The main world.
Konoha Year 30, summer.
West City Resettlement Area, Country of Roran.
The news arrived at dusk.
A Toyotomi clan member serving at Konoha's Martial Arts Hall sent back an encrypted message through Rōran's communication channels. It was short and plainly worded, but every word was like a tightly packed brick of earth, landing with a dull thud.
The message read: Konoha had taken in a small group of Uzumaki clan members, just over twenty people. They had not entered the Resettlement Zone, had not been registered, and had not received medical examinations. That night, they had been transferred to the Vine Division's underground facilities. Their whereabouts were unknown.
A note was appended to the message: Hiruzen Sarutobi had ordered that Mito Uzumaki must not be informed.
Within two hours of its arrival in Rōran, the message passed through the Resettlement Zone's communication nodes to the Uzumaki community in the west of the city. The news spread without any loudspeakers or official announcements, yet it traveled faster than any public notice. It slipped through the gaps between doorways, passed from one person's mouth into another's ears, and was confirmed by a third person's silence, until it blanketed the entire area in full.
Uzumaki Jifang was among the last to learn of it.
He sat on his doorstep as the evening wind blew sand to his feet. He did not brush it away. A young man stood before him, having just recounted the message in full, and remained there, waiting for him to speak.
Jiefang did not speak immediately. He seemed to pick up the words one by one and turn them over in his mind, making sure he had missed nothing. Then he asked, his voice neither loud nor soft, as though confirming the pronunciation of a name,