Aftermath

On December 6th of Konoha Year 43, earth-shattering news shocked the entire human world: Hanzo, the legendary ninja known as the Demigod and leader of Amegakure, had suddenly fallen!

Even more astonishingly, the one who replaced Hanzo as Amegakure's leader was a young ninja named Yahiko. This new leader had been completely unknown before; aside from knowing that he was the leader of Akatsuki, the nations of the Shinobi World knew absolutely nothing else about him.

Akatsuki was a newly emerged organization that had appeared in the Land of Rain only in recent years. It had previously repelled several small-scale incursions by Rock Ninja and Sand Ninja, but the other nations had never taken it seriously. Now that Yahiko had taken power, spies from every nation began investigating every piece of intelligence on Akatsuki at full force.

At the same time, every nation launched a thorough investigation into the true cause of Hanzo's death. Since Yahiko had ordered the surviving Rain Ninja to keep silent, the specific circumstances of Hanzo's death did not spread. The official statement released by Amegakure was that Hanzo had died suddenly from illness. Yet practically no one in the Shinobi World believed that explanation. Although Hanzo had begun to age, he was only in his early fifties. With the physical constitution of a Kage-level ninja, he absolutely could not have died from sickness or injury at that age.

There was no wall that could keep out all wind. After the spies of various nations made every effort to investigate, clues quickly surfaced. For example, on the day Hanzo died, he had originally been scheduled to meet Akatsuki under the pretext of mediating the war among the three nations. This had been publicly announced in Amegakure beforehand and was easy to verify. There was also the