As Sunagakure and Iwagakure withdrew their forces, the war that began in early Konoha Year 35—set in motion by the Shinobi Demigod Hanzō of the Salamander—and eventually escalated into a four-nation free-for-all, finally drew to a close in early Konoha Year 37, when Black Flash Gojo Yoru exposed his space-time bloodline.
The war lasted exactly two years.
In those two years, countless people died.
Freshly graduated, unknown genin. Chūnin and special jōnin with hard-won experience and recognized skill. Mainline ace combatants—the backbone of the Five Great Villages. Even famous legends who stood at the very top of the pyramid of the shinobi world, along with Jinchūriki.
Every time an ace or a "big name" fell, it was a major wartime event.
But news like that spread through secret channels and special means, circulating mostly within shinobi circles. Even many civilians inside the hidden villages barely knew any details.
As for ordinary citizens who didn't live near military bases—almost nobody knew anything.
To them, it was simply: "A war is happening in the Land of Rain. The villages involved sent troops to the front or diverted forces to other borders. Commission fees are higher than ever, and even then, it's hard to get a squad to take your request."
Merchants couldn't cross the Land of Rain and had to take long detours—costing far more time and money.
As for what actually happened on the battlefield? People in crowded cities, or those with influence, might have heard fragments. Those living in remote areas knew nothing.
Only after the war ended—when newspapers finally went all-in—did ordinary people with no chakra, and regular villagers inside the hidden villages, gradually learn what had happened across those two years: which major events occurred, which famous figures died, and who "won."
For days afterward, newspapers of every size made obscene profits.
And that war—started in the Land of Rain and involving three great powers—was officially labeled by the public as:
The Second Shinobi World War.
Although Hanzō had initiated it, the Land of Rain was the first to withdraw, proving that a small country's rebellion had failed. The shinobi continent remained a four-legged table of great powers, while small nations were nothing but blood bags—never destined to rise.
Even the Land of Fire, though on the "winning" side, had only won by successfully defending. There was no true victor.
The Land of Rain at least offered the "Demigod's promise"—never again.
The Land of Wind and the Land of Earth withdrew without paying a single coin of compensation.
The Second Shinobi World War was, in the end, just three great nations burning each other's national strength—while the distant Land of Lightning and the overseas Land of Water quietly benefited.
That was also why, in the original history, the Third Shinobi World War followed only a few years later.
In this war, some people became famous only through death—while the ones who killed them rose to fame.
Chiyo's son and daughter-in-law, for example: inside Sunagakure they may have been household names, but across the continent and overseas they weren't universally known.
Only when the newspapers published investigations—revealing their background, strength, and achievements—did the world truly understand what kind of duo they had been.
And so, the man who instant-killed them—Konoha's White Fang, Hatake Sakumo—became the war's second great "winner."
In the original timeline, the "glorious losers" would have included the Sannin, and the enemy shinobi who killed Katō Dan.
But now, the Sarutobi team gained fame without the "Sannin" title ever being born.
And Katō Dan—who was supposed to be found, ambushed, and left with his organs spilling out near the war's end—survived this Second War thanks to the butterfly effect caused by Gojo Yoru.
Using the super-S-rank technique Spirit Transformation, the Yin-Release assassin Katō Dan killed many Iwa shinobi and made the papers as well.
He wasn't a commander, so his reputation didn't match the White Fang, the Sarutobi team, or even Danzo the Hokage's aide—he simply reinforced the name "Konoha ace combatant."
But the biggest winner of the war was, naturally, Gojo Yoru—who ended the Second Shinobi World War early just by exposing his space-time bloodline.
His achievements were so extreme that even enemy newspapers couldn't smear him—reporting the facts honestly sounded like shameless hype.
His name spread to every corner of the shinobi world: shinobi with supernatural power, ordinary people in remote villages, elders who had lived since the Warring States era, and children playing ninja games—everyone knew his title, his name, and his deeds.
At eleven, he stepped onto the battlefield, and his first enemy was already a pinnacle-tier monster. He became the only person in decades to injure the "First Poison of the Shinobi World."
Then he instant-killed Sunagakure's intelligence king along with fifty-four high-level fighters, becoming Konoha's youngest jōnin and commander.
At twelve, he displayed overwhelming domination—using assassination to counter assassination—slaughtering one of the strongest assassination corps in the world until they feared the night, and was recognized as one of Konoha's trump cards.
That same year, he defeated Hanzō one-on-one and declared the end of the Demigod's era—before he was even an adult, he had already become the unquestioned benchmark of the next generation.
At that age, with that record—no novelist would dare write it.
People thought that was the limit, that no one would come close for decades.
And yet it still wasn't his limit.
