This time, with advance warning, everyone had prepared themselves beforehand.
And after Uchiha Yoru's transformation, his control over his own power had increased tremendously. His grasping movements were exceptionally precise, causing no harm to anyone.
Everyone regained consciousness immediately, without going through the process of fainting and then waking up again.
The moment Momochi Zabuza, Konan, Yashamaru, and Tsunade regained consciousness, they noticed that two more people had appeared.
But in the next instant, they were shocked to discover that they could actually see one of their faces clearly.
Or rather—
They could remember it.
Unlike the other three, Zabuza was a Kirigakure shinobi and recognized him at a glance. He even shouted the name in astonishment.
"Uchiha Yoru!!"
Tsunade was equally shocked.
Naturally, she knew this Uchiha shinobi as well.
But his current appearance was vastly different from the one in her memories.
Especially Uchiha Yoru's aura.
It had become sharp and imposing, completely unlike the gentle Uchiha she remembered.
And everyone noticed that the Sharingan in Uchiha Yoru's eyes no longer had three tomoe.
Instead, the pattern had become three far more intricate interlocking rings.
The others did not understand what that meant.
But Tsunade knew of the existence of the Mangekyō Sharingan.
Combined with what Tobirama Senju had told her, she immediately reached a definite conclusion.
She sighed inwardly.
At last, she abandoned the final trace of wishful thinking in her heart.
Seeing that everyone had arrived, the Heavenly Emperor spoke.
"This time, two new members have joined us."
"They are Lady Swallow and Uchiha Yoru of the Flood Dragon."
Including the Miko, every member immediately realized that Uchiha Yoru was different.
Naturally, they were all shocked.
[The Heavenly Emperor actually called him by his real name.]
[So the fact that we can remember his face isn't an accident. It's deliberate.]
Uchiha Yoru glanced over everyone and explained indifferently,
"For certain reasons, I cannot conceal my information."
"Of course, there is no need to conceal it either."
"You'll learn about me soon enough."
Just as the Heavenly Emperor was considering whether to announce that this would be the final Divine Court Meeting, Konan suddenly stood up.
She bowed to the Heavenly Emperor and asked,
"Great Heavenly Emperor, I have information concerning the Land of Rain."
"I hope to exchange it with you for another medicinal pill."
"I know I still haven't repaid my previous debt, but… I really need one right now."
"Can I use this information as collateral and owe you another debt?"
The Heavenly Emperor considered it for a moment before replying,
"Tell me the information first."
"I will naturally judge its value."
"Do you need me to block the others?"
Konan thought for a moment and asked,
"If everyone is willing to hear it, can the value of the information they receive be converted according to the principle of equivalent exchange and credited to you?"
"Yes."
The Heavenly Emperor asked,
"Does anyone not wish to receive this information?"
Zabuza was far away in Kirigakure and had little interest in the Land of Rain.
After refusing, he was blocked by the Heavenly Emperor.
Zhurong, Uchiha Yoru, and the Heavenly Emperor were three aspects of the same existence. Since the cost did not matter, they casually chose to receive it.
Tsunade and Miroku were both wealthy enough that they similarly accepted without concern.
Yashamaru, although poor, cared greatly about information from the Land of Rain.
Gritting his teeth, he chose to receive it as well.
Konan happily began to speak.
Her very first sentence stunned everyone.
"We defeated the combined forces of Sunagakure, Konoha, and Iwagakure outside Amegakure."
Yashamaru blurted out,
"That's impossible! Sunagakure mobilized—"
Konan looked at him and emphasized once again,
"The three Great Shinobi Villages joined forces."
"Nearly forty thousand shinobi."
"We defeated them."
Yashamaru stopped arguing.
He knew that this information was primarily being offered to the Heavenly Emperor.
There was no way Konan would dare casually lie.
Uchiha Yoru was also rather surprised.
He knew this event would inevitably happen, but he had not expected it to occur so quickly.
Originally, he had thought that he no longer needed to wait for this condition to be fulfilled.
With his own strength and the legitimacy he now held, he could simply overthrow the Third Hokage himself.
Who would have thought that the final condition would be satisfied ahead of schedule?
He suddenly realized that the Divine Court Meeting still had value.
A great deal of value, especially when it came to intelligence gathering.
Even if he seized control of the Uchiha Clan—
Even if he seized control of Konoha itself—
He still could not achieve comprehensive control over the entire shinobi world.
