Within the Kazekage's office, Shiraishi flipped through some documents and then inquired: "What is the current movement in the Land of Rain?"
"There is no movement for the time being, but the Rock Ninja Village has increased its supply of resources to Amegakure."
As the poorest nation among the Four Great Nations of the shinobi continent, the Land of Earth now had to shoulder the heavy burden of supporting the Land of Rain's finances.
Although Onoki struggled immensely to maintain this support, he understood that Akatsuki was an essential, major combat power that had to be won over.
Regarding Konoha's Impure World Reincarnation project, the other ninja villages had already caught wind of it by now. Both Kumogakure and Iwagakure demanded to join the project and share the secret technique of the Impure World Reincarnation.
Although Konoha was highly repulsed by the conduct of Kumogakure and Iwagakure, faced with the pressure of two allies, Tsunade had no choice but to compromise.
However, Konoha had conducted practical tests of the Impure World Reincarnation several times, and the results were highly unsatisfactory. The reincarnated targets, after successfully maintaining their forms for only a brief period, returned to the Pure Land once more.
With this kind of progress, let alone deploying them to the battlefield, even basic communication was extremely difficult.
The root cause of the problem lay in the cloned cellular humans, whose efficacy was greatly discounted.
Danzo's view on this matter was somewhat disdainful. He believed Tsunade was currently wasting meaningless research on cloned cellular humans. Since cellular humans were hard to use on the future battlefield, they should simply resort to using living humans as sacrifices.
Of course, using ordinary civilians directly yielded very poor results, as their chakra reserves were far too small. Therefore, Genin or Chunin possessing a reasonable amount of chakra were the most perfect experimental subjects for living sacrifices.
"Danzo is indeed an efficiency-driven person..."
It had to be said that the Danzo over on Konoha's side was truly adorable in Shiraishi's eyes right now. Driven by this absolute troublemaker, many things that had been progressing poorly suddenly became exceptionally smooth.
Of course, Shiraishi had an even more important matter to handle at present, which was hosting a joint Chunin Exams on the grandest scale in the history of the shinobi world!
After this Chunin Exams, it would probably be very difficult for the shinobi world to ever have such a grand occasion again...
Or rather, this was perhaps the final peace.
"That bastard Danzo! This guy really needs to restrain himself."
What angered Tsunade was that the entire Root's plan had quickly been exposed to the public eye. The plan to use civilian shinobi as living sacrifices to summon the legendary predecessors of Konoha had left many Konoha shinobi deeply shocked.
Although everyone spoke of the Will of Fire on ordinary days, Konoha was now a setting sun, and the exposure of such a matter instantly dealt a severe blow to morale.
In factual reality, Tsunade also understood that this matter was bound to be the work of Sunagakure's intelligence operatives within Konoha, dispersing these reports to strike at Konoha's morale ahead of the Shinobi World War.
However, compared to Danzo's petty business, Tsunade was currently more worried about the Chunin Exams invitation delivered by Suna's envoy...
There was no mistake; Sunagakure was now preparing to organize a joint Chunin Exams in the vicinity of the former Kikyo Pass. Apart from Konoha, all the ninja villages of the shinobi continent—large and small alike, including Iwagakure, Kumogakure, and Kirigakure—had been invited to participate.
This absolute boldness caused the high-ranking officials of various nations and the leaders of the ninja villages to look sideways in astonishment.
As for the hosting site, Kikyo Pass, after years of environmental improvement by Sunagakure, it had long since taken on an entirely new look, forming a bustling commercial district in the surrounding area.
"Is it to display national power as well as a powerful foundation?"
Generally speaking, the Chunin Exams served as an important occasion for major nations to observe one another's national power.
However, under the heavy atmosphere of the impending Shinobi World War, Sunagakure still insisted on hosting a joint Chunin Exam, which was clearly a reflection of displaying their strength.
