REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!
Chapter 105: Postwar Coverage, International Phenomenon, The Strongest Ninja in History
With Sand Village and Stone Village both withdrawing their forces, the war came to a close.
It had begun in early Konoha Year 35, when Hanzo of the Salamander personally drew back the curtain and set what ultimately grew into a four-nation conflict in motion. It ended in early Konoha Year 37, the moment the Black Flash, Gojo Yoru, exposed his Space-Time bloodline.
The war had lasted exactly two years.
A great many people died in those two years.
There were genin fresh out of the academy, unknown beyond their own squads. There were chunin and tokubetsu jonin who had accumulated field experience and earned their ranks through assessment. There were ace combatants, the backbone of their respective villages. And there were legendary figures whose names had been known not just within the five great villages but across the shinobi world, as well as jinchuriki.
Every ace combatant and major figure lost was a significant event in the war's history.
But those events had spread only through shinobi channels, circulating within the ninja world alone. Even the ordinary villagers living inside the hidden villages had little detailed awareness of what had actually happened. The civilians living outside any military installation knew even less.
For those ordinary citizens, the shape of the war had been simple and indirect. They knew fighting had broken out in the Land of Rain. They knew the hidden villages of the nations involved had sent their forces to the battlefield or to border positions elsewhere, which made mission fees much higher than usual and made it nearly impossible to find a squad willing to take on a standard contract. Merchants who relied on routes through the Land of Rain had been forced to go around, spending more time and money on every trip.
What had actually happened on the battlefield was another matter. People in population centers with some degree of influence might have heard fragments. People in remote areas knew nothing at all.
Not until the war ended and newspapers began doing their work did the full picture reach those without access to shinobi intelligence networks. Ordinary people without chakra, as well as the village civilians, gradually came to understand what had taken place across those two years, which major figures had fallen, what decisive events had unfolded, and which side had ultimately prevailed.
For quite a few days afterward, newspapers of every size across every nation turned enormous profits.
This conflict, in which three great nations had entered a war initiated by a small country, was formally given its name by the world at large.
The Second Shinobi World War.
Although Hanzo of the Salamander had been the one to open hostilities, the Land of Rain was also the first to exit, declaring the failure of a small nation's resistance and confirming that the ninja continent remained a world where four great powers held each other in check. Small nations were nothing more than bodies absorbing damage, with no prospect of ever rising above that role.
Despite the Land of Fire being the victorious party, it was a defensive victory only. There was no true winner in this war.
The Land of Rain, the first to withdraw, had at least delivered the Demigod's personal promise never to act against the Land of Fire again. The Land of Wind and the Land of Earth, who simply pulled their forces back, offered no compensation of any kind.
The Second Shinobi World War had been nothing more than three great nations grinding each other down, ultimately benefiting the distant Land of Lightning and the Land of Water, who had stayed out of it entirely. This was precisely the reason the original story's Third Shinobi World War had followed the Second with only a few years between them.
In this conflict, some names became known across the shinobi world through death, and in doing so elevated the names of those who had killed them.
Chiyo's son and daughter-in-law had been well-known within Sand Village, but had not been household names across the shinobi continent or in nations further afield. When newspapers gathered and published detailed accounts of the couple's abilities, combat record, and background, the broader world came to understand what they had been. And in understanding that, the world came to appreciate what it meant that Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang of the Leaf, had ended them both in a single instant. Sakumo became the second great name this war had produced.
In the original story, Orochimaru's team would have been the third, earning the Sannin title despite their defeat, and the enemy ninja who had nearly killed Dan Kato would have added to the war's roster of figures to watch. But this timeline had changed considerably. Orochimaru's group made their names in the war, but without the Sannin title attached. Dan Kato, who in the original story would have had his kidneys forced out through his body by Stone ninja toward the war's end, had survived entirely due to the butterfly effects Yoru had set in motion. Using the super S-rank Spiritization Technique from the shadows, Dan had cut down a significant number of Stone ninja, and his name appeared in newspapers and became known to the general public. He wasn't a commander, so his standing didn't reach the level of the White Fang or Orochimaru's group, and even Danzo Shimura in his role as the Hokage's aide ranked above him. But he had put Konoha's ace combatant roster firmly on the map.
