Takigakure lay behind a massive waterfall at the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Grass.
The waterfall was hundreds of meters high. Water plunged from the top of the cliff, forming a rainbow that stretched across half the mountain in the sunlight. Its roar was like thunder, and the whole earth seemed to tremble faintly beneath the force of the rushing water.
At that moment, Uchiha Jun, Uchiha Hikari, and Kakuzu stood on a rocky platform before the waterfall, gazing up at the enormous curtain of water that completely veiled the mountainside.
"Takigakure is hidden behind this waterfall." Kakuzu stood beside Uchiha Jun and pointed to the center, where the current was strongest. "Beyond the waterfall, there's a passage leading into the mountain's interior. The village's main buildings are all carved into caves inside the mountain."
"Easy to defend, difficult to attack."
Kakuzu paused, then added, "But that's only against a frontal assault. Cut them off for a while, and everyone inside will starve to death."
[ Ding! A-Rank Mission [Escort Land of Fire official Nakamura Masao to the Land of Rivers] completed! ]
[Mission Rating: A (Number of ambushes encountered along the way: 6; all attackers eliminated, client arrived safely, no additional losses)]
[Mission Rewards: 3,000,000 Copper Coins, A-Rank Missions Completed +1 (Current: 2/7)]
Uchiha Jun was momentarily taken aback, then couldn't help raising an eyebrow.
He'd left several Shadow Clones with the escorting convoy, just in case. After all, although Nakamura Masao wasn't a low-ranking official, the convoy was traveling through the Land of Rivers during wartime. Running into scattered enemy stragglers was practically inevitable.
The memories returned when the Shadow Clones dispelled, flooding Uchiha Jun's mind like a compressed video file.
Three days after the convoy left the Land of Fire's border, it encountered the first wave of attackers on the northern wastelands of the Land of Rivers.
Five Chunin from Sunagakure, led by a puppet master at Special Jonin level.
They lay in wait on either side of a dried-up riverbed. The moment the convoy entered their ambush, they launched their attack.
Uchiha Jun's Shadow Clone reacted at once.
—Water Release: Water Wave.
A torrent erupted beneath the Shadow Clone's feet, blasting the three Chunin charging from the front away.
A second Water Release followed immediately, collapsing the ground beneath the remaining two Chunin and flipping them over with the sand.
The puppet master, a Special Jonin, reacted quickly. After the first attack failed, he immediately pulled back his puppets and tried to pin down Uchiha Jun's Shadow Clone with long-range poisoned needles. At the same time, he ordered the guards to protect the client and retreat from the ambush.
But Uchiha Jun's Shadow Clone didn't give him the chance.
The Shadow Clone immediately gathered chakra again.
—Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique!
A massive wave surged up from the ground and swallowed the puppet master's defenses. The puppets, forged from fine steel, were swept in every direction, and the Chakra Threads controlling them snapped along with them.
The whole thing took less than three minutes.
The convoy's dozen or so guards had only managed to stand on the opposite side of the wagons, dumbfounded.
Nakamura Masao was sitting in his carriage. When he saw what was happening outside through the window, his hand jerked, spilling tea all over his trousers.
He said nothing. He silently pulled out a handkerchief and wiped himself off, then pretended nothing had happened and lifted his teacup again. His fingers still trembled a little.
—So Konoha hadn't been stringing him along. This really was a super-genius. It was just that the "super-genius" had washed away the Dragon King's temple, along with the Dragon King himself.
Sitting in the carriage, Nakamura Masao silently reassessed the "value" of his escort mission.
Over the next few days, the convoy encountered five more waves of attackers.
Two were stragglers from Iwagakure, one was a gang of bandits made up of rogue ninja, and one was a Kusagakure reconnaissance team. The last consisted of several unidentified bounty hunters who tried to take advantage of the chaos, only to have Uchiha Jun's Shadow Clone casually take their heads.
Six waves of attackers. All six wiped out.
Uchiha Jun's Shadow Clone had barely used any jutsu above B-Rank. Most of the time, it had cleared the field with nothing more than Taijutsu and a couple of Water Release techniques.
It hadn't even used the Secret Scroll or Sharingan.
