After Senya left, Ōnoki immediately convened an assembly of Iwagakure's jōnin.
Several eagles appeared over Iwagakure. They cried out four times, each call lasting three seconds with five-second intervals between them. Every jōnin in the village raised their heads in unspoken accord and looked toward the center of the village, in the direction of the Iwagakure Building.
Kitsuchi, who had already returned to the Iwagakure branch of the Ninja Association, watched the eagles through the window and silently counted their cries. Before he could even take a sip of the hot tea he had just poured, he leaped straight out the window.
"It hasn't even been an hour. What exactly did Senya discuss with the old man? Why are they gathering every jōnin in the village so soon?"
"Could they be starting another war?"
Within Iwagakure, there were only two situations in which eagle cries were used to announce a meeting.
Three eagle cries, each lasting four seconds with three-second intervals between them, meant that all elite jōnin and high-ranking officials currently in the village were being summoned. Such a meeting was generally only held when the village faced an emergency.
The other was what Kitsuchi had just heard: four eagle cries, each lasting three seconds with five-second intervals between them.
This meant the village was facing an emergency and was summoning every jōnin within it, including retired shinobi whose bodies had been left disabled by injury.
Though they could ignore such a summons, this method was generally only used when the village was on the brink of war.
Since Iwagakure's founding, such a meeting had only been called at the beginning of the three Shinobi World Wars.
Though he had no idea what had happened, Kitsuchi had no time to think and immediately set off.
Thanks to the Shinobi