"Move quickly!"
On the other side of the battlefield, the moment Yuji and Hanzo had engaged, Yahiko led the three of them in pulling Akatsuki's members back from the killing ground.
Akatsuki had originally considered coordinating with Yuji's group of three to deal with the Hidden Rain and Konoha forces together. But the moment those three had acted, what they unleashed was on a completely different scale from anything Akatsuki could safely operate alongside.
Whether it was the salamander's toxic cloud, the blood mist Yuji had deployed, or Rasa's gold dust sweeping entire formations off the earth, every technique being used covered enormous areas without distinction. A single misstep and Akatsuki members would be buried or poisoned alongside the enemy.
Not to mention Sasori's two Kage puppets currently tearing through the Hidden Rain formations with absolute freedom.
This battlefield was no longer one they could safely involve themselves in.
"Take everyone and go first," Yahiko said, glancing up at the surging blood tide crashing across the high ground as he spoke to Konan.
He could not leave yet.
Because as Akatsuki's leader, he needed to negotiate with the Fourth Kazekage about the Land of Rain's future. And now Hanzo was dead. He had a strong feeling that without any unexpected development, the Land of Rain was about to fall into the Sand Village's hands.
The Kazekage had almost certainly orchestrated all of this, using the conflict between Akatsuki, and the Hidden Rain Village as the stage for exactly this outcome. The moment those three had appeared, it had been clear they had come specifically for Hanzo.
"I will stay with you," Nagato said, standing beside Yahiko.
"Yes," Yahiko nodded.
Looking at the situation before them, these three Sand Village figures could not be called anything but extraordinary. To have eliminated Hanzo in such a short span of time spoke for itself. But even so, the Hidden Rain Village had assembled an enormous force here. Even Kage-level fighters, when facing an overwhelming numerical disadvantage, could find themselves in genuine danger.
"Scatter!"
Up on the high ground, the moment Yuji unleashed the blood tide, the more capable Rain ninja immediately broke in every direction. But the Blood Release technique's coverage area and speed were simply too great. Many of the formation's members could not clear it in time and were scattered and overwhelmed by the surging blood water. Their formation collapsed in an instant.
Swoosh.
Yuji extended his hand, from within the blood tide that had not yet receded, a vast number of blood projectiles immediately rose and suspended themselves in the air. Then they scattered outward in every direction simultaneously.
At the same time, a Rain ninja had seized the opening and rushed in close, blade already moving in a slashing arc clearly aimed at a killing blow. The weapon swept through the air in a series of afterimages suggesting some form of sword-based ninjutsu.
Yuji activated his eye technique, his gaze sweeping across the field. Several Rain ninja were frozen in place instantly.
On Sasori's side, he was using the Third Kazekage puppet in coordination with Rasa's magnetic bloodline limit to let the iron sand achieve total battlefield dominance. Meanwhile the Third Raikage had become a streak of lightning cutting left and right through the Hidden Rain formations, harvesting lives with every pass.
Given the Third Raikage's particular combat nature, the puppet Sasori had crafted from his remains had been constructed using materials specifically chosen for the purpose, and the puppet's structural hardness alone far surpassed anything else in Sasori's collection. This was currently his proudest work.
"Too slow," Sasori said coldly, his eyes scanning the field around him.
The Third Kazekage's iron sand and Rasa's gold dust both covered enormous areas and carried significant destructive power. But this was the Land of Rain, the enemy's home ground. And the Hidden Rain Village's numbers were genuinely impressive. Their ranged techniques could mark targets consistently, but the kill rate was not absolute. Many Hidden Rain fighters of genuine ability were successfully using taijutsu and ninjutsu to evade the magnetic attacks.
Without another word, Sasori opened the mechanism in his abdomen and expelled a massive network of chakra threads, simultaneously unsealing several scrolls.
Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets.
In an instant, over a hundred red-robed puppet figures connected to him through chakra threads and launched themselves through the air toward the Hidden Rain formations.
His two hands continued controlling the Third Kazekage and the Third Raikage simultaneously, while the threads fired from his abdomen did not require separate conscious control. The core within his body could reflect his individual will through the chakra threads to all hundred puppets simultaneously, operating them with the same natural fluency as his own hands.
This particular secret technique carried the destructive potential to dismantle a small nation's military force on its own.
Looking across the entire ninja world, no one else could achieve this level of puppet mastery.
Crash.
Beneath the dark and pressing sky, over a hundred crimson figures wielding an array of weapon mechanisms advanced like an unstoppable wave, crushing and breaking through the Hidden Rain forces.
Rasa pulled a pill from his pouch and swallowed it, restoring his chakra and state. Then he swept his arm outward and a dense wall of gold dust rose instantly, blocking an enormous surging water technique that had been launched by a coordinated cluster of Hidden Rain ninja. The combined force of their Water Release was genuinely terrifying.
He glanced up at the high ground and felt a quiet relief. Hanzo had been eliminated by Lord Kazekage in the shortest possible time. If Hanzo had remained in the fight, the situation would have become significantly more dangerous for all three of them.
Their strength was not ordinary. But the Hidden Rain Village's numbers were not small either. A single fighter of unremarkable individual strength meant nothing, but when dozens coordinated their ninjutsu together the combined force multiplied dramatically, reaching a level that even he could not afford to dismiss.
Defending against these large-scale coordinated techniques was also draining his chakra at an alarming rate.
Fortunately, Lord Kazekage had given him that soldier pill earlier.
In this battle, his role had tilted toward supporting Sasori rather than independent offense. Because in pure terms of destructive output across the battlefield, Sasori with two Kage puppets in hand was clearly operating above him.
"The village's main force has already reached the Hidden Rain Village," Rasa said, exhaling a slow breath as he calculated the situation.
