Seeing that the other three still didn't understand, the Third Hokage felt both reassured and irritated.
Reassured because his intellectual advantage was still as overwhelming as ever. No one could threaten him.
Irritated because no one could understand him. It was lonely at the top.
Oh, and there was one more thing. Sarutobi Hiruzen had to personally explain his own plan, and the maliciousness hidden inside it sounded rather damaging to his upright and honorable image when it came out of his own mouth.
Fortunately, everyone here was one of his own. Saying it aloud once in a while wouldn't damage his reputation.
The Third Hokage pulled out the intelligence Danzo had provided and pointed to a few lines in it.
"Look here. The original members of this so-called study group were all publicly acknowledged within the Uchiha clan as the most talentless genin, the dead-last types who were considered unlikely to awaken their eyes."
"They were the first beneficiaries to awaken their Sharingan. Judging from what happened afterward, those beneficiaries obediently passed the method on to the children of the upper ranks."
Then he pointed to the following lines and continued, "After that, the names on the awakening list are mostly the children of the upper ranks, but there are still quite a few Uchiha from the lower level."
"I don't need to touch this study group itself. I only need to pull away all those low-level Uchiha who already awakened. Tell me—will the children of the upper-level Uchiha then pass what they've learned on to the other low-level Uchiha children?"
The Third Hokage's eyes were no longer warm.
He gave the answer coldly himself.
"No. The overwhelming majority won't."
"The Uchiha clan is not of one mind. Their upper ranks are highly guarded against the lower ranks. We can confirm that from how few ninjutsu lower-level Uchiha shinobi are able to learn."
"Of course, the Uchiha clan has never lacked for oddballs. There will definitely be a very small number willing to be generous. In that case, I'll simply pull them away too, one by one, until the lower-level Uchiha can't learn anything at all."
"How many upper-level Uchiha are there, really? Even if all of their children awaken, how many more Sharingan would that amount to compared to two months ago?"
Shimura Danzo felt as if a great light had suddenly shone before his eyes. A huge problem that had seemed impossible to approach at all was completely resolved by Sarutobi Hiruzen with a single order.
He laughed and said, "Good. That way the Uchiha upper ranks will even help us on their own and send all those newly awakened Sharingan onto the battlefield."
"Good, good, good. Send them all to the Kirigakure front. Those are the enemies Uchiha shinobi have the hardest time dealing with."
"Sending them all to the Kirigakure front would be too obvious. Move some of them to the Land of Rain front too. That place isn't exactly comfortable either."
Once the broad shape of the plan had taken form, adding conspiracies came very naturally to Danzo. In the blink of an eye, he had already thought up two malicious additions.
As expected of Sarutobi Hiruzen's closest comrade and most reliable assistant.
After an emergency discussion among Konoha's upper F4, the Third Hokage launched a second round of mobilization. But this time, he did not designate any names specifically.
A few days later, he saw with satisfaction that the list submitted by Uchiha Fugaku included almost all of the old study group members.
This had been strongly recommended by elders like Uchiha Setsuna and Uchiha Shihou. After meeting fierce opposition from Uchiha Yuichiro and Uchiha Ryunosuke, Uchiha Fugaku made the final decision himself.
In his view, since the upper ranks had already mastered all the secrets behind awakening the Sharingan, there was no longer any need to keep desperately protecting these low-talent genin who were practically destined never to advance to two-tomoe Sharingan anyway.
Since the eight squad leaders like Uchiha Shigenobu were leaving, their positions as leaders were naturally removed as well. That allowed Uchiha Fugaku to appoint new captains and take complete control of the entire study group.
So he simply went with the flow and handed the whole thing over to the Hokage.
And so those pitiful genin were dispatched to the Land of Hot Water and the Land of Rain.
After hearing the full story, Uchiha Yoru showed no surprise at all.
From the very beginning, he had known that even old man Nobutada together with elders Yuichiro and Ryunosuke would never be able to protect the study group.
Because the threat did not come only from within the clan.
It also came from the Third Hokage in the village.
Once Sarutobi Hiruzen and Uchiha Fugaku had reached a tacit understanding, that became an irresistible tide.
What could the two clan elders possibly do against that?
At most, they could hold on to their own children.
Uchiha Yoru looked around and asked, "Momoko, Kazuki, and Rinka all got sent to the Land of Rain?"
Uchiha Shigenobu answered, "Only Kazuki went to the Land of Rain. He's rolling around in mud every day now. Honestly, he has it even worse than we do."
"As for Momoko and Rinka… both of them got married."
Uchiha Yoru was stunned.
"Huh?"
