When the rumors reached Hiruzen's ears.
Hiruzen flew into a rage in his office.
"What do they know!"
"Our Shinobi Clans were the founding heroes who built Konoha together!"
"How can we be treated the same as them?"
But losing his temper solved nothing.
In the end, Hiruzen ordered all missions suspended and recalled every registered ninja, nearly ten thousand in total.
Together with the Anbu, the ninja directly under his command, and troops from the few small Shinobi Clans that reluctantly answered his call,
all the ninja split into three forces to meet the enemy.
And so, the Fourth Shinobi World War began in this absurd fashion.
Unlike the all-out, life-or-death struggle of the Third Shinobi World War,
this war seemed particularly "restrained."
Kumogakure, Iwagakure, and Sunagakure showed no strong desire to attack.
Their main forces spent more of their time plundering.
Konoha was even more passive in its response.
Hiruzen's orders were carried out disastrously on the battlefield.
The commanders on every front tacitly adopted a strategy of "avoiding battle to stay alive."
Small skirmishes occasionally broke out in certain areas, with casualties on both sides, but the intensity was far lower than in the previous war.
After all, for the Three Great Shinobi Villages, the wealth they had plundered was already plentiful enough. There was no need to throw ninja lives away.
And for Konoha's commanders on the various fronts, retreating to preserve their lives was the best policy.
The war thus settled into a stalemate.
Yet even as the entire Shinobi World was engulfed in war, Hidden Xuan Village entered another period of rapid growth.
The major Ninja Villages had committed large numbers of ninja to the war, drastically reducing the number available for regular missions.
Mission requests throughout the Shinobi World began piling up rapidly.