The blazing afternoon sun beat down on the Land of Wind's daimyo. At the frigid height of the Tenshukaku, he wrapped his robes tightly around himself against the biting wind.
The daimyo's gaze fell from the highest point onto the bustling Daimyo Mansion below. Yet even the clamorous crowds and the jangling camel bells could not conceal that it no longer possessed its former grandeur.
"Hashirama and Madara really came to the Land of Wind?"
Leaning against the railing, the daimyo shifted his gaze slightly, concealing the flicker of panic in his eyes as he stared at the samurai standing respectfully behind him.
"Yes!"
"Have you determined the details?"
His broad sleeves perfectly concealed the bulging veins on the back of his hands as the daimyo asked darkly.
He was worried.
The Shinobi Alliance had clearly not been satisfied with the explanation he had previously given. Those two gods had come all the way to this remote backwater of the Land of Wind—no matter how he looked at it, they were not here merely to sightsee. It seemed more like they had come to settle the score.
"Yes."
The samurai hurriedly lowered his head, avoiding the daimyo's terrifying presence.
Ever since the Shinobi Alliance had been established, the daimyo who had once been kind and approachable seemed to have vanished.
Back then, the daimyo had merely appeared gloomy every day, or shut himself in his room for entire days.
But after the failed attack on Sunagakure, the daimyo had changed completely. He had become exceedingly irritable and hot-tempered, with none of a noble's elegance or bearing remaining.
During that upheaval, quite a few ministers and nobles had been made scapegoats, beheaded one after another in the most conspicuous place within the Daimyo Mansion as a warning to all.
It was