Chapter 220 Naruto's Doubts
The battlefield, having just witnessed a fierce battle, was now bathed in the light of dawn. The once lush forest, after yesterday's bloody fighting, was a scene of utter devastation.
Morning mist clung to the canyon like a shroud. Broken lightning blades were embedded in the remains of giant cedar trees on the battlefield, the residual lightning chakra still flickering faintly, scorching the bark with charred spiral patterns.
The land, washed clean by the torrential rain three days prior, was once again stained dark brown, and blood had congealed into translucent amber in the ravines.
A crow's claws dug into the empty eye sockets of a Konoha ninja. This Chunin's throat had been completely severed by a ninja sword, and his broken trachea was crawling with milky-white maggots. In his
dying moments, he clutched half of a Cloud Village headband, the metal edge deeply embedded in his hand bones—perhaps the last trophy left to the world by an enemy before his neck was snapped.
Neji chased away the crows, laid his companion's body flat, and waved to the group that came to collect the remains.
The stream carried the scroll covered in sealing talismans eastward, blood and foam coalescing in the eddies to form grotesque faces. Downstream in the shallows, the charred body of a Cloud Village Jonin knelt in the water, seven still-burning explosive kunai embedded in his back. His hands remained in the "Never" seal, usually the second to last in Lightning Release ninjutsu, but what ninjutsu he intended to use remained a mystery forever.
A crater tens of meters in diameter lay riddled with honeycomb-like holes—the result of hundreds of explosive tags detonating simultaneously.
Ribs blown away by the shockwave lodged obliquely in the cracks, half a tattered green vest hanging from it. A severed hand clung desperately to a crevice, its fingernails stuffed with blue and white strips of cloth—the hand of a Cloud Village ninja who had tried to shield himself from the explosion.
A soft rustling of paper came from the pile of decaying leaves. A gentle breeze blew, revealing the scene below. At the bottom, the Konoha Chunin's eyes were still open, his pupils reflecting the Cloud Village headband melted by the flames. Molten metal droplets slowly slid down the enemy's distorted mask.
The wind swept through the metallic thorns of senbon needles, emitting a mournful sound like a shakuhachi.
In the center of the battlefield, the Konoha Special Jonin, his chest pierced by Lightning Release: False Darkness, still stood upright. His spine was impaled in the scorched earth by lightning-struck wooden nails. His left hand remained in a hand seal,
and the earth spear extending from his right fingertips formed a precise symmetry with the enemy's heart. Sasuke struggled to separate the body of a Konoha ninja wearing a Konoha headband, who was entangled with a Cloud Village ninja, from his opponent. This Konoha Chunin, with his abdomen pierced, had used his last breath to plunge a kunai into his enemy's chest. The two died entangled in this way.
Sasuke laid the body flat, closed the eyes, and signaled to the morgue team that had arrived from Konoha to preserve the remains properly so they could be taken back to Konoha for burial later.
"Naruto, don't just stand there. We need to collect our comrades' bodies and bring them back to Konoha before noon," Neji said softly, approaching Naruto.
"Neji, is this war?" Naruto stood up, his lips pressed tightly together. After a moment, he managed to speak with difficulty, but after taking only two steps, his foot suddenly slipped.
Naruto staggered backward, his heel crushing half a rib. The stench of decay suddenly became thick and sticky, like snakes crawling into his nostrils and coiling around his stomach. He covered his mouth tightly, the whimpers leaking from between his fingers startling the crows pecking at brains.
Two different styles of headbands gleamed coldly amidst the pile of corpses. The Konoha ninja at the very top, lying face up, had a kunai with cloud patterns etched into his right eye socket.
"Ugh!" Sour water mixed with the leftover instant noodles he'd had as a midnight snack before setting off splattered onto the scorched earth burned by lightning. Naruto's trembling fingertips sank into the mud, touching something wet and stringy—half of an intestine wrapped with explosive tags was hanging from the gap in a corpse's leg armor.
Sasuke's kunai suddenly appeared in front of him, the tip of the blade slicing away the bluish-purple organ.
"Don't move around," Sasuke glanced around, "Stepping on an explosive tag trap could be troublesome."
"Are you alright?" Neji patted Naruto's back, asking with concern.
Naruto looked up sharply, his azure pupils bursting with bloodshot veins: "Why...why did they tear people to pieces?!"
His scream startled the crows pecking at the mangled corpse hanging from a tree branch twenty meters away. The flock scattered at the sound, and black blood trickled from the severed neck of the headless torso.