The undisputed greatest winner of this war was, naturally, Yoru. Merely by exposing his Space-Time bloodline, he had ended the Second Shinobi World War ahead of schedule. His combat record was so overwhelming that even enemy newspapers reporting the facts with complete accuracy sounded like they were exaggerating. There was no possible angle for disinformation.
As a result, Yoru's name and titles penetrated every corner of the shinobi world without exception. Whether the person reading was a chakra-wielding ninja or an ordinary person in a remote village, whether they were an elder who had survived since the Warring States era or a child who played at being a ninja, all of them knew his titles, his name, and what he had accomplished.
At eleven, he had gone to the battlefield. His very first opponent had been the pinnacle of the shinobi world, and he had become the only person in decades to wound both that pinnacle and his partner.
He had then eliminated Sand Village's intelligence king and fifty-four high-tier combatants in a single instant, becoming Konoha's youngest jonin and field commander.
At twelve, he had demonstrated a dominance that left enemy forces without a response, fighting assassination with assassination until the shinobi world's most formidable assassination corps feared his name. He was recognized as one of Konoha's foremost aces.
That same year, he defeated Hanzo of the Salamander in a one-on-one fight, declaring the era of the Demigod over. Before reaching adulthood, he had already become the absolute benchmark for his entire generation.
Achievements like this at that age were the kind that didn't appear even in serialized fiction. Authors wouldn't dare write them.
Everyone had assumed this was the ceiling. That for decades to come, no one could surpass or even approach what Yoru had done.
But this was still not Yoru's limit.
Konoha Year 37 had barely begun and he had already eliminated one of the shinobi world's nine great beasts, the Five-Tails jinchuriki, and exposed a bloodline being called the miracle of the shinobi world. That was the actual reason Sand Village and Stone Village had withdrawn their forces.
Most people couldn't fully grasp what Space-Time was. But the newspaper descriptions were enough to leave them with a sense of something beyond comprehension.
The ability to convert chakra into a Space-Time nature transformation and merge one's body into space itself, ignoring any and all attacks, including Dust Release, the Kekkei Tota that eliminated every other bloodline limit and wielded the rule-level power of decomposition, taking a direct hit and emerging completely unharmed. An invincibility that was innate and required nothing.
Coating a weapon in Space-Time nature transformation to produce a spatial slash that ignored the physical properties of matter entirely. Techniques that annihilated everything they touched through spatial erasure, a killing ability more absolute than Dust Release, from which not even summoning beasts could escape back to the summoning realm.
Power without precedent. Power that had never existed before.
It was precisely because he was the incarnation of a miracle that Yoru had been able, at this age, to build this record. And it was why Sand Village and Stone Village had been left without a single workable counter and chosen to withdraw, ending a war that should have claimed many more lives before it ran its course.
And so the words rang out across every inhabited corner of the shinobi continent and beyond. Black Flash. Shinobi World's First Divine Speed. Top-tier assassin. Space-Time bloodline. Incarnation of a miracle. Space-Time ninja. Each of these became the most talked-about subject in the shinobi world.
What had been a four-nation conflict, the Second Shinobi World War, had somehow become one man's stage.
Countless travelers and clients began making their way toward the Land of Fire and Konoha. Just as Naruto Uzumaki in the original story had become a figure so celebrated after saving the world that Konoha had been overwhelmed with visitors for a long stretch of time, anyone with the means to travel and commission a mission wanted to witness the incarnation of a miracle in person.
Nobles and wealthy individuals tried to arrange private meetings through paid commissions.
People without the money for that found out the location of the Gojo house through channels nobody could quite trace, and gathered outside its walls, calling out Yoru's name and his titles.
The Gojo household had effectively become one of Konoha's tourist landmarks.
