Kitsuchi hurriedly pushed open the door of the stone house before him, pulled off his Tsuchikage robes in a few quick motions, and hung his Shadow Hat behind the door.
Holding the intelligence that had inexplicably appeared at a border outpost, he ran toward his spacious backyard.
With no time for the cumbersome password exchange, he coated his feet in chakra and rapidly formed seals with one hand.
"Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole Technique!"
The flowing chakra turned the soil beneath his feet into fine grains of sand, and Kitsuchi abruptly sank underground, burrowing forward like an earth dragon.
His agitated chakra made him descend rapidly, and thanks to the technique's special properties, Kitsuchi could still sense what was happening on the surface above.
But frantic with anxiety, he could spare no attention for the surface.
Whoosh, whoosh...
His tall, sturdy body burst into the underground space in a spray of sand.
This hollow beneath the residence of two generations of Tsuchikage bore obvious signs of extensive human workmanship.
There were smooth stone walls, a stone bed and table that seemed carved from the rock, and several small windows.
A close look at those windows would reveal that they consisted of numerous densely packed holes, providing ventilation while maintaining concealment as much as possible.
Though behind Kitsuchi's house, on the side of this underground space where the windows were located, lay a cliff that was difficult for people to reach.
"Father!"
Kitsuchi's shout awakened Ōnoki's "fatherly love," stopping a sharp earth spike just short of Kitsuchi's vulnerable neck.
"Kitsuchi!?"
"Didn't we agree you would be careful?"
"You're a grown man, the Tsuchikage, and you still panic like this whenever something happens!"
One glance at the papers in Kitsuchi's hand gave Ōnoki a rough idea of what had happened. He