Minato answered with a faint smile, "The Kage have come from far away. If too few people came to welcome you, everyone would say Konoha had slighted you."
Ōnoki snorted and sat down, which meant he accepted the explanation. Everyone knew exactly what both sides were worried about, so there was no need to push too hard.
"I've heard for a long time about Konoha's notorious Yellow Flash. I never expected him to be such a handsome man when I finally met him today." After sitting down, Mei Terumi smiled and spoke to Minato.
"You flatter me. The Mizukage is young and beautiful as well." Minato responded gracefully.
The match had not even begun, yet the Kage had already engaged in several rounds of covert competition. Although the four Great Ninja Villages were primarily targeting Konoha—for Konoha's current strength was the greatest among the Five Great Ninja Villages—Iwagakure and Kumogakure also had some friction between them, mainly because of the ambush against the Third Raikage.
However, for the sake of the bigger picture, A did not pursue the matter too much. Their main target was still Konoha. None of them wanted to see Konoha dominate alone.
Below the stands, Ye Wuyue had already learned who his opponent was. He had not expected it to be the same as in the original story: the Sand ninja Gaara.
Ye Wuyue had left after finishing the preliminary matches, so he did not know how the later matches had gone. Only after asking Itachi did he learn that Rock Lee and Gaara had fought in the preliminaries just as they had in the original story. The result went without saying: the medical ninja had judged that Lee had lost the possibility of continuing as a ninja.
"The first match of the official Chunin Ninja