Not long after Year 37 began, he killed the Five-Tails Jinchūriki—one of the Nine Great "Demonic Beasts"—and exposed the "shinobi miracle" known as the space-time bloodline. That was the real reason Sunagakure and Iwagakure withdrew.
Even if people didn't understand what "space-time" truly meant, the newspaper descriptions were enough to make them shiver.
A bloodline that can convert chakra into space-time nature transformation, merge the body into space, and ignore any attack—even Dust Release, the rule-power of decomposition that "eliminates all bloodlines"—is an innate, unbeatable defense.
Coating weapons in space-time transformation creates "space slashes" that ignore mass. And the ninjutsu side becomes spatial annihilation—an instant-death power even stronger than Dust Release—so absolute that even summons can't flee back to the summoning realm.
A miracle no one had ever seen.
That is why Gojo Yoru—miracle incarnate—could accomplish such feats at such an age, leaving Sunagakure and Iwagakure without an answer and forcing them to withdraw early, ending a war that otherwise would have consumed countless more lives.
And so the words Black Flash, Shinobi World's #1 Godspeed, top-tier assassin, space-time bloodline, miracle incarnate, space-time shinobi—echoed across every inhabited place on the continent and overseas, becoming the hottest topic in the world.
This four-nation Second Shinobi World War became, absurdly, a one-man stage for Gojo Yoru.
Tourists and commissions flooded toward the Land of Fire and Konoha.
Just like the postwar "Savior of the Shinobi World" Uzumaki Naruto would one day make Konoha overcrowded, anyone with the means to travel or commission missions wanted to see the "miracle incarnate" with their own eyes.
Nobles and the wealthy tried to buy an audience by hiring him.
Those without money somehow learned the Gojo household's location and gathered outside the walls, shouting his name and titles.
The Gojo house itself became a tourist attraction.
Helpless, Gojo Yoru temporarily moved into the First Hokage's estate to live with Uzumaki Kushina.
As for the nobles' requests—without Yoru even speaking, Hiruzen rejected them all.
Yoru wasn't a zoo animal. In Hiruzen's eyes, he had become an even more important strategic deterrent and "national asset" than Kushina.
If Yoru weren't still underage, Hiruzen would probably have urged him to marry early and produce heirs.
Even if his descendants ended up like the Senju—where even the First Hokage's own grandchildren couldn't awaken Wood Release—the village could still gamble on "skipping generations."
After all, Konoha already had bloodlines like that.
As long as Yoru left a bloodline, a second space-time shinobi would eventually be born. That was Konoha's future.
And because Yoru's weakness was sensing—something the entire world now knew—assassination and poisoning were the most realistic ways to kill him.
Until he fixed that weakness, Hiruzen would not assign him any missions.
And beyond sensing, Yoru also had to make medical ninjutsu one of his strong points.
Once those two weaknesses were patched, he would become the shinobi world's invincible being—the next Shinobi God.
That was the advantage of being "Hokage lineage."
If Yoru weren't Orochimaru's student—and Orochimaru weren't Hiruzen's most prized student—Hiruzen would absolutely feel threatened, seeing Yoru as an uncontrollable ticking bomb. That's the sickness every ruler suffers when their strength is insufficient.
He might even hint to Danzo, tacitly allowing "little moves" against Yoru—then dump all the blame on his old friend.
Hiruzen would rather erase the miracle incarnate than let Konoha house a bomb even more uncontrollable than a Nine-Tails Jinchūriki.
But because Yoru was Hokage-lineage, it was completely different.
As Hiruzen's "teacher-grandfather" and student's student, that age and generational gap benefited Hiruzen, not harmed him.
With Yoru around, Hiruzen no longer needed to fear the Uchiha, no longer needed to cede power to Danzo. He had three brilliant students, plus two trump cards—space-time shinobi and Nine-Tails Jinchūriki. His rule would be untouchable.
When he grew old and died, the Hokage seat would pass to student and student's student. His children and the Sarutobi clan would be protected by them for decades.
In the entire world, after Orochimaru, Hiruzen was the person who wanted Gojo Yoru to grow up the most.
"Yoru, you bastard—I'll choke you!"
Inside the First Hokage's estate, Kushina grabbed Yoru by the neck and shook his head hard.
Yoru played along, rolling his eyes and sticking his tongue out. Kushina's hair floated up with anger as she complained bitterly:
"I told you I'm a Jinchūriki, and you still hid something this huge from me! 'Miracle incarnate,' 'space-time shinobi'—you're a liar, a villain!"
…
"I wanted to tell you too," Yoru said helplessly, "but walls have ears. Space-time bloodline was my biggest secret. Before I grew strong, I wouldn't have told anyone—not even if my parents were alive. Orochimaru-sensei only found out by accident."
