Konoha's "Stone Mill Offensive" continued grinding forward at its relentless, suffocating pace. Beneath its vast shadow, a quiet rebirth was taking place-one that concerned personal conviction and the dignity of a squad.
The air in the medical camp always carried a mixture of bitter herbs and the faint metallic tang of blood.
Hizashi Hyuga lay flat on his hospital bed. The fierce pain in his back had gradually given way to a tingling itch, a sign that his wounds were rapidly healing under top-tier Medical Ninjutsu.
But his thoughts had long since left his injuries behind.
His pure white eyes stared at the patterns on the tent ceiling, while every detail of Wind Howling Gorge replayed in his mind.
The enemy's vicious Wind Release, their bizarre puppets, and that despair-inducing, airtight coordinated assault.
Traditional Gentle Fist emphasized precision strikes and defeating an enemy with a single blow, sharp and swift as the wind. Yet against overwhelming numbers and wide-area suppression, that "precision" had proved utterly powerless.
Fragments of things Shinji had once said were like grains of gold scattered across the riverbed of his memory, now washed into view one by one by the currents of his thoughts.
"Gentle Fist is more like the wind-"
"Rotation is like a whirlwind-"
The Kirigakure Ninja's viscous, resilient "Water Prison Technique," which trapped its enemies without giving them anything solid to fight-
And those stray phrases Shinji had unconsciously muttered under his breath: "The highest good is like water. Water benefits all things without contending-
Nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water, yet nothing surpasses it in overcoming the hard and strong-"
"Water..." Hizashi murmured.
He struggled to raise his uninjured arm, his gaze settling on the clear water gently rippling in the cup beside him.
Water had no fixed