On the battlefield, Tsunade glanced around, her expression grave.
Of the more than 300 ninja they had brought, half had been lost in a short time. Fewer than 200 remained.
"Orochimaru! Jiraiya! We have to stop that salamander!"
Tsunade pointed toward the Summoning Beast behind the Rain Ninja.
The salamander lay on its back, spewing poisonous mist from its mouth. The gas spread low across the ground.
The Rain Ninja all wore specially made gas masks. The Konoha Ninja had to contend not only with the Rain Ninja but also with the increasingly dense poison cloud filling the battlefield.
In the poisonous mist, the Konoha Ninja grew slower and slower, giving the Rain Ninja an opening to inflict grievous wounds and leave them on the brink of death.
Jiraiya said, "We're losing people too quickly. In another ten minutes, the Konoha Ninja might be wiped out."
Orochimaru frowned and looked at Hanzo beneath the salamander.
He knew they should take out the salamander first, but Hanzo stood before the three of them like an insurmountable mountain.
Orochimaru said, "Let's each summon our giant Summoning Beasts, break through the Rain Ninja formation in one decisive strike, and confront Hanzo!"
"Summoning Technique!"
Manda, Gamabunta, and Katsuyu, three giant Summoning Beasts, appeared on the battlefield.
Gamabunta's voice boomed like a bell as he complained, "You made me waste a pipeful of tobacco, Jiraiya! Why did you summon me into this downpour?"
Their enormous bodies alone made them top-tier weapons of war, crushing the Rain Ninja in front of them.
Yet Hanzo didn't care in the slightest that his subordinates were dying.
They were just a few wandering ninja he had recruited.
The world was so cruel. In some village in some minor country, a child heard stories about ninja and imagined himself as the hero. He would do everything he could to master chakra and learn ninjutsu.
But mastering chakra was only the beginning.
Talent, ninjutsu, secret techniques, experience—any one of them could bring a boy's progress to a halt.
After more than a decade of struggle, he might finally learn a single Earth Release technique, only to realize he could become nothing more than a wandering ninja.
The Five Great Nations had few ninja, but the number of boys in those nations who dreamed of becoming ninja was beyond counting.
Hanzo only had to put his name out there to recruit an endless supply of cannon fodder.
The Rain Ninja of Amegakure weren't particularly skilled, but there were a great many of them. That was the foundation of Hanzo's bid to establish a sixth great ninja village.
A young man named Wuliu was one of the wandering ninja Hanzo had recruited. He had a tumor growing on his head; without it, his features would have been quite handsome.
He came from the remote Land of Bears. After figuring out how to channel chakra into his feet, he used it to travel, setting out from the Land of Bears, crossing the Land of Earth, and joining Amegakure.
When he first arrived in Amegakure, he saw Hanzo in action and felt confused. Why did Lord Hanzo call himself "demigod"? He was far too modest. Lord Hanzo was clearly a god.
Now, watching a fifty-meter-tall Great Toad leap overhead, Wuliu thought there were a lot of gods in the Shinobi World.
How could a toad be that huge?
And this toad kept cursing. Even its insults boomed like a bell, calling someone named Jiraiya an idiot.
The Great Toad crashed down behind him, making the earth tremble. Wuliu turned around and saw the salamander spewing a huge cloud of poisonous smoke. Then Lord Hanzo and the salamander disappeared into it.
He searched all around and spotted Lord Hanzo and the salamander behind the Konoha lines.
What an incredible Body Flicker Technique. He could even teleport a salamander that enormous.
Lord Hanzo attacked without hesitation, slaughtering the Konoha Ninja.
His lord's scythe was the Grim Reaper's scythe tonight.
In a very short time, dozens of Konoha Ninja had died to the scythe or the poisonous smoke.
The Great Toad leaped through the air again, cursing as it went after Lord Hanzo.
Its voice still boomed like a bell. This time, it was cursing because its pipe had been put out.
What a strange Great Toad, thinking about smoking at a time like this.
The battle was brutal. Ninja on both sides fell in droves.