Under the governance of the Fifth Kazekage, Sunagakure had become the strongest ninja village in the shinobi world over the past decade or so, while concurrently serving as the actual, true administrator of the Land of Wind.
Shiraishi, holding this dual identity, was undoubtedly the most powerful person on this continent.
Since Sunagakure seized control of the Land of Hot Water, even Kumogakure, located in the peaceful rear, had felt the threat of Sunagakure.
The two sides had been in a standoff in the north for several years, clashing countless times both openly and in the shadows. Among them, the reputation of Navy Admiral Ace had already spread throughout the shinobi world.
An Admiral who could easily defeat Hizashi Hyuga and cause various powerful figures of Kumogakure to suffer losses—and someone whom even Hagoromo Masato could not successfully take down—naturally possessed immense deterrent power in Kumogakure.
As for the Rock Ninja...
Their pressure was probably even greater than Konoha's. Not to mention their declining national power, they still had to maintain a long battle line against Sunagakure along the Qishi Mountain Range.
This mountain range could fundamentally not block Sunagakure. A few years ago, the bombardment of the puppet dragons had almost destroyed this defensive line.
Now, they barely managed to invest massive military funds to maintain it, which was nothing more than an expression of the friction between Onoki and the internal Daimyo of the Land of Earth.
Facing Sunagakure's invitation, Konoha planned to symbolically send a single Genin team. Tsunade had originally intended to send the new generation of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, but she quickly shook her head.
At this stage, the strength of the new generation's Ino-Shika-Cho would probably only cause people to look down on Konoha if they went to Sunagakure...
Right now, among the new generation, the most suitable team was precisely Team 7, composed of Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, and Sakura Haruno.
The concept of this team had been reserved during the Third Hokage's era before Tsunade took over. After Tsunade assumed the mantle of Hokage, she naturally came into contact with Uzumaki Naruto. Although the plot had been twisted to this extent, this Naruto still exerted an influence on Tsunade.
Compared to the Third Hokage's era, Tsunade had revealed Naruto's true heritage to the villagers at the beginning of this year.
"Uzumaki Naruto is not the reincarnation of the Demon Fox! On the contrary, he is a hero of the village. His parents, the Fourth Hokage and the previous Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, protected the village with their lives!"
Tsunade's resonant declaration caused Naruto to weep bitterly in Jiraiya's arms. Having grown up in loneliness since childhood, Uzumaki Naruto had always wanted to be acknowledged by others.
Naruto had already understood a portion of his heritage from Jiraiya beforehand, but hearing Tsunade make such a public announcement still caused him to weep tears of absolute joy.
This posture naturally provoked dissatisfaction from a group of conservative forces led by Danzo, but Tsunade did not care.
Konoha had reached a moment of life and death, and she had to make changes and unite all forces that could be united.
Even the Uchiha clan's rebellion, which had long been officially defined as a treasonous event, was modified to be a mere conflict of philosophies and instigation by external forces.
Tsunade took absolute care of the lives of the Uchiha brothers, even issuing stern warnings to others in the village not to use the Uchiha rebellion to provoke Sasuke.
The final member of Team 7, Sakura Haruno, was the disciple she had taken under her wing. Her chakra control was exceptionally outstanding, and she was highly suited to learn the Strength of a Hundred, making her the successor of her own legacy.
The entirety of Team 7 was the hope of Konoha's new generation. However, traveling to Sunagakure posed one highly troublesome point: Uzumaki Naruto's identity as the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki. Tsunade was deeply afraid that the Kazekage might directly seize the Jinchuriki in public.
Tsunade faintly recalled that in the past Takigakure Village incident, this Kazekage could disguise himself as Lop Nur, infiltrate Konoha, and directly seize control of the Seven-Tails from the hands of both Konoha and Kumogakure.
Konoha's Team 7 was quite a bit stronger compared to the original history, but as their leading teacher, Kakashi's current pressure was not light either, because these three were all super-problematic rookies...
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