area51novel Chapter 483 First Arrival in the Star Kingdom: An Eye-Opening Experience
Chapter 483 First Arrival in the Star Kingdom: An Eye-Opening Experience
Chapter 483 First Arrival in the Star Kingdom: An Eye-Opening Experience
The border of the Iron Country.
The snow has been falling since last night.
The leaden-gray clouds hung low, as if you could reach out and touch the churning, damp, and cold air currents.
The entire mountain range was covered in snow, with icicles hanging from the branches of the fir trees, and the wind and snow made a low whistling sound as they passed through the valleys.
Danzo and his entourage walked on a stone bridge, each holding the walking stick they never parted with.
The stone slabs on the bridge were worn smooth by the passing vehicles and horses, and snowmelt seeped into the cracks in the stones, forming a thin film of ice.
Aburame Torune stood half a step to Danzo's right rear, his face covered by a mask, revealing only a pair of ever-vigilant eyes.
Yamanaka Fu was on the left, his hands forming a hand seal. It was a secret technique passed down from the Yamanaka clan, allowing him to receive information from his clansmen in Konoha from thousands of miles away.
The stream under the bridge was half frozen, and the water flowed against the ice shards, making a soft, tinkling sound.
Shan Zhongfeng's brows furrowed suddenly, and he pressed his right index and middle fingers together against his temple, as if filtering out noise from afar.
A few breaths later, he lowered his hand, turned to face Danzo, and knelt on one knee, the snow crunching softly beneath his knee.
"Lord Danzo." Yamanaka Fu's voice was low, but his urgency was unmistakable.
Something happened in the village.
Danzo did not turn back.
His hand, which was holding the cane, remained motionless. Snow fell on his shoulder and on the bandaged area, bringing a slight chill.
"Speak," he said, his voice hoarse yet steady, as if he had expected it.
"While I'm away from the village, who can't hold back?"
Shan Zhongfeng's Adam's apple bobbed.
He knew that what he was about to say would enrage Danzo.
When Danzo was angry, he didn't shout or yell; on the contrary, he never raised his voice when he was truly furious.
His anger was directed inward, forming a silent chill that sent shivers down the spines of everyone around him.
"It's the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, Naruto Uzumaki," Yamanaka Fu said, enunciating each word clearly. "He escaped with the help of Sasuke Uchiha."
Aburame Tori suddenly turned his head. He opened his mouth but managed to keep quiet, but the buzzing of the parasites around him suddenly intensified for a moment.
The Nine-Tails Jinchuriki—has escaped?!
Jinchuriki are not ordinary ninjas.
Not to mention the Nine-Tails!
That's Konoha's strategic nuclear weapon, the village's ultimate deterrent force.
If the Nine-Tails falls into enemy hands, especially into the hands of the Land of Stars, Konoha will lose the most significant piece of the balance in the entire ninja world!
Danzo gripped his cane tightly.
The veins on the back of his hands bulged out, and his knuckles left marks on his cane.
The eye socket beneath the bandage, which concealed the Sharingan, twitched slightly.
He had considered that Jiraiya might cause trouble after he left, that the fence-sitters of the ninja clans might secretly conspire, and even that the Third Hokage might have left some contingency plan before his death.
But the first one to jump out was not Jiraiya, not the Jonin class leader Shikaku, nor Hiashi Hyuga.
Instead, they were two twelve-year-old genin brats.
Danzo lowered his voice, his hoarse tone seeming to be infused with a layer of ice and snow: "I've only been away from the village for a few days? Two mere brats—"
Before he could finish speaking, the bottom of his cane slammed heavily onto the stone bridge deck, sending snow flying in all directions. The crisp sound of the cane striking the stone echoed several times in the canyon.
Yamanaka Fu lowered his head and quickened his pace in reporting: "Lord Aburame Ryoma has already dispatched a pursuit squad led by Terai."
"But recently the Root and Dark Side have been undergoing structural reorganization, and manpower allocation will take some time." He paused.
"Before the pursuit team could fully assemble, Jiraiya and Jonin leader Shikaku Nara simultaneously pressured the advisory elders, demanding that a Genin team be dispatched first for a 'persuasive pursuit'."
"The advisory group ultimately approved the plan and dispatched three genin teams, all of whom were Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha's classmates at the Ninja Academy."
"Classmate." Danzo repeated the word and gave a soft hum.
"A bunch of genin who didn't even pass the Chunin Exams, going after the Jinchuriki? Jiraiya and Shikaku have a good plan."
