Shock! Sunagakure Announces Unconditional Surrender, Legendary Ninja Appears at the Five Kage Summit

"Sunagakure has surrendered!" The Third's face darkened as he stared at the newspaper in his hand!

This was absolutely not good news!

In fact, there could not have been worse news!

Of all things, why did you people from Sunagakure have to attend the Five Kage Summit? Attending was one thing, but you did not even have the ability to resist or escape!?

Everyone else ran, but you did not. Sunagakure deserved to rank last among the five villages.

Sarutobi Hiruzen's heart burned with fury at their failure to live up to expectations. He had anticipated many terrible outcomes: Sunagakure being devastated, Chiyo or Sasori dying in battle, even everyone being captured—but he had never imagined they would surrender!

Defeat and surrender were two entirely different concepts.

Defeat meant they had resisted, and that the seeds of hatred had been planted. Surrender, especially under the guise of a "neutrality" declaration, meant that for the sake of self-preservation, they had removed themselves from the camp of the "Five Great Nations" and become Uchiha Madara's potential—perhaps even de facto—allies!

To put it even more bluntly, it would not be an exaggeration to directly count the One-Tail as part of Uchiha Madara's camp as well—

With a rough count, Uchiha Madara now controlled two major shinobi nations, six bizarre corpse puppets, and the power of three Tailed Beasts!?

What was he trying to do!? Unite the entire Shinobi World and complete the unfinished mission of the First, Senju Hashirama!?

"Lord Hokage."

A calm voice interrupted his thoughts.

It was Hiroki.

"What do we do next?" Hiroki asked.

Ever since returning from the Land of Iron, aside from eating, they had remained here waiting for the latest intelligence.

And now, the intelligence had arrived—

Though it was absurd that the newspaper had arrived before