The Tsuchikage's Office.
The Third Tsuchikage, Ōnoki of Both Scales, was also reading the Love Newspaper Office newspaper sent back from Konoha.
Kumogakure had suffered a crushing blow on the Land of Woods battlefield.
Ōnoki was delighted.
But Uchiha Minamoto's performance...
Ōnoki did not like that.
"Single-handedly wiped out the combined forces of Kumogakure and Woods Hidden..."
"Captured the Two-Tails Jinchūriki alive, all on his own..."
"Not a single casualty among his subordinates..."
"That youngster!"
Ōnoki slowly lowered the newspaper and looked up at the two stone statues standing silently in his office.
Unlike Konoha, which liked to carve giant portraits of its Hokage into a cliff face...
Iwagakure's first two Tsuchikage had also been immortalized in statues by later generations, but theirs were placed inside the Tsuchikage's Office.
"Teacher... do you see this...? The Uchiha... the Uchiha again..."
Ōnoki gazed at the statue of the Second Tsuchikage Mu, murmuring under his breath.
Long-dead memories suddenly began attacking him.
That year, the village had only just been founded.
Mu had taken his student Ōnoki to Konoha, hoping to establish an alliance between their villages.
Back then, Ōnoki had witnessed Madara Uchiha pin his teacher to the ground and utterly thrash him.
Ōnoki would never forget that scene as long as he lived.
That helplessness, being looked down upon by an Uchiha's [Sharingan] and treated like an ant, still lingered in Ōnoki's heart, impossible to forget.
Later...
Hashirama Senju died.
Madara Uchiha died.
Ōnoki had thought monsters like those would never appear again.
The Yellow Flash of the Third Shinobi World War had certainly been a dazzling talent.
But a genius of that caliber was only about on par with Tobirama Senju back in his day.
Minato Namikaze still could not compare to monsters like Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha.
But