Subsequently, Shimizu, dragging the now-immobile Kakutani Kyuuichi, used his sword to cut a hole in the ice prison large enough for two people to pass through. He then summoned several other puppets to drag the young ninja of the Kakutani clan out through the opening.
He no longer needed to worry about Kakutani Kyuuichi controlling the explosive insects to attack others.
Even if the old man could still manipulate the explosive insects after being sealed, he wouldn't be able to find any targets.
Because the war outside had already ended.
Without Kakutani Kyuuichi, the group composed of rogue and wandering ninja crumbled under the Sand ninja's charge.
Now, over eighty percent of them had been killed or captured alive, and the remaining, more capable ones were fleeing westward, pursued by Ebizo leading the reserve team.
The area within a thousand meters around Shimizu and Kakutani Kyuuichi had been cleared.
Having prior knowledge of the latter's abilities, Kazekage Karura, as the commander, naturally made such arrangements.
Shortly after the two left the ice prison, a series of explosions began to echo within.
The crisp sound of ice cracking made Kakutani Kyuuichi, who was being held by Shimizu, quicken his pace.
The Blue Jerboa stood in place, tirelessly releasing freezing rays and ice bombs.
Its mouth and shoulders were equipped with freezing ray emitters, and its back had a neat 4x8 array of grenade launchers, capable of effectively freezing a large area.
Like the White Samurai, the Blue Jerboa's ammunition bay was connected to a summoning seal, linked to a warehouse filled with relevant ammunition.
Shimizu had even created a small, fully automated puppet production line in his own warehouse. As long as the sensors in the warehouse detected that weapons made with cryogen were being summoned away, the production line would automatically feed in raw materials to replenish them.
Regarding this cryogen production line, there was also a similar one within the puppet corps, classified as a secret by Sunagakure. The ice bombs were considered strategic materials half a grade higher than explosive tags.
The reason for not further expanding production was that the material acquisition methods and extraction processes for this stuff were not yet mature enough, limiting production capacity.
After all, explosive tags had a long history of development and production in the ninja world, with even specialized tree farms producing pulpwood as raw materials.
With a large number of ice bombs reinforcing the ice prison, the power of the explosive insects' explosions was greatly suppressed. Shimizu and the others only had to move a few dozen meters away from the ice prison, cast two defensive ninjutsu to block the splashing ice shards, and they would be safe.
"Old man, you should know why we spared your life and those of these few people, right?"
"Can this old man… still live?"
Kakutani Kyuuichi asked.
"That depends on your cooperation."
Living was possible, after all, the old man's ninjutsu was of considerable value.
However, the freedom of him and his juniors for the rest of their lives would be greatly restricted.
Even if they married and had children in Sunagakure in the future, they would still be monitored to some extent, and would not receive the same treatment as the Chinoike clan.
Perhaps decades later, when they died and passed away, and their descendants remaining in Sunagakure inherited these insect manipulation techniques, would they truly be accepted by Sunagakure.
If they could demonstrate a certain value, they might even become secret ninjutsu clans like the Aburame and Inuzuka clans of Konoha.
The current Daimyo blankly touched the blood splashed on his face, looking with fearful eyes at the figure standing amidst the waves of sand gold at the palace entrance.
"Rasa… you, shouldn't you already be dead?"
"It seems that Lord Daimyo very much wished for my death. It's a pity, those insects failed to kill me."
Rasa said with a gloomy face, stepping on the sand gold clouds and flying in front of the Daimyo.
"Gulp."
The Daimyo swallowed a mouthful of saliva, his fat body trembling uncontrollably.
Since birth, he had experienced the fear of death for the first time.
"Rasa, I, I am very happy that you are still alive. I was wrong before. If you let me go, I will make you the Fourth Kazekage."
The fat Daimyo stood up from the throne, opened his arms to Rasa, and squeezed out a smile at him.
"It's too late, Lord Daimyo."
