"Lord Tsuchikage! Something terrible has happened!"
The Tsuchikage's office in Iwagakure.
The door burst open, and the patrol ninja who had narrowly escaped came scrambling inside, his face still marked with undried tears and urine stains, his expression utterly terrified.
Inside the office, the Third Tsuchikage, Ōnoki, a short man with an enormous red, rosacea-ridden nose, floated in midair, sipping tea as he reviewed documents.
At the startled cry, he frowned, a trace of displeasure appearing on his aged face.
"What's the meaning of this panic!"
"What could possibly have frightened you like this?"
"Has Konoha's Yellow Flash come back to life, or has Kumogakure's Raikage fought his way to our doorstep?"
Ōnoki's voice was strong and resonant, carrying the authority of someone long accustomed to command.
Beside him stood a burly man with an honest-looking face: his son, Kitsuchi, an elite Jonin of Iwagakure.
Kitsuchi, too, looked in puzzlement at the subordinate who was on the verge of collapsing.
"Lord Tsuchikage! It's even more terrifying than either of those!"
Panting heavily, the ninja recounted his encounter in full with a trembling voice, along with the words Uchiha Gen'yō had branded into his mind.
When he heard the phrases "Konoha's Root," "Danzo's gift," and "Iwagakure's very survival," Ōnoki's hand froze in midair, teacup and all!
A terrifying gleam suddenly shot from his cloudy old eyes!
"What did you say?!"
"The Uchiha Clan?!"
"Over a thousand people?! They appeared on the border of our Land of Earth without a sound?!"
Ōnoki dropped from midair in an instant, seized the ninja by the collar, and demanded answers in agitation.
"Yes, Lord Tsuchikage!"
"They all had Sharingan! So many I couldn't see the end of them!"
"Their leader, a young man named Uchiha Gen'yō, also told me to bring you this!"
As he spoke, the ninja pointed shakily at his head.
Kitsuchi immediately stepped forward, formed hand seals, and pressed his hands against the ninja's forehead, carefully extracting the encrypted mental information and projecting it onto a crystal.
When the list and briefing appeared on the crystal, the entire Tsuchikage's office instantly fell deathly silent!
Crash!
The teacup slipped from Ōnoki's hand and shattered on the floor!
He stared fixedly at the crystal's contents. His aged face turned purple with extreme shock and fury!
His body trembled violently!
"Matsumoto, Okamura, even the council's second-ranking elder, Akatsuchi's uncle! They're all spies for that old dog Danzo?!"
Ōnoki's voice was hoarse, like an enraged lion's!
What the crystal displayed was merely the table of contents for that lavish gift. Just a few names and summaries of the evidence of their intelligence transmissions, yet it was already enough to make Ōnoki's blood run cold!
Every one of these people held a high position in Iwagakure and had access to its core secrets!
This meant that, for decades, his Iwagakure had been practically transparent and defenseless before Konoha!
"Father!"
Kitsuchi's face, too, was filled with horror and belated fear!
If this list was real, the consequences were simply unthinkable!
Iwagakure had repeatedly suffered setbacks in its confrontations with Konoha over the decades. So this had been the root of it all!
"Uchiha Gen'yō."
Ōnoki slowly spoke the name, his gaze extraordinarily complicated.
There was anger and belated fear, but more than anything, there was the excitement and greed of someone who had spotted prey!
He waved his hand, signaling Kitsuchi to take away the patrol ninja, who was already scared senseless, and imposed a gag order.
Only father and son remained in the office.
"Father, could this be a Konoha plot?"
After calming down, Kitsuchi voiced his doubts.
"How could the entire Uchiha Clan possibly defect? It's too unbelievable!"
"And even if they did defect, why would they be kind enough to give us such important intelligence?"
"This could very well be a trap! Its purpose could be to sow discord among us and throw us into disarray!"
Kitsuchi's analysis was not without reason.
It was also the first thought any normal Kage would have when faced with such a situation.
Yet Ōnoki shook his head.
He slowly floated up again and moved to the enormous floor-to-ceiling window, looking down over all of Iwagakure.
"Kitsuchi, what sort of trap do you think would require the lives of over a thousand Uchiha as bait?"
"That old fox Hiruzen Sarutobi may be a hypocrite, but he certainly doesn't have that kind of nerve!"
"And have you forgotten that earth-shaking surge of energy that came from the direction of the Land of Fire a few days ago?"
"At the time, we all thought Konoha was testing some new forbidden technique. Now it seems..."
A light of wisdom shone in Ōnoki's eyes.
"That was no experiment at all. That was the Uchiha bidding their final farewell to Konoha in the most brutal way possible!"
"This Uchiha Gen'yō is ruthless! He's an ambitious overlord who dares to punch a hole in the heavens themselves!"
Ōnoki drew a deep breath, a fervor at odds with his age appearing on his old face!
"This is an opportunity! A once-in-a-millennium opportunity for Iwagakure to turn its fortunes around completely, perhaps even unify the Shinobi World!"
"Father! Are you really going to meet him?"
Kitsuchi paled in alarm.
"It's too dangerous! They're Uchiha, our sworn enemies! What if they've laid an ambush..."
"No, I must go!"
Ōnoki cut him off decisively!
"And I must go alone!"
"This list is worth gambling my old life on!"
"Once we have the identities of all Danzo's spies in the major ninja villages, we'll have every village by the throat!"
"Add to that the Uchiha Clan's thousand-plus pairs of Sharingan... Kitsuchi, imagine what a terrifying force that would be!"
The more Ōnoki spoke, the more excited he became, as though he could already see a future in which he led Iwagakure to reign over the Shinobi World!
He turned to Kitsuchi, his gaze becoming utterly resolute.
"Prepare my things!"
"I'm taking this bet!"
"If I win, Iwagakure will enjoy a century of glory! If I lose..."
A trace of grim resolve flashed through Ōnoki's eyes.
"Then you will inherit the position of Tsuchikage!"
Just then, an Anbu ninja suddenly appeared in the office.
"Reporting, Lord Tsuchikage! Konoha has sent an S-rank emergency notice of the highest priority!"
"The notice says the Uchiha Clan suffered an unfortunate accident while developing large-scale Ninjutsu, and the entire clan sacrificed their lives for the village. Konoha will hold a funeral for them with the highest honors..."
At this, Ōnoki and Kitsuchi exchanged a glance, each seeing a trace of mockery and disdain in the other's eyes.
"Heh, that old fool Hiruzen Sarutobi is still using such ridiculous lies to cover up his incompetence, even now."
Ōnoki sneered and used Dust Release to reduce the notice directly to ash.
"Does he think he can pull the wool over everyone's eyes like this?"
"It's too late!"
"Kitsuchi, pass on my orders! From this moment on, Iwagakure is on level-one combat readiness!"
"Also, secretly take every one of those bastards on the list into custody! Remember, don't tip them off!"
"The show has only just begun!"
Ōnoki could no longer wait to meet the young man who dared to threaten him.
Just what sort of person was he?
And just as Ōnoki made up his mind to undertake this earth-shattering gamble, another furious roar rang through the skies over Konoha, a thousand miles away!