There would inevitably be gaps in his intelligence network, and delays in how quickly information reached him.
But through the Divine Court Meeting, he could purchase the most immediate firsthand intelligence.
And at very little cost.
The Heavenly Emperor spoke.
"This information is interesting."
"But you need to provide more detailed information."
"Otherwise, its value is too low."
Konan was genuinely poor with words.
She opened her mouth, but had no idea where to begin.
The Heavenly Emperor saw her difficulty and said,
"You only need to carefully recall it in your mind."
"I can manifest your memories here."
"Thank you."
Konan hurriedly closed her eyes and began carefully recalling the event.
As her memories unfolded, everyone except Zabuza suddenly found their viewpoint transferred to a battlefield beneath torrential rain.
A red-haired shinobi wearing a black cloak patterned with red clouds stood alone in the downpour, facing tens of thousands of shinobi divided into three camps.
He raised both hands horizontally—
And flew directly into the sky.
Only when the wind blew open his cloak could everyone see that he was merely a teenage shinobi.
High in the air, the young shinobi began muttering in an almost fanatical manner.
"Endless war has made this country weep."
"Year after year."
"Without end."
"On this weeping land, men, women, children, the elderly—everyone has experienced pain!"
"I too struggled through endless pain."
"And through terrible suffering, I surpassed mortals and grew from a human into a god."
"You sinners who began these wars!"
"Feel pain!"
"Experience pain!"
"Accept pain!"
"Know pain!"
"Only then will you understand how precious peace truly is!"
"And only then will you sincerely long for peace!"
His voice clearly was not loud.
He had already flown hundreds of meters into the sky.
And the rain was pouring down heavily.
Yet his words somehow reached every one of the tens of thousands of shinobi spread across five or six kilometers.
Even from the perspective inside Amegakure, every word could be heard clearly.
After speaking of longing for peace, he suddenly raised both hands high into the air.
Then he unleashed what could be called the strongest offensive dōjutsu.
Outer Path: Almighty Push.
BOOM——!
A colossal shockwave erupted from the red-haired shinobi hundreds of meters above the ground, expanding downward in a spherical blast.
The accumulated rainwater and wet earth below were blown violently into the air.
Deep radial trenches were torn across the battlefield.
In the next instant, mud and stone surged up into a massive wave, driven outward in every direction by the white shockwave.
Seen from the distant viewpoint of the memory, the brown earthen wave and white shockwave appeared to move slowly.
But that was merely an illusion caused by the distance.
In reality, the shockwave moved terrifyingly fast.
The shinobi of the three Great Shinobi Villages had no time to react.
At least half of them were struck directly by the shockwave before being buried beneath the surging mud, sand, and stone.
At this point, everyone understood.
The combined army of the three Great Shinobi Villages had already lost.
That single attack alone had covered most of the nearly forty thousand shinobi.
At least thirty thousand had been struck and buried.
The casualty count would inevitably be horrifying.
And the shockwave had not only struck downward.
It also blasted into the sky.
The thick storm clouds that had been pouring rain were torn apart.
Sunlight poured through the circular opening, illuminating the gloomy battlefield with extraordinary brilliance.
Within that golden pillar of light, the red-haired shinobi held both arms high as if embracing the sun.
He truly looked like a god.
The illusion ended there.
Tsunade and Yashamaru were breathing rapidly.
They had both seen massive casualties among the shinobi of their own villages.
Yashamaru had also noticed that on Sunagakure's side, a wall formed from Gold Dust had attempted to block the shockwave.
It had been shredded apart instantly.
That was the Fourth Kazekage's Magnet Release.
His brother-in-law's Magnet Release.
Never before had Yashamaru imagined that Gold Dust could appear so insignificant.
So fragile.
He could not help worrying about the Fourth Kazekage's safety.
He had no idea whether his brother-in-law had survived such an unprecedented ninjutsu attack.
Naturally, Tsunade's attention was focused on Konoha.
She saw countless Konoha shinobi torn apart by the shockwave.
Although, from her perspective, the blood had been altered by suggestion into sprays of multicolored sparks, she could still tell that the true shock front must have been dyed red with blood.
Even after leaving Konoha for so many years, her heart still ached.
The two of them remembered Konan's use of "we."
Both immediately understood that she belonged to the same faction as that red-haired young shinobi.
Tsunade and Yashamaru looked toward Konan.