"Shikaku is trying to use the so-called bond to persuade the Jinchuriki to come back, right? What if he can't? Those genin can't keep the Jinchuriki at all, but they can be used as shields for my people."
He did not dwell on the matter further.
Time and distance are the greatest enemies at this moment. The Land of Iron is in the far north of the ninja world. Even if he marches at full speed, it will take at least several days to get back to Konoha. By the time he gets back, it will be too late.
With less than two days remaining until the Four Kage Summit, the Kage of the four major ninja villages have already set off. If he, as the acting Hokage, is absent at this time, Konoha's voice and influence in any subsequent joint operations will be weakened.
He cannot go back.
He could only place his most elite pieces on the chessboard and remotely control them from thousands of miles away.
"Pass on my orders to Ryuma." Danzo raised his eyes.
"We must capture the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki at all costs!"
"if----"
He paused for a moment.
In that instant, the snow seemed to fall even harder.
"If we can't bring him back, we absolutely cannot let him set foot in the Star Kingdom alive!"
Shan Zhongfeng bowed his head and replied, "Yes."
He stood up, re-formed the hand seals, and together with another Root ninja, transmitted the order back to Konoha Village, thousands of miles away, using a secret technique of the Yamanaka clan.
The chakra signal pierced through the wind, snow, and clouds, silently sweeping across the sky above the ninja world.
Danzo did not go to see him.
He continued walking forward, leaning on his cane, the snow beneath his feet compacted, making a series of soft cracking sounds.
Aburame Torune followed silently behind him, the buzzing of the parasitic insects almost inaudible in the wind and snow.
After crossing the stone bridge, the snow on both sides of the road became increasingly deep.
Occasionally, you can see a few bamboo stalks bent under the weight of the snow by the roadside. The bamboo leaves are frozen dark green, and they make a crisp cracking sound when the wind blows.
After walking about two more miles, several figures appeared on the hillside ahead.
Five warriors.
They were clad in layered silver armor, each plate edged with a thin layer of frost.
He wore an iron gas mask on his head, which was undecorated except for the Iron Country's sword pattern engraved on his forehead.
He had two or more samurai swords hanging at his waist, not the straight swords or short ninja swords commonly seen by ninjas, but real katanas.
The lead warrior took a step forward, the armor plates clashing together with a dull metallic sound.
He placed his right hand on the hilt of his sword at his waist, and raised his left hand in a standard samurai salute.
"By order of Lord Mifune, I await the arrival of the Hokage."
He addressed him as "Lord Hokage," not "Acting Lord Hokage."
The two warriors behind him simultaneously stepped aside, clearing a path to the mountaintop castle, the sound of their armor scraping against the snow perfectly synchronized.
Danzo slightly raised his chin.
His face was expressionless in the wind and snow, but the words "Lord Hokage" made the corners of his mouth curve up almost imperceptibly.
"Lead the way," he said.
In the land of rivers, in a withered forest.
Terai squatted on the branch of a dead chestnut tree, his breathing very light beneath his mask.
Five Root ninjas were scattered in the adjacent tree canopy behind him, each remaining absolutely still.
The wind rustled through the bare branches with a dry, grinding sound; a few withered leaves swirled in the air, landing on a body that had collapsed sometime earlier.
On the bodies of refugees here.
The corpse's abdomen was sunken, the ribs were pushing up the skin, forming one bulge after another, and the soft tissue in the eye sockets had long been eaten away by maggots.
Terai didn't look at the corpse for long.
Now 28 years old, he has been a Root ninja for twenty years, following Danzo from the Third Shinobi World War all the way to the present, growing from an ignorant boy into a young man.
Among all the Jonin in the Root organization, he wasn't among the strongest, but he was definitely the most reliable.
Danzo assigned him to lead the pursuit squad for this very reason: all he needed to do was maintain stability.
The six-person pursuit team, all equipped with special Jonin-level sensory and combat skills, maintained a well-spaced formation to avoid any possibility of an ambush.
Under normal circumstances, capturing or killing two twelve-year-old genin would only require one encounter.
But Terai had a string that had been subtly taut in his heart ever since he set off.
He was well aware of the threat posed by the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki.
When a Jinchuriki goes berserk, the power they can unleash far exceeds that of a regular Jonin. Without Yamato's Wood Release Kekkei Genkai, the possibility of suppressing a berserk Jinchuriki in his Tailed Beast form is almost zero.
However, according to the information provided by Ryuma, Naruto was taken away by Sasuke Uchiha and they traveled all night. Their current location should be in the border area between the Land of Fire and the Land of Rivers.