Miwa Masayo was stunned too.
"Nya?"
"No, wait…" Uchiha Yoru was completely dumbfounded. He almost suspected he had misheard. "Uchiha Momoko is only eighteen, and Rinka just turned seventeen. If they were civilians, then sure, that would already count as a late marriage."
"But they're shinobi. And they're Uchiha shinobi who awakened their eyes. How did they suddenly end up married?"
Uchiha Kazushi spread his hands helplessly and said, "Yoru-brother, you really didn't know?"
"It's exactly because they're female Uchiha shinobi who awakened their eyes that they got married so quickly."
Uchiha Yoru slammed fist into palm and cursed in sudden understanding, "What the hell, the upper ranks and main line are still doing that bloodline optimization nonsense? That stuff should've been thrown into the garbage heap long ago."
Awakening one's eyes was proof of the purity of an Uchiha's bloodline. Naturally, the children born from female shinobi who had awakened their Sharingan would be regarded as descendants with even purer blood, and therefore more likely to awaken their eyes and inherit bloodline power.
That sort of horse-breeding, dog-breeding logic was widespread in the Uchiha clan.
The Hyuga were even worse. Marriage between cousins from the main family and branch-related bloodlines was commonplace.
There were already few female Uchiha shinobi to begin with. Female Uchiha who awakened their eyes were rarer still. So even if they came from the lower ranks, once they awakened, the upper ranks would eagerly pursue them. It was common for them to retire quickly, marry, and produce children.
Even an outstanding female shinobi like Uchiha Mikoto—despite awakening the three-tomoe Sharingan—had still been targeted early by Uchiha Fugaku, retiring and marrying barely into her twenties.
At first glance, this latest blow looked like a total wipeout for the study group, but in reality, all the girls had stayed behind in Konoha.
They were hot commodities among those who had awakened their eyes.
At a time like this, there was no way the clan head would let them leave.
Looking around now, among the 103 living beings present, 102 were bachelors of one size or another.
Only Miwa Masayo, this one cat, was the sole female.
Faced with that social reality, even Uchiha Yoru could only sigh inwardly.
Damn it.
Even the heroes of Liangshan Marsh had never had a team this pure.
He could only hope that once his subordinates grew stronger in the future, the group he led wouldn't become a pure monk squad forever.
After settling his mood, Uchiha Yoru clapped his hands to draw everyone's attention, then said in a loud voice, "Since we've all gathered here on the Land of Hot Water front, let's simply stop splitting up altogether. We'll live together, train together, claim missions together, and then fight Kirigakure shinobi together."
The Uchiha genin immediately broke into happy cheers.
Although they had only been trained by Uchiha Yoru for a little over a month, each one of them had already had their hearts planted full of suggestion seeds by him.
This kind of high-intensity training for one month was easily worth an entire year under normal circumstances.
Little by little, parts of Uchiha Yoru's own worldview had seeped into the minds of these genin through the repeated activation of those suggestion seeds.
They had always been the lower ranks of the Uchiha clan. They were never as proud as the Uchiha who could attend clan assemblies or join the Military Police Force. As for war, they didn't hold any fanatical enthusiasm for it. On the contrary, they were rather uneasy and fearful.
That didn't mean there was something wrong with these genin.
Within the Uchiha clan, they were simply the bottom of the class. Day after day, all they ever saw and heard about was how talented everyone else was. They had long since grown used to being suppressed.
It was like being the last few students in the top class. Their scores might still easily surpass the first-place student in an average class, but because they were always ranked near the bottom, they lacked the confidence that top student from the average class would have.
On top of that, Uchiha Yoru's cowardly survivalist philosophy had already rubbed off on them.
They were genuinely afraid of war.
And now, with the person they trusted and admired the most leading them personally, how could they possibly not welcome it, not be happy?
After the cheering died down, Uchiha Shigenobu asked, "Yoru-brother, if we're all staying together, then we should have a name, right? Otherwise it's a hassle when we have to refer to ourselves to outsiders."
"That's right, Shigenobu's right."
"Should we still call ourselves the Study Group?"
"Idiot. Obviously not."
"Exactly. The clan's study group still exists. We were just kicked out. There's no way they'd let us keep using that name."
"Besides, we're on the battlefield now. We're here to fight Kirigakure shinobi. If we call ourselves something like the Study Group, that sounds way too soft. It doesn't sound impressive at all."
"Then how about the Uchiha Unit?"
"The clan head would definitely punish you hard if he heard that."
"Then how about the Ninja Crow Unit…"
One genin who had contracted a ninja crow made the suggestion, but immediately came under the vicious stares of the cat faction. He silently swallowed the rest of the sentence back down.
