Hozuki Zangetsu, whose retreat had been cut off, did not immediately launch a counterattack. Instead, he cautiously sent Kirigakure Anbu to gather intelligence. In such a sudden situation, Hozuki Zangetsu, lacking both strategy and decisiveness, could only request instructions from above. However, he felt that before making his report, he should at least determine where the six hundred thousand troops behind him had come from.
He had expected this intelligence to come at a certain cost, but the Kirigakure Anbu completed their mission very quickly. All they had to do was look from afar at the forehead protectors worn openly by those sixty thousand troops to identify them—they were all Sand Ninja!
Hozuki Zangetsu's first reaction upon receiving the report was that it was impossible, because the entire Shinobi World knew that Sunagakure had only forty thousand troops! But after connecting this to Konoha, he immediately thought of the Sunagakure Shinobi Army that the Skywalker had captured at the start of the war!
After figuring out where the Shinobi Army at his rear had come from, Hozuki Zangetsu sucked in a breath of cold air. His instincts told him that Kirigakure had fallen into some sort of trap again. This was absolutely not a strategic issue he could decide on, so he hurriedly reported the situation to headquarters!
Hozuki Zangetsu had guessed correctly. These sixty thousand Sand Ninja were the prisoners who had been held in River Forest Shinobi Village! They had originally been important hostages Konoha used to keep Sunagakure in check and prevent them from stabbing Konoha in the back. But now that the Land of Wind could barely protect itself, Nawaki used Tianxing Fortress to drop them all directly onto the Land of Wind battlefield as reinforcements.
In fact, Nawaki had already prepared to release these sixty