Main world.
Year 30 of Konoha, spring.
The northern border of the Land of Fire, frontline camp.
The tents stood on frozen ground, where patches of unmelted snow still lingered, hard and slippery underfoot.
The camp was sizable. Provisions were stacked on the west side, the wounded were housed in tents on the east, and the command tent and several meeting tents stood in the middle. Along the distant ridgeline, patrols from the Land of Lightning occasionally appeared, then quickly vanished again, like shadows drifting at the edges of sight.
Jiraiya sat on a wooden crate outside the command tent, holding a scroll of intelligence that had just arrived.
He had already read it twice and had turned back to the beginning for a third time. The intelligence had been forwarded from Konoha, approved by Mitokado Homura, and dated three days earlier. It was short, its core contained in a single passage: at the Golden Forest on the Rōran border, Toyotomi Yinglang's four sons had driven back Hanzo of the Salamander, who had dubbed them the "Four Toyotomi Heroes."
Several lines of notes below the report briefly outlined the battle-but included no details about any dōjutsu, no mention of immortality abilities, and no mention of the types of side effects their Mangekyō caused.
Jiraiya lowered the report and looked up at the distant ridgeline. The Land of Lightning patrol was already gone, leaving only a gray-white sky and unbroken stretches of snow.
He fell silent for a moment, then spoke quietly, as though talking to himself, or perhaps asking the silver-haired man crouching beside the campfire nearby, applying maintenance oil to his Ninja Blade.
"A Mangekyō at such a young age... and Wood Release too... could Toyotomi Jinsyokuin be the Child of Prophecy the Great Toad Sage spoke of?"
Hatake