Main World, Konoha Year 15, summer.
On an observation terrace overlooking the training grounds in the Imperial Palace, New Capital, British Continent.
The afternoon sunlight blazed, carrying the New Continent's distinctive, rough scent-a mixture of steaming vegetation and smoke from distant iron smelters. On the training grounds, hundreds of newly recruited "Citizen" reservists, who had just completed basic formation training, sweated through spear-thrusting drills under their officers' shouted commands.
Their synchronized cries, the swish of spear shafts cutting through the air, and the officers' coarse reprimands mingled with the faint work chants from the distant docks and the roar of forging hammers in the workshop district, forming the background noise of an imperial capital brimming with fierce vitality.
Sakura Haruno stood by the terrace railing, still wearing that slightly oversized gray maid's dress, her hand tightly clutching the "Toyotomi" forehead protector.
She had been on this New Continent for some time, progressing from her initial shock, rejection, and bewilderment to being forced to observe, forced to think...
She felt like a lump of stubborn iron thrown into a furnace, repeatedly forged by unimaginable heat and heavy hammers, her old shape and understanding slowly warping and deforming.
And the man before her, who had single-handedly created all of this, stood calmly beside her, his gaze directed toward the training grounds, yet seemingly also toward a more distant, more unfathomable future.
After a long silence-or rather, after gathering herself for a long time-Sakura Haruno finally turned to look at Toyotomi Yinglang's profile. On that young, stern, sharply defined face, there was none of the familiar expression of a "Konoha Ninja," only an indifference almost like that of a deity looking down upon the mortal world, and bottomless calculation.
"I..." she began, her voice a little dry from nervousness and a certain resolve.