From the ruined temple to Akaiwa Town was a mere thirty kilometers, but the journey took the caravan two full days.
The roads were treacherous.
The Land of Rivers was a fractured terrain, scarred by a sprawling network of waterways and deep gorges. Eight out of ten bridges had been blown apart during the war; the survivors were little more than hazardous, swaying planks.
Sosuke carried the heaviest bundle. He played the role of a silent coolie. He spoke little, complained less, and even took the initiative to gather firewood during their rests.
This behavior satisfied the man called "One-Eye." In these chaotic times, an obedient laborer who didn't demand extra pay was a rare commodity.
Sosuke was observing.
He analyzed the economic ecosystem of this world.
They passed several groups on the road: fleeing families, peddlers pushing wheelbarrows, and a squad of wandering samurai in battered armor. Transactions happened in the dirt by the roadside.
A peddler traded a small pouch of salt for a silver bracelet from a refugee. Sosuke saw it clearly. The bracelet weighed at least twenty grams; the craftsmanship was crude, but it was solid silver. The pouch of salt, however, was barely two hundred grams—yellowed and coarse.
In this place, hard currency wasn't gold or silver. It was salt, grain, medicine, and iron. The purchasing power of precious metals was severely compressed because no one could guarantee they would live long enough to spend them.
'Using gold and silver directly as currency is the height of stupidity,' Sosuke noted mentally.
Unless he established some sort of power base or found a stable fencing channel, his infinite gold and silver would be nothing more than a pile of pretty rocks.
By dusk on the second day, they reached Akaiwa Town.
It was an outpost built into the mountainside, surrounded by massive walls stacked from red rock. Several banners fluttered atop the ramparts, bearing not the insignia of a Great Nation, but a strange lizard crest—the kamon of the local warlord.
Guards inspected the arrivals at the gate.
"Entry fee. One hundred Ryo per head." The guard, clad in Land of Rivers leather armor, gripped a spear and swept a cold, indifferent gaze over the line of refugees.
One hundred Ryo.
According to the currency system of the shinobi world, a bowl of Ichiraku ramen during wartime cost roughly sixty to seventy Ryo. One hundred Ryo was equivalent to a commoner's food budget for two full meals.
For a refugee, it was an astronomical sum.
Swearing under his breath, One-Eye pulled a cloth pouch from his tunic, counted out a few crumpled bills, and tossed them into the guard's basket. The guard tallied the cash and waved them through.
Sosuke followed the caravan into Akaiwa Town.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the noise hit him. It was far more prosperous than the exterior suggested. Stalls crammed the sides of the street, selling everything imaginable. Wild game, worn clothes, medicinal herbs—even sons and daughters.
The air was thick with the mingled stench of sweat, roasting meat, and open sewers.
"Alright, we're done here." One-Eye ripped the heavy bundle off Sosuke's back. "You can get lost."
He didn't leave Sosuke a single copper coin.
Sosuke didn't ask for one. He rubbed his aching shoulders and watched One-Eye lead the other two men toward a pawnshop in the center of town. The little girl in their group glanced back at Sosuke once before being dragged away.
Sosuke stood on the street corner and took a deep breath.
He was penniless. His stomach was empty. But he had a pair of hands that could manufacture wealth.
He circled the town, in no rush to sell. He was checking prices.
Coarse rice: 40 Ryo per catty.
Fine rice: 120 Ryo per catty.
Coarse salt: 80 Ryo per tael.
Used kunai: 300 Ryo apiece.
Explosive tags: nowhere to be seen; likely strictly regulated.
[T/N: Catty (斤) / Tael (兩) / Mace (錢): Traditional units of weight used in the local civilian economy. (1 Catty ≈ 500g, 1 Tael ≈ 50g, 1 Mace ≈ 5g).]
The prices here were extortionate.
Finally, Sosuke stopped in front of an unassuming general store. A wooden placard read "Tanaka Merchant Guild." Several wooden vats of rice sat by the door. The owner, a man in his fifties wearing spectacles, was flicking the beads of an abacus.
