An Immature Plan

The ground was riddled with enormous craters. At the center of the deepest one, the earth had even taken on a bizarre, molten glass-like appearance, radiating searing heat and violent residual chakra.

The rock walls had been torn open with countless savage gashes, while vast stretches of collapsed rubble filled the field of view.

Severed limbs, shattered puppet parts, twisted ninja tools, and dark-red, viscous bloodstains were mixed together, smeared across every inch of the scorched ground.

Dozens of corpses lay dead in twisted poses, their hollow necks telling a silent tale of terror.

Charred marks outlined human silhouettes, silently recounting the brutality of instant annihilation.

It showed them what a real battlefield looked like.

Corpses carpeted the ground, and blood flowed like rivers!

"Th-this... what on earth...?"

A young Chunin went deathly pale, his stomach churning violently as he barely held back his vomit.

"Where's Captain Lan?"

Tekka was the first to snap out of his shock. His anxious gaze swept over the mountain of corpses and sea of blood like two massive searchlights.

"Over there!"

Inasui spotted him first and pointed toward a relatively open area in the middle of the canyon, though it too was soaked in blood.

A figure clad in a damaged Konoha jonin flak jacket lay there!

His signature messy black hair had fallen across his forehead, obscuring part of his face.

Most terrifying of all, he lay there silently, as though all life had left him, completely motionless.

Not far from his body, Chahachiro's head, frozen in an expression of terror and disbelief, stared wide-eyed at the dim sky.

The blood at the severed stump between his head and body had already half-congealed.

"Captain Lan!"

Tekka's eyes split with fury as he rushed over first, utterly disregarding the sticky blood beneath his feet.

He rushed to Uchiha Lan's side, dropped to one knee, and tremblingly reached out to check his breathing.

Inasui and the other Chunin swiftly gathered around them and formed a defensive perimeter, yet their eyes remained fixed on Uchiha Lan on the ground, filled with shock and grief.

At last, Tekka's fingers felt an extremely faint but unmistakably warm breath.

"Captain Lan is alive! He's breathing!

"Tekka's voice shook with overwhelming relief and lingering fear. He immediately and carefully placed his hand on Uchiha Lan's carotid artery to confirm his pulse.

Inasui also quickly crouched down and began examining him with practiced efficiency:

"His pulse is weak, but relatively stable... There are too many potentially fatal wounds on his body... His chakra fluctuations are extremely chaotic and weak. It looks like... severe chakra depletion."

His brow furrowed tightly. His eyes swept over the horrific battlefield before returning to the unconscious Uchiha Lan, filled with immense confusion and alarm.

"Depletion? Forget that for now! Get Captain Lan back immediately!"

Tekka raised his voice.

"Quick! A stretcher!"

Tekka's voice cracked with urgency. He did not dare move Uchiha Lan's body carelessly.

Several quick-witted Chunin immediately chopped down some relatively sturdy nearby branches and rapidly bound them together with ropes and tough cloth they carried, making a simple stretcher.

They carefully lifted the unconscious Uchiha Lan onto it.

Uchiha Inasui remained fairly calm as he abruptly looked up.

"Everyone, listen up! Abandon the battlefield cleanup for now! Form a defensive formation immediately! Keep the stretcher at the center and retreat toward the main camp at full speed!"

"Tekka, you're in charge of sensing and clearing the way ahead! Everyone else, stay alert for movement from every direction! If anything obstructs us, kill without mercy!"

"Got it!"

"Yes!"

The Chunin answered in unison, their voices carrying a note of solemnity.

Compared to staying on this blood-soaked battlefield, escorting Uchiha Lan was practically an easy task.

Ten minutes after they escorted the heavily injured Uchiha Lan away.

Thirty-six Sunagakure ninja emerged from a cave entrance. Every one of them had vacant eyes, with the image of a Three-Bladed Scythe Sharingan reflected in their pupils.

And standing before them was none other than Uchiha Lan's... Shadow Clone.

"Seriously, does the original have some kind of weird fetish? He actually pretended to be badly injured and expects me to keep controlling these thirty-something people with the Sharingan all the way to that Akina Mountain. How am I supposed to control them from that far away?!"

Uchiha Lan's Shadow Clone—hereafter referred to as Shadow Lan—stood at the cave entrance. Looking at the thirty-six Sunagakure ninja before him, their gazes vacant and the Three-Bladed Scythe Sharingan pattern branded deep within their pupils, he could not help but rub his forehead and sigh.

"That bastard original... definitely has masochistic tendencies!"

Shadow Lan muttered under his breath, his tone full of helplessness.

"He could've just slaughtered them all and saved himself the trouble, but no, he had to play around with some Ember Plan and even make his fake injuries look so convincing!

He recalled the final perilous moment in the canyon:

The scarred jonin's desperate counterattack had indeed been beyond expectations, and more than a dozen equally fearless Sunagakure elite ninja had joined in.

They abandoned all defense and turned all their chakra and life force into attacks, even managing to break through Uchiha Lan's Susanoo.

Of course, the final outcome was obvious. Those who had launched the desperate counterattack had all gone to the Pure Land.

Only those dozens of Sunagakure ninja who had completely lost their fighting spirit and collapsed limply to the ground remained.

Kill them? Easy as pie.

But a thought flashed through his mind:

Perhaps these terrified fools... still had some other use.

So, with the last of his mental strength and the little Mangekyō Sharingan ocular power he had left, he implanted a powerful, shallow mental domination mark bearing the Three-Bladed Scythe imprint.

This mark could temporarily suppress their will to resist, making them obey simple commands like walking corpses.

But it would not last long, and it could fail if the targets fiercely resisted mentally or encountered powerful outside interference.

He had actually learned this from Madara and that filial son Obito. Unfortunately, he did not have Madara's ocular power, which could directly control the Third Mizukage for long periods.

Nor did he have Obito's ability to control both a jinchuriki and a tailed beast at the same time.

After all, without Hashirama Cells or Indra's Chakra, he did not dare use his Mangekyō Sharingan recklessly.

"Stand up."

Uchiha Lan's voice carried unquestionable authority.

The thirty-six Sunagakure ninja rose stiffly like puppets on strings, staring at him with vacant eyes.

He laboriously formed hand seals with both hands, creating the Shadow Clone before them, Shadow Lan, then gave the order:

"Follow my Shadow Clone to the designated location. Hide yourselves and await further orders."

After doing all this, Uchiha Lan felt wave after wave of darkness blur his vision. His mental strength and chakra had both been completely exhausted.

He staggered, used a kunai to cut several wounds of varying depths across nonfatal areas of his body, then deliberately messed up his hair and clothing, smearing himself with dirt and blood that had splashed from Chahachiro nearby.

Finally, he forced himself to walk to the relatively open, bloodstained area in the center of the battlefield, calculating the timing as he went.