Deterrence

Half a year later, the uproar over the Hokage Half-Sleeve had gradually died down. Konoha seemed to have returned to its usual tranquility, and Bai Ye had slowly relaxed from his initial gravity, because he had realized that only greater strength could possibly allow him to intervene in all this.

Konoha Year 38, winter.

Hidden Cloud's activities along the northeastern border of the Land of Fire had begun growing frequent in autumn. First, patrol squads found footprints near the border that did not belong to Konoha. Then, several outposts consecutively reported seeing unidentified shinobi moving outside the defensive line at night. They neither attacked nor withdrew, simply standing in the distance like hunters measuring their prey from the darkness.

Bai Ye was practicing ninjutsu in the Hatake Clan's backyard when he received the mission.

Yes, his swordsmanship had hit a bottleneck. At Sakumo's suggestion, Bai Ye had begun training in ninjutsu—namely Lightning Release: Lightning Tiger Kill and Lightning Release: False Darkness. As for other Lightning Release techniques, Bai Ye had dabbled in them, but did not intend to master them.

Sakumo emerged from the living room in combat gear, a short sword slung across his back. "Get ready. The Third has ordered us to make a trip to the northeastern border."

"What mission?"

Bai Ye waved away the chakra gathered in his hand.

"A deterrence patrol."

It was not just Bai Ye and the two of them. When they departed that afternoon, there was also a squad led by an ANBU jonin: members of the Hyuga, Sarutobi, Nara, Yamanaka, Akimichi, Aburame, Inuzuka, and even Mitarashi Clans. Their group included one elite jonin, five jonin, and more than ten other chunin.

Bai Ye calculated it in his head. In some smaller nations, a force like this could overthrow the government outright. No wonder the mission was described as deterrence.

The northeastern border's terrain was entirely different from the Land of Rain. There were no endless curtains of rain or muddy swamps, only one barren ridge after another and dry riverbeds. Winter winds swept down from the north, cutting across their faces like knives. Konoha's outpost stood atop the highest mountain. Looking north from the watchtower, the ridgeline beyond Hidden Cloud's border was as clear as if it had been drawn with a ruler.

Sakumo led the team along the border. Bai Ye followed slightly behind and to the side, the tomoe in his eyes slowly turning. His Sharingan caught several blurred figures crouched behind rocks along the opposing ridge. Chakra flowed steadily through those people—they were sensory-type shinobi, tracking their route.

Of course, with the Hyuga Clan present, reconnaissance was not his primary responsibility.

"Captain Sakumo."

Hyuga Sosuke's voice cut in. He was walking on the team's left flank, the veins around his Byakugan slightly bulging, his gaze fixed northward.

"Eleven o'clock. Reverse slope of the ridgeline. Four people. Likely a standard chunin squad. The targets are recording observations. No hand signs, no attack posture."

Sakumo did not stop walking. "Distance."

"One thousand two hundred and thirty meters in a straight line."

"Their observation frequency."

"They look up once every ninety seconds, synchronized with our pace. Each observation lasts six to seven seconds. Judging from the range of their hand movements, they are recording our numbers, formation intervals, marching speed, and... your precise location."

Sakumo gave a quiet "Mm."

Sosuke continued his report, every figure precise to the last digit. "Approximately two hundred meters behind the enemy observation point, below the ridgeline, there are traces of chakra activity. Suspected fortified cover. Based on chakra trace density, there are estimated to be three to five people, outside my field of vision. Also, at ten o'clock, there is a faint residual chakra trace among the dead trees. It is less than half an hour old, likely left behind during a shift change."

"In other words, this isn't their first time here."

"Yes. Based on the freshness of the traces, this observation point has been maintained for at least seven days."

Bai Ye looked at Sakumo. His silver-white hair gleamed harshly beneath the winter sunlight. The White Fang of the Leaf standing here was itself the most direct deterrent to Hidden Cloud.

The patrol ended on a relatively gentle ridge. Sakumo stopped beside a dead pine tree, and Bai Ye crouched beside him as they waited for the gray-blue northern sky to darken before sunset. The figures watching from Hidden Cloud's ridgeline had vanished, and even their chakra traces had been cleared away completely.