Sosuke walked in.
"What are you buying?" The old man didn't look up. "No credit."
"I'm selling," Sosuke replied.
The old man paused and glanced up. Despite his ragged clothes, Sosuke's eyes were calm. He didn't look like a madman or a beggar.
"I take mountain goods and herbs. If it's stolen property, I knock thirty percent off the price," the old man said flatly.
Sosuke stepped up to the counter, turning his back to block the line of sight from the door. He extended his hand, placed it on the wood, and slowly uncurled his fingers.
In his palm sat a small lump of silver.
It wasn't the disguised, impure scrap from before, but something freshly generated. Roughly five grams. Irregular in shape, as if melted off a larger piece of silverware. But this time, he hadn't intentionally weathered it.
In the dim light of the oil lamp, the silver gleamed with a cold, harsh luster.
The old man's pupils contracted slightly. He knew his goods.
The purity of this silver was far too high. It didn't look like something dug out of the dirt or melted down from cheap jewelry. This kind of flawless white was usually only found in government-refined bullion.
"Where did you get this?" The old man lowered his voice, his hand instinctively dropping below the counter. A weapon was likely hidden there.
"Passed down in the family," Sosuke answered smoothly, his cover airtight. "How much rice can it buy?"
The old man picked up the silver, weighed it in his hand, then produced a black touchstone. He scratched the silver lightly against it. The streak left behind was distinct and brilliantly white.
"Good purity," the old man said, setting the silver down and pushing up his glasses. "But the shape is wrong. This isn't minted currency."
"I never said it was money. I said it was silver," Sosuke corrected.
"According to market price, one tael of silver exchanges for 1,200 Ryo," the old man began to lowball. "This piece of yours is a mace and a half at best. And I have to go through the trouble of melting it down, plus taking on the risk... I'll give you 500 Ryo."
500 Ryo.
Daylight robbery.
A piece of high-purity silver like this would fetch at least 2,000 Ryo in peacetime or within a Great Ninja Village.
But Sosuke didn't get angry.
"800 Ryo," Sosuke countered. "Or give me ten catties of coarse rice, and add two catties of salted meat."
The old man stared at Sosuke for a moment, seemingly assessing the young man's background. "You a refugee?"
"From the north of the Land of Rivers."
"The north... I heard the Ame and Suna shinobi fought another battle up there." The old man sighed, seemingly talking to himself, or perhaps testing the waters. "Times are far from peaceful."
He turned, scooped the rice from a vat in the back, and sliced off a chunk of meat crusted in a thick layer of salt.
"There's your eight hundred Ryo worth of goods," the old man said, sliding the cloth sack toward Sosuke. "If you get your hands on more stock of this purity, bring it straight to me. Don't go to the pawnshops. Those leeches will swallow you down to the marrow."
Sosuke nodded, scooped up his provisions, and walked out.
But he hadn't gone far before he felt something wrong.
Someone was watching him.
Not the old man. The shop boy. The young man who had been sweeping in the corner had frozen for a fraction of a second when Sosuke produced the silver.
Sosuke exited the shop and ducked into a narrow alley. He didn't run. Instead, he quickened his pace, using the complex layout of the terrain to double back and loop around.
His current physical conditioning was no better than a civilian's; if he was being tracked by a professional, he couldn't outrun them.
Was the shop boy a shinobi? Unlikely. If he was a ninja, he would have subdued Sosuke right there in the shop. Most likely just an informant.
Sosuke found an abandoned, rotting awning and slipped beneath it, using the pitch blackness to obscure his silhouette. He held his breath, his knuckles white around the sack of rice.
A few minutes later, the shop boy appeared at the mouth of the alley. He looked left and right, cursed under his breath, and turned back.
Sosuke let out a silent exhale.
But he knew this town was no longer safe. That lump of high-purity silver had bought him calories, but it had also leaked a deadly piece of information: he was carrying valuables. He needed to find a safe house immediately. A place where he could convert his 'wealth' into 'power'.
