Crossing the mountain plank roads and ancient trees, the air carried a faint scent of earth and cherry blossoms.
Satsuki sat quietly on a wooden bench beneath a blooming cherry tree, a large stack of reports filled with jutsu formulas and conclusions piled on the table before her.
Momentarily relaxed, she leaned sideways against an armrest with her eyes closed—her habitual posture. The world around her was silent, giving her a brief illusion of being set apart from the world.
…
It had been two weeks since the great battle she had orchestrated—a conflict originally between the heads of the Kōga and Iga ninja factions.
Yet the course of the battle twisted and turned like a mountain path.
When the Uchiha forces broke through Myōken Senju's defenses, the Senju clan had already completed a reverse summoning, calling forth many allies from the Uzumaki clan.
The Uzumaki split into two groups: one aided Butsuma Senju in suppressing and absorbing the tailed beast, while the other joined the Senju to resist the Uchiha.
The Uzumaki, like the Senju, were descendants of Asura and natural adversaries to the Uchiha, descendants of Indra. Blessed with immense chakra and a natural talent for sealing arts, they were formidable support on the battlefield.
On the other side, the Uchiha's main force pressed forward. Individually, they outmatched the Senju or Uzumaki, but in coordinated battlefield tactics the gap was negligible.
Thus, numbers and terrain became decisive factors. For nearly two days, both sides clashed in a grinding battle eight to thirteen kilometers from the Eight-Tails, pouring massive fighting strength into what became a meat grinder.
On the third day, the Kaguya clan and the Tachibana clan—two other great families once allied with Kōga—arrived. Though small in number, each was a jonin-level elite.
But they struck not only at the Iga side but also at the Uchiha of Kōga. Their intervention threw the field into chaos, collapsing the stalemate and pushing the lines all the way to the Eight-Tails' location.
In the end, the Senju failed to seal the Eight-Tails, allowing it to escape. Even the Amber Purifying Pot was seized by Tachibana shinobi. But Butsuma Senju and Master Fayen survived.
The Kaguya clan, terrifying in their skeletal armor, became enemies to all once they joined the fray—turning even on their temporary Tachibana allies. Their slaughter earned them swift destruction, with only a handful escaping under Suzuki Kaguya's protection.
Both Senju and Uchiha suffered heavy losses among their chunin and genin.
In this battle, two future legends—Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha—each lost brothers dear to them. Their grief awakened the Asura and Indra chakra within, heralding a coming surge in their power.
Despite its complexity, no one expected the ultimate victor to be the seemingly brutish Tachibana. They not only dealt a crippling blow to the Uchiha—forcing their retreat from the Valley of Clouds and Lightning—but also devastated the Kaguya, whose surviving leaders fled across the sea to a mist-shrouded refuge.
The Kōga ninja group was annihilated. In its place, a towering shinobi calling himself "Ai" and his clan became the new rulers of the Valley of Clouds and Lightning.
On the Iga side, the Senju and Uzumaki were too weakened to sustain the Iga faction. Yet their alliance, forged in mutual aid, deepened further, and together they secured their remaining territory.
In this battle, the greatest losses were suffered by the Uchiha clan. Both their elite forces and their younger generation were decimated—seven or eight out of every ten gone—leaving them on the brink of decline. Were it not for the Sharingan's power and the Nine-Tails as their ultimate trump card, they might have struggled even to survive.
Even so, they remained one of the most formidable clans in the shinobi world, though far from their former glory in the Valley of Clouds and Lightning. Had it not been for Tajima Uchiha's extraordinary display of strength in that battle, he might already have been ousted from his position as clan head.
Yet perhaps only Satsuki knew that this outcome had little to do with the Uchiha leader himself. From beginning to end, the true hand guiding the course of the conflict was hers—the unseen outsider—and the daimyō hidden within their castles.
The goal from the start was never political marriage or capturing a tailed beast—it was to weaken the position of the "shinobi" class as a whole in the Warring States era.
The result left those pulling the strings from the shadows thoroughly satisfied. After this blow, even the mightiest ninja clans could no longer stand alone in the shinobi world. They were forced to seek alliances with the daimyō, conceding part of their sovereignty in exchange for aid and funding to stabilize their development.
Once the great clans took the lead, the mid-sized and smaller clans quickly followed, pledging allegiance to their nearest daimyō and becoming mere armed forces.
But this was only part of Satsuki's plan. In truth, she had four objectives in this operation and two more to prepare for the future. At present, her work was largely complete—most of what remained was waiting and minor matters.
So when news arrived of a visit from the Senju clan, she slowly set down the experimental report in her hands and rose. "They've arrived? Show them in."
"Yes."
The reply came from Kiyomaru, wearing his oni mask. After a period of training with Tenseigan chakra, he had developed a degree of independent awareness and could now teleport short distances within the castle's barrier. His overall strength had not grown much—being a mere puppet construct with a low ceiling—but he was far more convenient as a greeter.
Even so, when Butsuma Senju arrived with several of his personal guards, they were startled by the power Satsuki's domain displayed.
Built against the mountainside, the castle was expansive, in traditional Japanese style, with a highly advanced defense system and intricate protective mechanisms. Along the way, they sensed numerous ninja maintaining the fortress's security.
On every floor, oni-masked warriors patrolled—each brimming with chakra no weaker than an elite chunin, many reaching jonin level, armed with fine equipment and moving with disciplined precision. The cold killing intent in their eyes was enough to shock even battle-hardened shinobi.
And these were only the visible sentries. The hidden ones were beyond counting.
Among them, two chakra signatures were so profound that even Butsuma Senju could not fully gauge them—mysterious and unfathomable.
The Ōtsutsuki clan's power is this terrifying, yet we have only heard of them in recent years? This is far too strange.
His sensory instincts were on constant alert; even the stationary warriors nearby seemed capable of threatening him.
Leading them was the ever-silent, masked Kiyomaru. When they reached the castle's main hall, Satsuki was already seated at the head of the room. She gestured for puppet attendants to seat the visiting clan head.
Even for men like Butsuma and his guards, who were not narrow of experience, it was still surprising to see the Ōtsutsuki leader was a woman.
Her delicate features framed by a princess-cut cascade of silk-like black hair falling down her back. She wore a finely crafted black robe trimmed with gold and patterned with the mysterious genbu bird, seated high upon the dais with an air of graceful composure.
But it was her golden eyes—dreamlike and unearthly—that drew the gaze of all present. Even Butsuma Senju found himself caught, mind slipping into a dazed trance.