Welcome to Star City!

After the mountain flood passed, the sky finally cleared completely.

Naruto, Sasuke, and the others continued south under the "escort" of Neji, Kimimaro, and Toneri, officially entering the heartland of the Land of Stars.

Sunlight poured down through gaps in the scattered clouds, shining over the mountain forest that had been soaked by rain all night and raising a thin layer of white mist.

Droplets on the leaves glittered in the sunlight, and now and then birds burst from the wet shrubs with a flutter, shaking off a spray of gathered water.

After the floodwaters rushing down from the Nagano Mountains flowed into the Nether River, it was as if an invisible hand had slowly pressed them down.

The river surface suddenly opened up, turning from a rapid current in a gorge dozens of zhang wide into a vast expanse of water several li across, and the speed of the flow also slowed.

The muddy water gradually settled across the broad riverbed. By noon on the second day after they set out, the river had changed from earthy yellow to light brown. The reed beds along the bank once again revealed their waterlogged tips, and several waterbirds stood on the reed stalks, shaking droplets from their wings.

What surprised and reassured the Konoha group most was the scene on both sides of the river.

Although the flood had passed through and the water level had clearly risen, submerging some low-lying shoals and grasslands near the banks, the devastation they had imagined—farmhouses destroyed, villages drowned—had not appeared.

On both sides of the riverbanks stood flood-control embankments built from massive grayish-white stones. Above the embankments were flat roads wide enough for carts and horses to travel, and at intervals there were ingeniously designed Floodgates and Diversion Canals that guided floodwaters above the