Book of Thunder

After arriving in the Land of Thunder, Oguri Hayashi stopped training.

He needed to keep himself in peak condition at all times to deal with the situation in the Land of Thunder.

The Land of Thunder stood at a considerable elevation, surrounded on all sides by mountains. They were not mountain ranges, but individual, towering peaks.

The people of the Land of Thunder connected mountains with Chains, then nailed wooden planks onto them. They traveled and moved along these chain roads.

The Land of Thunder was a country born with its own defensive barrier.

With hundred-zhang cliffs and thousand-foot sheer walls, only jonin could climb them.

What was the point of sending dozens of jonin up in a battle on the scale of a national war? That was why the Land of Thunder suffered the fewest invasions. But from Oguri Hayashi's perspective, those chain roads, incapable of transporting large amounts of food and supplies, were probably the greatest reason for the Land of Thunder's poverty.

As the saying went, if you wanted to get rich, build roads first. If transportation capacity could not improve, the Land of Thunder wanted to escape poverty? What a joke.

However, he had come for the Book of Thunder, not to help the Land of Thunder become prosperous. So he bypassed those "main transport routes." Cloud Ninja guarded the ends of every cableway. They served as essential scouting posts and defensive positions; with only a small force, they could lock down the main routes and immediately warn the village when large numbers of enemies approached.

They stationed themselves along the cableways like beacon towers. Once enemies appeared, they would cut the cableways, light the signal fires, and retreat.

The cost of repairing the cableways, along with the constantly lit signal fires, would make any invasion extremely troublesome. The Land of Thunder was a resource-poor country blessed with natural barriers.

Such a country clearly had no great plains for growing food. Without plains to produce food, its population would be relatively small, and its people would naturally be exceptionally fierce.

History had long proven that nations without agriculture could not sustain population growth, because productivity simply did not allow it. That was why the Cloud Ninja had such strong territorial ambitions and aggression. In every Shinobi World War, it was the Cloud Ninja who emerged from the deep mountains and forests to attack other countries, rather than other countries attacking the Cloud Ninja. The Land of Thunder simply produced too little; it was not worth invading.

He did not take the usual route. Using the Omni-directional Mobility Gear, he drove its anchors directly into the cliff and slowly hauled himself upward.

The Omni-directional Mobility Gear also had a dual-anchor configuration, one on each side. After reaching a certain height, he could fire the other one out and secure its steel cable to another cliff.

Relying on the Omni-directional Mobility Gear, he slowly crossed mountains and ridges, heading toward Kumogakure by a route no ordinary person would ever imagine.

Kumogakure sat atop the highest peak in the Land of Thunder. Earth Style Jutsu had reshaped the surrounding terrain, turning the mountains into platforms for the Cloud Ninja to live on.

Wouldn't it have been better to turn all the mountains in the Land of Thunder into this from the start?

Oguri Hayashi curled his lip from the outskirts of the mountain. The Land of Thunder lacked farmland, yet its ninja would rather go to war than use ninjutsu as productive tools for the country.

He truly could not understand what those ninja were so proud of.

He draped the Invisibility Cloak over himself and lowered the display from his forehead. By now, he had entered an extremely dangerous area.

He still wore Konoha's forehead protector at his waist. If he got caught, there was absolutely no way he could survive the Cloud Ninja's pursuit and return home.

Almost everyone in Kumogakure was a ninja, while civilians were comparatively rare. That was related to the Land of Thunder's small population and Kumogakure's martial culture.

Without knowing the amount of Chakra the others possessed, he could only evade everyone he encountered along the way while also planning a reasonable escape route. That was difficult.

But it was not difficult for Oguri Hayashi.

Oguri Hayashi had prepared two escape routes, and he remained utterly composed.

He used Thermal Imaging to spot people ahead of time, then avoided them with the Invisibility Cloak. He did not even need to use Chakra along the way, relying solely on his nimble movements as he made his way toward the Raikage's Office.

If he had guessed correctly, this was the late stage of the Second Shinobi World War. The Land of Thunder and the Land of Earth were about to fight a major war, which meant the Raikage should already be at the border between the Land of Thunder and the Land of Earth.

He was not someone reckless enough to come to the Land of Thunder and steal another village's secret manual without knowing anything.

According to his estimates, whether the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki was Killer Bee or Killer B, once he went berserk in the village, no one would be able to restrain him. So the Third Raikage would have taken him to the battlefield.

That meant only the underage Two-Tails Jinchuriki, Yugito Nii, and the not-yet-mature Fourth Raikage, A, remained behind as the village's two top-tier combat forces.

Of course, neither was someone Oguri Hayashi could contend with now.

Once he had a general understanding of the high-level combat forces here, he knew how to deal with them.

At this time, Kumogakure lacked top-tier combat power. At most, it had some genin and chunin, along with a small number of jonin. That made his chances of success much greater.

He made his way into the Raikage's Office, where sealing techniques had been set up. Anyone who touched something carelessly would immediately trigger the seals and sound an alarm.

With the Raikage absent, there was no Shadow Guard here. The Shadow Guard had to remain by the Raikage's side at all times to protect him. After the Raikage left for the front lines, this place was nothing but an empty shell aside from the seals.

"This is really easy..." Without hesitation, he triggered the seals and alarm, then charged straight out through the Raikage's Office window.

This was the highest point in all of Kumogakure. Unlike Konoha, it had no Hokage Rock. The moment the alarm sounded, his brazen leap through the shattered window made the scene look like something out of a blockbuster.

The instant the alarm rang, every ninja in Kumogakure looked up toward its source—the Raikage's Office.

They saw someone burst arrogantly out of the Raikage's Office with a massive scroll as tall as he was strapped to his back, his limbs spreading wide in an instant.

Membranous wings like those of a Winged Suit unfolded from his body. Using the height of the Raikage's Office and the mountain peak, he shot downhill before the eyes of every Cloud Ninja like an arrow loosed from a bow.

"Damn it! An enemy broke into the Raikage's Office and stole the Book of Thunder!!" This was Kumogakure's secret legacy, a secret tome that even most Cloud Ninja were not qualified to study. It had actually been stolen?!

And judging by his build, he was just a child?!

The Cloud Ninja erupted. Countless jonin, chunin, and genin leaped onto the rocks and sprinted across them, occasionally using vines to assist themselves as they chased after the figure who was several times faster than them.