The Fifth Shinobi World War ended even faster than anyone expected. After several weeks of intense negotiations, the agreement was finally signed.
Of course, that didn't mean everyone could relax afterward.
Implementing the treaty, building the new country, and developing and settling the new continent—every one of those was a tangled mess of work. It wasn't something you could "solve" in a few easy steps.
Yōrin had already steeled himself for at least a year or two—maybe longer—of not going out to cause trouble, and instead staying in the office handling endless government business.
And that was with his massive modernization push: standardizing the bureaucracy, professionalizing it, and introducing electronic office workflows that massively improved efficiency.
If he wanted to run a low-efficiency, useless government like the Five Great Nations—collect taxes, enjoy life, and ignore everything else—that would be easy.
But if he were aiming for that kind of trash state, he wouldn't be working himself to the bone in the first place.
By the way—
After the Shinobi Republic was founded, Yōrin did something.
He recalled all the tailed beasts Senju Hashirama had distributed to the other villages.
Black Zetsu was ecstatic.
And the other villages had no real reason to object. It was symbolic, after all—nobody thought tailed beasts were stronger than Yōrin's Amaterasu anymore.
On top of that, Yōrin had Kishō Tensei, so after extracting a tailed beast he could just revive the host—meaning there didn't even need to be a sacrifice.
Chiyo criticized him for treating life too lightly, but from a technical standpoint it was the cleanest method.
With the Shinobi Republic came a new ideology.
Because Yōrin actively promoted it, the republic developed a strong reverence—almost a worship—for science and technology.
That was beneficial for national development, even if it also came with side effects. With proper guidance, the benefits would outweigh the risks.
…
So:
Shukaku (One-Tail), Matatabi (Two-Tails), Son Gokū (Four-Tails), Kokuō (Five-Tails), Saiken (Six-Tails), Chōmei (Seven-Tails), Gyūki (Eight-Tails), Kurama (Nine-Tails)…
Out of the nine tailed beasts, Yōrin had sealed eight. Only the final one remained.
Black Zetsu was practically vibrating with excitement.
Of course, he also nursed a grudge.
If Yōrin hadn't gone too hard against the Three-Tails earlier—literally smashing it—then they could already be moving to revive "Mother."
Yōrin: "It's just a few more years. You can't even wait a few years, you unfilial brat?"
That made Black Zetsu furious.
Call him a schemer, a monster, whatever—he didn't care.
But call him unfilial, and you were punching his one true weak spot. He nearly forgot the massive gap in power and tried to go at Yōrin.
Yōrin: "Don't forget I'm your dad. If you fight me, you'll be confirming the 'unfilial' label for real."
Black Zetsu: "…."
His face went so dark it looked like he was about to turn into "Red Zetsu."
But in the end, he swallowed it.
As long as Mother could be revived… any humiliation was worth enduring.
Yōrin figured that was what the little bastard was thinking.
After teasing him a bit, Yōrin threw himself back into the heavy workload.
Right now, the Shinobi Republic had two main priorities:
1. making the Five Nations' reparations real, and
2. reorganizing and building out national territory and infrastructure.
The first was straightforward. The war had been too one-sided—Yōrin's army crushing the Five Nations was like adults stomping ants.
So what could the Five Nations do besides grovel and beg the shinobi ancestors to "please be gentle"?
They had no options. None. Zero.
The second priority was the true headache.
Because, for reasons everyone understood, the Shinobi Republic's territory was currently a chaotic mess. Its five biggest pieces were scattered across the world—centered around the Five Great Villages inside the former Five Nations.
Transportation was inconvenient. Communication was inconvenient. Administration was nightmarish.
On top of that, in the last period the Great Villages had seized chunks of territory and key trade nodes inside the former Five Nations and wanted to keep them as enclaves.
And over in the New World, along the coastline, there were scattered settlements belonging to various villages too.
If someone looked at that national map, they'd feel genuine confusion.
It was more fragmented than the Venetian Republic or the British Empire. How do you even govern that?
So to make management feasible, Yōrin planned to use land swaps and consolidation—pulling the republic's territory into one connected block as much as possible, and downgrading far-flung enclaves into trade stations.
It was a massive project.
Because everyone always wants more land—wanting even worthless scraps just because "it's ours."
If the Five Nations hadn't already been beaten into the ground, these negotiations would've been ten or a hundred times harder.
After months of drafting, they finally reached a territorial exchange agreement.
The Shinobi Republic's commercial stations and industries across the Five Nations would remain untouched.
Any land already occupied by the Shinobi Republic inside the Five Nations would be returned.
In exchange, centered on the Land of Rain, the republic would merge the Lands of Grass, Waterfall, River, and Bird—plus specific ceded border regions from the Five Nations—into the new, unified territory of the Shinobi Republic.
After consolidation, the Shinobi Republic would sit in the core of the shinobi world. Its land area wouldn't be smaller than any of the Five Nations.
The pros and cons were obvious.
Pros: central location, easy trade routes, easy military movement.
Cons: surrounded on all sides—if things went wrong, it could be "gangbanged by all nations."
…
Of course, with the Shinobi Republic's strength, it wasn't afraid of that.
And of course, the "six powers standing side by side" situation wouldn't last long anyway.
Once the Shinobi Republic finished integrating resources and training enough administrators, it could swallow the world.
In fact, it already was.
Grass and Waterfall were easy—those villages had been smashed earlier. Without shinobi protection, the states were defenseless even against bandits and rogue-nin.
So when the Shinobi Republic announced it would fold these regions into its governance, the locals basically cried with relief:
"Thank heaven! Someone is finally going to manage us!"
Rain was even easier—years earlier, the Akatsuki had already used the Rinnegan to "manage" the top brass. One order, and the old leadership simply retired.
The people living on the newly ceded border lands of the Five Nations were also strangely calm.
After all, the Warring States era had ended only about fifty years ago—plenty of people still remembered borders changing overnight.
Many border-region elders had been "citizens of Fire today, citizens of Wind tomorrow, citizens of Earth the day after."
Expecting deep national loyalty from them was unrealistic.
If a stronger state came along, they could be that state's people. Fine.
The real trouble spot was the Land of Bird.
(The Land of River was barely an issue: huge, sparsely developed, and in canon it's basically the default "secret base / battlefield" backdrop. It lay down and stayed down.)
But Bird was different.
Bird had an active sovereign.
Even if that sovereign was weak and his military power was laughable—canon Bird was basically "poor countryside with nothing"—it was still a sovereign state.
How could the great powers close their doors, negotiate among themselves, and sell Bird like a commodity without its consent?
The Bird daimyo, Ōwashi, immediately protested.
Bird declared strong opposition. And nearby small states like the Land of Fields and the Land of Frost—fearful of the Shinobi Republic's aggressive expansion—also voiced support for Bird.
And just like that, a "small" diplomatic problem landed on Yōrin's desk.