Just then, a wet cough echoed from the deepest shadows of the alley.
"Cough... You've got sharp instincts, kid."
Sosuke whipped his head around, every muscle in his body snapping taut.
Someone was sitting at the very back of the awning. It was so dark that Sosuke had completely failed to notice him.
It was a man in a gray cloak, his face obscured by a half-mask that left only his jaw and mouth exposed. A gruesome wound marred his chest, steadily leaking blood that stained the gray fabric black.
A shinobi.
Sosuke's heart plummeted.
"Relax." The man offered a weak, blood-stained smile. His voice carried a wet, rattling undertone—the unmistakable sound of a punctured lung. "I'm dying. Can I... buy something from you?"
Sosuke didn't move an inch, his eyes locked on the figure. "I only have rice."
"No. I want what you pulled out in that shop earlier," the man wheezed. "That silver... the purity is incredibly high. Was it... refined from the companion ore of a chakra-conductive metal?"
Sosuke blinked.
Chakra-conductive metal?
What he generated was just standard, chemical-grade silver. But in the ninja world, where metallurgy and refinement techniques were primitive, exceptionally high-purity metals usually implied specialized crafting methods or rare mineral veins.
"What do you need silver for?" Sosuke asked.
"My wound... it's poisoned." The man leaned heavily against the damp wall, pulling a snapped kunai from his robes. "Sunagakure toxin. I need silver... pure silver powder, to neutralize the toxicity... even if it only buys me a few hours..."
Sosuke's mind raced.
This could be an opportunity. The shinobi was critically injured, hovering on death's door.
"If you die, everything on your corpse is mine anyway," Sosuke stated coldly.
"Heh... I rigged a... fuinjutsu seal." The man gestured weakly to his ninja pouch. "If I don't release it, the explosive tags inside will vaporize everything. Including that bag of rice. Including you."
He was making a threat, but he was also gambling.
Sosuke fell silent for two seconds.
"Deal," Sosuke said.
"Good... deal." The man's eyes were losing focus. "Give me the silver. I'll give you... a scroll. A basic... chakra refinement method."
Sosuke's heart violently skipped a beat.
What did he lack most in this world? It wasn't money. It was power. It was a ticket to enter the ranks of the shinobi. In this world governed by bloodlines and hidden clans, a civilian acquiring a chakra refinement method was as difficult as scaling the heavens.
"I don't trust you," Sosuke said.
"You don't have a choice." The man coughed up a thick glob of blood. "I'll count to three... If I don't detonate, we trade. One..."
Sosuke reached out his hand.
With a shift of his will, he activated [Precious Metal Generation].
A full twenty-gram chunk of pure silver materialized out of thin air, resting heavy in his palm. This time, he made no attempt to conceal it. In the suffocating darkness, the silver emitted a faint, ghostly white gleam.
The man's eyes widened. He hadn't expected the vagrant to actually have more on him, let alone a piece this massive.
"Take it." Sosuke tossed the silver over.
The man caught it and, without a second of hesitation, shoved it into his mouth. He ground it down with his molars, crushing it into a coarse powder, then spat the silver-laced blood directly onto the gaping wound on his chest.
Hiss— A plume of white smoke erupted from the flesh. The man's ragged breathing steadied by a fraction.
He looked at Sosuke with a deep, profound stare.
"You... are very interesting." The man struggled to pull a blood-soaked scroll from his tunic and tossed it onto the dirt. "Your payment."
Sosuke didn't immediately reach for it.
"One piece of advice," the man whispered, letting his eyes slide shut. "Leave Akaiwa Town. Iwagakure's Explosion Corps... is going to level this place tomorrow."
Sosuke's pupils shrank to pinpricks.
He snatched the scroll from the ground, grabbed his bag of rice, and plunged out into the rainy night without looking back.
This was the shinobi world. One second you were haggling over the price of rice, and the next, the shockwaves of a war between Great Nations could grind you into dust.
On this night, Sosuke learned his second lesson: The value of information far outweighed gold.