If the two kids are fleeing in a hurry, they should be almost exhausted, which would actually reduce the probability of the Jinchūriki going berserk.
The premise is that there are no reinforcements.
Terai recalled that the intelligence report mentioned that Shikamaru's three genin squads were already ahead of them, meaning they had most likely made contact with their target.
Shikamaru is Nara Shikaku's son, and his tactical acumen during the last Chunin Exams has already caught the attention of many.
If Shikamaru can successfully restrain the target, then the mission of the pursuit team will be simple.
If Shikamaru is instead held back —
"Captain!" A root ninja in the tree canopy on the left suddenly raised his hand and made a warning gesture.
"There's a large area of chakra residue in the woods ahead! The fluctuations are very chaotic, suggesting it might be traces of a chaotic battle!"
Terai frowned: "Speed up, keep your distance, and don't crowd together."
Six dark figures sprang up from the treetops at the same time, and the moment they leaped out, the distance between their landing points was sufficiently safe.
This is the tacit understanding forged by the Roots through countless pursuit missions. No commands or gestures are needed; everyone knows their position and the surrounding perimeter.
then.
"Corpse Bone Pulse —"
Terai heard a voice coming from deep within the woods.
The voice pierced the deathly silence of the withered forest, as cold as if someone were speaking softly on ice, yet every word clearly reached everyone's ears.
Terai's pupils suddenly contracted beneath the mask.
He didn't have time to determine the direction of the sound; it seemed to be coming from directly in front of him, or from under his feet, from above his head, or seeping out from every tree trunk.
But his battlefield instincts, honed over two decades, were already frantically sending him warning signals.
"The Dance of Ferns!!"
Terai roared, his voice shattering the deathly silence of the withered forest: "Enemy attack!! Take cover!!"
He formed hand seals, and the amount of chakra in his body was instantly drawn to a critical level.
Earth Release·Earth Wave!
The cracked soil at the foot of the well softened rapidly after the chakra was injected, surging up like ocean waves.
Hard rocks rose from the soil, layering and interlocking to form an upward-rising, wave-shaped stone platform.
The moment the stone platform lifted him up, he heard countless muffled thuds.
That sound is hard to describe.
It wasn't the splattering sound of a knife cutting into flesh, nor the thud of a kunai being driven into wood, but rather a complex sound produced when something penetrates soft tissue and bone in an extremely short time.
It includes the sounds of broken ribs, torn lung lobes, and the bursting of liquid as blood is ejected from blood vessels under high pressure.
All these sounds were compressed into a single instant, becoming a short, chilling muffled thud.
When the stone platform at the foot of the well rose to a high enough position, all sounds stopped.
He looked down and saw that the color of the soil on the forest floor was no longer visible.
Countless bone spurs burst forth from the ground, each as thick as an adult's arm, their pale white flesh reflecting a cold, metallic sheen in the sunlight.
The bone spurs ranged in height from several feet to several meters, arranged in an alternating pattern, layer upon layer, turning the dead wood forest within a radius of thousands of meters into a forest of white bones.
His five men were hanging on those bone spikes.
After being pierced by bone spurs from various angles, the corpse lost all support and hung limply among the skeletal branches.
Some people's masks were pierced from the side by bone spurs, splitting in two and revealing the young faces underneath that had not yet completely lost their color.
Another person's ninja tool bag was pierced, and kunai and shuriken slid out of the hole, clattering as they fell into the gaps between the bone spikes.
All of them were fatal in one hit!
In the instant the bone spurs erupt, no one has time to mount an effective defense.
Terai's breathing paused for a moment.
His heart sank to the bottom, and a chill ran from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head.
He was just about to form a hand seal.
Suddenly, the surface of a bone spur in front of me began to wriggle.
It was as if something was emerging from the bone structure, like a human body rising from underwater onto land.
Kimimaro's naked upper body slowly separated from the bone spurs, his pale skin almost fused with the bone spurs before the separation.
He stood atop the bone spur, looking down at Terai, his white eyes gleaming faintly.
His right forearm was completely enveloped by rotating bones, which protruded from his metacarpals, ulna, and radius, overlapping, rotating, and converging layer by layer to form a huge bone spiral drill within a few breaths.
The drill bit's texture resembles a sharpened threaded steel bar, with the tip converging into a sharp apex that is difficult to see with the naked eye.
Corpse Bone Pulse: Dance of the Iron Wire Flower!
Terai's hands hadn't even had time to form a hand seal yet.