The three of them had come here as the advance strike team.
And the Sand Village's true military force had already broken through the Land of Rain's defensive perimeter and was driving straight toward the Hidden Rain Village itself.
Hanzo had drawn the Hidden Rain Village's main army here for this ambush, which meant the Hidden Rain Village's defenses back home were now at their most depleted.
Bang, bang, bang.
Danzo, who had been retreating from the battlefield at speed, was moving through the forest with a small Root escort unit, driving straight toward the Land of Fire.
His prediction had proven correct.
The rapidly developing Sand Village, riding its economic and military ascendance, had indeed been unable to suppress its ambitions. It had moved against the Land of Rain.
He simply had not anticipated that the Fourth Kazekage would move this quickly. And he had not anticipated that the Kazekage had already established coordination with someone inside Akatsuki, preparing to deal with Hanzo from both directions simultaneously.
This made Danzo unable to stop himself from cursing Hanzo inwardly.
That fool had not detected any of this beforehand. He had faced the Sand Village's advance with absolutely no preparation whatsoever.
"Looking back across this entire Great Ninja War, the Fourth Kazekage is young, but his methods are extraordinarily ruthless. He used the war's circumstances to calculate every village's position and played them all against each other.
Now that the Great Ninja War has ended, every major village including Konoha needs time to recover and rebuild. None of them have the strength to oppose the Sand Village in this condition. He chose precisely this window to move against the Land of Rain. The Kazekage had planned this long in advance."
"Careful. Methodical. Patient."
"This person's ambitions are enormous. Before long, he will become the greatest threat any village faces."
Danzo narrowed his eyes and drew a slow breath.
Something had to be done to restrain the Sand Village's rise. If left unchecked, the balance of the ninja world would shift entirely.
Fortunately, after the long period of preparation that had been quietly underway, Konoha had successfully reverse-engineered the Sand Village's pharmaceutical resources and completed the research into producing their own equivalent medicines. It had simply not been made public yet.
Once Konoha's counterfeit pharmaceuticals entered the market, they would deal a significant blow to the Sand Village's economy and industrial dominance. Furthermore, when the Sand Village faced Konoha directly, they would not hold the same overwhelming advantage they had enjoyed against other villages.
The Sand Village's only current advantage was that their losses throughout the Great Ninja War had been the smallest of any village. In terms of total military manpower, they held a meaningful numerical superiority over the others.
The small group moved at high speed through the forest.
Then Danzo's eyes narrowed and he stopped.
He raised his hand simultaneously, signaling the escort unit to be on alert.
"Come out," Danzo said, his eyes going cold as he fixed his gaze on the forest ahead.
"Worthy of a senior figure. Your alertness is genuinely impressive."
The words were followed by quiet laughter drifting down from a large tree some dozen or so meters ahead. Then a figure stepped out slowly from behind the trunk.
From the surrounding forest, one shadow after another emerged in sequence.
Every single one of them wore a Sand Village headband.
Twenty people in total.
This Sand Village unit had clearly come here specifically to intercept him.
What alarmed Danzo was that his group's retreat route had been kept extraordinarily secret and their movements had been as careful as possible throughout. How had this Sand Village team found them? And how had they arrived here ahead of them to set up the ambush?
"Leader of Konoha's Root organization, Shimura Danzo," Shimizu said from his position on the branch above, looking down at the Konoha group below with a calm, elevated gaze.
"Shimizu," Danzo said, identifying him immediately.
Konoha had been paying careful and unusual attention to the Sand Village's intelligence for some time now and had been gathering it personally throughout. From the very beginning of the Great Ninja War, Shimizu had been the Sand Village army's field commander and a key figure in everything that followed.
"The Sand Village and Konoha signed a ceasefire agreement. Are you trying to break that balance?"
Danzo said it coldly.
"The first one to break that balance was Konoha, was it not?" Shimizu replied with quiet sarcasm. "Your Root operatives were on the battlefield just now moving against our Kazekage. And does the Third Hokage know about your little private arrangement with the Hidden Rain Village?"
Danzo said nothing.
"If we are going to speak plainly, it was Konoha that violated the spirit of the agreement first."
As Shimizu spoke, one of his eyes suddenly began to shift to red. The familiar tomoe pattern appeared, a shape the Konoha ninja present recognized immediately despite themselves.
A Sharingan.
Danzo's expression changed.
Even the masked Konoha ninja around him could not suppress startled sounds.
And it was not just Shimizu. Every Sand Village ninja surrounding them had their eyes wide open.
All of them.
Every single one bearing a Sharingan.
The Konoha escort unit felt a collective chill move across their skin.
"As expected," Danzo said in a low voice. "The Fourth Kazekage really did go this far."
But the number of eyes present was somewhat beyond what he had calculated. By any reasonable accounting, only a handful of Uchiha had ever been captured by the Sand Village. Even accounting for transplants, the number of recipients should not have been this large.
Damn the Uchiha clan.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, Danzo's eyes grew dark.
"Lord Commander, allow us to deliver our greetings on behalf of Lord Kazekage," Shimizu said, his voice entirely conversational. "Many years ago, you sent an operative to the Sand Village to carry out an assassination attempt against our Kazekage. And there was also that particular visit from Orochimaru."
"Our Kazekage said something once. To receive without returning is improper etiquette. Since you showed us such consideration, it would be rude of us not to respond in kind."
Shimizu said it all with complete composure.
Then he moved his hand into a stance.
Swoosh.
Every Sand Village ninja in the surrounding positions launched themselves simultaneously toward the Konoha escort unit.
"Get Lord Danzo out first!"
The Konoha escort commander shouted the order and immediately stepped forward with several of the unit's most capable fighters to meet the incoming attackers head on.
...
STONES 💎
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