Main World.
Summer, Year 25 of Konoha.
The Meeting Hall, Uchiha Clan Compound.
The summer night was stiflingly hot. Cicadas shrilled through the windows, like countless fine needles stabbing at the eardrums. The Meeting Hall was brightly lit, but the atmosphere inside was even stuffier, hotter, and more suffocating than outside.
Uchiha Fushan sat at the head of the table. Spread across the long table before him was a report that had just arrived from the Land of Rivers. Its contents were simple-the Toyotomi Clan's Relief Station had expanded again. Toyotomi Makoto had used his Sharingan to save a gravely wounded ninja from the Land of Grass. The injured man had kowtowed three times at the entrance to the Relief Station, saying, "The Toyotomi Clan are living bodhisattvas."
Fushan did not look at the report. He had already read it. Three times, and each reading had turned his stomach sour.
His gaze rested on the tabletop, on his own fingers. They were pale and slender, unlike a ninja's hands. His Sharingan had three tomoe. He had awakened it many years ago, and it had never evolved. He knew what that meant-it meant this was as far as he would ever go.
"Clan leader."
A voice came from farther down the hall. Fushan raised his head and saw Uchiha Bali standing in the center of the Meeting Hall, also holding a report. Bali's face was expressionless, but Fushan could feel his irrepressible resentment-not toward him, but toward their situation, the Toyotomi Clan, Konoha, and this increasingly suffocating world.
"The Toyotomi Clan has opened a Relief Station inside the Land of Fire." Bali's voice was calm, but every word seemed squeezed through his teeth. "Just south of Konoha, on the border with the Land of Rivers. When people from Konoha need treatment,