Kimimaro leaped down from the top of the bone spur.
He was falling so fast that Terai only caught a blurry white light.
Then the spiral bone drill slammed into his chest.
The bone drill pierced through his back, bringing with it a cloud of dark red blood mist that quickly condensed into tiny, blood-red ice crystals in the dry, cold air.
"What—" Terai lowered his head in disbelief.
He saw a white bone still spinning inside his chest, its threads twisting together his flesh and tissue fragments.
He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but only a mouthful of blood welled up in his throat, dripping down the gaps in his mask and onto the bone spurs, where it quickly condensed into dark red ice beads at the low temperature.
Kimimaro pulled his right hand out of Terai's chest cavity.
The spiral pattern on the bone drill brought out more fragments as it was pulled out, producing a series of fine tearing sounds.
He stretched out his right arm, and the rotating bones began to deconstruct in reverse, peeling off the back of his hand and forearm in circles, falling to the ground with a crisp tapping sound.
Finally, his right arm returned to its normal human form, with his long, slender fingers slightly bent and warm blood still clinging to his fingertips.
Terai's body slid off the stone platform, fell into the gap between the bone spurs, and landed on the ground, where it remained motionless.
Kimimaro stood atop the bone spikes, surveying his surroundings with his Byakugan.
The Byakugan's vision pierced through bone spurs, withered trees, layers of soil, and the pervasive dust of corpses, filtering out all chakra fluctuations within a two-kilometer radius frame by frame.
There were no surviving members of the Konoha Anbu; all six Root members had completely lost vital signs.
The insect burrows underground were still wriggling weakly, a few wild birds were shivering in the distant mountain stream, and further on the main road, a line of refugees was slowly moving westward.
After confirming that no one had escaped, he jumped off the bone spikes and landed barefoot on the ground covered with broken bone fragments.
Those giant bone spurs began to sink into the soil one by one.
The bone began to disintegrate from the tip, turning into fine white powder that drifted in the dry air of the dead forest.
The forest of bones, spanning thousands of meters in radius, vanished completely within minutes, leaving only countless dense holes in the muddy ground.
He took out a storage scroll from his ninja tool pouch, unfolded it, and formed hand seals.
The sealing incantation on the scroll glowed with a soft blue light, drawing in the first corpse.
Then came the second body, and the third.
He would stop before each corpse was sealed, examining the face beneath the mask and the items in the ninja tool pouch.
The label inside the vest.
Especially Terai.
He crouched down beside the corpse with a fist-sized through wound in its chest and removed the person's mask.
The young man had a angular face, his lips were already pale, his eyes were half open, and his pupils were dilated.
Kimimaro closed the other's still-open eyelids with two fingers, then sealed the corpse into the scroll.
After doing all this, he rolled up the reel and tapped the communication device in his cochlea with his finger.
"This is Kimimaro. The Konoha Anbu pursuit team has been completely dealt with. All six ninjas have been killed, and none escaped. Requesting further instructions."
A few breaths later, a response came from the cochlea.
"Received, thank you for your hard work!"
"Return to your unit as planned."
Kimimaro put the scroll back into his ninja tool bag, put the white kimono top back on, and tied the top sash.
He took one last look at the now peaceful, withered forest, then turned west, his figure disappearing into the gray-brown depths of the woods in a few breaths.
The western part of the Land of Rivers, the road leading to the Land of Stars.
As Naruto ran through a thicket, he saw Neji land on the hillside ahead, turning his body back in the direction they had come from.
-
"Neji?" Naruto stopped in his tracks.
"It's nothing." Neji turned and continued westward, his white eyes appearing exceptionally calm.
After traversing about ten kilometers of withered forest and dried-up riverbed, the ground beneath their feet began to change.
The soil beneath their feet was no longer the dry, cracked, and grayish soil they had been exposed to.
Although the soil is still relatively dry, it is already showing signs of browning, and in some places, there are even a few clumps of tenacious wild grass growing.
Then there are trees.
The further west you go, the fewer dead trees there are.
At first, there were a few trees that were half withered and half green, but later the whole forest, though sparse, was still alive.
As they walked further, they saw water.
It is a narrow stream with a small volume of water, the surface of which just covers the waist of the rocks, but the water is clear and you can see small fish swimming between the rocks.
"There's water!" Akamaru's ears perked up on its head, and it barked twice.
Naruto squatted down and scooped up some water to wash his face. The cold water flowed down his cheeks, washing away the cigarette ash and gunpowder smoke he had picked up during the battle at Fukuyama Castle.
