Triumphant Return

Not much news leaked out about the battle between Nagato and Hanzo. Only one line spread—"Another band of fools who didn't know their own limits tried to ambush the Demigod and got wiped out instead"—and it vanished just as quickly.

After that, no one knew that Amegakure had already changed leaders.

Shiro knew nothing about what had happened in Amegakure. Although he was keeping an eye on Akatsuki, Azu's intelligence network was not yet strong enough to gather information like that.

So for now, he was traveling with Orochimaru, Tsunade, Minato, and the others while carefully planning what they would do after returning to the village.

The most important matter was Orochimaru. He had been extremely useful, and the blow he had dealt to Sunagakure had been massive, but now things were troublesome.

Although the Third Hokage had already suppressed the news, anyone could guess that the advisers would definitely seize the chance to make trouble. Right now, Orochimaru and Shiro's group were in the same boat. The more benefits Orochimaru gained, the more help it would be to Minato.

Unfortunately, even as they neared the village, they still had not come up with any good solution. The only relatively suitable option was to withstand it head-on, then find a point of conflict and shift the topic elsewhere.

As for that, Shiro already had some ideas. When it came to muddying the waters, Shiro did have a few tricks. Before transmigrating—or rather, in his previous life—he had not read all those trashy webnovels for nothing.

Who cared whether it worked or not? He would just mess around blindly. In any case, Shiro was currently the greatest contributor in this war. Even Shukaku was in Shiro's hands, which was equivalent to having a controllable Jinchuriki!

And that did not even include