The night passed in the blink of an eye.
At the first light of dawn the next day, the Water Country and the Lightning Country arrived in the Land of Wind one after another. Under Reto's reception, the ninja from all six villages had finally assembled!
After a brief rest, the great battle between the six villages finally began that afternoon in the vast desert!
The skies over the desert were cloudless for thousands of miles. The sandstorm from several days ago had conveniently carried away the lingering heat in the air, making it the perfect battlefield for the strongest fighters of the age.
The rules of the competition were quite simple. Teams of three would each draw a white primary scroll and a black secondary scroll before the match began. Each primary scroll bore a number from one to six, as did the secondary scrolls.
Each team only needed to collect matching numbers on its primary and secondary scrolls, then submit them at a designated location in the center of the desert. Each team could carry no more than two scrolls, and the number on the scrolls determined the team's ranking.
If a team had not gathered matching numbers by nightfall, the incomplete teams would be ranked in order according to the number on their primary scrolls.
Naturally, after drawing their primary and secondary scrolls, the six teams would enter the arena from six different directions, preventing all six teams from encountering one another right at the start.
Inside Sunagakure's Kazekage Building, the leaders of the six ninja villages sat in turn around a circular conference table. A crystal ball sat before each of them, displaying the scene of their own team.
"Everyone, this is the Telescope Technique invented by my younger brother," Hashirama introduced proudly. "It can use