As the leftmost digit of his gold column dropped by another unit, a pendant appeared in Hatani's hand, emanating the same faint purple glow as his Shadow Blade.
Shadow Amulet.
This was one of the three components used to forge the Shadow Blade. As the name suggested, the amulet was the source of the blade's invisibility effect.
The Shadow Amulet allowed its user to enter invisibility after a 1.25-second fade time. However, any movement would immediately break the effect, making it seem far inferior to the Shadow Blade, which granted a movement speed bonus during its duration.
Yet, compared to the Shadow Blade's measly 14-second window, the invisibility provided by the Shadow Amulet was permanent.
Its flaws—the slightly long fade time and the inability to move—became non-issues when used in tandem with the Shadow Blade. Hatani already had the wind acting as his personal radar, alerting him to enemies long before they spotted him. He simply needed to trigger the Shadow Blade to move through a dangerous area.
If he couldn't clear the enemy's line of sight before the 14 seconds were up, he could simply activate the Shadow Amulet right before the blade's duration ended. He could then wait in total invisibility for the Shadow Blade's 25-second cooldown to reset.
By alternating between the two, he could achieve permanent invisibility.
Of course, this was mostly a "just in case" measure. With the wind constantly feeding him intelligence, he could bypass almost any threat through sheer positioning.
Relying on his wind-sense and the invisibility combo, Hatani successfully navigated the Suna patrols and sentries. In a maneuver that seemed hair-raisingly reckless, he slipped right past the edge of the Sunagakure main camp.
The most dangerous place was often the safest.
The Suna shinobi had never even entertained the thought that someone could slip past their dense outer perimeter to reach the camp's edge. Consequently, the security near the camp itself was surprisingly lax.
For a moment, Hatani was tempted to scrap the original plan and go for a "center-blossom" tactic—striking the heart of the command structure.
However, a gust of cold night air quickly snapped him back to his senses, and he abandoned the enticing thought. The risk of failure was too high. Unless he could pull off a miracle and locate every single Suna Jonin's tent to assassinate them in their sleep, the moment the alarm was raised, he'd be trapped. Without a massive diversion, any Konoha strike team would be swarmed and slaughtered by the sheer weight of Suna's numbers.
Compared to a suicidal assassination run, his "Guandu" plan—destroying the supplies—was far more reliable.
Once he had carefully bypassed the main camp, Hatani found himself in an undefended expanse. Since Suna had focused almost all their security on the front lines and the perimeter, their rear was effectively a blind spot.
Driven by their obsession with washing away the shame of the White Fang, they had poured every available resource into the frontal assault. In their eyes, the pressure they were exerting on Konoha was so immense that the Leaf could barely catch its breath, let alone dream of a counter-infiltration mission.
However, having crossed the most dangerous territory, Hatani now faced a new problem: he no longer had the Suna ninjas acting as "beacons" for him. Alone in the dark rear of the enemy lines, he had no idea where to find the specific coordinates of their supply depot.
While Hatani was beginning his search in the Land of Rivers, another group was moving silently through the same territory.
The Hidden Mist headbands on their foreheads, displayed with zero attempt at concealment, gave away their identity.
This was the Kirigakure capture team. They had landed in the Land of Rivers and were heading north, supposedly to "join the fun"—or rather, to capture the Five-Tails.
Compared to Iwagakure's determined force of nearly two hundred elites or Kumogakure's hundred-man squad, the Mist's team looked a bit pathetic in terms of scale. Because the village was prioritizing the upcoming war with Konoha, the capture team consisted of fewer than fifty ninjas.
Against Iwa or Kumo, they looked more like tourists than competitors.
However, Kirigakure didn't see it that way. Even with only fifty men, they were brimming with confidence. The source of that arrogance was the team—or more accurately, the unit—leading them.
The Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist.
Though the group was relatively new and hadn't yet solidified its terrifying reputation by toppling a minor nation, within the Mist, they were seen as superstars on par with Konoha's Sannin.
Seven elite Jonin, each wielding a unique blade that perfectly complemented their style, working in perfect synchronization. In the eyes of the Mist, even if this group faced a Kage, they wouldn't lose.
The Seven Swordsmen themselves were naturally arrogant. They believed that aside from the Kage themselves, famous ninjas like the Sannin or the White Fang were nothing more than "clay chickens and pottery dogs"—fragile pretenders.
This pride would continue to swell with every victory until a certain cloudy afternoon in the near future. In an unremarkable forest near the borders of the Land of Fire, they would be kicked into the dirt and shattered by a "mere" Genin with a bowl cut, wearing a green spandex jumpsuit they had mocked.
But for now, though arrogant, they weren't completely suicidal. They didn't think seven people could just march into Konoha, topple the Hokage, and kidnap the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki yet.
Consequently, after entering the Land of Rivers, the Mist team was cautious. While they didn't hide during the day and move only at night, they were extremely careful to avoid bumping into the Suna or Konoha main armies.
A fierce tiger cannot withstand a pack of wolves.
No matter how elite they were, a fifty-man squad running head-first into an army a hundred times their size was a death sentence. Not everyone had the strength to look down on an army and ask if they "wanted to dance."
At the very least, even if they could pull a "Lu Bu" and fight ten men for every one of theirs, a skirmish would ruin their plan to capture the Five-Tails.
But as the saying goes: the thing you fear most is the thing you'll face.
They had spent the entire trip avoiding Suna and Konoha, and they were just a night's journey away from leaving the Land of Rivers to enter the Land of Rain. But right as they saw the light at the end of the tunnel, they ran headlong into a Suna unit moving through the dark.
This Suna unit was, ironically, the very thing Hatani was searching for: the logistics corps.
Just as Hatani had deduced, Suna's forced march had left their supply train in the dust.
What he hadn't accounted for was just how desperate the Suna commanders were. They had only brought two days' worth of rations with them. Under the relentless pressure from the Jonin at the front, the supply units were forced to pull an all-nighter, pushing through the darkness to get the goods to the main camp as quickly as possible.
If they didn't arrive by sunset tomorrow, the Suna army would be completely out of food.
In this high-tension environment, two groups who desperately wanted to avoid a confrontation ended up in a massive, head-on collision.