"The Akatsuki launched a direct assault on Iwagakure, and Tsuchikage Ōnoki died in battle!"
When Tsunade and Hiruzen Sarutobi read the intelligence report sent from Iwagakure, the looks they exchanged with each other—and with Homura Mitokado standing nearby—were full of shock and disbelief.
The report in their hands was astonishingly detailed. It even explicitly recorded that the Akatsuki leader could manipulate attraction and repulsion, and it also noted that Ōnoki had used Earth Release to physically move Iwagakure six kilometers east.
And even so, the death toll in Iwagakure had still exceeded a thousand.
"According to the spies' report, Iwagakure doesn't seem to be trying to hide the news."
"More than that, the Fourth Tsuchikage, Kitsuchi, is even preparing to send invitations to all Five Kage, inviting us to attend Ōnoki's funeral, and planning to hold a summit over the Akatsuki issue…"
Hiruzen stared blankly at the report in his hand. He had thought Uchiha Chizumi was already fierce enough, but who could have imagined there was someone in the shinobi world even more extreme?
And the moment that person made a move, he went straight for wiping out an entire village.
The most frightening part was that if Ōnoki hadn't fought to the death to protect Iwagakure, he might actually have succeeded.
"What is happening to this shinobi world?"
"How are these monstrous, out-of-spec fighters appearing one after another?"
Homura Mitokado couldn't stop wondering what exactly was wrong with the world now. He distinctly remembered that shinobi hadn't been like this before.
Even jōnin, despite possessing all sorts of destructive techniques, were still limited by their chakra. The Third Raikage fighting ten thousand Iwa ninja on the battlefield had already been enough to become legendary for years.
So why was it that ever since Uchiha Chizumi appeared, the shinobi world suddenly turned into one person versus one village every other day?
If this kept up, it was going to destroy the whole world.
"The Akatsuki…"
"The Akatsuki!"
Tsunade repeated the name to herself. She felt like the man described in the Iwagakure report was oddly familiar, but she had met too many people in her life—mostly because she had owed too many people money.
"Are we going?"
"No matter where this Akatsuki came from, the fact that they openly declared war on a village already violates the core interests of the Five Great Nations."
Hiruzen looked at Tsunade. She was the Hokage now. The real authority to decide rested with her.
There was always an unspoken understanding among the Five Great Nations.
Resources in the shinobi world were limited, and because of that, the Five Great Nations basically wouldn't allow any sixth major power to rise. The Second Great Ninja War had broken out because Hanzo of the Salamander wanted to make the Land of Rain into a sixth great power.
Now, the Akatsuki's actions had clearly trampled on that same balance.
"We're going."
"I don't care what the Akatsuki's ultimate goal is—we need more intelligence on them."
"If they pull something like this on Konoha while Chizumi isn't in the village, I'm not sure we'd do any better than Ōnoki did."
Tsunade wasn't particularly concerned with preserving the balance between the Five Great Nations. What she cared about was simple: what would happen if the Akatsuki came after Konoha?
"Um…"
"There's actually another piece of intelligence. Because of the Hokage transition, it got buried on my end."
Homura, who had barely had a presence in the room until now, finally spoke up and admitted that some special intelligence had ended up in his hands.
"According to the Konoha ninja who went to support reconstruction in the Land of Water, Chizumi already clashed with the Akatsuki once."
"They even ran into Earth Country ninja at the battlefield ruins. Based on what they learned, it seems the Land of Earth had hired the Akatsuki to assassinate Chizumi—but the attempt failed."
"So the matter between the Land of Earth and the Akatsuki may be more complicated than it looks?"
Homura handed over his report. After Tsunade and Hiruzen read it, the two of them could only stare at each other.
According to the Konoha team sent to help the Land of Water rebuild, the Land of Earth and the Akatsuki had seemed practically inseparable.
If that was the case, then how had they suddenly gone from cooperating to open war?
No one could possibly have guessed that the war Iwagakure suffered so brutally had started because someone pocketed 250 million. After Kitsuchi took over, he and Deidara had made very sure the Iwa shinobi understood exactly which money could be touched and which absolutely could not.
Both Deidara and Kitsuchi felt that Ōnoki had died in a truly infuriating way.
At one point, Ōnoki's bounty alone had been pushed to over 700 million on the black market—the equivalent of more than twenty Asumas.
If you said the Akatsuki were greedy, then why did they leave Ōnoki's corpse to Iwagakure?
But if you said they weren't greedy, then Ōnoki's death really had been absurdly unfair.
In truth, Kakuzu had already been grieving hard back at the Akatsuki base. He had never seriously thought about killing one of the Five Kage before, so he had never really paid attention to Ōnoki's bounty.
On the second day after returning to the Akatsuki base, Kakuzu had gone out to collect a bounty and, out of idle curiosity, looked up Ōnoki's price—only to immediately abandon the job in his hands and run back to beg Pain to go raid Iwagakure again.
That was seven hundred million!
A full seven hundred million!
People joked about "missing out on a hundred million," but Kakuzu had literally missed out on seven hundred million.
That seven hundred million had been right there in front of him—so close he could have touched it—and yet somehow he still hadn't taken it.
"Honestly, this time we were far too high-profile. That doesn't fit the Akatsuki's usual style."
Konan let out a sigh. She could already imagine it—the entire shinobi world was probably in an uproar over the Akatsuki now.
"No. Even if we'd stayed low-profile, the moment news spread that the Akatsuki had fought Uchiha Chizumi, the entire shinobi world would have noticed us anyway."
"All we've done is reveal part of our strength a little earlier."
"And for the Akatsuki, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If we want to recruit new members, a strong reputation helps."
Pain shook his head. Konan's reasoning made sense.
He just didn't want to hear it.
For no deeper reason than this: after fighting at Iwagakure, the bitterness in Nagato's heart had eased somewhat.
As for what bitterness?
Naturally, it was the humiliation of the entire Akatsuki mobilizing, only to be thoroughly crushed by Uchiha Chizumi.
"By the way, what about that Uchiha who calls himself Madara? And Black Zetsu and White Zetsu?"
"The news from the Land of Earth has already spread across the entire shinobi world. Even if they took the most remote route possible, they should have heard something by now, right?"
Pain looked at Kakuzu and Sasori, hoping one of them knew something about Obito and the Zetsu.
But Kakuzu and Sasori only looked at each other—and both shook their heads.