Perched on Uchiha Yoru's shoulder, Miwa Masayo gave a satisfied little meow-laugh. Since she was very pleased with everyone's reaction, she quietly drew back the white paw she had raised slightly toward her chest.
More than a hundred Uchiha genin argued and shouted for quite a while, but nothing came of it.
That was only natural.
Shinobi were trained mainly in combat. The overwhelming majority of them lacked cultural education.
If there was nothing inside their heads, then naturally no good name would come out of them either.
Asking this bunch—whose strongest reaction to shock was usually no more than "Impossible!"—to come up with a good name was about as realistic as asking a college student who used only one single expletive for everything to write poetry.
No chance.
Uchiha Yoru himself wasn't much better, but at least he wasn't completely illiterate. In the end, he had still memorized quite a few good essays and poems.
And here in the shinobi world, he didn't need to worry about being accused of plagiarism.
So he wracked his brains, digging through his memories for lines from powerful poems and prose, hoping to find a good name for his team.
Yes.
These 101 genin now all belonged to him.
The kind Orochimaru couldn't take away.
Very quickly, Uchiha Yoru found quite a few excellent lines in his memory, but some of them were simply too grand and majestic. He felt he himself wasn't worthy of them, and could only skip past them regretfully.
Then, as he looked at these children—the oldest no more than eighteen, the youngest only just eleven—a particular line about youth rose up in his heart.
The red sun rises at the beginning, its path bright with light.
The Yellow River bursts from hidden currents, pouring forth in vast abundance.
A hidden dragon springs from the abyss, scales and claws flying.
A young tiger roars in the valley, and a hundred beasts tremble.
A hawk tests its wings, and wind and dust spread together.
Rare flowers are newly born, brilliant and magnificent.
Out of that long sequence, the red sun was too lofty, the great river did not fit, the hidden dragon was too much, the hawk displeased him, and the strange flower sounded too delicate.
So in the end, Uchiha Yoru chose the words Tiger's Roar.
There was no need to recite the poem.
Even if he did, it would be pointless. Without the bloodline of Yanhuang, no one here would be able to feel the beauty in it anyway.
Uchiha Yoru simply gave everyone those two words, and that was enough. The entire group accepted them immediately.
That was the effect of identity.
If anyone else proposed a name, everyone would pick at it. If it wasn't absolutely perfect, it would be ridiculed until there was nothing left of it.
But if it was Yoru-brother's suggestion, then unless the problem was too glaring, who would dare stand up and oppose it?
Did they not fear getting surrounded and kicked by the rest of the group?
And besides, Tiger's Roar sounded powerful as hell.
Even if it got shortened down the usual shinobi-world way, just "Tiger" alone still sounded imposing enough.
And so the unit formed from these Uchiha genin under Uchiha Yoru began calling itself the Tiger's Roar Unit, or simply the Tiger Unit.
Now that the name had been made formal and legitimate, everyone suddenly seemed to feel as if they had something to rely on. With a central figure to lead them, the fear they felt toward the battlefield lessened a great deal as well.
After that, under Uchiha Yoru's direction, the Tiger's Roar Unit began setting up tents on the spot, building dividing walls, and marking out a section of the Konoha military camp as their own territory.
He also sent people to purchase food supplies and formally register the Tiger Unit with headquarters.
From now on, if the commanders had direct assignments, they would be delivered to the Tiger Unit itself, rather than to the smallest three-man shinobi squads or to individual shinobi.
Of course, the creation of the Tiger Unit was essentially building an independent little group inside the Konoha army.
But that wasn't taboo behavior.
On the contrary, every Konoha field commander welcomed the formation of this kind of organization, because it greatly reduced the difficulty of command.
In battle, if a commander needed to quickly mobilize a large block of force at a key moment, then giving one order to the Tiger Unit would immediately move more than a hundred shinobi.
If the recipients were instead three-man squads, then he would need to send out thirty-four separate orders just to move one hundred shinobi.
Which method was simpler and faster was obvious at a glance.
Of course, these internal sub-units could only remain sub-units.
They absolutely could not grow too large.
For example, in the more than six thousand Konoha shinobi stationed in the Land of Hot Water, Uchiha Yoru organizing 101 Uchiha genin into the Tiger's Roar Unit would be regarded as a good thing by everyone from Orochimaru all the way up to the Third Hokage.
But if he expanded the Tiger Unit to three hundred men, Orochimaru might still tolerate it, yet the Third Hokage's appreciation would almost certainly turn into deep suspicion.
