032-New Player Enters the Arena

As it turned out, having the advantage of foresight made for accurate judgment of the situation. But even without it, Higashino Shin wouldn't have believed that Kirigakure would stay docile forever.

Among the Five Great Shinobi Villages, Sunagakure had puppets and poison; Iwagakure had numbers and group jutsu; Kumogakakure had brute force and zero-cost looting; Konoha had... deep foundations, always producing some godlike figure at critical moments.

And what did the last one, Kirigakure, have? They had psychopaths, masters of infighting.

This most mysterious of the Five Great Shinobi Villages, due to its long-standing extreme isolationist policies, rarely let information leak out.

But from the limited intel available, they'd been running something called the Bloody Mist Village policy internally, and the pressure from brutal conflict was about to explode. Better to blow up others than blow up themselves.

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At this moment, his four opponents were all battered and scarred from war, with no cards left to play—the perfect time to drop bombs and double down on the harvest.

Finally, one month after the Battle of Kannabi Bridge, in Konoha Year 49, August, Kirigakure decided to join this delightful killing game.

They landed on the eastern coast of the Land of Fire and brazenly invaded Konoha. In an instant, the eastern defense line collapsed; civilians died or fled; towns were destroyed. The situation was dire.

These madmen displayed an unparalleled lust for slaughter, as if their invasion wasn't for gain but purely to vent bloody desires.

But Konoha couldn't muster enough ninja forces from other fronts anymore.

The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, called an emergency meeting of the major clans overnight and came up with a final solution.

Let the Uchiha loose.

Using the fire-adept Uchiha to counter the water-adept Kirigakure—the Uchiha didn't mind. This was a golden chance for the strongest ninja clan to earn merits. Elemental disadvantage? What was that?

So, with Uchiha ninja as the core, Hyuga as support, plus reserves dug up from other clans, an emergency force was assembled and sent to the Eastern Battlefield.

To bolster strength, the village not only squeezed commoner ninja dry but even threw many fresh graduates who'd only been out of the academy a few years onto the battlefield.

Aside from leaving behind the bare minimum to guard the village, every available hand had been wrung out. Fighting on multiple fronts had left Konoha's troops severely depleted.

Finally, to balance competition between Konoha's two great houses, the Third Hokage had no choice but to hand command of the Eastern Battlefield to Orochimaru.

Though Iwagakure had agreed to peace talks under pressure, they hadn't signed a peace treaty. Plus, with Kumogakure's attack, Jiraiya and Minato Namikaze simply couldn't leave.

Orochimaru had seen through it all long ago. Though his mind was no longer on the war, he didn't refuse; in fact, he gladly took the job. Compared to Sunagakure's single bloodline, Kirigakure had far more variety.

The Kaguya Clan's Shikotsumyaku, the Yuki Clan's Ice Release, the Hozuki Clan's Water Transformation Secret Jutsu, the Hoshigaki Clan's Human Shark Body...

All excellent experimental materials.

Subarashii!!

Kirigakure's entry plunged the gradually clarifying war situation back into chaos.

Not only that, while invading Konoha, they also sent forces south across the sea, using the Land of Tea peninsula as a springboard to eye the wealthy southern coast of the Land of Wind.

In his previous life, Naruto fans speculated that Kirigakure crossed the ocean from the other side of the planet to invade Sunagakure, sparking a war between them.

But that was highly unrealistic—too far. The shinobi world's planet wasn't small, and the Five Great Nations plus the smaller ones were mostly clustered in one region.

For Kirigakure to invade Sunagakure, they just needed to cross the Rainbow Sea westward and set up a base in the Land of Tea, which had no ninja village.

The Land of Tea was a vassal of the Land of Fire, but Konoha had no spare capacity to protect them now.

As for going east around the other side of the planet, not only was it distant, but they'd have to bypass two other large and small, vast and barren continents.

Those continents were nearly wastelands, with only a handful of humans living there. Their power styles and cultural customs were completely different from the mainstream world.

The shinobi world wasn't ancient; maritime technology was advanced, so they weren't unfamiliar with those lands. But since those continents offered no real benefits, no country was interested.

