Next, it was time to sort through the intelligence...
Amid the howling gale, the ancient trees rushing backward before his eyes seemed to blur into afterimages, forming an unbroken wall of phantom trees. Chiba became a faint silhouette, streaking through the primeval forest at his utmost speed.
And the direction he was heading was the path he had taken earlier.
Yes, at this very moment, he was racing back as fast as he could toward where he had come from—the place where he had originally believed fate would unfold, where Iwa's Higure had set up the Earth Clone.
After he decided to save Hirohiko and Yukina, Rin briefly told him how Hirohiko and Yukina had fallen into danger.
From that brief account, Chiba had roughly grasped what had happened.
After separating from Minato Namikaze, Minato Squad, Hirohiko, and Yukina had traveled smoothly. With Hirohiko's Sharingan and Yukina's Byakugan keeping watch, they could often detect danger hundreds of meters ahead and prepare before reaching it. Though they had not encountered any Iwa troops or ninja, they had discovered several concealed traps, avoiding considerable danger in advance, greatly increasing their pace and saving a great deal of time.
Everything had originally been going smoothly. With Hirohiko and Yukina joining them as powerful reinforcements, whether it was Kakashi, Obito, Rin, Hirohiko, or Yukina, they had all been optimistic about completing the mission—and completing it well ahead of schedule.
The sooner Kannabi Bridge was destroyed, the sooner the village could escape danger, and the scales of victory in this battle would tip toward the village.
Yukina had even analyzed that the Kannabi Bridge mission was very likely the final key battle of this Ninja World War. Once the mission was completed, the war would more or less be over.
The other four had fully