Drip... drip...
In the stark white hospital room, fluid dripped from the IV tube while the lines on the heart monitor pulsed rhythmically.
Outside the window, the moon hung high in the night sky, casting a cold glow across the bedside.
On the room's only bed, Tsunade slowly opened her eyes. Dazed, she turned toward the bedside and saw a mess of long white hair.
"Huff... huff..."
In the chair beside her, Jiraiya-sensei sat with his arms folded and head lowered, his eyes closed as he dozed lightly, letting out faint snores.
This guy's snores used to shake the heavens. But now...
At that thought, Tsunade's gaze turned distant, and she subconsciously reached her right hand toward him.
But in the next instant, her pupils contracted sharply. A fine chill rose through her body as her muddled consciousness gradually cleared.
Her memories began to rewind, like fish swimming upstream, rapidly bypassing scattered fragments until they reached the very head of the river.
They finally stopped at the utmost pain: flames that seemed ready to set the entire world ablaze, a soft laugh that still seemed to echo in her ears, and a panicked figure running toward her.
That was where the memory ended.
An overwhelming sense of fear surged up, followed immediately by nauseating revulsion.
Together with the pain awakening and spreading through her body, it drained the color from Tsunade's face, which had only just regained some bloodiness. She instantly bent over the side of the bed and began to retch.
"Urgh! Cough, cough!!"
Her voice was so loud that Jiraiya-sensei's body jolted. He abruptly opened his eyes and turned toward the bed.
"Tsunade!"
Seeing her retching and coughing, he hurriedly reached out and gently rubbed her back. "Slow down. Your body right now..."
But it did little good. Tsunade kept coughing.
"Cough, cough! Cough!"
It sounded as though she were going to cough up her lungs. Her coughs were incredibly hoarse, like a broken bellows, more piercing than the wind outside.
Her left hand clamped tightly around Jiraiya-sensei's palm, her somewhat long nails digging into the back of his hand.
Pain flashed through Jiraiya-sensei's eyes, but he clasped her wrist in return.
After about half a minute, the sounds of retching and coughing in the ward gradually subsided.
What replaced them was a chilling silence. They could even hear the crisp sound of water droplets hitting the floor.
"Huff!"
Jiraiya-sensei let out a breath and relaxed his facial muscles. A smile appeared on his worried face as he scratched his head and gave a foolish grin. "How do you feel now?"
Tsunade released the left hand that had been gripping Jiraiya-sensei's. In a hoarse voice, she said, "I had a dream."
"A nightmare?" Jiraiya-sensei smiled faintly and said softly, "It was only a dream."
"..." Tsunade sat upright in silence. Turning toward the window, she smiled for no apparent reason. "I dreamed that my right hand was ruined."
The exaggerated smile on Jiraiya-sensei's face froze, and he could no longer keep up his carefree act.
Just beyond the window lay bustling Konoha.
Even at night, countless lights still shone. Dim yellow streetlamps stretched through every corner of Konoha's streets like veins, illuminating the darkness.
The clamor of villagers on the busy streets stirred a humid warmth into the air, giving Konoha an entirely different kind of vitality. There was no sign at all of war's suffering.
Only the hurried figures flashing past could prove how tense the current situation was.
Yet all that beauty and liveliness belonged to the world outside the ward.
Inside, Tsunade lowered her head and stared blankly at her right arm.
The bright window glass reflected her face.
Haggard, pale, powerless, fragile...
As the finest medical Ninja in all of Konoha, perhaps even in the entire Ninja world, Tsunade could feel that the flow of Chakra through her right hand was incredibly sluggish.
Her entire arm was covered in countless tiny openings, as though punctured by needle-like thorns. They had severed the pathways through which Chakra circulated and was conducted in her arm.
It had not been a dream.
It was her reality.
Click.
Jiraiya-sensei opened the ward door, but as he stepped out, he paused and looked back at Tsunade on the bed.
Her eyes were lowered, helplessness hidden within them.
The prosperity outside the window and the suffering within it existed in the same place, yet they seemed separated by entirely different worlds.
For the first time, Jiraiya-sensei, who had always taken pride in Konoha, wished Konoha's nights were not so lively.
If it were not so bright outside, then the face reflected in the glass would be blurred, not so fragile and pale.
The unvarnished truth was simply too vivid and cruel for her right now.
"...Sigh."
Letting out a deep sigh in his heart, Jiraiya-sensei closed the ward door.
Outside was the hospital corridor, bustling with people. The lights cast a somewhat cold glow over the floor.
"Lord Jiraiya-sensei."
A female doctor walked up to Jiraiya-sensei and bowed lightly. With the respect and apology of a subordinate toward her superior, she said quietly, "I'm sorry. This is already the limit of what we can do."
