Chapter 577: Maintaining Peace in the Ninja World
Compared to those noble officials who have no bottom line and are full of flattery.

Instead, Uchiha Shisui was more concerned about the black-haired girl who was standing alone and at a loss.

The girl’s originally exquisite princess dress was now stained with a little dust, making it look particularly messy.

There was a look of confusion in his big eyes, like a lost deer.

She was the only heir to the Snow Country, her father the daimyo had just been killed by her own uncle, and she needed comfort right now.

However, those ministers who had always greeted her with smiles and were considerate to her seemed to have completely forgotten her existence at this moment.

She was left standing alone and helpless in the corner.

Tears welled up in the girl’s eyes, but she was stubborn and refused to let them fall. Her face turned paler and paler, and she tried hard not to cry out.

However, just as Uchiha Shisui was about to step forward to comfort the little girl who looked so pitiful.

But a blue-haired figure was one step ahead of him.

Honglian impatiently pushed away the ministers surrounding the three of them, not giving them any face at all, and walked straight to Fenghua Xiaoxue.

He bent down and squatted, gently holding the little girl in his arms.

The girl, who had been able to hold on with gritted teeth, completely lost control of her emotions and burst into tears the moment Honglian embraced her.

Hearing Fenghua Xiaoxue’s sobbing, those officials who had been fawning on Xuehuo and the others before all stood there in embarrassment, their eyes wandering in panic, not knowing what to do.

Fortunately, no one knows what Honglian said in Fenghua Xiaoxue’s ear.

After a while, the girl slowly stopped crying and fell asleep sobbing.

However, with this little incident, the originally lively atmosphere naturally could not continue.

Honglian, Uchiha Shisui and others, who had already become impatient, refused the so-called celebratory dinner and left on their own initiative, using the excuse of not delaying the aftermath work in the Snow Country.

Perhaps they felt that the previous scene was somewhat embarrassing, or perhaps they each had some other little thoughts.

The officials of the Snow Country did not try to persuade them to stay. They just exchanged a few simple courtesies and then sent the group of six out of the capital of the Snow Country.

On the way back, the three Konoha people who had been left out before hadn’t said anything yet, but Xuehuo, who had just been transferred to the maintenance force, was the first to complain.

“By the way, why are we doing this kind of mission? Shouldn’t these things be announced to the village normally?”

Honglian, who was standing aside, looked at her new teammate with his hands behind his head, looking silly, and complained with a look of disgust.

“Just now I saw that you were quite happy to be flattered by those people. Why are you dissatisfied now?”

Having said that, Honglian did not explain to him why the work content of the maintenance and coordination team has changed.

In fact, although Xuehuo, the guy who had just joined the maintenance force, didn’t know about it, the few of them who had reported to the Chunin for more than half a year knew something about it.

The original maintenance force’s core mission was naturally to fight against the Zero Organization hidden behind the scenes of the ninja world.

However, in the nearly two years since the maintenance force was established, the Zero Organization has been hiding very well.

Although the intelligence investigation has been ongoing, there have been several times when we have caught the other party on their tail.

But after several attempts, they were all successfully escaped by the other side.

It is impossible for such a large joint organization of five villages to just enjoy resource support and do nothing practical, right?
Therefore, starting from last year, the work of the maintenance force has gradually shifted towards “maintaining peace in the ninja world.”

In the past, such tasks would indeed be handled by the five major ninja villages.

Or to put it more bluntly, usually a small country would send a mission to the big country ninja village to which it belongs, asking for help. However, this kind of mission related to the entire country, asking for help from the sovereign country, inevitably involves things like influence and autonomy.

Now we have an organization like the Maintenance Force that claims to be neutral and claims to maintain peace in the ninja world.

Those small countries would naturally prefer to seek help from the peacekeeping and mobilization forces first.

This is not the first time that the maintenance force has intervened in missions like the Snow Country mission.

Occasionally, there would even be a ninja from one of the five major countries who would cause killings in smaller countries.

In the past, these small countries would have had nowhere to turn for help.

Now, among the maintenance forces, there are always guys from the other major ninja villages who are looking for opportunities to disgust their opponents, and they are particularly enthusiastic in the investigation.

As a result, the reputation of the peacekeeping force in small countries is relatively positive.

Of course, even Honglian, a teammate, couldn’t tell Xuehuo in front of people from other villages that he started taking on a ‘side job’ because he couldn’t do his ‘main job’.

But Xuehuo doesn’t really care about this.

Long before he came to the maintenance and coordination unit, he had inquired about it and found that the work in the maintenance and coordination unit was relatively safe, so he took the initiative to gain experience there.

If he were really asked to deal with some organization behind the scenes in the ninja world, he would back off from this job which sounds dangerous.

“I just think that if a big ninja village steps in, it might be easier for the little princess to take over the Snow Country in the future.”

“Now, she is still very young. Alas.”

When these words were spoken, except for Honglian who had a strange expression, the others present sighed silently in their hearts.

They had seen the expressions of those Snow Country officials just now.

Can a princess who is only five or six years old, with no relatives to take care of her, really become a daimyo smoothly by relying on the title of heir?

In the end, it was the relatively calm Uchiha Shisui who broke the silence first.

“Non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries is the most important purpose of our maintenance and coordination forces. If we take the initiative to intervene and support, why would these small countries find us? We are also in conflict with those big ninja villages.”

As if realizing that what he said was somewhat inconsistent with his identity as a Konoha ninja, Uchiha Shisui stopped speaking halfway.

However, the others already understood what he wanted to express.

In fact, as a member of the Uchiha clan, Shisui has gradually begun to accept his identity as a member of the maintenance force in the nearly one year since he joined the force.

Compared to being in Konoha Village, having the Uchiha surname also means being discriminated against by fellow villagers.

On the contrary, in the maintenance force, they are under the care of their own family head, and the commander-in-chief, Lord Hoshigaki Kisame, is also clear in rewards and punishments.

Although there may be occasional minor frictions between the ninjas from different villages, they are more like a whole because they eat and live together for a long time.

If someone really takes the initiative to cause trouble, that adult’s 40-meter-long sword will not have eyes.

Especially these young people who were rotated in later because of the change in the route of the maintenance and dispatching troops.

Because they had not experienced the previous Ninja World War, and they had lived together for a long time.

Many people have even entrusted their backs to companions from different ninja villages to protect them during missions.

Uchiha Shisui himself also feels that maintaining peace in the ninja world is making his ninja career more meaningful.

(End of this chapter)