Hiruzen Sarutobi did not make many movements. He simply stood there quietly, watching the pair of ninja who had appeared before him moments ago make their plans and arrangements in an instant.
To be honest, he felt a faint sense of satisfaction inside.
At the very least, ninja from other villages still remembered who Hiruzen Sarutobi was when they saw him, and they still showed him sufficient respect.
But Hiruzen Sarutobi only paused briefly, using the time to recover some of his chakra.
After all, this was war. No matter how unwilling he was to kill, he still had to wield the butcher's blade.
The thick mist Mei Terumi had left behind while fleeing allowed the female jonin to expend less chakra as she blended into the fog and stalled for time.
Perhaps if she delayed long enough, she might even be able to quickly leave the battlefield and preserve her life.
Hiruzen Sarutobi spoke at that moment.
"You really are a kind ninja. If there were no war, you could be accompanying your students and properly completing missions."
"Instead of wasting time here, buying them time to escape."
Hiruzen Sarutobi said that purely to disgust the other side with some trash talk.
After all, he too needed enough time to recover a certain amount of chakra.
Uchiha Yato's medicine could only maintain his minimum chakra reserves; it could not restore them quickly.
Repeatedly draining his chakra would cause irreversible damage to his body.
So Hiruzen Sarutobi was willing to spend some time trading trash talk with the other side while seeing whether he could pry out any useful information.
This time, the ninja village alliance had paid an enormous price to ambush Hiruzen Sarutobi and a sealing squad.
A long-term hidden agent in Konoha had been exposed, along with