In the midst of a sandstorm, two figures walked with straw hats covering their heads and black cloaks to keep the sand out.
It was Afro and Toji who had arrived in the Land of Wind.
Toji deeply regretted choosing that place as the next destination of his 'pilgrimage'.
This place was a dump, he just wanted to take a look at this country, but the further he went, the more tired he became of it.
The territory of the Land of Wind was incredibly vast, but it was also very difficult to find villages there. Each village needed an oasis to survive, and finding an oasis in the desert was already difficult, so it was no surprise that the number of villages here was small.
The biggest problem was the environment itself, freezing cold at night and infernal heat during the day. If that were all, Toji wouldn't even think much about it, after all, his heat resistance was no joke, plus his body was extremely warm, even able to raise its temperature at will, so the night was easy to deal with too.
The biggest problem was the sandstorms.
Damn, that damn sand could get into everywhere!
There were also animals that took advantage of this environment to hunt, using the poor visibility of the sandstorm to attack their prey.
This wasn't a problem under normal circumstances, but during storms, it only increased Toji's irritation. Toji's danger sense wouldn't alert him to such trivial things, and he didn't want to keep the Byakugan active the whole time, having such a wide field of vision might be useful most of the time, but it wasn't comfortable.
Even his sage-chakra-based sensing ability was vaguely clouded by the weather conditions, the creatures here seemed perfectly adapted to the environment, as if they were one with it.
Afro wasn't doing much better, he looked at Toji with evident resentment. He had clearly warned him that going to the land of the wind was a bad idea, but had Toji listened? Of course not.
Toji ignored Afro's resentful gaze and instead began to think about how to handle the situation.
Sighing, he couldn't think of anything, it was no surprise, they had been in this infernal desert for days. He wasn't going to waste his chakra trying to fight against nature, so he could only take another break.
He simply stopped while creating a large dome of earth around them.
Afro might not have complained while they walked, but he was the first to start taking off his clothes, ready to remove the sand from places where it shouldn't be, the cloaks offered limited protection after all.
There was no light there, so Toji first separated a clone and let it maintain a ball of flames as basic illumination, the clone could only shrug and accept the request.
Toji didn't care about Afro, he also had sand on his body, so he started taking off his clothes to get rid of it, but while he was busy, a huge scorpion jumped out of the sand behind him, its venomous tail lunging straight for Toji's back as its pincers tried to grab his legs.
Before Scorpion could even understand what was happening, Afro's sword pierced his head, freezing him.
Toji simply stared at the thing, not at all frightened. It was just a scorpion, his danger sense gave no indication. Clearly, the thing was too weak, even if he stood still, it couldn't even break his skin.
He was ready to punch the head off that thing when Afro intervened.
Toji looked at the fallen scorpion, then at Afro, who calmly removed the sword from its head, waving it to wipe away the purplish blood.
-Looks like dinner served itself.- Toji joked.
Afro shrugged, none of them cared about eating the scorpion.
After they switched clothes, they began processing the scorpion. Although Toji didn't mind the creature's venom, the same couldn't be said of Afro, so he still removed the venom sac from it.
Toji opened some cracks in the stone dome, it was a clever way to keep the sand out. It consisted of opening a crack and placing a barrier in front of it, opening cracks on the sides and repeating the process several times. Eventually, air could enter while the sand remained outside. At least they wouldn't suffocate in there.
After that, he created a simple clay oven on the ground while placing the exhaust outside. Satisfied, they began grilling the meat with Toji on a stone slab. They carried spices with them so the meat wouldn't be tasteless.
The best part was undoubtedly the claws, the meat was tender and somewhat resembled crab meat.
While they ate peacefully, neither of them thought to talk. Afro wasn't much of a talker, and Toji, mostly when there was nothing interesting to talk about, respected this desire for silence.
It was only when he was finishing eating that Afro's eyes narrowed and Toji sighed, the two jumped away from the food, and the next moment, dozens of poisoned needles struck exactly where they had been standing.
From the ground not far away, a puppet head emerged from the sand, its mouth open, clearly the attacker.
-Seriously, why don't these idiotic bounty hunters ever learn?- Toji complained lightly, wiping the oil from his mouth with the back of his hand.
Afro just grunted, he was angry too. Whether it was Toji or Afro, both were rewarded. Many wandering or renegade ninjas seemed to treat them like walking money bags. He couldn't even remember how many times he'd been attacked in the last few weeks.
Toji's bounty was already 340 million and Afro's was 87 million.
Toji's death was obviously the work of the angry Daimyos, who, unable to kill Toji easily, simply increased the bounty on his head. However, perhaps to deal with the weaker party first, it was usually Afro himself who was attacked first.