Rasa lowered his eyes, seemingly provoked by the Daimyo's words.
"When you decided to give the military expenses to that bunch of trash, it meant that you had lost your value to the village. The inheritance of the Kazekage does not need to be judged by worthless people."
He no longer had the chance to inherit the Kazekage!
If it weren't for these incidents caused by the Daimyo, how could he have been so seriously injured, and ultimately have to rely on his rival to save him?
"No, I still have value! I have a lot, a lot of money. Not to mention a year's military expenses, even ten or twenty years' worth, I can provide. If that's not enough, I can raise taxes, and there are those ministers, they can always help me get money. All of this, I, I can give you half!"
The Daimyo was frightened by Rasa's increasingly ferocious expression, and slumped back into the throne.
"Hmph, I said, Lord Daimyo, you are no longer valuable. Throughout the entire capital city, whether it's your and those nobles' private property, or the gold and silver in the national treasury, it's all ours now."
Slender golden needles formed under the condensation of sand gold, slowly approaching the Daimyo.
"Rasa, stop for now."
An old voice rang out, and Ebizo, surrounded by nine puppets, walked into the royal palace.
Ebizo acted in a low-key manner and rarely took action on weekdays, but his strength was definitely not bad. His puppet manipulation ability was only slightly inferior to Chiyo's. Although the puppets he used were not the Chikamatsu Ten Puppets, they were also top-notch puppets that he had carefully crafted. His overall strength had also steadily crossed the threshold of the Kage level.
"You can kill those nobles, but the Daimyo's life must be spared. At least after the next Daimyo is selected, he can reasonably die for other reasons.
Only in this way can we legitimately take over the power of the Daimyo."
Ebizo looked at the Daimyo who was already so frightened that he had wet his pants, and said to Rasa.
"I understand, which means he has one last bit of value left."
Rasa slowly retracted the sand gold needles, glanced at the Daimyo with disdain, and turned away.
"Elder Ebizo, what exactly, what exactly does Sunagakure want to do?"
The Daimyo stuttered.
“You should be well aware of what we intend to do, Lord Daimyo. After all, this has all been forced upon us step by step by you. If you hadn't slashed the military budget and indulged in pleasure all day long, Sunagakure wouldn't have resorted to digging canals and developing new puppet techniques—a series of measures to generate wealth for the village.
And when we created this wealth with our own wisdom and hands, you and your ilk sought to seize it, even escalating your demands and trying to create an organization to replace Sunagakure.
All the ninjas of Sunagakure will never agree to that. And when we refuse, you continue to be aggressive, leaving us no choice but to stand against you.
All of this is your own fault, brought about by your and those nobles' insatiable greed.”
Ebizo looked at the Daimyo with a mocking gaze.
Ever since this Daimyo first cut Sunagakure's military budget many years ago, he had disliked him.
That dislike soon turned into disgust.
“But, but no matter what, ninjas shouldn't attack the Daimyo! This is a contract made between the first Kage of each village and the Daimyo of that time!”
The Daimyo was on the verge of tears.
This good-for-nothing truly didn't expect things to escalate to this point.
“Lord Daimyo, in the world of ninjas, there's a saying: contracts are meant to be broken.
And the one who first broke this contract was you…”
Ebizo extended his withered hand and patted the Daimyo's obese cheek.
“From now on, I will speak, and you will do. Understand? If you are unwilling to cooperate, we will use ninjutsu to extract your memories and find a ninja skilled in transformation techniques to become you.”
“I will, I will!”
The Daimyo said repeatedly.
… …
… …
Shifting the focus to another battlefield.
Ninjas from Sunagakure were cleaning up the battlefield, trying to find valuable items.
After completing the statistics, Kazakami Chitose reported the results of the battle to Shimizu.
Because the quality of these Daimyo's Guardian Shinobi was uneven and their average strength was low, even after dispatching high-end combat power, Sunagakure ninjas' average combat power was more than three times that of the opponent.