Left with no comfortable alternative, Yoru moved temporarily into the First Hokage's mansion, staying there together with Kushina Uzumaki.
As for the commissions from nobles and the wealthy, Yoru didn't need to refuse them himself. Hiruzen Sarutobi turned every single one down on his behalf.
Yoru was not a performing animal. In Hiruzen's eyes, he had already become an even more critical piece of strategic deterrence and foundational strength than the Nine-Tails jinchuriki herself. If Yoru had already come of age, Hiruzen would have been pressuring him to marry and start producing children as quickly as possible.
Even if his descendants turned out like the Senju clan, where even the First Hokage's own grandchildren could not awaken the Wood Release that had shaped an era, hope could still be placed in a generation further down the line. The shinobi world had plenty of bloodline families where the awakening skipped generations.
As long as Yoru left descendants, there would eventually be a second Space-Time ninja. That was Konoha's future.
And in the immediate term, sensing remained Yoru's known weakness. The entire shinobi world knew it. Assassination and poison were currently the two methods with the best realistic odds of killing him. Until those gaps were closed, Hiruzen was not assigning Yoru any missions whatsoever.
Beyond sensing, medical ninjutsu was the other area Yoru needed to turn into a strength.
When both weaknesses were filled, he would be untouchable. A new God of Shinobi for a new generation.
This was the advantage of being part of the Hokage's direct lineage.
If Yoru had not been Orochimaru's student, and if Orochimaru had not been Hiruzen's most prized pupil, Hiruzen would have looked at Yoru with wariness, the way any leader who lacked sufficient power of their own would view someone whose capabilities had outgrown conventional control. He would have considered him a ticking time bomb, something to be watched and quietly contained. He might have dropped hints to Danzo, allowing him to make quiet moves against Yoru and absorbing none of the responsibility himself.
Hiruzen might have chosen to eliminate the incarnation of a miracle rather than risk having someone even less controllable than a Nine-Tails jinchuriki operating inside Konoha.
But Yoru was part of Hiruzen's direct lineage, and that changed everything.
He was Hiruzen's grand-student, separated by one generation in both seniority and age. That gap worked entirely in Hiruzen's favor with no disadvantage.
With Yoru present, Hiruzen no longer needed to manage the Uchiha clan with careful caution. He no longer needed to distribute power to Danzo as a counterbalance. Not only did he have three prized students, he also held a Space-Time ninja and a Nine-Tails jinchuriki as his two most powerful cards. Hiruzen's position would become impossible for anyone to threaten.
When he eventually grew old and died, the Hokage seat would pass to his students and their successors. His own descendants and the Sarutobi clan would be watched over. The future was stable for decades.
In all the shinobi world, after Orochimaru himself, Hiruzen Sarutobi was probably the person most invested in seeing Yoru grow.
"Yoru, you complete jerk, I'm going to strangle you!"
Inside the First Hokage's mansion, Kushina Uzumaki had both hands around Yoru's throat and was shaking his head back and forth with considerable force.
Yoru played along, letting his eyes roll back and his tongue loll out. Kushina's hair practically levitated with her fury, and her voice came out full of grievance. "I told you everything about being a jinchuriki and you still had something this enormous you were hiding from me! The incarnation of a miracle, the Space-Time ninja, you're nothing but a great big liar and a complete menace!"
"I really did want to tell you, but walls have ears." Yoru's expression was genuinely helpless. "The Space-Time bloodline is my biggest secret. Before I had fully grown into my strength, I wouldn't have shared it with my own parents if they were still alive. Orochimaru-sensei finding out was a complete accident."
"It's because I kept it hidden that I came out of this in one piece. If I hadn't, there's a real chance you'd never have seen me again."
After saying this, Yoru mimicked the gesture belonging to the shinobi world's most devoted son, bringing two fingers up and tapping Kushina lightly on the forehead. His eyes and voice were both uncharacteristically soft. "Forgive me, Kushina. This was the first time. And it will be the last."
"...Fine. I suppose that actually makes a certain amount of sense. I'll magnanimously forgive you, I guess."