The hatred in their eyes could not be concealed.
Yashamaru was only eighteen this year.
Because of his older sister, he had always been carefully protected.
Although he was already a jōnin, there was still a certain naïveté in him.
This was the first time he had ever personally witnessed such a bloody battlefield.
And the first time he had seen the shinobi of his own village slaughtered on such a scale.
His hands clenched into fists.
He growled,
"How could you be so cruel?"
Konan looked at him and replied coldly,
"Cruel?"
"That was Amegakure."
"Our home!"
"We killed enemies invading the Land of Rain outside our own front door."
"What right do you have to call us cruel?"
"We didn't run into the Land of Wind and poison its people."
"We didn't massacre entire villages!"
Konan's voice was not as loud as Yashamaru's.
But her tone was colder.
And the anger and hatred behind her words were far deeper and more real.
After all, Yashamaru had merely borrowed her perspective to look at the battlefield from afar.
He had never truly experienced the cruelty of war.
Konan had.
She was one of its victims.
She had rolled through blood and carnage herself.
Hearing her words, Yashamaru opened his mouth—
But could no longer say anything.
And after hearing Konan's words, the hatred in Tsunade's eyes instantly turned into helplessness.
She had fought in the previous war.
She had personally witnessed the devastation of the Land of Rain.
No matter what, she could not bring herself to say that the other side was cruel merely because they had killed people.
In the end, Tsunade could only let out a deep sigh and close her eyes helplessly.
Zabuza scratched his hair.
"Wow."
"Looks like I missed some really interesting intelligence."
Then he stopped speaking.
Uchiha Yoru silently recalled Nagato's behavior.
His heart, however, was filled with confusion.
Nagato calling himself a god did not bother Uchiha Yoru.
It was merely self-aggrandizement.
Even if Nagato called himself the God King, would that make it real?
Nagato attacking the shinobi of the three Great Shinobi Villages did not bother him either.
Because Nagato had done nothing wrong.
What Uchiha Yoru could not understand was this—
He had already helped Nagato escape his suffering ahead of schedule.
So why was Nagato still spouting that Pain speech?
That obsessive behavior was not a good sign.
The Heavenly Emperor asked,
"His condition appears good."
"Lady Bat, why are you asking for another medicinal pill?"
Konan restrained her emotions and replied,
"That's not the case."
"Immediately after the battle ended, there really was nothing wrong with him."
"But after he returned home…"
"He suddenly collapsed."
Suddenly collapsed.
That meant the burden on Nagato had sharply increased.
The only question was whether the problem came from the Divine Tree—
Or the Rinnegan.
Uchiha Yoru felt that the Rinnegan was more likely.
After all, Nagato had used an Almighty Push of such enormous scale at only seventeen years old.
For a Rinnegan that had not yet fully matured, it might not have been so easy to endure.
Konan once again made her request.
"Heavenly Emperor, can this information be exchanged for one medicinal pill?"
The Heavenly Emperor shook His head.
"The information is interesting."
"But it isn't enough."
Looking at the disappointment in Konan's eyes, Uchiha Yoru said nothing.
From Nagato's repeated talk of pain in Konan's memory, he had understood something.
Nagato had already closed off his heart.
Other than Konan, he no longer trusted anyone.
It was still that old saying—
Only the supremely wise and the utterly foolish cannot be changed.
Nagato was the latter.
His thinking was simple.
His logic was crude.
He possessed almost no ability for dialectical thought.
Toward those he trusted, Nagato would offer his heart, his life, everything.
But toward those he did not trust, he was exceptionally cold and ungrateful.
He could turn on them without hesitation.
Because his reasoning process was so crude, when Nagato killed or destroyed, he did not carefully reconsider the specific circumstances.
Instead, he relied on the conclusion from his most recent round of thinking to determine everything afterward.
Thus, when he slaughtered people outside Amegakure, his starting point had not actually been to protect the Land of Rain.
It was the same reason he had slaughtered people in Konoha in the original history.
He wanted people to experience pain.
He wanted to use the pain of killing to give birth to peace.
What Uchiha Yoru found impossible to accept was that Nagato could carry out indiscriminate slaughter based on reasons he had imagined himself—
Yet could also abandon a conviction he had maintained for more than ten years because of an illogical talk-no-jutsu.
He would even disregard his own life.
Disregard Konan's safety.
