The next day.
Morning.
Qian and the fully prepared Leaf Village Jonin led several hundred Low and Mid-Ranked Leaf shinobi toward the frontline stronghold against Iwagakure.
Aside from people, the group also had a dozen or so flatbed carts, mostly loaded with standard ninja tools like Kunai and Shuriken.
Clearly, these were all prepared by Main Camp for this counteroffensive.
However, to be honest, Qian did not think much of this counteroffensive's chances.
As for the reason—
It was simple. The war had dragged on for two years, and the Leaf's manpower was already critically short. Even if they took a few strongholds this time, once Iwagakure's reinforcements arrived, there was a high chance they still would not be able to hold them.
As for wiping out the enemy's effective forces...
That might be possible, but Iwagakure had plenty of ninja and simply did not care about the deaths of a few cannon-fodder shinobi.
With that kind of exchange, the Leaf would definitely be the one to lose out in the end.
But not fighting was not an option either, because if they kept delaying, Iwagakure would transfer all ten thousand-plus ninja who had surrounded and killed the Third Raikage to the front line.
Although it was impossible for all of them to be thrown against the Leaf, even one-third of that force would be enough to put pressure on the Leaf's front line.
At that point, the situation would return to how it had been before—Iwagakure using its superior numbers to slowly gnaw away at the Leaf's defensive zone bit by bit.
Clearly, that was a slow death.
Orochimaru must have seen this as well, which was why he intended to gamble.
If they could take advantage of Iwagakure's temporarily hollow front line this time and wipe out a