A week had passed since the successful conclusion of Operation "Grand Exhibition Kitarobo."
Yet the severely weakened Mist Ninja had not even found an opportunity to clear away the ruins of Kirigakure...
After the night's air raid came to an end, the Uchiha clan members responsible for the airborne operation, led by Uchiha Fugaku, began the next phase of the campaign in coordination with Hatake Sakumo.
Since the Land of Water had completely lost control of its airspace, the Mother Nest Fleet began patrolling the skies above the islands at will, brazenly providing communications, logistics, reconnaissance, and various other forms of support to the personnel carrying out the ground sabotage plan.
Under such circumstances, the behind-enemy-lines force centered around the Uchiha clan was able to unleash its full potential!
Their formidable individual combat ability, combined with flexible hit-and-run tactics—weaving together and dispersing at will, striking once before changing locations—had turned the numerically superior Mist Ninja into headless flies... For an entire week, they could not spare enough manpower even to clear the village ruins!
According to Konoha's expectations, by this stage of the war, the Mist Ninja's command center had almost completely ceased functioning. The remaining scattered troops, harassed day and night by the airborne forces, had even less chance of organizing any counterattack on a meaningful scale. From every angle, it seemed the Land of Water had no choice left but to disarm and surrender.
But the Third Hokage Cabinet, blindly copying the successful experiences of the Land of Rain and the Land of Wind, had clearly failed to grasp the essence of Director Yamada's previous methods...
When faced with the crisis of national extinction, the Land of Water's far greater scale compared to the Land of Rain gave it the capital to resist to the bitter end. Meanwhile,