Since Kumogakure's guerrilla forces wanted to play hide-and-seek, Nawaki decided to play with them himself.
To be honest, Kumogakure's method of resistance was extremely underhanded. In the history of Nawaki's previous life, a certain Southeast Asian country had once used civilians to launch surprise attacks, causing enormous trouble for a powerful nation. Even bloody massacres had failed to suppress them; instead, they only intensified the conflict and provoked even fiercer resistance. Therefore, the best solution was to capture and imprison all the resisting guerrillas as hostages in a short time, leaving Kumogakure wary of taking action.
However, Nawaki had never been one to follow convention. Even when playing a game, he would not let the enemy lead him by the nose—he had to set the rules himself.
So the first thing Nawaki did was use Deep Forest Emergence to create trees throughout Kumogakure on a massive scale. With fifty thousand Konoha Shinobi Army troops forming a formation to channel chakra in support, the entire village was soon swallowed by a forest! This made up for the difference in terrain between the two sides, and Konoha even gained the advantage. Though the method was old-fashioned, a tried-and-true move could carry you far. The greatest advantage of Wood Release was large-scale battlefield control, and Nawaki naturally intended to push it to the limit. By now, whenever a major battle began, he would almost always open with Deep Forest Emergence to seize the terrain.
Besides the terrain advantage, this technique brought an additional benefit. Seeing Wood Release's miraculous, world-altering power for the first time, the people of Kumogakure came under immense psychological pressure. The hatred and anger that many civilians had impulsively felt were finally extinguished by fear, and for the safety of their families, they abandoned thoughts of dying together with the