Kushina was not the type to be unreasonable without cause. The source of her anger and hurt had been discovering that Orochimaru knew Yoru's secret while she had been kept completely in the dark, both of them hiding it from her together.
Against Yoru's direct approach, her fury evaporated almost immediately. She just didn't want him thinking she was easy to handle, so she crossed her arms and put on a deliberately aloof expression.
What Yoru didn't say out loud was that having Kushina know was actually one of his biggest concerns. She knew, which meant Kurama knew. And if Kurama mentioned it to other tailed beasts, and those tailed beasts passed the information to their own jinchuriki, who then reported it upward to their village leadership, it might as well have been announced to the entire shinobi world from the start.
Of course, Yoru was not going to say any of that to Kushina.
Seeing her deliberately aloof expression, Yoru couldn't help reaching out and rubbing both her cheeks between his hands with a grin. "Tomato-na, playing hard to get is out of fashion. You're supposed to act magnanimous about it, pat my shoulder, and say you'll mercifully let it go."
Kushina's face had been squished out of shape between his hands, but her eyes lit up with interest. She spoke through distorted cheeks. "Then do it again."
"Not a chance."
Yoru pinched her cheeks lightly and gave them a small tug, still smiling. "But as an apology, once things settle down, I'll take you out on a mission."
"Really?" Kushina's eyes went even brighter. Then something seemed to occur to her, and the brightness shifted to concern as she shook her head. "Actually, forget it. The newspaper said your bounty has already passed one hundred million ryo. Hokage-sama also said there are people across the entire shinobi world right now who want you dead. Let's wait until your sensing and medical ninjutsu are both where they need to be."
Yoru patted her head and smiled. "The reason I feel safe staying in Konoha at all is because you're here. Otherwise I wouldn't dare."
Kushina caught his meaning immediately and the smug expression reappeared on her face. She hummed with satisfaction. "Go ahead and depend on me as much as you want. As long as I'm around, nobody's getting anywhere near you with an assassination or a poison attempt."
Yoru was not joking.
If Kushina weren't there, he would have left a shadow clone in Konoha and teleported his real body somewhere else to sleep. Everyone's defenses were down while they slept. Even Yoru's neural reaction speed, which functioned something like a spider's warning sense and could wake him the instant danger was near, might not always leave enough time to avoid an attack.
He was especially aware that White Zetsu, the Naruto world's equivalent of a certain cursed spirit user, could pass through barriers undetected, merge freely with the earth and vegetation around him, and channel Wood Release. One Wood Release spike was all it would take.
And for a bounty of one hundred million ryo, there were certainly going to be reckless individuals who, like certain pirates who had somehow convinced themselves that attacking a fleet admiral was achievable, would attempt poison or assassination against Yoru.
Kushina's Mind's Eye of Kagura, before it developed the Nine-Tails chakra enhancement that gave it the ability to sense intentions, couldn't detect White Zetsu either. But it could pick up on individuals who believed their own concealment was better than it actually was, making her a temporary third eye for Yoru in situations where his own sensing fell short.
Her body healing could restore her from injuries severe enough to bisect her. Neutralizing poison was trivial by comparison.
With Kushina present, he had no fear of assassination or poison.
With this in mind, Yoru had finally placed a regular chakra version of a Flying Thunder God seal on Kushina herself.
On Kushina's wrist, an ouroboros forming the shape of an infinity symbol sat like a special bracelet.
When he had marked her with it, Kushina had looked genuinely wistful. She liked the tomato-with-a-night-character design from his original kunai far better. That one had represented both of them in a single mark.
"So this is how wide the gap between us has actually become."
On the Hokage Monument, in the middle of a cleaning assignment scrubbing the carved stone faces, a blond young man paused and looked out over a central street packed with more people than it could comfortably hold. Minato Namikaze murmured to himself, his expression difficult to read.
He had read the newspaper. Learning that Yoru possessed a Space-Time bloodline had hit him harder than it had hit anyone else.