Half an hour later, only seventy or eighty Konoha Ninja remained. The Rain Ninja didn't care about their casualties; they were all wandering ninja serving as cannon fodder anyway.
Wuliu was delighted to see the salamander defeat the Great Toad, turning the red-skinned toad into a cloud of smoke.
Then he suddenly received an order from his squad leader: he was to follow the main force and capture Konoha's Medical Department.
In Amegakure's mission ratings, killing the enemy's medical ninja was equivalent to killing an entire enemy company. It would earn at least an A-rank mission reward.
Wuliu eagerly followed his squad leader, charging toward an area in the northwest of the rainforest.
But a large group of Konoha Ninja burst out of the rainforest instead!
Some of them had bluish faces, their poison not yet fully purged.
He hadn't expected the renowned Konoha Ninja to look so weak, too.
From the highest branch, Wuliu spotted a Konoha Ninja with scarlet eyes.
An Uchiha!
Wuliu had long wanted to see what made the Uchiha so formidable.
He threw a Kunai at the Uchiha Ninja.
But the Kunai passed straight through the Konoha Uchiha's body!
What... was his body fake? Was it made of air?
In the next instant, a Kunai was lodged in Wuliu's throat, and he fell backward.
The searing pain snapped him out of the genjutsu. Only then did he see that the Uchiha Ninja on the branch had moved two positions over, partially hidden behind the trunk.
How strange and cunning...
Poor Wuliu. He had set out from the Land of Bears, walked across the sun-scorched, foot-burning yellow earth of the Land of Earth, and endured the endless rain of the Land of Rain. He had finally become a ninja of a hidden village, only to die horribly in his first battle, struck down by a strange Kunai.
He raised a hand desperately, not knowing what to point at.
He felt that the way he was dying didn't do justice to all his efforts along the way.
Kawadera Uchiha thought the Rain Ninja still had the strength to fight, so he hit him with three more Kunai.
The thuds as they pierced his body left the Rain Ninja well and truly dead.
Kawadera Uchiha felt a little regretful. What a waste. That Rain Ninja had only been rallying at the point of death; he couldn't fight back at all.
He said to Tobirama Senju in his Sea of Consciousness:
"Second, look. Konoha's at a disadvantage, and Tsunade and the others can't keep up with Hanzo's Water Body Flicker.
"If I hadn't brought out the wounded, who've recovered some of their fighting strength, to serve as a decoy on the battlefield, those three would've been in serious trouble."
In the distance, Hanzo turned and saw dozens of Konoha Ninja suddenly appear in the rainforest beyond the plateau. He thought Konoha's reinforcements had arrived.
What a pity. He'd wanted to play with a few more Konoha prodigies, but now he had no choice but to stop early.
"It looks like your Konohagakure has won this battle. So I'll spare you..."
Kawadera Uchiha quickly advised Squad Leader Mei Senju to have everyone stay put and bluff from where they were.
If they charged down, the enemy would realize they were just a handful of battered, defeated soldiers with no fighting strength.
A Hyuga Ninja explained from nearby,
"It looks like Hanzo is retreating! Has he run out of strength, too?"
Only after Hanzo had finished his act, bestowed the title of Sannin on Tsunade and the others, and vanished with his Water Body Flicker did Kawadera Uchiha say,
"All right, our decoy strategy worked. Let's hurry and rescue our Konoha comrades!"
In his Sea of Consciousness, Tobirama Senju said, "I hoped to see you go toe-to-toe with the Rain Ninja and fight Hanzo, helping Tsunade and the others. Your method is cunning, but it's a cheap trick."
"Second, don't joke around. I'm supposed to fight Hanzo? Help Tsunade and the others? You think far too highly of me.
"Getting the wounded out here to create a decoy was already the limit of what I could do. I don't have the strength to turn the tide of battle."
Tobirama Senju said nothing. He awarded Kawadera Uchiha an A-rank mission reward: one Mind Awakening.
Kawadera Uchiha's [Genjutsu] rose from 8.1 to 8.2.
Not bad.
He wondered how much his visual prowess had to increase before both eyes turned into Three Tomoe.
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