Why that was the case, the shinobi world didn't know. Curious explorers had studied it in the past but never figured out the reason.

Probably only Kaguya Otsutsuki and her three inhuman sons knew the full story.

Higashino Makoto had studied shinobi world geography and vaguely guessed the answer.

It must have been drained by the Divine Tree. The lands of the shinobi nations and smaller countries were the last vestiges of life on this planet. Even so, most of the Land of Wind, the largest nation, was endless desert.

Otherwise, what did you think the Otsutsuki Clan came to plant trees for? Afforestation?

Furious at Kirigakure's senseless attack, Sunagakure immediately redeployed forces, with Pakura as Commander, and struck back hard at these madmen.

Can't beat Konoha, but I can't beat you, Kirigakure?

Fire Release countered by Water Release? Pakura said she used Scorch Release, guaranteeing them a one-stop mummy service from sauna to drying.

In an instant, countless Kirigakure ninja experienced a dryness and freshness they'd never felt in their lives. The Third Shinobi World War, which had been stabilizing, plunged back into chaos.

The chaotic war continued.

Kirigakure had thought Konoha was exhausted and helpless against their sudden invasion, but they hadn't been happy for long before getting beaten black and blue by the Uchiha- and Hyuga-led Konoha forces.

Elemental disadvantage? Uchiha ninja said if you were strong enough, it didn't affect the outcome.

The Mist Technique blocked vision? The Hyuga Clan said that before the Byakugan, they had nowhere to hide.

Kirigakure ninja immediately joined the other villages in hating these cheaters with X-ray vision, but they also desperately wanted it. So they started secretly eyeing the Byakugan, searching the battlefield for any Hyuga Main Family members.

To turn the tide, they played their strongest trump card: the Seven Ninja Swordsmen.

Seven powerful ninja with bizarre weapons and wildly different personalities began hunting freely on the Eastern Battlefield.

They didn't submit to each other but competed constantly, treating the war entirely as a delightful game.

Even when encountering a Konoha Newbie Squad, the seven of them would toy with them like cats with mice for ages, only to frequently fall out over who got the prey.

Kill efficiency? The Mizukage's orders? Screw that.

Then they ran into a Genin in a green bodysuit—a total Weirdo—and got beaten into the Lucky Three, with some fleeing and others defecting.

In October of Konoha Year 49, Might Duy died in battle.

Konoha's High Level were overjoyed, never expecting such a windfall: trading just one Genin's life for four of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen. A steal, a massive profit.

At the same time, they began to take the Eight Inner Gates, a Forbidden Jutsu, seriously. After research, they found that this thing really wasn't something a person could train in. It took an absurdly long time, required extreme Taijutsu talent and ultimate endurance, and even decades of training might not yield results—plus it could easily kill the practitioner. It had zero universal applicability.

Still, as the inheritor of this technique, Might Guy gained the village's focused attention.

With his own life, Might Duy not only greatly relieved the pressure on the Eastern Battlefield but also kicked open a future for his son.

Time raced forward amid the flames of war, and soon a new year arrived.

The stubborn Kirigakure, manipulated by certain wills, quietly cooked up a big move: they planned to unleash the Three-Tails on Konoha.

The result was another failure. Aside from killing a worthless female Medical Ninja from Konoha, they achieved nothing.

Not only that, but Kirigakure temporarily lost the Three-Tails and nearly all their Anbu Masters. A huge loss, a massive deficit.

But these people didn't know that, under the arrangement of schemers, they had personally destroyed the light of an Uchiha Youth, turning a kind child completely dark, making him the operations director of a conspiracy city layered within layers.

At the end of February in Konoha Year 50, Konoha Ninja Nohara Rin died.

The one who killed him was: Konoha Ninja Kakashi Hatake.

The faint glimmer of light that had just begun to shine turned gray again. He knew his Teammate had used his hand to complete her suicide, thwarting Kirigakure's plot.

But that very fact made him suffer all the more. Even Rin, with her ordinary strength, had firmer convictions and greater courage than he did.