Hanyu was far more experienced in the jungle. His skills in staying alert, finding a path, and moving through the forest were almost on par with those of a seasoned ninja... if you ignored his various uses of chakra.
Before long, he found the tracks he had left earlier and followed them back to the place where the Second had been cremated.
"There are no signs that anyone else has been here." Hanyu made that judgment as soon as he saw the site... He had never imagined he would return here.
The enormous hollow tree and the Second's remains had both burned to ashes. Mixed with the autumn rain that had fallen from the sky a few days ago, they had formed a gray sludge spread across the ground. Anyone who had come near would surely have left footprints in it.
But no one paid any attention to his assessment. More precisely, he received no response at all. Sanshao, Mitokado Homura, and Kagami Uchiha stood there in silence, lost in thought.
This nameless, primeval forest was where the Second had spent his final moments—and where he was buried. His cremated remains were mixed with the ashes of the plants on the ground. To Sanshao and the others, even accidentally stepping on them would be disrespectful and profane... None of them wanted to disturb the Second's eternal rest.
Then there was Senju Tobirama, whose name had resounded throughout the Shinobi World since the era of warring states. He had died peacefully in such an insignificant place, his remains beyond recovery, with only an unfamiliar boy by his side. For the Hokage himself, even if this death could not be called dying without regrets, at least he had achieved what he sought. But for his family and students, this was a loss so heartbreaking they could hardly bear it.
Hanyu quickly noticed the sorrow on their faces. He turned to Hatake Sakumo and said, "Hatake, come with me. Let's search for Kinkaku and Ginkaku's bodies."
"But..." Hatake hesitated. Was it all right to act on their own like this? Hanyu wasn't the one who could give orders to this team.
"Come on." Hanyu ignored his hesitation and firmly pulled him away.
At a time like this, it was best to let the three of them stay there for a while.
Earlier, the Second had carried Hanyu into the hollow tree while he was unconscious. So, although Hanyu could use the tree hollow as a landmark, he didn't know exactly where Kinkaku and Ginkaku's bodies were. They had to be nearby, though. Given the Second's condition at the time, he couldn't have carried an unconscious Hanyu very far.
With the place where the Second had fallen at the center, Hanyu and Hatake Sakumo searched outward in a fan-shaped sweep. Before long, they found the two bodies.
"Judging from the state of decomposition, they don't look like they've been dead for nearly a week." Hatake Sakumo quickly reached the bodies and examined them. By now, it was impossible to tell which was Kinkaku and which was Ginkaku. The smell of decay wasn't strong, and the scene they might have expected—where insects and ants had eaten them down to their bones—hadn't happened at all.
After thinking it over, Hanyu said, "Maybe they ate some preservatives while they were alive."
He remembered that these two had apparently swallowed some of the Nine-Tails Chakra. Maybe it had a powerful antibacterial effect.
"Would a ninja preserve his own body while he was still alive?" Hatake was deeply skeptical of Hanyu's guess. Still, the fact that their remains had lasted this long had to be related to their constitution. He simply had no idea what the reason was.
Hatake continued, "Stay here. I'll go get the others."
Mitokado Homura was technically the team's captain, but in practice, all decisions were made after the three of them discussed them together. By now, they had probably finished paying their respects to the Second, so there shouldn't be any problem with Hatake going to fetch them.
Hanyu stayed behind and searched for anything of value. Kinkaku and Ginkaku had been so powerful in battle partly because they had absorbed some of the Nine-Tails Chakra and partly because they possessed several powerful ninja tools.
The sword and gourd that the Second had destroyed were two of them. Hanyu gathered up the fragments first, but both had been utterly ruined, reduced to nothing more than scrap metal. They had long since lost their original functions.
He wondered if the Cloud Village would still accept souvenirs like these...
Hatake Sakumo came and went in a hurry. Soon, he returned with the other three. By then, Sanshao and the others had regained their composure. At least, nothing in their expressions gave away what they had been feeling.
"Are these Kinkaku and Ginkaku? Can we be sure of their identities?" Once she arrived, Sanshao asked with a frown as she looked at the two unrecognizable bodies.
In these circumstances, it was difficult to confirm their identities based on their appearances and physical features alone.
"They're definitely the two of them." Mitokado Homura first inspected the fragments of ninja tools Hanyu had collected, then said with certainty, "These are the ninja tools used by Kinkaku and Ginkaku: the Seven Star Sword and the Crimson Gourd."
Then he went to one of the bodies and lifted its arm, showing them a pale golden rope wrapped around it. "The Golden Canopy Rope. This body must be Kinkaku's... I didn't expect them to have avoided being found first by the Cloud Village or another village's ninja."
They hadn't been moving very quickly, and before seeing the bodies, they had worried that ninja from another village might have gotten there first. The attack at the alliance ceremony had taken place six days ago, and Kinkaku, Ginkaku, and the Second had been dead for at least three days. It was fortunate that no one else had found the two bodies first.
The Second's efforts to delay them had played a major part in this. The alliance ceremony had been held in the Land of Lightning. When Kinkaku and Ginkaku had attacked with a group of elite ninja, the Raikage had died on the spot. The Second had fled with his students, then acted as a decoy and moved in the opposite direction from them. He had eventually died in the Land of Fields. It was clear that he had fought while retreating, battling alone for three days before accomplishing the extraordinary feat of taking two enemies down with him.
"The rain helped a lot. It not only obscured the Second's route, but the poor visibility meant that no one even noticed the huge fire that cremated him... Still, who would have guessed they died so far away, if we hadn't seen it with our own eyes?" Sanshao explained.
Traces of the fresh rain from several days earlier could be seen throughout the forest. Much of the battle between the Second and Kinkaku and Ginkaku had been concealed by the rain. But that was only part of it. As Sanshao had said, who could have imagined that the Second would drag the battle all the way to the Land of Fields under such desperate circumstances?
It had truly been a lonely battle, fought by one man with no reinforcements in sight—a long, desperate struggle, threaded with both relief and hope.
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