anwhile, in the Land of Earth, at Iwagakure—
"You want us to ally with Kumogakure and Sunagakure, and then imdiately send troops against the Land of Fire?"
Kitsuchi, who had only recently taken over as the Fourth Tsuchikage, looked at the secret letter in his hand, and a troubled look flashed across his face.
Ever since succeeding as Tsuchikage, he had been busy handling the funeral matters of the Third Tsuchikage, Ōnoki.
On top of that, Kitsuchi had been killing people left and right within Iwagakure. He had not forgotten that it was because people inside the village had concealed things from above and deceived those below that the Akatsuki had been able to attack Iwagakure in the first place.
As for the Akatsuki, Kitsuchi couldn't find their base for the mont, and he certainly wasn't their match, so naturally he had no thoughts of taking the fight to them. But the parasites within Iwagakure were right under his nose—there was no way he was going to show them rcy.
"It's probably what happened in the Grass Country that scared the daimyo."
Kurotsuchi stood beside Kitsuchi. Ever since Kitsuchi beca the Fourth Tsuchikage, she had naturally taken over as his assistant, while Deidara had gone down a different path.
After watching Ōnoki die right in front of him, Deidara had no chance of joining the Akatsuki anymore. In fact, he had already realized that his explosions alone would never be enough to avenge his teacher.
So recently, Deidara had been studying Iwagakure's Dust Release, hoping to inherit it.
"Uchiha Chiizumi…"
Hearing his daughter's words, Kitsuchi's expression turned complicated.
At that mont, he found himself thinking exactly what Ōnoki had once thought—why was it that monsters like this always ca out of Konoha? If Iwagakure had a powerhouse like Uchiha Chiizumi, then even the Akatsuki might not have been impossible to resist.
But only after becoming Tsuchikage did Kitsuchi truly realize just how barren Iwagakure's future looked.
They clearly had two tailed beasts, and even two jinchūriki. Yet Roshi had long since left the village, and when the Akatsuki attacked, the Five-Tails' jinchūriki, Han, had been away on another mission.
Iwagakure's Explosion Corps was strong, even elite by the standards of the Five Great Nations, but against an enemy like the Akatsuki, the Explosion Corps had been effectively useless.
Even their strongest mber, Gari, could only be called solid—not soone capable of turning the tide of a battle.
"Wait for now."
"If the three great villages are really going to form an alliance, we'll have to see what Kumogakure and Sunagakure decide first."
"What matters most for Iwagakure right now is gathering as much intelligence on the Akatsuki as possible—and taking revenge on them."
Kitsuchi wasn't especially concerned with the daimyo's life or death right now. Most of his hatred was fixed on the Akatsuki. And after taking over as the Fourth Tsuchikage, he had already executed a great many people inside the village.
So at the mont, Iwagakure honestly wasn't short on money.
After all, the people who had been embezzling were dead, Kitsuchi had confiscated quite a bit of wealth, and their mission expenditures had dropped. Even without the Land of Earth daimyo's funding, Kitsuchi felt Iwagakure could still hold on for at least two or three years.
And after those two or three years?
By then, once Deidara mastered Dust Release, Kitsuchi planned to hand the Tsuchikage's seat over to him and let him be the one to worry about everything.
It wasn't just Iwagakure either. Kumogakure and Sunagakure didn't really want to march against the Land of Fire either.
After all, a daimyo's life was a life—but the lives of shinobi were lives too.
As for the idea that ninja were simply tools in the daimyo's hands…
Maybe that had once been true, back in the old shinobi world, when no daimyo had ever been killed. But once Uchiha Chiizumi started killing daimyo one after another, the consequences were not limited to daimyo growing afraid of him.
The daimyo also started asking themselves: what if soone like that appeared in their own hidden village and decided to kill them too?
That kind of fear made them instinctively wary of their own villages, and stopped them from trusting them the way they once had.
And as for the ninja, they started thinking: so the daimyo aren't really untouchable after all. If they're killed, they die just like anyone else.
Uchiha Chiizumi himself probably hadn't even realized it, but by repeatedly killing daimyo, he had already shaken the original order of the entire shinobi world to its core. Or rather, the relationship of trust between daimyo and village was already gone.
That was the real reason the daimyo kept urging the great villages to go to war, yet the villages still refused to move.
Still in the Land of Earth, Yakushi Kabuto and Jūgo had already infiltrated a small town on the outskirts of Iwagakure.
"Kabuto, weren't we supposed to sneak into Iwagakure and steal Ōnoki's corpse?"
"Why are we still stuck here with no follow-up?"
Jūgo looked at Kabuto and asked in confusion.
Ever since Kimimaro had been taken away by those two strange figures, Jūgo felt like sothing was missing from his life. He had heard they took Kimimaro away to treat his illness, but he was still worried.
What Jūgo wanted now was simply to help Kabuto steal Ōnoki's remains as quickly as possible, finish the job, and then go see Kimimaro.
"I didn't expect Iwagakure's defenses to tighten this much!"
"Even the informants I planted there before have all been uprooted!"
Kabuto's expression was ugly. After mastering Ryūchi Cave Sage Mode, his complexion had always looked unnaturally pale, almost corpse-like, but now it was even worse.
Kabuto actually had so psychological resistance to entering Iwagakure. He had not forgotten that it was because of what happened there that Root forced him and Nono Yakushi to kill each other, and in the end Nono died by his own hand while trying to protect him.
Nono had been known as the Wandering Miko precisely because of her exceptional intelligence-gathering abilities. She had spies in villages all across the shinobi world.
But after Ōnoki's death, Kitsuchi not only tightened Iwagakure's internal security to guard against a second Akatsuki strike, he also carried out a bloody purge. Many of those killed were spies planted by the other hidden villages.
Under those conditions, the difficulty of sneaking into Iwagakure was obvious.
"I guess I'll have to try contacting Black Zetsu…"
Kabuto thought helplessly to himself. He had already seen what White Zetsu was like, and in his eyes, White Zetsu was practically the perfect expendable infiltrator.
And just as Kabuto and Jūgo were thinking about how to steal Ōnoki's remains, soone else, far beyond the shinobi world, up on the moon, had also finished making preparations.
"They really did lose the Great Tenseigan…"
"Through the Tenseigan, I can see fragnts of what the other Tenseigan sees."
"I don't know what kind of person stole that Tenseigan, but this is without a doubt my chance!"
Toneri Ōtsutsuki stood there, ready.
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