Time slipped by, second by second.
In the blink of an eye, the battle had already been raging for more than forty minutes.
And after Qian had stalled for nearly ten minutes, the situation on the field finally began to change.
First, on the outer edge of the battlefield—especially among the Rock ninja in the direction away from the stronghold—some inexplicable unrest broke out.
Then came some of the Rock jōnin. They seemed to have received some sort of news, and after a struggle, they began organizing people to retreat.
Seeing this, Qian narrowed his eyes slightly.
Then he looked at the two Rock jōnin who were stalling with him and said with interest, "Hey, your companions seem to be pulling out. Aren't you leaving?"
"What?"
When the two Rock jōnin heard this, they were first startled, then immediately glanced toward the other Rock jōnin. Sure enough, they saw that some of them had already begun withdrawing.
Clearly, they had not noticed this earlier.
However, that was only normal.
Although Qian had been stalling with them earlier, he would not truly just go through the motions. To grind more Proficiency, he had been using Swordsmanship at full strength.
As a result, the two of them had to deal with him with their full attention. Otherwise, they still might have died at his hands.
So it was perfectly normal that they had not noticed the movements of the other Rock jōnin.
Just as they were wondering why, several sharp whistles of varying length suddenly rang out across the field.
"That's the retreat signal!"
The expressions of the two Rock jōnin changed slightly. They exchanged a glance, then immediately launched a counterattack against Qian.
Seeing this, Qian could roughly guess what those whistles from the Hidden Rock meant.
At a time like