"Whether these people are our comrades or enemies, whose fathers are they, whose sons are they? Their families should be waiting for them, but now they're all dead here!" Naruto roared, his voice filled with rage.
"You're right, but this is war." Sasuke glanced at his completely emotional friend, shook his head, and said, "Our teacher said that war is a continuation of politics. As long as there are dirty politicians trading their interests in this world, war will never stop."
Before Sasuke could finish speaking, he suddenly saw Naruto rush towards a collapsed earthen wall.
Naruto was digging through the collapsed wall with his bare hands, trying to drag a wounded Cloud Village soldier whose legs were trapped under the wall out.
Neji's expression suddenly changed drastically. He stepped forward to stop Naruto, urgently reminding him, "Are you crazy? He has explosive tags hidden in his sleeve!"
"But he's still alive!" Naruto's face glowed with a golden light in the early morning sun. "Hold on!"
He haphazardly wrapped medical bandages around the wounded man's still-bleeding wound, completely oblivious to the man's left hand gradually gathering chakra.
The dull thud of a kunai cutting through flesh and the simultaneous explosion of lightning, Sasuke coldly pulled out the purple lightning piercing Naruto's heart. The cold blade reflected Naruto's frozen expression, who had only been pulled away by Neji and had only suffered an arm injury. "This is what you wanted to save."
"I…" Naruto's left arm, which had been cut, slowly recovered after a puff of smoke. After Neji put him down, Naruto collapsed to the ground again, muttering repeatedly, "Why is this happening? I wanted to save him."
"Sensei was right, the ninja system in this world is seriously ill." Neji couldn't help but say at this moment.
At this moment, inside the sealed space, Naruto looked up at the Nine-Tails behind the sealed gate.
The Nine-Tails, contrary to its usual sleeping posture, sat up and looked down at Naruto.
"Kid, stop overthinking. I can feel your negative emotions; they're keeping me awake." Kurama spoke after a moment of silence.
"Sorry, Brother Kurama," Naruto said apologetically. "And thank you for the battle earlier."
"Hmph, I just didn't want my Jinchuriki to die so humiliatingly," Kurama sneered.
"Kurama, tell me, why must chakra be used in war, as a weapon for mutual slaughter?" Naruto suddenly sighed and asked.
Kurama's gaze sharpened, his thoughts drifting back in time. He remembered a fool, just like the boy before him, who had once asked him a similar question: why, when the Sage of Six Paths founded Ninjutsu with the intention of making chakra a bond between people, allowing for mutual understanding, did chakra end up as a weapon for mutual slaughter?
Back then, Kurama (the Nine-Tails) lived a carefree life, eating, sleeping, and beating up Shukaku whenever he was unhappy. Therefore, he couldn't answer the question posed by that boy.
But thousands of years later, facing Naruto's same question, Kurama recalled his millennia of experiences and found he still couldn't answer.
"I don't know," Kurama said solemnly. "In my long lifespan, I've witnessed countless instances of humans killing each other. You humans always say we tailed beasts are the embodiment of calamity, but what I've seen over these thousands of years is humans spending countless hours and effort to convert chakra into more powerful ninjutsu in order to increase the efficiency of slaughtering their own kind."
It must be said that Naruto now is very much like that boy from back then; they are both kind-hearted, and also both… naive.
"Is there really no way to make everyone give up war?" Naruto murmured to himself.
"Even powerful figures like Hashirama Senju, the First Hokage of your village, and Madara Uchiha couldn't completely solve this problem. Although they brought temporary peace, the flames of war in the ninja world reignited after their departure," Kurama said. "You humans are such a strange race."
Hearing this, Naruto fell silent again. After a while, Naruto left the sealed space without saying a word.
"Brother? Naruto? Hey? Are you alright?" Deidara waved his hand repeatedly in front of Naruto.
"Brother Deidara." Naruto snapped out of his daze and greeted him wearily, realizing he was on Deidara's flying clay bird. "This is..."
"Hey, Uchiha brat, you didn't seem to be in a good mood, so I asked you to take me back to the village first," Deidara said.
"Um, thanks," Naruto forced a smile and said.
"Why are you being so polite with me!" Deidara slapped Naruto's shoulder forcefully. "By the way, bro, you saw my performance last night, right? Wasn't it amazing!"
Deidara's mention of it only brought back vivid images of the horrific deaths of the enemies engulfed in the explosions Deidara created.
"Big brother, do you remember how many people you killed yesterday?" Naruto asked, his voice trembling.
"Who knows?" Deidara shrugged. "Anyway, they were all enemies. Being part of my art, they died without regrets."
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(End of Chapter)