He paused and looked back at the brightly lit area, his gaze settling on the direction where the Chakra Energy Cannon was being researched.
Thinking of the engineers who had once been enslaved in the Land of Snow, and the frenzied expressions mixed with fanaticism and obsession that had appeared on their faces when they introduced the cannons they had built with their own hands, Uchiha Ping could not help feeling a complicated sense of helplessness.
But when he recalled the dark days when they had been enslaved in the Land of Snow, never knowing whether they would survive the next day, that helplessness instantly turned into deep understanding.
They were merely haunted by a deeply rooted fear of that life without any sense of security, longing to possess the ultimate force capable of deterring everything and bringing absolute safety----
This----he understood it better than anyone.
Having figured this out, he turned away with relief, his figure quietly blending into the night and vanishing beyond the sight of the ANBU ninja standing guard in the shadows.
Time flew by, and before anyone realized it, the Konoha calendar had quietly turned to its tenth year.
That year, under the silent reshaping of the Ninja World, its two great powers, U Country and Konoha, both welcomed new lives that symbolized hope and the future.
On September 3, the Hatake Clan, never particularly populous, welcomed an important new member.
--
After a joint discussion between Clan Head Hatake Toshiki and his son, Hatake Suke,
the baby boy born into a ninja family was given a name that carried the clan's hopes and sharp edge—Hatake Sakumo.
On the 27th of the following month, the home of Kubo Ichiro, a core figure in the research district and an expert in medicine and biology, also rang