In the meeting room, Uchiha Tenjo stood up. "Our first priority is to evacuate the civilians. As long as the villagers survive, Konoha's roots will remain.
"Then Mito can fight with everything she has without worrying about hurting them.
"Once the villagers are safe, we might as well turn Konoha into one enormous trap."
Elder Shinsuke considered this. "Clan Head Tianchang is right. As long as Konoha's people survive, we can rebuild the structures we lose.
"If we win this battle, we can recover our losses from Kumogakure in time."
The meeting lasted more than two hours.
Afterward, every department in Konoha sprang into action, mobilizing the villagers and moving them to shelters.
Konoha had rehearsed this evacuation many times. War was all too common, even for the wealthiest nation in the Shinobi World.
In the more than thirty years since Konoha's founding, no army had ever fought its way into the village, but assassinations and bombings had never stopped.
Especially after the First and Second Hokage died, Konoha's power to deter its enemies had waned. With enough at stake, many Ninja Villages were willing to take the risk.
Throughout the village, shinobi placed Sealing Arrays and Explosive Tags underground. Others inscribed Sealing Formations across the ground to conceal all traces of the tags and traps.
Time passed as Konoha worked feverishly. Daylight gradually broke, and several members of the Konoha leadership gathered on the outer wall.
They had only one task: lure Kumogakure into the village. Beneath Homura's calm expression lay a hint of anxiety.
Kumogakure's successful landing in the Land of Fire had been a grave failure on his part. If the traps dealt Kumogakure a devastating blow,
and the village's civilians survived, he might be allowed to spend the rest of his life in peace despite his