As Fucheng had said, the Sand Ninja, defeated on the front lines, finally couldn't hold out any longer!
After a brief struggle, the Daimyo of the Land of Wind decisively abandoned Sunagakure.
Without logistical support in the form of "people, money, and supplies," Sunagakure had only one choice left.
That was to surrender unconditionally and immediately seek peace with Konoha.
Inside Konoha's main tent.
Hatake Sakumo and Tsunade were meeting through the night with the Sand Ninja representatives who had come to sue for peace.
Compared with the battle between Konoha and the Sand Ninja in the parallel timeline, the Sand Ninja had suffered a far more thorough defeat this time.
The number of Sand Ninja captured or killed was much higher than in the original timeline.
Perhaps it was because Uchiha Fucheng, that little butterfly, had stirred up its wings here.
Without the hatred brought on by Nawaki's tragic death, Tsunade was fairly amenable to peace talks.
She and Hatake Sakumo quickly reached an agreement. Konoha voluntarily lowered its demands for war reparations and compensation in supplies.
But Konoha was exceptionally strict about the border issue with the Land of Rain.
It not only required the Sand Ninja to carry out specific deployments, but also set requirements for troop numbers and defensive positions.
On the Sand Ninja side of the border with the Land of Rain, Konoha demanded that they station specific units at designated locations.
The intent was clear: make the Sand Ninja draw more attention from the forces of the Land of Rain and the Land of Earth.
The Sand Ninja didn't have many terms they could offer.
In this situation, they could only agree to Konoha's armistice and peace treaty for now.
At this moment, the first phase of the Second Shinobi World War—the battle between Konoha and the Sand Ninja—officially came to an end.
After the Sand Ninja signed the peace treaty, Konoha's forces began their formal withdrawal from the battlefield.
Thanks to aerial surveillance by the giant Ninja Hawk Garuda, all six messenger hawks used by Root for communication were captured and brought under the control of Uchiha shinobi.
Fucheng understood perfectly well that too many people knew he had the Mangekyō Sharingan. Completely controlling what information made it back to the village wasn't realistic.
But he could control the flow of information for a while and keep Shimura Danzō from making trouble on the way back to the village. That much he could manage.
As for whether Shimura Danzō would target him in the future, Fucheng wasn't afraid of that at all.
With no Shisui, Obito, or Itachi around, Shimura Danzō and his hastily assembled Root organization, which had only recently been established, were unlikely to openly clash with the Uchiha Clan.
What Uchiha Fucheng needed most urgently was to seize the power of Uchiha Clan Head as soon as possible.
He only needed to deal with Shimura Danzō and Root cautiously.
On the return journey, Fucheng also grew much closer to Hatake Sakumo, thanks to Hatake Jiangyi.
As Hatake Sakumo's nephew from the main family, Jiangyi was one of the few men in the Hatake samurai clan to become a shinobi.
When Sakumo learned that Fucheng had saved Hatake Jiangyi more than twice, the usually taciturn man warmly invited Uchiha Fucheng and the members of Jiangyi's squad to share a whole roasted lamb he had cooked himself.
Perhaps it was Sakumo's dazzling knife skills and unique cooking techniques, but in Fucheng's eyes, the Konoha White Fang was an outstanding gourmet.
Even if he quit being a shinobi, he could probably make a fortune running a barbecue restaurant.
The more time they spent together, the more Fucheng realized that Hatake Sakumo wasn't a stern, old-fashioned elder.
On the contrary, Fucheng thought he was a very humorous and straightforward man.
No wonder he had come up with such a bizarre secret technique as "One Thousand Years of Death."
The prankish humor in Kakashi's bones, that "forever a boy at heart" quality, had probably been inherited from Hatake Sakumo.
Uchiha Fucheng chatted and laughed with Lord White Fang, and from time to time discussed Medical Ninjutsu with Lady Tsunade.
His sociable manner genuinely baffled Uchiha Fugaku.
As far as Fugaku could remember, his younger brother was supposed to be the kind of "Uchiha introvert" who couldn't get a word out of him no matter how hard you tried.
"How did just a few days make him so close to Lord White Fang and Lady Tsunade, exactly like he said he would be?"
If Fucheng had known what Fugaku was thinking, he would have scoffed.
This counts as being sociable? This is nothing.
This was just basic socializing.
If Fugaku had seen him back when he was running a private coal mine, dealing every month with seven or eight inspection teams, five or six civil society groups, and all sorts of competitors, he probably would have been so shocked his nose would start running.
Any one of those headaches could have stressed Fugaku enough to awaken his Mangekyō Sharingan.
As Uchiha Fucheng put it, anyone who could make it big in such a remote, desolate place could have even the worst social anxiety cured!
Thanks to Fucheng's careful handling, the disappearance of eight Root shinobi from the battlefield barely caused a ripple amid a battle that had left more than a thousand people dead or wounded on both sides.
After intercepting all of Root's messenger hawks, Fucheng also prevented Shimura Danzō from learning accurate details about his Mangekyō Sharingan right away.
It was only when the main force had reached a point forty kilometers from Konoha that the returning troops sent more accurate information back to the village.
The battle report from Konoha High Command immediately put Danzō on alert. He still hadn't received any word from the Root shinobi.
Until then, most of his attention had been focused on the Land of Rain.
Now, Danzō could clearly smell danger.
Touching the bandages covering his right eye, Danzō looked wary and uneasy. "It's the Mangekyō Sharingan?! The Uchiha have awakened another Mangekyō?"
Most of Danzō's Root subordinates were currently concentrated in the Land of Rain.
If he recalled those shinobi early, all the preparations he'd made in the Land of Rain would go to waste.
And the eight Root shinobi he'd stationed in advance on the Sand Ninja battlefield hadn't sent him a single message before the battle ended.
Abnormal!
Extremely abnormal.
When he discovered that all eight of his Root shinobi had disappeared from the battlefield, Danzō immediately understood that someone had thoroughly set him up this time.
Nearly a week had passed since the Root shinobi disappeared. If he sent people to investigate the Land of Wind border now, it would be far too late.
Finding the real culprit was nothing but a pipe dream.
The conspiracy theories in Danzō's mind grew without limit.
In his eyes, Konoha's Anbu, Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Konoha advisers, White Fang, Tsunade, the Uchiha, and even some of his own Root subordinates who were at odds with him—all of them were suspects!
His indecision and suspicion also made him miss his last chance to ambush Uchiha Fucheng outside the village.
For ordinary villagers in Konoha, the shinobi returning in triumph filled them with joy.
Although plenty of the fallen shinobi's families clung to the vehicles carrying the bodies and wept bitterly,
as victors, Konoha's shinobi still received a welcome filled with ceremony.
Flowers, food, colorful fireworks...
And a personal welcome from the Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Having killed two Kage Level Sand Ninja in battle, Hatake Sakumo, the Konoha White Fang, was now the very embodiment of the "Hero of Konoha."
With his silvery white hair and the red triangular armband on his left shoulder, White Fang looked so spirited that Fucheng could hardly imagine Sakumo later dying by suicide in such tragic circumstances.
After the welcoming ceremony, Hatake Sakumo learned that his wife was due to give birth soon and could hardly wait to get home.
That reminded Fucheng of something.
As he recalled it, Kakashi's mother had suffered a severe illness as a result of a difficult childbirth.
She had died young, when Kakashi was still little.
Thinking of this, Fucheng gave Hatake Sakumo's retreating figure a meaningful look.
"If I can save the mother of the Copy Ninja, could I change the tragic fate of that poor father and son..."
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