"With Konoha's current level of medical ninjutsu, we can only restore Lady Tsunade's arm enough for normal movement. But the countless pathways inside her arm..."
She did not say the rest, but Jiraiya-sensei understood what she meant.
—The damage was irreversible.
In other words, from now on, Tsunade's dominant right arm could no longer conduct Chakra. Its strength was no different from an ordinary person's, perhaps only reaching the level of a samurai at most.
She could not even use the medical ninjutsu she was best at.
Jiraiya-sensei could not imagine the pain in her heart. She had already been grieving Nawaki's death, and she bore the trust of Konoha's Ninja on her shoulders. The psychological pressure she had endured lately had been immense.
And now, this...
"There's no need to say that, Dr. Muramatsu. You've done your best, and I'm grateful to you as well." Jiraiya-sensei's cheek twitched as he gave a bitter smile. "Tsunade probably understands it herself."
After all, that masked bastard's attack had not simply "severed" anything. It had used countless tiny blades of air to wildly churn through her body.
Such terrifyingly precise control and shape transformation of Wind Release Chakra meant that even though Jiraiya-sensei had relied on experience and instinct to provide emergency treatment in time, preventing that air from entering fatal areas such as her heart and brain, the damage was still beyond what surgery could reconnect or repair.
Even the Mystical Palm Technique, a high-level medical ninjutsu, could only enhance the healing ability of wounds or afflicted areas.
Even if they slowly nourished the damage bit by bit through that method, it was unlikely that she could ever fully return to her original condition. If too much Yang-natured Chakra were injected into her body, it might even damage her body's normal circulatory system.
It was like orderly threads being twisted and torn apart. Even if they were reconnected, they would become a tangled mess instead of returning to what they had been.
Perhaps the Yin Seal that Tsunade had yet to master, along with the still-theoretical Creation Rebirth: Strength of a Hundred Technique, might offer hope of repairing something so complicated and painstaking.
But now that one hand was crippled, perfecting those secret techniques was a distant prospect.
The only solution Jiraiya-sensei could think of was to seek out the Slug Sage or the Great Toad Sage.
"Our inability to heal Lady Tsunade is our incompetence and dereliction of duty." Dr. Muramatsu shook her head guiltily. "You have always been protecting us on the front lines..."
The front lines. War...
Jiraiya-sensei let out a weary breath. After waving his hand, he walked away without another word.
Tsunade had been unconscious for nearly three days. Orochimaru had already returned from Kumogakure, and the mission seemed to have been completed smoothly.
Kumogakure had suffered heavy losses and was too occupied with its own troubles. Having temporarily lost the deterrent power of the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki, with only the Two-Tails Jinchuriki who possessed that power remaining, it could no longer interfere in the coming war.
However...
Orochimaru's complexion and condition did not look good either.
Especially after hearing that Tsunade had been injured by someone wearing a blank mask, his already pale and sickly face had become dreadful to behold.
Yet no matter how Jiraiya-sensei questioned him, he remained silent.
"One bad thing after another lately."
Jiraiya-sensei leaned against the dimly lit stairwell and looked up at the bright full moon outside the window.
In a daze, he seemed to see that brilliant slash again, along with the flaming tornado raised with a casual wave of a hand.
And Tsunade's terrified expression whenever that person was mentioned.
Was it merely... a gift for their first meeting?
A ninjutsu without hand signs?
Or something else?
That masked bastard had spoken as though he had merely passed by and casually tossed them a greeting gift.
"Tch!"
Jiraiya-sensei irritably lowered his head and punched the wall beside him. His expression was obscured in shadow as he said in a low voice, "What a guy. He disgusts me from the bottom of my heart!"
"The next time we meet, I'll definitely tear off your mask and see what kind of ugly face lies beneath it to create such sinister, despicable ninjutsu!"
"Definitely! Definitely!!"
At the same time, at the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Hot Water, Yun Chuan suddenly sneezed.
"What's wrong?" Nagato frowned and turned to ask, "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine." Yun Chuan rubbed his nose and smiled. "Someone must be praising me."
Baiyu had originally suggested taking a detour to the Land of Whirlpools. With the Land of Fire's borders under martial law, being discovered could easily lead to trouble.
But Yun Chuan ultimately chose to force his way directly through the Land of Fire's border.
There was no other reason. He held no prejudice against Konoha.
It was simply because the Land of Fire and Konoha were blocking his path.
"Still, there was an unexpected gain." Yun Chuan pondered as he sank his consciousness into his mind.
A new character template was glowing brightly. When he saw the character's name, Yun Chuan's expression became somewhat strange.
"Why is it this thing?"
P.S.: "I Alone Cultivate the Law: I Think I Really Might Become Immortal"
A fleshly body that continuously evolved, inconceivable abilities, secret arts that touched the divine... everything in reality lost its meaning at this moment.
Before you continue