Interlude

Two silhouettes in long black robes with red clouds on them were walking in the desert.

"Are you sure your bounty target is here? You know, we have our Akatsuki assignments to do..."

"I'm sure since the information came from Shiki Ryuu tea-house."

"Hoo, if that's the case then it has to be true...though I really don't like how they seem to know everything...it's really a spooky group if you ask me..."

"Like you can call others spooky with you and your weird shit religion."

___

Around two and a half years, a new information broker emerged and rose to the sole powerhouse in their fields.

Their aggressive conquering of rival brokers was one of the main reasons for the unbelievable rapid growth.

Either they submitted to them and worked for them, or they would get destroyed.

And since information brokers were often considered shady and acting out of the law, no one intervened to help them.

With that, the unorganized and ununited small brokers soon found themselves being part of a big information trading network.

But their aggressive expansion method wasn't the sole reason for the rise into the undisputed position they have.

Uniting all those small brokers and developing a vast network meant that they could deliver almost any information you ask and that in a laughable short amount of time!

They called themselves Shiki Ryuu tea-house!

It was safe to say, that they revolutionized information-trading and made it as comfortable as possible.

Almost every town or village had a tea-house, where you can just go in and give a letter of what information you want.

If they have the information available in their tea-house branch, you get your information instantly.

If not, the letter will be sent via carrier-pigeons to their headquarters and then delivered back with the information you are looking for as soon as possible.

You can even leave and do something else, while the carrier-pigeons will find you and deliver the information you asked for.

There was even a saying: "Shiki Ryuu tea-house has all the information in the world! If you get your money sent back instead of the information, it just means you didn't pay enough!"

Even some Daimyos praised it and expressed their wishes on employing or buying the organization.

Of course, the Shinobi villages grew worried about the growing influence of the Shiki Ryuu tea-house.

But the extent of the influence was only known when for some reason Orochimaru tried to find trouble with them.

He attacked various branches, but the overall damage dealt was minuscule since most of the employers were ordinary civilians and non-shinobis, so replacing them was totally easy.

Furthermore, most employees didn't know the location of the headquarters and the pigeons behaved weirdly when someone tracked their flying.

In short, his attacks dealt almost no damage.

But how the Shiki Ryuu tea-house retaliated was a completely different matter.

The locations of various hideouts from Orochimaru were published.

And more importantly, all kinds of techniques, jutsus, and secrets from him were published as well.

Almost all his fighting techniques and trump cards were known to the whole world.

It was said that he spat blood for days out of anger.

But the more problematic thing for him was, that know all of the 5 great shinobi villages knew that he had plundered the dead bodies of various shinobis from them for his Edo Tensei.

Save to say, they weren't exactly happy how the dead bodies of their village's heroes were treated and so all published hideouts were completely raided.

With just publishing some information, the Shiki Ryuu tea-house managed to move all the 5 great shinobi villages!

After this incident, the 5 great shinobi villages recognized how threatening the influence of the Shiki Ryuu tea-house truly was.

But they couldn't move against them, since the Shiki Ryuu tea-house always showed their clear stance of neutrality and having a clear bottom-line of not selling any information which would threaten a whole country or village.

And more importantly, no one of them knew what kind of information about their village could get published if they decided to attack them.

None of the villages wanted to "sacrifice" themselves so that the other 4 villages would feel safer.

Of course, this was the other aspect of them buying information from them as well, which makes missions a lot easier, but that's something they wouldn't openly admit...

___

"You will burn in hell for calling my religion weird and shit when you die, you know?"

"Like I care. As long as I have money, even hell won't be a problem."

"There you go again about money..."

The two silhouettes continued to walk in this desert until they spotted a cave that seemed to be a hideout.