The Road No One Had Walked

Snow kept falling, slowly turning the whole world white.

People trudged through the snow, carrying bodies out of the ruins. Their sobs sounded all the more desolate against the winter landscape.

The Clinic was packed. Stretchers bearing the wounded nearly filled the corridors, and nurses hurried from patient to patient, changing dressings and bandages.

Fortunately, they had plenty of Wound-Healing Pills and painkillers in stock. No one would die for lack of timely treatment.

Inside the Village Chief's Office, the mood was grim. Kumi Uzumaki, Listening Yulong, and almost everyone else bore injuries. Even the clerical staff were covered in dust, exhaustion plain in their eyes.

Lu Zeming first asked how badly the village had been damaged.

As his deputy, Kumi Uzumaki answered in a hoarse voice. "The Northern District suffered heavy damage. More than fifty homes were destroyed. We're still counting the dead, but the conservative estimate is over four hundred. We've confirmed that twenty-five of our ninja were killed. Six of them were still children..."

The village had only a little over sixty ninja to begin with. Losing a third of them at once was heartbreaking.

Suppressing his grief, Lu Zeming forced himself to sound resolute. "Things will get better. For now, our priorities are treating the wounded and rebuilding. Set aside a plot on the mountain behind the village for a Cemetery, where we'll bury the heroes who died defending us. I'll have their names carved on a monument so future generations will honor them."

"Yes!"

Lu Zeming turned to Listening Yulong. "How are the prisoner interrogations going?"

Listening Yulong replied respectfully, "Some of the ninja from the Land of Grass were the Daimyo's personal guards. The rest were private troops from various Shinobi Clans, including Shinbu and Shinomiya. As for the Konoha Ninja, they say the