Upon receiving Yamanaka Chujiu's order to retreat, every squad immediately complied.
The Konoha ninja followed the plan, using their most powerful ninjutsu or scattering explosive tags as if they were free, creating enormous clouds of smoke to the greatest extent possible.
Within the smoke, one clone after another—Shadow Clones—ran wildly in every direction, attacking recklessly and sowing chaos.
On a battlefield with violent chakra fluctuations, even ordinary clones could not be distinguished. More often than not, the Kumogakure Ninja the red-eyed Kumogakure Ninja slaughtered turned into puffs of white smoke.
Taking advantage of the chaos, the Konoha ninja calmly disengaged from the battle, escaped over the northern slope where they had begun, and waited beyond it to regroup.
Before withdrawing, the Genjutsu Squad used the Large-Scale Genjutsu: Illusory Light once more, mixing real flames with genjutsu flames until they became impossible to distinguish.
The chaotic valley descended into complete pandemonium, and the difficulty of disaster relief for the Kumogakure Ninja nearly doubled.
In truth, it had already become impossible.
They only had three minutes to wait. Every second of those 180 seconds felt as long as a year.
When the final time limit arrived, not everyone had gathered. Three Konoha ninja were still trapped in the valley.
Yamanaka Chujiu was fully occupied controlling the emotions of the Kumogakure Ninja and had no spare attention to spare for his own subordinates. He did not know what had happened to those three ninja either.
But he did not hesitate, calmly issuing the order. "Time's up. Retreat!"
Yamanaka Chujiu gave the order calmly, and the other Konoha ninja acted calmly, as though no one had been sacrificed.
Even several younger ninja, such as Uchiha Shisui, had reluctance and tears in their eyes, yet they said nothing.
This was war!
This was what true