"And it's thanks to how well I hid it that I survived this time. Otherwise… you might never have seen me again."
Then, copying the pose of the Shinobi World's #1 "big brother," he tapped her forehead with two fingers, voice and gaze gentle:
"Forgive me, Kushina. First time, and last time."
"Hmph—your words!" Kushina huffed. "Fine. Since what you said makes some sense, I'll… reluctantly forgive you."
She wasn't truly unreasonable. What hurt was learning that Orochimaru knew Yoru's secret while she didn't—and that both of them had kept her in the dark.
Yoru's blunt tenderness extinguished her anger instantly. She crossed her arms anyway, acting tsundere so he wouldn't think she was too easy.
Of course, Yoru wasn't about to tell her the real reason he feared her knowing:
If Kushina knew, then the Nine-Tails would know. And if Kurama told other tailed beasts, and they told their Jinchūriki, and the Jinchūriki reported upward… it would be the same as announcing it to the whole world.
Instead, Yoru grinned and teased:
"Tomato-na, tsundere's out of fashion. You're supposed to act magnanimous, pat my shoulder, and say: 'I'll forgive you out of sheer generosity.'"
Her eyes lit up. "Then do it again."
"Dream on."
Yoru tugged her cheeks lightly and said, "But as an apology—once the heat dies down, I'll take you out on missions."
"Really?" Her eyes shone—then she remembered something and turned serious. "Forget it. The papers say your bounty broke a hundred million ryō. Hokage-sama said the whole world is full of people who want you dead. Wait until your sensing and medical ninjutsu both improve."
Yoru stroked her hair and smiled. "It's because you're here that I feel safe. Otherwise I wouldn't dare sleep in Konoha."
Kushina understood at once, pride swelling. "Rely on me all you want! With me here, assassins and poison won't succeed!"
Yoru wasn't joking.
If he didn't have Kushina, he'd sleep uneasily—leave only a shadow clone in Konoha, while his real body teleported somewhere else to sleep.
Everyone is defenseless when they sleep.
Even with reflexes like spider-sense, an attack might still be too fast to dodge—especially with Black and White Zetsu existing: a shinobi-world version of Toji, able to slip through barriers, merge with earth and plants, and even use Wood Release.
One wooden spike could kill Yoru.
And for a hundred million ryō, plenty of idiots would attempt poison or assassination.
Kushina's sensory eye couldn't detect White Zetsu yet—she needed Kurama's "good-evil sensing" to reach that realm—but she could still catch plenty of "stealth experts" and serve as Yoru's third eye for now.
And her Vitality Healing could regenerate even a body split in two; detoxifying was trivial.
With Kushina, Yoru didn't fear assassination or poison.
So he finally placed a normal-chakra Flying Thunder God mark on her.
On Kushina's wrist was an infinity symbol shaped like an ouroboros—like a special bracelet.
She complained she preferred the "tomato with the character 夜" design that represented the two of them, but Yoru refused.
"…So our gap is really this huge…"
On Hokage Rock, while cleaning as part of a task, Namikaze Minato stared at the jam-packed main street and muttered to himself.
After reading the papers and learning Yoru possessed a space-time bloodline, Minato felt shock unlike anyone else.
As the man most likely to become the Third Flying Thunder God user, nobody understood better than Minato how high-dimensional and terrifying space-time truly was.
It looked like something everyone "touched," but in truth it was not their world at all.
Flying Thunder God was only an alternate form of Summoning.
Attack-type or defense-type space-time abilities weren't just unseen—they weren't even imaginable.
And now someone existed who could convert chakra into space-time transformation and turn those unimaginable powers into reality.
No wonder the world called Gojo Yoru "miracle incarnate."
Because only a miracle could explain it.
If Minato had once thought he could chase him… that thought died here.
They weren't even in the same dimension anymore.
For the first time, Minato truly understood that the history books' praise of the First Hokage might not have been exaggeration.
There really are people who can, by themselves, turn everyone else into background characters—so untouchable that the entire world doesn't even know how to oppose them, and dares not offend them.
Hashirama's era had Madara as a rival.
This era—what could possibly counter space-time?
"Konan-sama… this space-time… is it the same 'space-time' you told me about?"
In a small town in the Land of Birds, one of Rain's neighbors, people were also passionately debating the Second Shinobi World War—again, centered on Gojo Yoru and the space-time bloodline.
Nagato, now wandering with Konan and looting graves, heard the term and couldn't help asking.
"Probably," Konan said.
"But… space-time is tied to sealing, right? Only storage scrolls and summoning involve it. Can something like that really exist as a bloodline limit?"
