While Tsunade, Ringo, and Pakura focused on the respective villages under their command, Rei and Konan focused solely on the Village on the Other Side.

The biggest accomplishment in the last years was the finalization of the hideout network for the village. Since the village was so far away from any form of civilization, clients could not simply walk into the village to request a mission.

The Village on the Other Side was backed up by the Biri-Biri Company and the Uzushio Trading Company but that didn't mean they could go on without having any profitable venture. Rei didn't make a village because he wanted to lose money. As such, the ninjas of the village had to earn their keep too.

Which meant missions.

Missions not only brought money but also provided an experience to the ninjas of the village. No matter how good the training of the Other-sided village was. No matter how superior its ninjas were. Without proper experience, they could still be beaten by unconventional means.

The problem was... how to get clients since the village's location sucked in that regard.

The solution was simple.

Rei and Konan simply used the Uzushio Trading Company as a middle-man. The missions were posted to the Uzushio Trading Company who was then 'supposed' to find people for hire to accomplish the task.

That was a nice and broad way of saying, 'For a price, we will hire ninjas for you.'

At the first glance, this didn't seem like a business venture that would succeed but once one really thought about it...

Since the hirer was the Uzushio Trading Company, it was hard to track who really issued the mission unless the investigator went through the company that would in most cases keep quiet because it was a part of their service as the middle-man.

After all, if somebody is assassinated and his relatives want to get revenge, they will look for the assassin, sure. But they will look for the man who paid the assassin even more. This way, the request-maker was the Uzushio Trading Company, making it harder to find the real requestor... Even an idiot would realize the company was just a middle-man, hence it was obvious the company in itself only handed the request to a ninja village and had nothing to do with it.

It was simply a waste of time trying to get revenge against the Uzushio Trading Company that acted at most as a delivery man.

This service also proved efficient when the requestor is unable to leave his town, country, residence... whatever. He can simply ask the Uzushio Trading Company representative in the nearest branch of the company to make a mission request for him.

The nobles and richer people usually send their employees or servants to do these things in their stead anyway. Hiring the Uzushio Trading Company will cost them but they have assurance the request will safely get to a ninja village. It was, after all, significantly easier to hunt down one servant on his way to request a mission than an entire company... Not to mention, nobody yet discovered that the Uzushio Trading Company used transportation seals to get valuable paperwork to the headquarters asap.

This service proved to be a very valuable part of what the Uzushio Trading Company offered to their clients. Essentially the clients didn't care if the ninja was from Konoha or Iwa. They cared only about the results.

As such, the requests that passed the initial screening by the Uzushio Trading Company ended in the Village on the Other Side, waiting to be assigned to a team.

Thanks to the extensive network of hidden outposts all over the Elemental Nations, the ninjas from the Other-sided village could teleport to any part of the world almost instantly, creating an image of mystery around them.

After the people started to realize the existence of new ninja forces, they noticed these new ninjas were simply everywhere and nobody had any idea where they came from. Needless to say, it was frustrating to no end. The other hidden villages could only speculate these ninjas belonged to the Uzushiogakure because the thing they all had in common was that they only did missions where the Uzushio Trading Company acted as the middle-man.

There were a few 'clever' people who tried to probe the situation by trying to request a mission of hunting down the merchants of the Uzushio Trading Company while using the said company as the middle-man...

Yeah... that didn't go so well.

Anyway, many took this as proof of the new unmarked ninjas being from Uzushio.

Neither Rei nor Konan actually tried to dissuade that notion. If people wanted to think their forces were from a village that didn't even exist anymore, who were they to correct them?

The ninjas from the other side, as Rei liked to call his troops, didn't wear headbands or flak jackets or anything even remotely telling they were actual ninjas. They always wore civilian clothes, ones that were heavily riddled with various seals to make them useful in combat.

The entire act of wearing a headband seemed stupid but in reality, it was not. It served as a deterrent against bandits and other ninjas. The priority for ninjas was not to fight ninjas from other nations but to finish their mission. Ninjas generally tried to do that without getting into a conflict.

Many fights were avoided simply because the attacking side saw a headband and realized that the opponents are not easy pickings and even if they are defeated, their village would surely investigate.

Rei decided the ninjas from the other side did not need that. They looked like civilians. There was no reason for anybody to attack them. And if somebody did, they were trained enough to kill their way out of the trouble. After all, only ninjas who were at the very least chunin-rank in strength could leave the village for missions. Then again, having the strength of a chunin, in the Village on the Other Side, simply meant they were eligible to get the rank of genin.

It was the entire point of attending the academy to get to that level of strength and ability. Nobody can say the academy instructors in the Village on the Other Side went easy on the kids. Sometimes, even Rei cringed at the brutality of the training and rued the day he handed the responsibility for the academy curriculum over to Konan and worse, Mei.

The kids were in no immediate threat of dying or even staying injured. The important word there was 'staying' because the curriculum was made to harm the kids in a way that would force them to improve. It was a no-brainer, really. Kids were adaptable and soaked up new knowledge like a sponge. There was a reason why so many pre-pubescent kids became legends in the Ninja world during wartime.

Konan simply got the marvelous idea to simulate that kind of environment while making it safe without telling the kids it was safe. Those who could get through it became a force to be reckoned with and those that couldn't... well, there was still the option of working for the Biri-Biri or the Uzushio Trading Company where they could still get training. It would just be a very down-graded version of what the ninjas from the other side received.

There were not many civilians in the Village on the Other Side either since most of its occupants were from ninja clans Rei and his wives collected all over the Elemental Nations. That meant, the kids of those people were raised to be a ninja from the start, and failing at the academy was taken as a sign of shame.

Sure, Rei would love to be an idealistic idiot and let kids be kids but he knew what kind of world he was sending them in once they left the academy. As such, he allowed the academy to take education from an entirely different side and focus on making the kids into capable killers. In Rei's opinion, it was better to be an accomplished killer rather than be dead, raped, or tortured.

In this manner, the forces of the Village on the Other Side started to slowly build up and the service of its ninjas was becoming more and more sought after through the Uzushio Trading Company acting as the middle-man.