Sosuke gave one final report. "The observation point was cleared seventeen breaths ago. All personnel have withdrawn to the reverse-slope fortifications. Today's records have been taken away."

Then he deactivated his Byakugan and returned to the formation without another word.

The instant Sosuke finished speaking, Sakumo stopped.

The north wind poured down, snapping everyone's cloaks.

"Bai Ye, follow me."

"Sosuke, keep the Byakugan active. Report any new chakra appearing in any direction."

"Inuzuka and Aburame, take the left. Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi, take the right. Suppress both flanks."

"ANBU squad, support from the center. Do not scatter."

"Everyone else, maintain formation. We continue forward."

Sakumo walked at the very front, and the more than twenty people behind him followed his pace down from the ridgeline.

Bai Ye walked behind and to Sakumo's side, his Sharingan already active. He drew his gaze away from the opposing ridgeline and looked back at the formation. Hyuga Sosuke's Byakugan covered an astonishing range. The Inuzuka and Aburame Clans' ninja hounds and kikaichu had silently spread across both flanks, while the Ino-Shika-Cho had already formed up at the right rear.

More figures began appearing across from them.

Bai Ye's Sharingan saw it clearly. The Hidden Cloud shinobi who had been crouching behind rocks stood up one after another. Some began running to the rear, some drew kunai from their waists, and some reached into their ninja tool pouches for signal flares.

"Two hundred meters ahead, reverse slope of the ridgeline. Five new chakra signatures... no, eight." Sosuke's voice was low, but every syllable was crisp. "Large movements. Signs of hand seals. They are gathering."

Sakumo did not stop.

"Their captain is behind the ridgeline, coming out of the fortification." Sosuke's Byakugan saw through rock and snow, reporting the scene beyond the ridge frame by frame. "Short dark hair. An old scar on his right cheek. Considerable chakra volume. Estimated jonin."

When the team entered the center of the open ground, the enemy formation finally closed in. More than ten Hidden Cloud shinobi came over the reverse slope, forming three loose lines ahead of them. The first row crouched with kunai already fitted with explosive tags. The middle row stood with their hands already positioned in seals. The person in the back stood atop the highest rock.

The jonin Sosuke had described.

Short dark hair, with an old scar running from his cheekbone to his jaw.

"Konoha," the jonin said. "This is within Hidden Cloud's alert zone. Stop advancing immediately."

Sakumo did not slow. More than twenty people followed him forward.

The enemy formation began to waver. Some of the crouching shinobi in the front row looked back.

"Take another step forward, and it will be considered a provocation." The jonin's voice dropped.

Sakumo stopped less than fifty meters from their first line of defense. The wind suddenly weakened at that moment. A small swirl of snow dust rose in the open ground between the two sides, spinning several times over the snow.

The enemy formation retreated two steps.

Sakumo spoke.

"Hatake Sakumo, Konoha jonin. By order, I am carrying out a routine patrol within the Land of Fire."

He paused.

"This is the Land of Fire. I do not need anyone's permission to walk across my own land."

The jonin raised his hand. The Hidden Cloud shinobi crouching in the front began feeding chakra into their explosive-tag kunai.

"Captain Sakumo." Sosuke's voice cut in from behind, half a beat faster than before. "Two o'clock, four hundred meters beyond the ridgeline. New chakra signatures approaching at high speed. Very fast, with concealment awareness. Not ordinary reinforcements."

Sakumo did not respond.

His right hand settled on the hilt of his short sword.

The short sword left its sheath.

The formation of those ten Hidden Cloud shinobi fell apart the instant he moved.

The enemy finally acted. The jonin's chakra surged the moment Sakumo advanced, bursting outward like the mane of an enraged beast as it crushed toward the team. Sakumo's silver-white blade came down along the jonin's charge. In that instant, the Hidden Cloud jonin raised the long sword on his back horizontally to block. The White Fang of the Leaf's short sword collided with the Hidden Cloud jonin's long sword, sparks exploding from their edges, painfully bright beneath the gray-white sky. The man and his sword were driven back several steps, but his guard remained steady.

A ninja hound from the Inuzuka Clan bit down on a Hidden Cloud chunin from the flank. Aburame Clan kikaichu silently crawled through the gaps in his armor. From the moment that chunin was bitten to the moment he fell, he could not even finish a single scream.