Nagato—already a super genius under Konan's teaching—grew more confused:
"The shinobi world has Yin-Yang and the Five Elements—seven nature transformations. You said secret arts are usually special extensions of Yang Release or Yin Release. Black Lightning is a Lightning extension, which proves all seven can develop secret arts."
"And a bloodline limit is two transformations fused, creating a new attribute that still relates to Yin-Yang and the Five Elements, yet isn't any of them."
"Bloodline Elimination is three fused."
"So what does 'space-time' connect to? What fuses into it?"
Konan sighed. "I don't know. Everything I know is self-taught. If you want answers, get stronger and figure it out yourself."
"Yes."
Nagato nodded hard, and etched the name "Gojo Yoru" into his mind.
He didn't notice Konan's lips curling upward.
To the watching White Zetsu and Tobi, it looked like Konan was smiling proudly at Nagato's curiosity.
In truth, Konan was simply overflowing with joy.
So Yoru-sama was that incredible.
"Miracle incarnate" really was the perfect title.
She wondered when Yoru-sama would master the technique called Spirit Transformation and sneak over to see her. She wanted to report her progress—both in raising Nagato and in her own growth.
"Sensei… is the guy in the paper the one who defeated you?"
In Amegakure's tower, Yahiko—already on the shinobi path—was reading the paper too, then asked Hanzō with a puzzled look.
"Is he really as terrifying as they say?"
"Yes. And he's even worse than the papers describe."
Hanzō stared at the front-page cover featuring Gojo Yoru. His eyes were complicated; a self-mocking smile tugged at his face.
"I thought his chakra-hiding was a special Earth-Release extension—some secret art. I never imagined it was actually merging into space… meaning that at eleven—maybe even earlier—he already had that invincible defense."
"I fought him so many times and couldn't force him to reveal it. Looks like there's still a big gap between me and Ōnoki."
Yahiko grew serious. "To me, and to everyone in the Land of Rain, you're stronger and greater than the Third Tsuchikage. You're just different types."
"Heh. Brat. I don't need your comfort."
Hanzō laughed and scolded him, then looked at him with pity.
"The ones who truly need comfort are you kids."
"If that brat hadn't existed, you might've inherited my legacy and become one of the new era's 'peaks.'"
"But now your generation has produced someone who may become the strongest shinobi in history. I hope you won't be crushed so hard you lose your will to move forward."
Yahiko's eyes widened. "Strongest in history? Isn't that exaggerated?"
"Whether it is or isn't—when you grow up, you'll understand."
Yahiko pressed on. "Then what's stronger—his bloodline, or the Wood Release that calmed the age of chaos?"
Hanzō answered decisively:
"Don't underestimate the value of the word 'miracle.' Across all history, his ability is the most special and the strongest. Even the Shinobi God's Wood Release can't compare."
"And don't be fooled by history books. What was strong wasn't 'Wood Release.' It was Hashirama Senju."
"Without Hashirama's chakra, Wood Release is just a Water-Earth bloodline. To me it isn't a threat at all—it would even boost my Fire Release."
"Wood Release is called the power that calmed chaos only because it belonged to the Shinobi God."
"With that level of chakra, any jutsu in his hands would be world-ending. If Hashirama had Dust Release, then 'bloodline elimination' truly would have lived up to the name."
"In this world, every bloodline has counters. That's the rule."
"But now… that rule has been broken."
Hanzō's gaze sharpened.
"Even Dust Release—three transformations fused into Bloodline Elimination—can't harm him at all."
"To defeat that brat, you have to kill him before he merges into space… unless you can also merge into space, twist space, or shatter space."
"Otherwise, his space-time bloodline is unsolvable."
"We all understand space-time—storage scrolls, summoning, various techniques. That's why we know space-time doesn't belong to Yin-Yang or the Five Elements, and can't be fused from them. It's an independent attribute."
"When someone can convert chakra into that attribute… they are a miracle incarnate."
"Elemental counters don't apply. Only space-time can fight space-time."
He continued:
"Right now the only known objects containing space-time power are space-time scrolls."
"The only techniques that truly involve space-time are Summoning, Heavenly Transfer, and Konoha's Flying Thunder God and Edo Tensei—four techniques, all support-type."
"Unless a once-in-history genius uses chakra and seals to pull space-time power into a combat-grade range effect—attack and defense—then they still won't be able to hurt that brat or stop his attacks."
"So even if his chakra reserves are far below Hashirama's, he will still become the strongest shinobi in history."
Yahiko understood none of the mechanics, but felt the weight of it—awestruck.
Right now he was the definition of a frog in a well: he thought his gap with Gojo Yoru was simply "well bottom vs. well rim."
When he grew up and his worldview expanded, he'd realize he was just a large rock—bigger than pebbles and sand, sure—
But Gojo Yoru was the sky above him.