And arbitrarily sacrifice himself to resurrect the people he had just killed.
Uchiha Yoru could not accept such an absurd behavioral pattern.
Previously, considering the difference in age, Uchiha Yoru had given the fish pill to Nagato through Konan.
He had allowed Nagato to escape more than a decade of crippling pain ahead of schedule.
He wanted to see whether a different Nagato might emerge.
But now, after witnessing Nagato's behavior in battle—
The seventeen-year-old Nagato, aside from being weaker, was no different from the Nagato Uchiha Yoru remembered.
Seventeen-year-old Nagato was already an unstable factor.
Considering that he could become his enemy at any time—
Uchiha Yoru decided that he would no longer actively increase Nagato's strength.
After Konan sat down, Momochi Zabuza reported information about the finalized holders of Kirigakure's Seven Ninja Swords.
He exchanged that intelligence for a simplified hand-seal sequence for Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique.
Tobirama's version reduced more than forty hand seals to only three.
Zabuza was immensely satisfied with his reward.
One could even say he was ecstatic.
A shinobi battle was a contest of speed and rhythm.
Reducing a technique's casting time from more than seven seconds to half a second completely transformed Water Dragon Bullet.
It instantly became Zabuza's strongest ninjutsu.
After Zabuza, no one else offered any intelligence.
Originally, Tsunade and Yashamaru had both prepared information.
But Konan's report had thrown their minds into chaos.
For the entire latter half of the meeting, both remained absent-minded and completely forgot the intelligence they had prepared.
Seeing that there was nothing left to discuss, the Heavenly Emperor decided to end the meeting.
At that moment, Zhurong suddenly spoke.
"Heavenly Emperor, I have a proposal."
"Speak."
"You already possess a fairly detailed understanding of the shinobi world."
"I believe that from now on, what you need are reports on major events like the one Lady Bat just provided."
"Correct."
"Events of this scale may not even occur once a year in the shinobi world."
"Therefore, holding a Divine Court Meeting once every ten days has become unnecessary."
"I propose that from now on, you convene the Divine Court Meeting only when similarly major events occur."
"Accepted."
Zabuza was startled.
He hurriedly asked,
"Then what if I obtain intelligence?"
He had just earned a substantial reward by selling intelligence.
Right now, his enthusiasm for the Divine Court Meeting was at its peak.
He had even been thinking about when he might suggest shortening the interval between meetings.
The Heavenly Emperor smiled faintly.
Then He told everyone His honorific name.
"If you obtain valuable intelligence and wish to exchange it with me, recite my honorific name."
"You will then be able to speak with me."
Momochi Zabuza was overjoyed.
Now he could sell intelligence whenever he wanted.
And the timeliness of that intelligence would be preserved to the greatest possible extent.
The Heavenly Emperor continued,
"Besides shinobi intelligence, I also wish to obtain unusual plants, animals, minerals, and other such items."
"If you sacrifice such things to me, I will provide compensation that satisfies you."
"Even if you only provide information regarding the whereabouts of unusual objects, I will still offer a reward."
After that, no one spoke again.
The Divine Court Meeting ended.
After leaving the Purple Mansion world, Uchiha Yoru lowered his altitude again and accelerated toward Konoha.
Konoha had suffered catastrophic casualties in the Land of Rain.
The Third Hokage and Uchiha Fugaku's reckless gamble had failed completely.
So—
What would they do next?
Uchiha Yoru smiled faintly.
As long as they were unwilling to give up completely, they had only one choice left.
One final gamble.
Intercept him on his return journey.
Kill him before he reached the village.
Excellent.
Very excellent.
If Hiruzen Sarutobi and Uchiha Fugaku gathered together—
Perhaps the Third Hokage Collapse Plan and the Uchiha Clan Head Replacement Plan could be carried out at the same time.
After approaching Konoha, Uchiha Yoru deliberately slowed down and began searching for any possible ambush.
And he really did find one at the Tiger Mountain Pass.
Especially when he saw that the Third Hokage himself was among them—
Uchiha Yoru was extremely satisfied.
The Third Hokage had voluntarily left the village.
That meant Uchiha Yoru no longer needed to worry about damaging the flowers and grass of Konoha.
He could finally fight without restraint.
Uchiha Yoru slowly descended to the ground and smiled.
"I suddenly realized something."
"The Third Hokage really is destined to die at the hands of a Konoha shinobi."
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