The Shadow Clone's memories ended there, then naturally faded away.
After digesting those memories, Uchiha Jun's lips curved slightly.
"The Shadow Clone's doing a decent job. Maybe I can pick out a few hostile Jonin from Konoha and pull off a 'switcheroo,' using their names to take on A-Rank missions."
"That way, I can get Uchiha Izuna soon, too!"
"Though picking the right person might be tricky. They need to be Jonin-level, and their social circle should be as 'limited' as possible..."
Uchiha Jun glanced down at the mission counter on his panel. He'd completed 2/7 A-Rank missions, with five more to go before he could unlock Uchiha Izuna's full card.
At this rate, a few more A-Rank missions should be enough to bring out that mad dog. Then, besides his swordsmanship, he could show off a little Uchiha's Glory!
Uchiha Jun closed the panel and thought for a moment before forming hand seals—
Shadow Clone Jutsu.
Poof!
Clouds of smoke burst across the empty space in front of the three of them. When the smoke cleared, several of Uchiha Jun's Shadow Clones stood there.
One of the Shadow Clones flexed his fingers, then nodded to the original. "I'm off."
He formed hand seals, and light shimmered across his body as he changed out of Uchiha Jun's usual clothes and into the standard Konoha Ninja uniform: a dark green vest and a Konoha Headband tied around his forehead.
Kakuzu watched Uchiha Jun complete the whole process in just a few seconds, utterly dumbfounded.
"I didn't expect Uchiha Jun to be a Konoha Ninja. I thought he was some Uchiha branch-family member who'd drifted away from the clan."
"With the way things are in Konoha, can it really produce a super-genius who has a Mangekyō Sharingan in his teens?"
Watching the Shadow Clone he'd sent off to return to Konoha and take on a new A-Rank mission, Uchiha Jun turned to Kakuzu and Uchiha Hikari.
"Come on. We'll go in through the front gate. This is only a small village. An Elite Jonin is no reason for us to hold back!"
Takigakure's defenses were indeed built across steep, winding terrain. There were three checkpoints in all, each manned by sentries day and night.
But to Uchiha Jun, these defenses were completely useless—nothing more than a formality.
"Susanoo!"
Susanoo smashed the iron gate at the first checkpoint away with a single punch.
"Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique."
The second and third checkpoints were swept away by the water in an instant.
Takigakure's current leadership—the three councillor ninja and the village chief—were sitting stiffly in the meeting hall by the village entrance. Their faces looked as though they'd just bitten into a bitter melon full of broken glass.
They watched Uchiha Jun and the others stride in, their eyelids twitching, but not one of them dared stand up and rebuke the intruders.
—They had no choice. They couldn't afford to provoke any of the people facing them.
Kakuzu, an S-Rank missing-nin from Takigakure.
When he defected, he'd killed the previous village chief and three elders. He was said to have taken the secret technique Earth Grudge Fear with him. Takigakure had been helpless against this missing-nin, and the bounty on his head had remained nothing but a formality.
As for the little girl—though she looked only twelve or thirteen, she was with these two ruthless figures, and Kakuzu even seemed wary of her. Not a single Jonin in the room dared test her.
And the one leading them...
The black-haired boy looked no more than ten. His unusual red Sharingan were half-lidded, and he stood quietly in the center of the meeting hall, yet the air throughout Takigakure seemed to grow heavier.
He'd just punched through the half-meter-thick steel gate at the village entrance with Susanoo, and even brought down two nearby storehouses in the process.
Such a blatant "show of force" was more effective than any verbal threat.
"—Hero Water."
Uchiha Jun got straight to the point, his tone calm. "I want all the information you have on Hero Water, along with your entire stockpile."
Takigakure's village chief was a white-haired old man. Fine beads of sweat formed on his forehead. His lips moved several times, but in the end, he said nothing and stood up.
He slowly walked to the wall at the back of the meeting hall and pressed his hand against a particular stone brick. The instant he pushed it, a mechanism whirred inside the wall.
A little dust puffed from between the bricks. Then the wall slowly slid open, revealing a spiral staircase leading downward.
"The origin of Hero Water... lies at the end of this staircase."