The Ino-Shika-Cho trio held back two people in the rear. The Yamanaka Clan's Mind Body Switch Technique disrupted one man's rhythm, and the Akimichi Clan's Human Bullet Tank slammed into him from the side. He was sent flying, tumbling through the air several times before he hit the ground. The Nara Clan's Shadow Imitation Technique caught his ankle the instant he landed, pinning him in place.

Bai Ye's Sharingan remained fixed on the leading jonin. He saw that Sakumo did not withdraw his sword after the first strike. The short blade slid down along the angle of the block, its tip cutting across the man's wrist. Blood sprayed from the wound and scattered in the wind. The man's long sword nearly slipped from his grip. He clenched the hilt with his injured hand while drawing a kunai from his waist with his left and stabbing it straight at Sakumo.

Sosuke's Byakugan had already locked onto all the man's movements. He called out the man's next landing point, and Bai Ye saw it at the same time.

But Sakumo's blade had not yet moved.

Bai Ye moved.

The tomoe in his Sharingan spun faster. Lightning-nature chakra exploded in his palm, and a piercing birdlike cry tore through the air. Chakra shape transformation was completed in an instant. A tiger formed from lightning surged out from his palm, its four limbs kicking up arcs of electricity as they struck the stony ground, faster than any thrown ninja tool.

Lightning Release: Lightning Tiger Kill.

The lightning tiger did not bite directly at its target.

It cut across the front of the jonin's landing point from the right, forcing him to turn sharply left. The moment his left foot touched the rocky ground, his right hand instinctively raised the kunai to block—exposing a blind spot in his defenses.

Bai Ye was no longer where he had been.

Flash Step.

He crossed twenty meters in the instant the lightning tiger swept through the enemy's line of sight, appearing in the target's left-side blind spot. His short sword was already unsheathed, blue-white arcs dancing along its blade with a fine crackling sound—Blue Steel Shadow.

The enemy reacted. As that diagonal slash came down, he forcibly twisted his body, drawing back his exposed left ribs. A Hidden Cloud jonin capable of leading a squad along the border had endured more than one session of life-or-death reaction training.

Bai Ye's blade scraped across his armor, cutting only through a layer of surface leather without reaching anything vital.

That was the expected outcome. A jonin would inevitably make that defensive movement after being briefly displaced. Bai Ye had known even before swinging that his slash would not cut deep. He only needed to use the blade to force his opponent into that posture.

Because Sakumo's sword had already arrived.

The long sword and short sword crossed in midair. As Bai Ye retreated half a step, his hand seals were already complete.

Lightning Release: False Darkness

But Bai Ye did not seek a single piercing thrust. Instead, he unleashed multiple lightning spears in a fan-shaped spread, sealing every possible avenue of retreat. Arcs of electricity plowed several charred grooves through the ground, while stones along their path were instantly blasted into powder.

The only direction the Hidden Cloud jonin had not been sealed off from was precisely the direction of Sakumo's descending strike.

There was nowhere to evade.

Sakumo's short sword swept upward from below, its edge carving a precise, lethal white line from the man's right shoulder.

The long sword slipped from the Hidden Cloud jonin's hand and plunged into the stony ground with a dull sound. He dropped to his knees at Sakumo's feet, his body crashing heavily onto the rocks and kicking up a small cloud of dust.

Sakumo wiped the blood from his short sword on the man's combat uniform and sheathed it. "Go back and tell your Raikage not to casually approach Konoha's border."

The man knelt amid the rocks, pressing his right hand against the sword wound in his chest as blood flowed through his fingers. After catching his breath, he took a signal flare from his clothes and fired it. A red flare burst across the gray-white sky.

The enemy formation began withdrawing in an orderly fashion, vanishing behind the ridgeline.

"Fall back."

Sakumo turned and headed south. Bai Ye followed behind him. The Inuzuka Clan's ninja hounds returned to their masters' sides, and all the Aburame Clan's kikaichu were recalled. No one in the entire team had died, and no one had suffered serious injuries.

Sosuke reported in a much calmer tone than before, "There are no new chakra signatures within three kilometers. All observation points have been cleared. No signs of further pursuit have been detected."