Chapter 190: Cracks in the White Fang
"I know. We cannot simply leave this matter as it stands."
Hiruzen Sarutobi had finally managed to force a semblance of composure back into his posture. He sat heavily at his desk, the wood groaning under his weight. "Let us hold a funeral for Stelle first. Once the mourning period is over, we will go to war again."
"As long as you have made your decision." Danzo turned on his heel, his cane tapping sharply against the floorboards as he walked toward the door.
"Danzo!"
Hiruzen called out to him, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register. "My words just now... they were spoken in haste, without thinking."
Stelle's overwhelming strength had made every single one of them lose their vigilance. They had grown too comfortable, too reliant on her invincibility. This time, they were all dead wrong.
Hiruzen slowly picked up the bamboo hat—the very symbol of the Hokage's absolute power—and carried it over to a nearby cabinet. His hands trembled slightly as he placed it inside, locking it away with painstaking caution.
The Hokage of Konoha were all cursed with short lives; none seemed to survive long after taking office. Looking at the empty space on his desk, he decided it was better not to reclaim the position just yet. The weight of the hat felt too much like blood on his hands.
Outside the heavy oak door, Sakumo Hatake paused. He had been just about to knock, but Danzo's parting words froze him in place.
As the Captain of the Anbu and the Supreme Commander of the Land of Wind front, Sakumo possessed the highest security clearance. He had the absolute right to review all intelligence concerning the sacrifice of the Fourth Hokage.
He didn't wait for Danzo to exit. Sakumo vanished in a blur of motion, arriving at the Intelligence Department at top speed. Bypassing the usual protocols, he stood directly before the Yamanaka clan head and demanded the classified document—a scroll that only a select few could open using a highly specific sequence of hand seals.
The intelligence analysis laid out on the parchment was crystal clear, cutting through his mind like a kunai.
The Fourth Hokage had left the safety of the village and rushed straight to the Land of Lightning battlefield. And she had done so entirely because of the urgent intel he had sent back to Konoha.
Upon arriving in the Land of Lightning, she had instantly realized the discrepancy. The intel from the Land of Wind was a fatal error. It was a trap. Yet, to prevent the elite Konoha troops stationed in the Land of Lightning from being utterly slaughtered by the ambush, she had stepped willingly into the center of the encirclement.
The later sections of the report were a mess. The handwriting was frantic, no longer neat, with dark ink stains blurring the characters where the scribe's tears had fallen. Between those smeared lines, Sakumo could only visualize the horrifying scene of her standing alone, a solitary figure struggling against an endless, suffocating tide of tens of thousands of enemy shinobi.
When his eyes reached the final piece of intelligence at the bottom of the scroll, Sakumo's pupils constricted to pinpricks.
Due to the sudden, violent flare-up of her old injuries, the Fourth Hokage had lost consciousness on the battlefield. In that vulnerable moment, her heart had been pierced straight through by the Third Raikage. Then, in her final breath, to prevent her body and its secrets from falling into enemy hands, she had forcibly activated a Chakra self-detonation.
Sakumo slowly rolled the scroll back up. He sealed it, placed it back on the desk, and walked out of the Intelligence Department without uttering a single syllable to the Yamanaka head.
Was it because of his intelligence error?
Was it because she had gone out of her way to save his insignificant life back then?
He, Sakumo Hatake, the legendary White Fang. He was the Anbu Captain. He was the Hokage's direct, personal guard. He should have been the one to die protecting her. Instead, he was breathing, and because of his failure, the Fourth Hokage was dead.
He returned to his empty home purely on instinct. Pushing the door open, he stood in the hallway and looked up. There, hanging perfectly straight on the wall, was the short blade.
It had been forged from the exact same block of samurai steel as the long sword he currently carried on his back.
It was a personal gift from the Fourth Hokage.
Sakumo reached up, his fingers numb, and took the short blade down from its mount. He gripped the hilt and slowly unsheathed it.
The snow-bright edge of the metal caught the dim light of the room, reflecting his cold, stern, and entirely hollow features. His vision gradually began to blur, the sharp lines of the steel swimming in his sight.
He had sworn a blood oath of absolute loyalty. He had promised to always stand before the Fourth Hokage, to be her shield, to protect her even if it meant having his own body torn apart in battle.
He had believed in that conviction so firmly that it had become the core of his soul.
Yet, as her sworn guard, his own actions had directly caused the death of the Kage he was meant to protect.
How utterly ridiculous.
He had taken his own convictions and crushed them into dust with his own two hands.
With a hollow, metallic clatter, the short blade slipped from his loose grip and struck the wooden floorboards.
At this exact moment, deep, irreparable cracks appeared in the White Fang of Konoha.
A few days later, the funeral of the Fourth Hokage proceeded exactly as scheduled.
Because she had died in the heart of enemy territory and detonated her own Chakra, absolutely no remains were found. The heavy wooden coffin lowered into the earth contained only a few of the simple items she had used daily. It was nothing more than a cenotaph, an empty shell for the grieving village to mourn over.
Strangely enough, on the exact day the Fourth Hokage fell, Konoha had been battered by gale-force winds and torrential, freezing rain. The wind that night had wailed through the streets like a dying animal, snapping the thick trunks of the large landscaping trees in half. The days that followed had been drowned in a continuous, miserable drizzle.
But today, for her burial, the rain had completely stopped.
The azure sky above the village was painfully clean and bright, stretching out endlessly without a single cloud in sight. Brilliant, golden sunlight poured down over the entire cemetery, casting a warm, gentle glow on the thousands of people who had come to attend the funeral.