As the person with the best realistic chance of becoming Konoha's third Flying Thunder God user, no one was more qualified to understand how high-dimensional and how overwhelming Space-Time force truly was.
It looked accessible from the outside. Everyone had encountered Space-Time through some technique or another. But it was not in the same dimension as any of them at all. Flying Thunder God itself was nothing more than the principle of summoning applied to the user's own body.
Offensive Space-Time. Defensive Space-Time. Not only had Minato never witnessed either, he had never even allowed himself to imagine they might exist.
And now someone had arrived who could convert chakra into Space-Time nature transformation and turn everything they had never dared to imagine, all of it, into reality.
No wonder the world was calling Yoru the incarnation of a miracle.
Because that was truly the only word for it.
If he had still entertained some residual idea of catching up, it was gone now. Completely.
They were no longer in the same dimension.
In that moment, Minato finally understood something he had only ever read in history books. All those superlatives applied to the First Hokage in those pages, the ones that had always seemed like reverent exaggeration, perhaps were not exaggerated at all.
There really were people in this world who, by themselves, made everyone else in their era into a backdrop. Beings so completely beyond what the shinobi world could counter that no one dared to even consider challenging them.
In the First Hokage's generation, there had at least been Madara Uchiha to stand against him.
In this generation, what could possibly stand against Space-Time?
"Konan-san, is this the Space-Time you mentioned before?"
In a small town in the Land of Birds.
As one of the Land of Rain's neighbors, this region was also buzzing with discussion about the Second Shinobi World War. The topic, as everywhere else, circled back to Yoru and the Space-Time bloodline.
Nagato, who had been wandering with Konan since the war ended and making a living however they could, heard the words Space-Time and couldn't hold back his curiosity.
"Probably."
"Space-Time isn't connected to sealing techniques, is it? I thought only storage scrolls and summoning techniques involved it. Can it really manifest as a bloodline limit?"
Nagato had been learning steadily from Konan during this period, and his mind was as sharp as it had always promised to be. His confusion was genuine and layered. "The shinobi world only has seven nature transformations, the five elements plus Yin and Yang. From what you've taught me, Konan-san, most secret arts are specialized extensions of Yang Release or Yin Release, while something like Black Lightning is a specialized extension of Lightning Release. That means all seven natures can be developed into secret arts."
"And a bloodline limit is formed by fusing two nature transformations together, producing a completely new attribute that is related to the original elements but is itself distinct from them."
"A Kekkei Tota is three nature transformations fused together."
"So what attribute or attributes is Space-Time related to? What would need to fuse to produce it?"
Konan looked at this exceptionally eager student and spread her hands with a helpless expression. "I honestly don't know. That's the limit of what I've taught myself. If you want those answers, you'll have to grow strong enough to go find them yourself."
"Understood."
Nagato nodded firmly, and the name Gojo Yoru settled into his memory.
He didn't notice that the corners of Konan's mouth had curved upward slightly.
To the White Zetsu agent and the Tobi figure monitoring them from a distance, it looked like the smile of someone pleased by a student's enthusiasm.
In reality, Konan was simply unable to contain a private happiness that had surfaced on its own.
So Lord Yoru was this amazing.
Incarnation of a miracle. The title fit him perfectly.
She found herself wondering when he would master the Spiritization Technique and come to visit her quietly. She genuinely wanted to give him a full report on everything she had accomplished, not just the progress with Nagato but her own growth as well.
"Teacher, is the person in this newspaper the one who beat you?"
In one of Amegakure's towers, Yahiko, who had already set foot on the path of a ninja, was reading a newspaper and looking up at Hanzo of the Salamander with a puzzled expression. "Are his abilities really as impressive as the paper says?"
"Yes. And they're more frightening than what's written there."
Hanzo looked at the image on the front page, Yoru's face staring back from the headline position, and his expression held layers of feeling. A self-deprecating smile crossed his lips. "I assumed the technique he used to conceal his chakra completely was some specialized extension of Earth Release, a secret art of that category. I never imagined it was the ability to merge into space itself. Which means that at eleven years old, or possibly even earlier, he had already mastered this invincible defensive capability."
