Hatred

The night was as cool as water.

The girl's forceful response did not change Ye Zi's expression in the slightest. He was like a cold stone—quiet and indifferent. So the girl fell silent as well. She gazed at Ye Zi in silence, her eyes stubborn. She firmly believed that Ye Zi would need her help, even if not now, then someday.

"My name is Shimura Nanako." After leaving her name behind, the girl turned and left, trailing a faint fragrance.

Ye Zi finally shifted his gaze to Nanako's back. A trace of mockery surfaced in his cold eyes. "Root, the Shimura Clan, the Corpse Collection Unit... Heh. You want to help me?"

A vast cloud drifted past, slowly veiling the moon. He watched the darkness rush toward him from afar, watched Nanako disappear into it, and let out a low, cold laugh.

He acted as if he had seen through everything, self-righteously rejecting every offer of goodwill.

Even if Nanako's intentions truly were pure, Ye Zi could only regard that goodwill as a false disguise when it came from Root, which bore the Shimura name. There were many reasons for this. For instance, she had always been the one treating him, and she now knew about the peculiarities of his body. A body like his was surely an extremely valuable existence to many people—and Shimura Danzō was certainly among them.

Ye Zi thought coldly. He was a member of Root, but he was not the kind of person who would remain hidden in the darkness forever. That was why he had answered the call and come to this war. Yet his attending physician had come along in the capacity of a member of the Corpse Collection Unit.

"Is this to prepare for the worst and collect my corpse?"

The clouds drifted away, and silvery moonlight once more fell upon the earth. At that moment, the silver light shone over Ye Zi's face and eyes, making him look exceptionally cold.

The next day, the great battle was on the verge of erupting.

The Stone ninja and Konoha deployed their forces, facing each other as if across a river.

A vast stretch of loess lay between the two armies. It marked the boundary between the Ash ninja and the Grass ninja.

In this war, the Ash ninja and Grass ninja had joined the battle as allied forces on their respective sides. However, the troops they had committed were merely symbolic reinforcements.

Neither the Stone ninja nor Konoha expected these two allied forces to add much strength. All they wanted were travel permits through the territories of the Ash ninja and Grass ninja. After all, during wartime, no one liked having a source of trouble right under their nose.

The two battle lines stretched far into the distance. Seen from afar, they looked like a black dragon lying across the horizon. This was the front—and the overt battlefield. Neither side knew what other trump cards the other had hidden in secret.

In a war, schemes were secondary. The key to victory still lay in the gap between their strength, because every scheme required strength to support it.

The Stone ninja clearly outnumbered Konoha. Konoha's forces were smaller, but its individual soldiers were far stronger than the Stone ninja. This time, both sides appeared to have deployed all their forces openly, hoping to intimidate the other. In truth, both had secretly set aside a separate force.

The Stone ninja's side.

The man at the head was a cold-looking, middle-aged man named Ishihō Fūdo. He was an immensely renowned figure among the Stone ninja, with a status in the Stone ninja comparable to Orochimaru's in Konoha. This time, as commander, he had come not only to weaken Konoha's strength, but also to avenge his son.

During the mission to protect the Daimyo of the Land of Ash, his son had died at Ye Zi's hands. When he first received the news, he had been unable to believe it, because the team had been led by Tsuchiya Sanzo. But after suppressing his grief and fury and carefully reading the battle report, he poured all his rage onto the strange name Ye Zi.

(Note: It was during the mission in which Bei Xingye died that Ye Zi killed Daiyan. The other one, Dick, was also the son of a high-ranking Stone ninja, but his fate was not as tragic as Kitsuchi's—Daiyan had been his only son.)

This was the man who had killed his only son.

He had spent his entire life on the battlefield and had fathered a son only in middle age. His son had lived up to expectations and become one of the outstanding figures of the new generation, only to die during what Fūdo had considered a mere mission for gaining experience.

He was both grief-stricken and furious. That grief and fury were enough to obliterate reason.

So he had come. Standing there and gazing at Konoha's army, he intended to use every ounce of his strength to inflict a devastating blow on Konoha while killing every dazzling member of Konoha's new generation. For this purpose, he dared to defy the Tsuchikage's orders, because at that moment, he was already prepared to sacrifice his life.

Compared with an obsession more important than his own life, the Tsuchikage's orders naturally seemed far less important.

"Orochimaru."

The figure was only a tiny point in his field of vision, yet it was clearly reflected before his eyes. Fūdo's expression was as cold as ice, and his gaze was so sinister and vicious that it seemed he wanted to carve a person apart.

The Tsuchikage's goal was to use this opportunity to weaken Konoha's strength. Even with intelligence from spies in hand, he was unwilling to strike at Konoha's new generation. But Fūdo had placed killing Ye Zi above all else. If possible, killing Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki as well would be even better.

Thus, during the strategy meeting, he had supported and approved the plan to send troops into Konoha's rear to sever its supply lines. Only then could he deploy the assassination squad under his command and, with the aid of the Camouflage Squad, search for Ye Zi and the others.

He firmly believed that if they could find Ye Zi and the others, they would certainly be able to kill them, because this assassination squad was no ordinary group of Jonin...

Of course, it would be best if the targets were not in the rear. Once Ye Zi displayed his brilliance on the battlefield, Fūdo would disregard everything and devote all his strength to killing him. No one could stop him.

On Konoha's side, Orochimaru had no idea that the Stone ninja's Ishihō Fūdo had secretly placed killing Ye Zi as his foremost objective. Even if he had known that Daiyan was Ishihō Fūdo's son, it would have been difficult for him to imagine that, in a large-scale war like this, a powerful man could be influenced by personal feelings concerning his child.

Precisely because he could not imagine it, his arrangement of Ye Zi as a member of the interception force happened to suit Ishihō Fūdo perfectly.

Because of Ishihō Fūdo's influence, the strength of the Stone ninja's force sent to cut off Konoha's supplies actually exceeded Konoha's decision-makers' estimates. No one could have imagined that Ishihō Fūdo would rather weaken his overt forces until they were comparable to Konoha's than strengthen his hidden forces—all to ensure that Ye Zi would be killed.

Whether Stone ninja or Konoha, anyone who saw through this would give the man the same heartfelt assessment: he was an utterly irredeemable old bastard.

A large-scale war like this could not determine victory or defeat in a single clash, so the contact between the overt forces was merely a test. The true reason the first victory would be decided lay in the collision of the hidden forces.

Konoha's interception force numbered roughly a hundred people, with fewer than twenty Jonin among them. Most were Chunin. Unfortunately, all the dazzling figures of the new generation were among them, including Ye Zi, Kushina, Minato Namikaze, the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, and even the more outstanding members of the new generations of the Uchiha and Hyuga Clans.

Without a doubt, led by several Jonin and bolstered by the dazzling figures of the new generation, this interception force was already extremely powerful. However, Ishihō Fūdo's unconventional move would place it in the most dangerous situation of the entire war—and subject it to a crucial trial.