It was as if, even in her passing, she simply couldn't bear to let anyone suffer the chill of the rain for her sake.
Standing at the very front of the crowd, mere inches from the polished stone of the monument, was Minato Namikaze. As Ida Stelle's direct disciple, he stood perfectly straight, his posture rigid. But his arms hung stiffly at his sides, his hands clenched so tightly into fists that his knuckles were bone-white.
In his usually bright, warm azure eyes, a thick, impenetrable layer of ice had formed. He had frozen all of his overwhelming grief deep beneath this calm, stoic exterior.
Beside him, Hiruzen was mechanically reciting a long, somber eulogy, his voice echoing across the silent grounds.
The area surrounding the tombstone was packed tight. It was a dense, suffocating sea of black clothing. In addition to the thousands of active-duty Ninjas attending the funeral, there were countless ordinary villagers spilling out past the cemetery gates.
They hadn't been ordered to come. They had organized themselves entirely spontaneously, closing their shops and leaving their homes to attend this final farewell.
Among all the Kage who had ever ruled Konoha, perhaps only Hashirama Senju himself had been more beloved than Ida Stelle.
During her brief but blindingly bright reign, the entire Land of Fire had flourished under Konoha's protection. She had aggressively promoted new technology and advanced agriculture. She had slashed taxes, allowing the common people to finally live and work in genuine peace.
Although she lacked the boisterous, approachable warmth of the First Hokage, she had brought absolute hope to the downtrodden commoners of the Land of Fire. Her reputation among the civilian populace was entirely unmatched.
Not a single mourner spoke. No one wailed.
Everyone just stared silently at the brand-new, sharply carved characters on the tombstone. The atmosphere pressing down on the cemetery was so suffocatingly heavy it was almost impossible to draw a full breath. Even the brilliant, warm sunlight completely failed to penetrate the sheer weight of their collective despair.
Suddenly, the sharp sound of hurried, disorganized footsteps shattered the absolute silence.
Hiruko, who had practically killed himself rushing back from the distant Land of Water battlefield, burst violently through the back of the crowd. He was gasping for air, his clothes torn and soaked in sweat. When his bloodshot eyes finally locked onto the name carved into the stone, the very last fragile thread of his hope snapped.
He stumbled backward, his boots catching on someone's foot. He lost his balance completely and rolled clumsily across the dirt path before scrambling frantically back to his feet.
"This isn't true... I don't believe it." Hiruko's voice cracked, high and desperate. "The Fourth Hokage couldn't have died. She absolutely couldn't have died...!"
No one else could possibly understand what the Fourth Hokage meant to a man as cowardly, low-esteemed, and historically pathetic as Hiruko. She had been his anchor.
Having received the battlefield transmission far too late, and now suddenly facing the reality of her funeral, his mind fractured. He couldn't maintain even a shred of calm. He lunged forward, rushing blindly toward the tombstone completely out of control.
Just as he was about to shove his way past the inner circle of mourners, a pale hand shot out.
Orochimaru's fingers clamped down hard onto Hiruko's shoulder. The Snake Sannin used a terrifying, obvious force to physically pin the frantic man in place, his grip digging painfully into bone.
"Hiruko," Orochimaru hissed, his voice dangerously soft but laced with a tremor he couldn't quite hide. "Everyone here is just as devastated as you are. But please, restrain your emotions. This is the Fourth Hokage's funeral. No matter how much you cannot accept reality, do not disturb her peace."
Hiruko instantly stopped struggling. His knees buckled slightly, and his head hung low. His shoulders began to shake violently, his chest heaving as he sobbed silently into the dirt.
A few rows back, a small child being held in her father's arms shifted. She looked to be only about two years old, clutching a small, slightly crushed bouquet of white flowers. She gazed blankly at the weeping adults surrounding her.
She didn't understand the heavy atmosphere. She didn't know what death meant. Blinking her large eyes, she asked in a bright, innocent, childish voice, "Daddy, didn't you say I should give these flowers to Hokage-sama? Where is Hokage-sama? I really want to give them to her myself. I like her the most, most, most. When I grow up, I want to be a great Ninja just like Hokage-sama."
That innocent, bright voice acted like a blade, slicing cleanly through the thick tension and striking the absolute softest, most vulnerable part of everyone's hearts.
The dam broke. The hundreds of people who had been desperately holding back their grief could no longer endure the pressure. A wave of whimpering, choked sobs rippled through the massive crowd.
They tried so hard to keep their voices down, terrified of being disrespectful, but they simply couldn't help it. Grown men and hardened veterans could only cover their mouths tightly with both hands, forcing themselves to swallow their wails.
This was the Fourth Hokage's funeral. They couldn't be loud. They couldn't disturb her rest.
They had to let her sleep well.
At the front of the crowd, Minato Namikaze bit down on his lower lip so hard that the metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth. He refused to allow himself to make a single sound. His jaw locked tight, his teeth grinding together with an audible creak, as hot, uncontrollable tears finally spilled over his frozen azure eyes and tracked down his cheeks.
It turned out that what Master had said to him that day really were her final words.
She had already made the absolute resolution to die for the sake of protecting Konoha. Thus, she had treated her departure to the battlefield as a final, permanent farewell.
She had never expected to come back.
She had carefully arranged everything for him. She had paved his path, secured his future, and protected his life. But she hadn't arranged a single thing for herself.
'Master...'
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