"I'm home..."
Stepping across the threshold into his house, Aoki Shigeru spotted little orange rolling all over the floor and acting cute, which coaxed a faint smile from him. "Ah-Ju, what sort of mischief are you up to now?
Seeing its young master return, little orange's eyes lit up with delight. It wiggled its chubby hindquarters and trotted over to rub affectionately against Shigeru's legs.
Having watched Shigeru grow up since infancy, little orange was exceptionally gentle with him. On several occasions when Maki and Shiraishi were away from home, it was little orange who had helped look after the young boy.
Consequently, the bond between this boy and his cat was completely seamless and incredibly close.
Yet today, even as Little Orange kept nuzzling Shigeru, its gaze remained fraught with deep anxiety, darting constantly toward Maki and Unohana Retsu.
Shigeru recognized Unohana Retsu. Not long ago, during a rotation in the Medical Department, the new head of the medical team gave a lecture to his class. Shigeru had remembered the deeply knowledgeable female Jonin ever since.
Little orange possessed highly acute instincts. For it to be this tense meant that Unohana Retsu's strength had to be formidable.
With this realization, Shigeru adopted a highly respectful demeanor and greeted both Maki and Unohana Retsu.
"Teacher Unohana..."
Looking at the polite young Shigeru before her, Unohana slowly rose to her feet and smiled gently. "Young Master Kazekage is too polite. I shall conclude my visit for today. I will take my leave now, Madam."
"Mm. Shigeru, see the teacher out."
Watching Shigeru meticulously escort her to the front door, Unohana Retsu flashed a brief smile. "Goodbye then, Young Master Kazekage."
As he watched Unohana Retsu's retreating figure, Shigeru slowly closed the door. During the process, his palms broke into a heavy sweat.
Although Unohana Retsu had not intended it, the invisible aura she naturally projected during their brief interaction had struck a trace of fear into Shigeru's heart.
"Does the Hidden Sand intend to execute the Tailed Beast capture plan entirely on its own?"
Inside Shiraishi's office, the consultations between Black Zetsu and Shiraishi had reached their final, crucial issue: the Tailed Beast capture project.
"Yes."
"Then what about Akatsuki?"
Black Zetsu's ultimate reservation lay with Akatsuki. With both Obito and Nagato on that side, bypassing them entirely to cooperate with the Hidden Sand carried immense risks.
"What I said previously was no joke. No matter what, I will personally seize the Rinnegan. As for that 'Uchiha Madara,' it will be up to you to persuade him to let Akatsuki engage in a deeper, covert cooperation with our Hidden Sand."
The moment Nagato's faction of Akatsuki began preparing to cooperate with the Hidden Stone, Shiraishi had decided to discard that particular pawn and claim the Rinnegan for himself.
Dispatching Uchiha Kaede and Deidara to join Akatsuki was precisely to prepare for the final strike. Shiraishi needed to dismantle Akatsuki in one fell swoop, and the fewer participants involved in this operation, the better.
Black Zetsu shook his head. "If you intend to seize the Rinnegan, then the 'Uchiha Madara' on the surface will never cooperate with you. At the very least, we require one of those eyes."
The Rinnegan possessed by Nagato was hailed as the eye that controlled life and death—the most sublime ocular power, an ultimate dojutsu originating from the chakra fruit of the Divine Tree.
A wielder of the Rinnegan held mastery over Yin and Yang and could manipulate at least six chakra nature transformations. Possessing extraordinary abilities, they could either be a god of creation capable of shaping worlds or a god of destruction capable of ending them.
At the same time, the Rinnegan was the sole method capable of resisting and unraveling the Infinite Tsukuyomi!
The Rinnegan was divided into three colors: purple, red, and yellow. If the possessor held two Rinnegan, they appeared without tomoe; if the possessor held a single Rinnegan, it manifested with six tomoe.
It did not share an evolutionary relationship with the Sharingan; rather, it was formed by merging the powers of Indra and Asura to draw out the Six Paths power, obtaining a completely new dojutsu that overrode the original Sharingan.
The two remained independent of each other, requiring the user to switch between them when utilizing their respective powers.
How could Shiraishi possibly pass up such a powerful bloodline limit?
In the past, he had allowed it to remain with Nagato only because his intelligence gathering and information regarding it were insufficient. Now that the timing was steadily maturing, the Rinnegan would naturally not be left in the hands of that boy Nagato.
On the flip side, Obito was executing the Infinite Tsukuyomi purely for his own selfish desires—a fact Black Zetsu saw through completely.
Currently, Obito remained wary of Nagato's strength, and since Akatsuki had not yet begun collecting the Tailed Beasts, he needed to keep Nagato around. If Shiraishi moved to seize the Rinnegan, it would ruin Obito's own plans, so why would he ever cooperate with the Hidden Sand?
Black Zetsu believed he possessed a profound grasp of human nature. Furthermore, he still needed Obito—as well as the future resurrected Uchiha Madara—to act as a check against this Kazekage, and the Rinnegan was paramount to that equation.
Thus, his bottom line was that out of Nagato's pair of Rinnegan, one had to be reserved for Obito.
Shiraishi tacitly accepted this condition. However, since both parties had established a cooperative relationship, the Hidden Sand absolutely required Zetsu to hand over all the various intelligence and pieces of information he had gathered across the ninja continent over the centuries.
Possessing unique sensory abilities, Zetsu was a singular entity in the ninja world when it came to gathering geographical and strategic intelligence.
With the help of his secret techniques, the Hidden Sand's odds of victory in the upcoming Ninja World War would skyrocket.
"I understand. I look forward to our upcoming cooperation."
Watching the traces of Zetsu fade away, a look of cold indifference surfaced on Shiraishi's face. Black Zetsu was considerably more cautious than he had anticipated, but the initiative currently rested firmly with the Hidden Sand, leaving Zetsu with very little room to maneuver.
In this current world, what Shiraishi truly needed to handle with care was the very mother Black Zetsu so desperately yearned to revive—the ultimate progenitor of the ninja world, Kaguya Otsutsuki.
This woman, who possessed all three grand dojutsu—the Byakugan, Sharingan, and Rinnegan—along with the source of all bloodline limits, might have been an existence Shiraishi had to look up to in the past.
Yet, as his own strength continued to grow, Shiraishi came to view Kaguya Otsutsuki as a sort of virus infecting this world.
Beyond her, other members of the Otsutsuki clan might also be peeping at this ninja world from the shadows.
"Truly repulsive existences..."
Shiraishi did not place absolute stock in Black Zetsu's promises. Although Zetsu had expressed a willingness to cooperate with the Hidden Sand's plan to capture the Tailed Beasts, it did not mean he would bet everything on the Sand.
At present, Akatsuki's core framework of ten members—including Orochimaru—was largely complete.
Aside from the final impending addition of Uchiha Kaede to represent the Vermilion Bird, every single remaining member was an S-rank rogue ninja from their respective villages. Zetsu maintained immense confidence in such a concentration of force.
Aside from Black Zetsu, Uchiha Kaede—whom Shiraishi had personally arranged—had finally established contact with Uchiha Obito.
Outside the Land of Rain, amidst the ceaseless downpour, Uchiha Kaede took a deep breath under his bamboo hat and slowly crossed into the borders of the Land of Rain.
The very moment his foot touched the soil, he could sense the investigative and sensory chakra interwoven into the falling rain.
Nagato, is it...
Compared to before, his sensory range had expanded to encompass the entire territory of the Land of Rain, indicating that his grasp over the nation had reached an incredibly absolute level.
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