Under the night sky, the middle-aged man walked along counting the stack of bounty money he had just collected. His fingers flipped through the bills with practiced speed, but after a few steps, he stopped.
Not far from the roadside, an ancient tree stood beneath the moonlight. Its branches were thick with leaves, and its trunk was broad enough for several grown men to encircle. Trees like it were hardly rare in the fertile Land of Fire.
The trees of the Land of Fire were often this lush. Yet this one, like every towering tree on this land, looked slight beside the sacred tree of his homeland.
That tree had been far larger. Its crown blotted out the sky, and its roots reached deep into the earth, sheltering the entire village beneath its shade.
He had grown up beneath it, joining his fellow villagers in offerings and worship at every annual festival.
When he came of age, he had even been chosen to enter the sacred tree and carry out the Hero Water himself, taking it with him on a mission anyone would have called impossible.
Assassinate the First!
Back then, he had not been a rogue ninja. He had been one of Takigakure's finest Jonin, entrusted with the Hero Water by the village leadership.
In that battle, the middle-aged man had risked his life and drunk every drop of the Hero Water he carried. Even so, he had been no match for
the God of Shinobi.
Moved by his willingness to die for his village, Hashirama Senju had spared his life in the end.
He had survived the Hero Water by sheer luck and returned to the village in a daze. What awaited him was harsh punishment for failing his mission and the disgrace of being branded a deserter.