Nine-Tails Incident

In the blink of an eye, three weeks had passed.

Hyuga Kagami was rather surprised. So much time had passed, yet the village had neither sent a support squad nor resumed its Purge of him and Anko.

This clearly did not match his expectations, nor did it make any sense.

Who carried out a Purge in such a slow, drawn-out manner?

"Could something have happened in the village?"

Searching through his vague memories, Hyuga Kagami tried to find clues and figure out what had happened, but after racking his brain for a long time, he found nothing.

Then, an image suddenly flashed through his mind. His whole body trembled as he murmured, "The... Nine-Tails Incident!?"

Though he did not know exactly when the Nine-Tails Incident had occurred, Hyuga Kagami knew it happened on the night Naruto was born.

Naruto's mother, Kushina, had been the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki. All information related to her had been classified, and given Hyuga Kagami's standing in the village, there was no way he could have learned anything about her.

But that did not prevent him from making deductions. Hinata was around Naruto's age, and before he had left the village, he had already learned that the clan head's wife was pregnant. If Naruto was a few months older than Hinata, then Naruto's birthday should have been sometime around now.

"How could I have forgotten about this!"

Hyuga Kagami silently reproached himself.

Still, it was understandable. He had already been in the Ninja World for more than a decade, and his memories had grown hazy. On top of that, he had always been weak and under the threat of death. He had neither the ability nor the desire to interfere with major events, so he had not paid much attention to the Ninja World's great upheavals.

Now, however, things were different. With the Tenseigan, he had gained the ability to meddle in certain matters. He had to start paying attention to every major event in the Ninja World like a true powerhouse, so that he could profit from them.

After reflecting on himself, Hyuga Kagami began analyzing the village's current situation.

If the Nine-Tails Incident had truly happened, then the village's entire power structure was about to undergo earth-shaking changes.

The young Fourth Hokage and Kushina, the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, had died at the same time. Konoha had lost its two most promising Kage-Level Combat Power, leaving it in the awkward position of having no capable successors.

White Fang had committed suicide, Tsunade had left, Orochimaru had defected, and Jiraiya had departed the village in pursuit.

In present-day Konoha, apart from Jiraiya, who was not in the village, there were no real Kage-Level Combat Power left among either the younger or middle generation. Only the Third Hokage, Danzo, and that group of old men who had held power for over twenty years remained to keep up appearances.

Furthermore, during the Nine-Tails Incident, the Nine-Tails had seemingly been controlled by the Sharingan. This caused the village to suspect the Uchiha Clan, one of its key fighting forces. Every powerful Uchiha had been placed under surveillance. Even without memories of his previous life, Hyuga Kagami could foresee that an internal conflict between the Uchiha and the village was unavoidable.

After analyzing the changes in the village's power structure, Hyuga Kagami turned his thoughts to his own predicament.

Without question, compared to the Uchiha Clan, who were suspected of causing the Nine-Tails Incident, possessed immense strength, and stuck together, former subordinates of Orochimaru like Hyuga Kagami were not much of a threat in the village's eyes.

Moreover, a large number of ordinary ninja had died during the Nine-Tails Incident. After losing so much manpower, the village not only had to immediately rebuild the destroyed areas, but also assign elite personnel to monitor the Uchiha Clan. Even Konoha was likely stretched thin at this point, so it was only natural that it could not spare attention for a border outpost.

Before long, Hyuga Kagami's guess was confirmed.

A message arrived from the village: abandon the outpost and return to the village immediately.

After packing up briefly, the four people at the outpost set out for the village. Along the way, Hyuga Kagami secretly counted himself lucky. Sasori had failed to find him after all this time.

In truth, Hyuga Kagami had gotten the wrong idea.

Taking the Third Kazekage Human Puppet had been an accident. Hyuga Kagami knew that, but Sasori did not.

In Sasori's eyes, Hyuga Kagami's Rotation and his method of controlling puppets without chakra threads were simply too bizarre. This caused Sasori to overestimate Hyuga Kagami's strength, believing him to be at least an Elite Jonin, so he had directly ignored the border outposts.

By common logic, border outposts, whose main purpose was early warning, would not have Elite Jonin stationed at them.

As a result, Hyuga Kagami's border outpost became a blind spot right under Sasori's nose, turning into the safest place instead. That was why Sasori had never been able to find him.

After traveling at full speed, the four finally returned to the village a week later.

The village had become a massive construction site. Everywhere they looked were busy craftsmen, scaffolding, and transport carts moving back and forth.

Pointing at the damaged wall in the distance, Anko stood there in a daze. "What happened here?"

The two ninja traveling with them, who were suspected to be from Root, seemed to know something. Yet upon seeing the sight before them, they both revealed shocked expressions.

Clearly, the damage the village had suffered far exceeded their earlier expectations.

Hyuga Kagami was equally stunned.

Although he had long known that the Nine-Tails Incident had inflicted deep, lasting wounds on Konoha, the village's ruined state still left him struggling to adjust.

Even during the brutal wars, the village had never suffered such severe losses!

After arriving at the Mission Center and completing a simple handover, the four went their separate ways.

Having regained his freedom for the first time in months, Hyuga Kagami did not rest. Instead, he began gathering information about the village's upheaval.

Before long, he had collected quite a bit.

First, the Nine-Tails Incident had occurred about a month ago. Judging by the timing, it had happened around the same few days when Hyuga Kagami encountered Sasori at the border.

Second, in just one night of chaos, the village had lost more than twenty Jonin and several hundred Genin and lower-ranking ninja. Nearly every ninja clan in the village had suffered casualties. It was said that funerals alone had continued for an entire week.

Finally, several districts ravaged by the Nine-Tails had been completely flattened. Civilian casualties were impossible to estimate, and even now, many civilian bodies had yet to be found.

After gathering enough information, Hyuga Kagami returned home with a heavy heart.

Hyuga Kagami was no stranger to Obito. Among their classmates, there had only been a few whom Hyuga Kagami could barely keep beneath him, and Obito had been one of them.

Yet this dead-last who had seemed like he was missing a screw had now grown into the mastermind capable of driving the Fourth Hokage and the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki to their deaths, manipulating the entire Ninja World in the palm of his hand.

To be honest, Hyuga Kagami was truly a little annoyed.

But annoyed or not, he understood that Obito, who now possessed the Mangekyō Sharingan and the First Hokage Cells, was no longer the same person he had been. He could no longer view him through the same old lens he had used at the academy.

At the same time, a surge of ambition rose within Hyuga Kagami.

If Obito could stir up storms with the Mangekyō Sharingan, then why could he, who possessed the Tenseigan, not step down from the audience and take the stage that belonged to him alone?