He looked up, wanting to say something to Sasuke, but Sasuke had already passed him and was standing on a high slope in front of him.
His dark eyes narrowed slightly as he gazed down the slope.
The wind blew through the stray hairs on his forehead.
"Sasuke?" Naruto arrived at the high ground, followed Sasuke's gaze, and then froze.
There is a city in the valley.
Unlike Fushan City, which was a dilapidated city pieced together with rammed earth walls and gray-tiled houses.
The city wall was built with off-white stone, and every so often a dark blue flag was planted on the wall. On the dark blue background, a silver five-pointed star shone brightly. Countless people thronged the city wall.
From the high slope beneath their feet, stretching into the distance, an endless stream of people meanders like a long dragon!
They were refugees fleeing the disaster, tens of thousands of refugees!
Their numbers far exceeded anything they had seen outside any city in the Land of Fire and the Land of Rivers!
But unlike the refugees in the Land of Fire and the Land of Rivers who were turned away and cried out in despair, the refugees here, though also ragged and emaciated, had less of the numbness and madness of someone on the verge of death, and more of a glimmer of hope and order.
On the open ground outside the city walls, there were rows and rows of tents.
These were not the crooked shacks that the refugees had built themselves out of branches and rags in the Land of Fire and the Land of Rivers, but uniform dark gray canvas tents, each one the same size and arranged in an orderly fashion.
A large number of staff members, dressed in dark blue uniforms, wearing masks and gloves, moved about busily and orderly like worker ants.
They guided the newly arrived disaster victims to the designated registration point, where clerks quickly recorded the information; they distributed bowls of steaming porridge, pieces of coarse grain cakes, and bottles of clean drinking water to the disaster victims who were lined up in long queues.
Outside the medical tents, medical ninjas dressed in white medical gowns and headbands were examining and providing basic treatment to injured and sick disaster victims.
A faint scent of herbs mingled with the aroma of rice from the porridge, carried by the wind.
Further away, some simple water conservancy facilities can be seen under construction, and some strong disaster victims, under the command and organization of Xingren, are participating in work-for-relief labor, digging ditches and leveling the land.
During this time, ninja squads wearing Star Ninja headbands patrolled and guarded the perimeter of the resettlement area and key intersections from time to time, maintaining order. Their presence brought a sense of security, rather than the death threat posed by the samurai on the walls of the Land of Rivers.
Everything seemed so busy yet orderly, tense yet well-organized.
There were no desperate cries of despair, no shouts and whips from noble warriors, no tightly closed city gates and no cold arrows.
Yes, there was food, water, medicine, temporary shelter, and ——————
Hope to survive!
"This is—" Sakura came to Naruto's side, her eyes reflecting the rows of tents and the busy crowd, her lips slightly parted, the words stuck in her throat.
"Are these all for refugees?"
No one answered.
Behind them, Shikamaru also came up, followed by Tenten, Yakumo, Shino, Ino, and Lee.
Choji stared blankly ahead, while Kiba took Akamaru off his head and held him in his arms. Akamaru's dark eyes were also fixed on the unprecedented scene in the valley.
"There are three tent areas on each of the east and west sides, and the zone numbers are very clear. It doesn't look like a temporary, cobbled-together settlement." Shikamaru habitually started doing mental calculations, his voice unconsciously lowering.
"The porridge supply is proceeding smoothly. The medical area is located on the left, upwind, while the isolation area is set up further downwind. This planning—"
He had seen similar layout plans at home when his father worked as a staff officer since he was a child. These were the standard plans that the wartime command would use to set up field camps for the Allied Shinobi Forces.
Now, this standard is being used to provide disaster relief to victims.
Naruto didn't count the tents or plan the zones.
He simply stood on the high slope, staring blankly at everything before him.
He recalled the hellish scenes he had witnessed in the land of rivers.
The iron pot reduced to ashes, the woman who died holding her child under a withered tree, the refugees driven away by warriors on the main road outside the city, and the countless skeletons along the roadside.
And now.
He saw the disaster victims who had lost their homes and were starving due to the drought being properly resettled and lining up to receive porridge. He saw the woman kneeling in front of the tent, hugging a thick blanket and crying. He saw the old woman in the crowd being treated by the medical ninja and wiping her eyes with her sleeve. He saw the satisfied smiles on the children's faces after they drank the porridge from their bowls.
This place is unlike any other country they've ever seen before!
"That guy Menma—" Naruto's voice was very soft.
Then he grinned and smiled broadly.
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