Yuffie was hard to track in Wutai. Appart from her being a ninja, it was obvious the rest of the town was helping her elude the group. After several encounters where she managed to escape, Cloud, Barret and Red XIII managed to corner her near an inn. Even then, she only pretended to be defeated to lure them into a trap.
During the search, Cloud had another encounter with the Turks. They were Reno, Rude and Elena this time. While Elena was eager for a conflict, Reno and Rude decided to ignore the party due to, in their words, being on a vacation. They even refused to help a bunch of Shinra guards with tracking down another unknown individual who was in the area.
Eventually, the group tracked down Yuffie again, this time to a hidden room under a large bell. This is where they discovered Yuffie and Elena were captured, by none other than Don Corneo, the perverted idiot with whom Cloud has already dealt in the past. He lured the gang into another trap and then escaped towards the gigantic statues carved in the local cliff side.
It was difficult to consider Wutai a nation in Final Fantasy VII. Crisis Core made me realize that.
There was nothing left to do in Wutai, so the party returned to the Tiny Bronco and continued sailing to the north. On the shores of the northern continent, they found Bone Village, a tiny settlement built upon an arheological dig. This is where Cloud finally managed to get some information about Sephiroth’s whereabouts. The Temple of the Ancients is located to the southeast, directly opposite of Bone Village, in relation to the central continent. It is supposedly a pyramid, located in the middle of the forest, on an isolated island. In order to enter, however, one needs a keystone. The rumor is, some rich guy has it.Reno and Rude decided to initiate a truce and help Cloud and the others with saving Yuffie and Elena. Together, they searched the cliff side and soon found Corneo with the girls strapped to one of the statues. At first, he threatened their lives unless Cloud lets him go, but he did not expect Reno and Rude to be there, so his plan failed. Yuffie and Elena were finally free and Yuffie even gave back all the materia she stole.
There are several rich people Cloud knows, so this wasn’t a very useful rumor. Because of this, the party decided to find the rumored temple first and only then worry about the keystone. As described, the temple was on an island between the southern tips of the central and the eastern continent. Without the keystone, the party was unable to enter.
North of the temple, on a peninsula of the central continent, there was a lone house which Cloud already visited in the past, but there was no one home. Desperate for clues, the party visited the house again and found a man living there. As luck would have it, he used to have the required keystone, but sadly, he was “persuaded” into selling it to Dio, the manager of the Golden Saucer.
This was Cloud’s next stop.