With proper tactical arrangements, there were only a few casualties.
More than four hundred Guardian Shinobi died in this battle, and more than two hundred were captured alive.
The rest were those relatively strong rogue ninjas with some battlefield experience who chose to break through after seeing that things were not going well, and Yekura is currently leading a team to hunt them down.
This is expected to take a long time.
However, Yekura's strength is there. She can easily deal with opponents below the Kage level, and she also has the power to fight against most strong people above the Kage level.
In the current Land of Wind, they should not encounter enemies of that level.
One day later.
All the members of the Guardian Force had been eliminated, either killed or captured.
Most of the rogue ninjas from the five major ninja villages were all imprisoned in Sunagakure's prison, waiting for interrogation and even memory searching.
Even if it is not certain whether these people have truly defected or are pretending to defect, their origins cannot be faked, and they will have some information about other ninja villages.
On the capital side, Rasa was full of murderous intent and beheaded many nobles.
Without exception, these people had all tried to have ideas about the wealth created by Sunagakure, such as the canal, and had taken action.
These were also the people who instigated the Daimyo to cut military spending, or even not give military spending, and use it to form the Daimyo's Guardian Force.
These people have offended Sunagakure very badly. Even if they want to change their tune, Sunagakure doesn't want to agree. Rasa simply took action, killed them, and confiscated their homes.
There is no need to win over or attack another group of the remaining people.
Because there are no more targets to attack, each of them is afraid that these ninjas, who they used to regard as tools, will come to their door, so they are very obedient.
Therefore, the capital is now under strict military control to prevent people with ulterior motives from causing trouble, but the overall situation has returned to calm in just one day under the leadership of Ebizo.
What Sunagakure will do next is to abolish the current Daimyo and establish a new one, letting this Daimyo, who has done a lot of disgusting things, go to the Pure Land to accompany the Six Paths Sage, and then use the new Daimyo controlled by Sunagakure to gather the power of the whole country into the ninja village.
In the plan that Shimizu made for the Third Kazekage, the next Sunagakure will replace the Daimyo's government organization and become the political organization of the Land of Wind, taking over the Daimyo's power and turning him into a political puppet.
This political system, in which the military armed class takes over the feudal monarch, causing the organization's power to be above the monarch, is often called the shogunate system.
Regarding this area, Shimizu has a lot of information to refer to.
Actually, it is not impossible to go further.
Completely eliminating the political influence of the Daimyo system can indeed be regarded as progress in the political system, but institutional reforms in any era will be affected by the environment of the era, and cannot be solved by one or two leaders with sufficient long-term vision.
This is also the reason why many reforms and even revolutions in history are not thorough enough.
From a historical point of view, this is actually right.
Because overly radical reforms often suffer excessive backlash, and the best outcome is the demise of both the people and the government.
In the extraordinary world with ninjas, you can be moderately radical, but you have to grasp the degree.
Although Sunagakure is strong now, it is not strong enough to contend with the entire ninja world with the power of one village.
So they have to retain something with symbolic significance like "Daimyo."
This will also be more conducive to them receiving the Daimyo regime's political legacy and more effectively building a new management system.
You have to eat one bite at a time, and you have to take one step at a time.
Before possessing the unparalleled strength of Hashirama Senju, Shimizu would not think of reaching the sky in one step.
The shogunate system is the most suitable system for Sunagakure to rule the Land of Wind, and it is also a more suitable transition when moving to the next system.
It's just that the current Daimyo used unclean methods when he came to power, killing all his adult brothers, and imprisoning the remaining underage ones. More than a year ago, Ebizo and Rasa rescued some of them and secretly supported them as the current Daimyo's rebel forces.
The next Daimyo can basically be determined to be selected from these people.
Now these people are hiding in relatively remote areas of the Land of Wind. Because they are all ordinary people, it will still take a few days to bring them back to the capital.
