearance, Sunagakure had experienced a massive power vacuum.
Combined with Chiyo and Ebizō's retirement, this led to even more power being scattered.
Thus, the entire village developed a very strange phenomenon:
Despite supposedly being a centralized system with the Kazekage at its core, the village actually had numerous departments with seriously overlapping functions and large numbers of idle people holding positions without doing work.
Three years ago, Rinjin—who intended to infiltrate Sunagakure—keenly noticed this phenomenon.
So he selected this so-called Ministry of Municipal Affairs as his target.
The former Ministry of Municipal Affairs had also been just another idle government office.
Though its name sounded like it could manage everything, in reality, nobody gave a damn about this useless Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
But after Rinjin, under the alias Kaza, took over, things changed.
Rinjin didn't eliminate the parasitic worms in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Instead, he created a huge cake:
A water plant established under the name of unified management by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
Rinjin gathered these parasites together and generously laid the water plant's profits and shares on the table for distribution.
As long as you held a position in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, you were qualified to participate in the distribution.
Thus, juicy meat attracted jackals.
Large numbers of capable middle-class people, either through connections or by calling on friends, began trying every means to get people into the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
To all these people who approached Rinjin, he uniformly stated:
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs would absolutely not expand—eighteen seats meant eighteen seats, but it would be survival of the fittest.
Upon receiving this news, the slaughter began.
Parasites are parasites because they can't rely on anything else except their so-called families.
Jackals are jackals because they're ruthless and cruel enough.
Over two years, the eighteen chairs in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs' conference room saw countless new faces.
Those who remained were without exception both cruel and capable.
The very existence of these people directly helped Rinjin transform the Ministry of Municipal Affairs' nominal functions into real power.
This was a win-win situation: Rinjin made the cake while the eighteen seats shared it and rallied around Rinjin.
In the end, most of the profits generated by the entire Ministry were completely swallowed by neighboring Amegakure.
Not only that, Rinjin used this money to befriend these so-called power holders, forming a massive spider web that completely sidelined the Fourth Kazekage.
For a hidden village, strength is certainly an important element, but economics are the indispensable foundation for any development of power.
Currently, the Daimyō of the Land of Wind was so addicted to doing business with Rinjin that he couldn't extricate himself, giving Sunagakure pitifully small allocations.
This guy was the poorest Daimyō among the Five Great Nations—bar none.
He was scared of being poor.
Rinjin even suspected this guy would love nothing more than to outsource the entire Land of Wind's national defense to Amegakure to further reduce the expenses of maintaining the hidden village.
Under these circumstances, the Fourth Kazekage's burden of making money was particularly arduous.
Faced with this situation, how could Rinjin—as a friendly neighbor—not help the Fourth Kazekage~
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