"All those engagements between us, and I never once forced him to use it. I'm afraid the gap between me and Onoki is still considerable."
Yahiko straightened immediately. "In my eyes and in the eyes of everyone in the Land of Rain, Teacher is greater than the Third Tsuchikage in every way that matters. You're simply different types of fighters."
"Ha. You little brat, I don't need your consolation." Hanzo waved him off with a fond scold, then looked at Yahiko with a faint trace of pity. "The ones who actually need consolation are young people like you."
"If not for that young man, you might have had the potential to inherit my legacy and stand at the next era's pinnacle."
"But now, your generation has produced someone who will one day become the strongest ninja in history. I hope that doesn't knock the drive to move forward out of you."
Yahiko's eyes went wide. "The strongest ninja in history? Isn't that going a bit far?"
"You'll understand once you've grown up." Hanzo didn't elaborate.
Yahiko pressed further. "Is it his bloodline that's impressive, or is the Wood Release of the God of Shinobi that pacified the world still stronger?"
"Don't underestimate the weight of the word miracle." Hanzo spoke with complete certainty. "Looking across all of recorded history, his ability is the most singular and the most powerful that has ever existed. Even the God of Shinobi's Wood Release doesn't come close."
"Don't let history books mislead you. What was powerful was not Wood Release. What was powerful was the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju."
"Without chakra reserves at that level, Wood Release is nothing more than a bloodline limit formed from Water and Earth natures combined. Against me personally, that kind of bloodline poses no threat at all, and would only strengthen my Fire Release."
"Wood Release was called the bloodline that pacified the world only because it belonged to the God of Shinobi. With chakra at that level, any jutsu, any bloodline, becomes a world-shaping force in a person's hands. If the First Hokage had possessed Dust Release instead, then the Kekkei Tota that eliminates all other bloodline limits would have been exactly that in the most literal sense."
"Just as natures counter one another, every bloodline limit has an attribute that counters it. That is one of the shinobi world's fundamental rules."
"But now that rule has been broken." Hanzo's expression became serious. "Even a Kekkei Tota formed from three nature transformations cannot harm that young man in the slightest. The only way to deal with him is to catch him before he merges into space. Unless you yourself can merge into space, distort space, or shatter space, his Space-Time bloodline has no counter."
"Every ninja alive can interact with Space-Time force through things like storage scrolls, summoning techniques, and certain jutsu that manipulate Space-Time energy through seals and chakra. We understand it well enough to know that Space-Time force does not belong to the five elements and cannot be synthesized from Yin and Yang. It is a special attribute that exists entirely outside of and independent from the seven known natures."
"When someone can convert their chakra into that special attribute's nature transformation, that person is the incarnation of a miracle."
"Nature counters mean nothing against him. Only Space-Time can counter Space-Time."
Hanzo paused, and the look of quiet pity returned to his eyes. "The only objects in the current shinobi world known to contain Space-Time energy are Space-Time scrolls. The only techniques that involve Space-Time are the Summoning Technique, the Heavenly Transfer Technique, and Konoha's Flying Thunder God and Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation. Every single one of those is supplementary in function."
"Unless a future genius of extraordinary talent manages to develop offensive and defensive jutsu by manipulating Space-Time energy through chakra and seals, jutsu capable of affecting space across a meaningful range, they will still be unable to harm that young man or stop his attacks."
"This is why, despite his chakra reserves being far below the First Hokage's level, he will one day become the strongest ninja in history."
Yahiko, who had only just begun walking the ninja's path, heard all of this without fully grasping its weight. The way he saw it right now, he was at the bottom of a well, Gojo Yoru was standing just above the opening, and the gap between them was simply the height of that well.
When he grew up and his understanding of the world expanded, he would realize he had it wrong.
He was a large stone. Larger than the pebbles and sand that surrounded him, certainly.
But Gojo Yoru was the sky above him.
***
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