A sleepless night.
For the representatives of the four great nations in Sanlang City, the night was long and agonizing.
The terms Uchiha Ling had laid out, which amounted to "destroying villages and wiping out their people," weighed on them like an invisible mountain, leaving them struggling to breathe.
Anger, humiliation, despair, and desperation... All kinds of emotions fermented and clashed in the cold night.
Sunagakure's defection had been like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing their last hope of joining forces to resist.
Rasa had traded Sunagakure's future for relatively "lenient" treatment, and had utterly shattered the already fragile alliance of the defeated nations.
The next day, when the parties gathered again in the cold conference hall, the atmosphere was even heavier than the day before. Everyone's face was marked by fatigue and gloom.
Uchiha Ling still sat calmly at the head of the table, as though the shocking terms he had announced the day before had never come from his lips.
Behind him, Namikaze Minato watched with a sharp gaze, Might Duy stood with a steady presence, and Nara Shikaku silently observed the slightest changes in each opponent.
Mifune, the Great General of the Land of Iron, announced in a solemn voice that the meeting would resume.
After a brief silence, the one who broke the deadlock was none other than the Fourth Raikage, A—the most vehemently opposed the day before.
His teeth clenched and his jaw muscles bulged. It seemed to take all his strength to force the words out through gritted teeth:
"Cloud Village... can accept compensation and partial cession of land.
But three billion ryō is too much, and a ten-year payment period is too long! The most Cloud Village can offer... the most is two billion ryō, paid over five years!
The territory ceded...