If he then kept pushing his luck and expanded the Tiger Unit further, taking it up to one thousand men, that would become a direct challenge to Orochimaru.
At that point, even purely for the sake of his authority as commander, Orochimaru would not hesitate in the slightest to order the Tiger's Roar Unit dissolved and send Uchiha Yoru back to Konoha.
After that would come endless surveillance.
Being thrown into prison would be entirely possible.
They might even deliberately force him into becoming a rogue ninja, then use that as a reason to hunt him down.
It wasn't only Konoha's Third Hokage who could not tolerate such an outstanding Konoha shinobi.
Even the Uchiha clan head, Fugaku, could not tolerate such an outstanding clansman.
This kind of small battlefield unit was not a rare example among the great villages.
The Sand Village's Puppet Corps and the Stone Village's Demolition Corps were both successful examples. Their scale exceeded a thousand men and they had become elite units within their own villages.
The most important reason those two could grow to that level was that the puppeteers had been created by the Second Kazekage, while the demolition shinobi had been created by the Second Tsuchikage. They existed directly under the command of the highest leader of their respective villages.
Whether they later won glory on the battlefield was actually not the key condition.
If a sub-unit achieved dazzling battlefield success without being under the Kage's direct command, then that success itself often became the fuse that led to its forced breakup.
As Uchiha Yoru supervised the tent construction, all kinds of random thoughts naturally drifted through his mind.
But perhaps because of his recent breakthrough, his mentality felt strangely young at the moment. From the bottom of his heart, a little impulse to try something rose up anyway.
Of course, Uchiha Yoru was not actually a young man.
That tiny impulse was quickly suppressed.
[Stay calm, stay calm. Controlling the Tiger Unit is only for the sake of controlling the Uchiha. Controlling the Uchiha is only for the sake of gathering resources. My one and only goal is cultivation. Cultivation brings longevity.]
[Uchiha Yoru, your goal is not to conquer the ninja world. Not conquest. Not conquest.]
[But… it kind of does sound fun… bah!]
...
The establishment of the Tiger Unit caused almost no ripple at all.
At this moment, the biggest matter was Kirigakure's massive advance. From top to bottom, every Konoha shinobi was tensely watching the enemy.
Although Uchiha Yoru had brought back the intelligence early enough to buy Konoha plenty of advance time, the follow-up reconnaissance efforts went very badly.
Kirigakure had never produced dazzling results in its previous two wars.
But because the Kirigakure forces came by fleet, they held absolute initiative in the early stage of war. They could decide where to land and where to begin fighting, while Konoha shinobi could only respond passively.
And even passive defense demanded considerable sacrifice from Konoha's side before it could be achieved.
Konoha shinobi simply did not have enough manpower to line every stretch of coastline in the Land of Hot Water. All they could do was continuously send out scouts to track the Kirigakure fleet's position, then adjust the position of their own main force, trying as much as possible to reduce the amount of time Kirigakure held first strike initiative.
But the sea was the absolute home field of Water Release and Ice Release.
Any battle fought at sea placed Kirigakure shinobi, who specialized in Water Release, in a position of overwhelming advantage.
Moreover, Konoha shinobi were isolated on the sea, while Kirigakure shinobi had the fleet at their backs, able to receive supplies and reinforcements at any moment. That only magnified their advantage even further.
During the intelligence phase alone, Konoha losses were usually more than ten times those of Kirigakure.
If luck was bad, the ratio could even spike to fifteen to one.
The fortunate thing was that Kumogakure, though it had not declared war on Konoha, was just as nervous about Kirigakure's massive advance.
After urgent communication between Orochimaru and Dodai, the northern stretch of the eastern coastline of the Land of Hot Water was handed over to Kumogakure for defense. That greatly reduced the pressure on Konoha's forces.
Because a common enemy had arrived in force, Kumo and Konoha had no choice but to huddle together temporarily.
A communication channel was established between the two sides, not especially smooth, but workable enough. Intelligence sharing was unreliable as always, but at least it let their shinobi maintain enough restraint that when they ran into each other at sea, they didn't immediately try to kill one another. That alone prevented a large amount of unnecessary reconnaissance losses.
After all these measures, the Konoha forces finally managed to maintain track of the Kirigakure fleet.
But the intelligence they received only left Orochimaru more puzzled than before.
After confirming the accuracy of the reports over and over again, and still failing to make sense of it, Orochimaru finally voiced his doubt to his staff officer.
"Nara Shikaku, the Kirigakure fleet has remained stopped beside this uninhabited island for more than two full days now. Is there something on that island?"
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