Blackstone pushed through the crowd and ran west, looking back as he went.
Chisen was still standing there.
Amid the chaotic crowd, before the collapsing mountain walls, beneath the noise of more than twenty thousand people, he stood motionless, like a blade planted in the mud.
The mountain walls continued tilting inward.
They moved slowly, but nothing could stop them. That was the power of Earth Release Ninjutsu-not an explosion, but a displacement. Hollow out the base of an entire mountain wall and let its own weight bring it down. Twelve Jonin had activated it simultaneously, each responsible for a section of the wall, their coordination flawless. This was no spur-of-the-moment ambush. It was a massacre calculated in advance, rehearsed over and over, as precise as clockwork.
Blackstone suddenly understood why the reconnaissance team had been unconscious. Chisen hadn't done it. Someone else had. Chisen hadn't needed to do anything. He only needed to stand here, let the Allied Forces see him, let them pursue him, and draw their main force-no, not just the vanguard, but everyone-into this basin.
It was a trap.
It had been from the start.
Outside the basin's western entrance, the Allied Forces' central army was assembling.
Rasa stood on a small hillside, watching the vanguard file into the basin. He hadn't lowered the binoculars in his hands once. The fog inside was too thick for him to see far, but he could just make out the rear of the vanguard still outside the western entrance, writhing across the ground like a snake's tail.
"Where's the vanguard now?" He lowered his binoculars and asked the messenger beside him.
"The main body of the vanguard has reached the basin's middle section. Lord Blackstone, the vanguard commander, is currently just west of the center. The reconnaissance team reported