Hiruzen and his friends did not believe they would be surprised again after the appearance of Gin Uzumaki.
But they had to admit they were wrong, since the temples of the great countries were hidden deep underground and surprised them when they decided to come out and show their strength.
Sacrifice techniques and techniques to enhance an individual's strength that were powerful enough to conquer the world, and they wondered how strong the Leaf Village would become if they could obtain those techniques.
"But there must be other negative effects," Koharu said, and the others nodded, understanding that the woman was referring to the mysterious method for empowering a samurai or ninja.
The monks had already warned them that the empowered individual would lose years of life, depending on how long they used their new power.
But they and the other villages and countries believe there must be other negative side effects, or the monks wouldn't have been so hidden.
Everyone knew there was something wrong with the monks.
All the temples in the major countries possessed the same techniques, but not those in the smaller countries. They had already proven this.
But even though they had such powerful techniques, the temples did nothing and seemed to be waiting in silence.
If the Uzumaki clan hadn't conquered the Land of Water and seemingly eliminated the Water Temple, it would have seemed that the monks had no plans to show their strength anytime soon and would continue acting like the helpless monks who only want to help people in need.
But they knew they weren't good people.
Many negative reports about the temples were suppressed, but they knew about these reports and knew for sure that these monks were not good people.
Therefore, they would never believe that these monks had these techniques and didn't use them to gain power.
Based on the secretive behavior of these monks, it was impossible that they had not tried to take over a country.
But they didn't.
Therefore, these monks were hiding something else, and we wanted to know what it was.
The fact that these monks didn't want to use their own limbs to use the mysterious strengthening method told me that these monks weren't telling the whole story.
Therefore, they agreed to send spies to secretly join the fire temple.
For now, they and the Daimyo pressured the fire temple to use these mysterious techniques, under the pretext that they might be the next target of the Uzumaki clan or the 3 countries.
After agreeing to send spies to the temples of the great countries to find out their secrets, including to the other temples, the 4 began to discuss the Uzumaki clan.
Although they wanted to deal with the temples at that time, they had to focus on the Uzumaki clan.
Especially when no one could track his movements.
That the Uzumaki clan would attack the 3 countries was a fact that everyone believed and they were already preparing to follow their movements.
Like a country in the middle of the sea, all countries and villages expected to see ships sailing the sea to go and attack the coasts of the 3 countries.
But contrary to all expectations, no ships were seen near the coasts when 3 cities in 3 countries were silently taken over by the Uzumaki clan.
Everyone was taken by surprise.
Everyone went crazy trying to find out what happened.
But unfortunately for everyone, the 3 cities were surrounded by gigantic barriers and could not receive information.
True to their abilities, no one can penetrate the barriers erected by the Uzumaki clan and find out what was happening in these cities.
Those who had friends and family living in these cities were worried about them, especially when rumors began to circulate that the Uzumaki clan was torturing the poor citizens.
Of course, they knew that these rumors were created by the Daimyos and their court in preparation for a possible invasion by the Uzumaki clan.
In that way, the enemy will have a headache when trying to conquer the civilian population.
But anyway, nobody knows what's happening in those cities and, more importantly, how the Uzumaki clan conquered the 3 coastal cities without any of the 3 countries discovering a clue until it was too late.
If the Uzumaki clan could gain that advantage against the 3 great countries, what prevents them from doing the same against the Land of Fire?
That's what kept the leaders of the Land of Fire and the Village Hidden in the Leaves worried.
"ANBU failed to obtain important information," Hiruzen said regretfully, and then everyone turned to look at Danzo.
But unfortunately for them, the leader of ROOT hadn't achieved anything either.
"Hiruzen, doesn't Mrs. Mito know anything?" Homura asked, and Hiruzen shook his head.
The Third Hokage had visited the Senju matriarch before this meeting seeking important information, but the woman denied knowing how the Uzumaki Clan managed to go unnoticed by the numerous spies stationed on the open sea.
While the Leaf Village waited attentively, the Land of Wind, the Land of Earth, and the Land of Lightning began to rapidly move the recruitment process.
Thousands of people joined the army of the 3 nations every day and announced that they would soon recover the 3 lost cities.
But what the civilian population did not know was that the 3 villages were having trouble breaking through the barriers surrounding the 3 cities.
Since they lacked the knowledge to break through the barriers of the Uzumaki clan, the only thing they could do was force their way through.
But to achieve that, an attack powerful enough to break the barrier in a single blow was needed, not giving the Uzumaki clan time to rebuild it.
But it wouldn't be that easy.
According to the Fuinjutsu masters from each country and village who reviewed the barriers, they all agreed that the barriers had damage redirection capabilities and that a combined army attack would not work.
The attack must be on a single point or the barrier simply will not fall.
The ninjas had already used more than a thousand explosive tags at the same time and only managed to create cracks in the barrier, which were repaired in seconds.
Therefore, nobody wanted to continue spending valuable explosive labels without the expected results.
The obvious solution was to use the 20 ninjas empowered by the monks, but that couldn't be done.
Besides wanting to keep these ninjas and samurai as their trump cards, the monks had not yet done their part.
According to these monks, the religion of their temples must spread first before they use their secret techniques on the 20 selected ninjas and samurai.
Even the fire temple made the same request, and the four countries increased their efforts to build more temples and promote the religion in their territories.
Even the small neighboring countries were affected by the expansion of these religions, but they did not dare to disagree when the 4 large countries joined together in this religious campaign.
Back at the barriers surrounding the 3 coastal cities of the 3 countries, they didn't know how to proceed from now on.
They either use ninjas and samurai empowered by the monks, or they try to wait until the Uzumaki can no longer maintain the barriers due to lack of energy.
What they didn't know was that someone was even more eager to help them.
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In a hidden base, Madara Uchiha was receiving the daily report from a White Zetsu.
Previously, he would spend many days or even weeks sleeping while his life force was fed by the statue of the outer path. In this way, he could live longer, valuable time that he needed to choose a successor who would follow his plans to the letter. He would wake up from time to time to find out how the outside world was doing and if his army of white Zetsus had been able to find an Uchiha with the characteristics he was looking for.
But since the Uzumaki clan defeated the alliance of the 4 great villages, Madara has awakened more often because of this clan of redheads.
At first, Madara didn't attach much importance to the Uzumaki clan.
After all, their plans had not yet begun, and their plans would benefit in the future if a major war occurred that significantly harmed the major countries.
But something happened that immediately put him on alert.
Many White Zetsu were captured by the Uzumaki clan.
The White Zetsu were Madara's Ace to watch over the world for him and carry out the missions he entrusted to them.
With the White Zetsu's abilities of concealment and transformation, Madara believed they would never be discovered and his plans would go smoothly.
After all, who could stop their plans if they couldn't even find the White Zetsu and couldn't do anything when their comrades (White Zetsu) betrayed them?
What he didn't expect was to lose contact with the White Zetsus who went to investigate the Uzumaki clan.