Chapter 590: Shion's Transformation
Time flew by, and two years passed in the blink of an eye. In these two years, the shinobi world was relatively peaceful overall, with no major wars breaking out.
But there was no peace in specific regions; squad-level conflicts never ceased.
Under the guise of peace, battles between ninja continued.
At first, Iwa and Konoha engaged in small-scale skirmishes along the border.
Iwa squads, usually in groups of two or three, would weave back and forth across the long border of the Land of Fire, constantly seeking out and attacking isolated Konoha squads.
With their superior numbers, Iwa could dispatch many squads to infiltrate the Land of Fire from different directions.
Facing Iwa's overwhelming forces, the shorthanded Konoha could barely defend a few key locations, unable to guard the long border line.
So, in the first six months, Konoha was constantly suppressed by Iwa. Every few days, news would come back to Konoha that a squad had been attacked within their borders.
As time went on, Konoha's situation didn't improve; it worsened.
In half a year, Iwa finally finished digesting the entire Land of Lightning, basically completing the purge of all Kumo remnants within the country.
After the war in the Land of Lightning ended completely, a large number of Iwa ninja were finally freed up to increase the intensity of their strikes on Konoha.
This time, Konoha's situation nearly collapsed. The border line was completely lost, and many Iwa squads began to brazenly penetrate deep into the Land of Fire.
It could be described like this: for Konoha ninja, the northern half of the Land of Fire, north of Konoha Village, was no longer safe.
The number of missions in this area dropped significantly, and more than half of the remaining mission requests were taken by Iwa.
Konoha's control over this area existed in name only. Even the administrators of some border towns had been replaced by subordinates of the Earth Daimyō.
This wasn't even the most critical issue. For Konoha, the most serious problem was the loss of too many ninja.
Based on the time after the last Joint Chunin Exam in Konoha, the total number of combat-capable ninja Konoha could send out was only six thousand.
Send any more, and the normal operation within Konoha Village could not be maintained.
And in these two years, more than half of these six thousand ninja had died in battle or lost their combat ability. On average, a squad of Konoha ninja died every day.
To make up for the manpower shortage, students at the Konoha Ninja Academy underwent early graduation twice.
Originally, like Iwa, graduates of the Konoha Ninja Academy were around ten years old, but now, eight-year-old students in Konoha were forced to embark on the path of missions.
Fortunately, Kakashi was still rational. Most of these newcomers performed missions in the southern half of the Land of Fire and rarely participated in conflicts with Iwa in the northern half.
So now, among the Konoha ninja out on missions, there were less than three thousand ninja who had graduated more than two years ago.
Ninja under twelve, who had graduated less than two years ago, made up the vast majority.
Similarly, to maintain the normal operation of Konoha as a military institution, many ninja whose strength was not up to standard also received titles such as Chunin and Jonin.
In short, the average combat power of Konoha ninja had dropped significantly.
However, Konoha also had an advantage. After Kakashi completely opened up the secret techniques that originally belonged only to those ninja clans, Konoha ninja had more means at their disposal.
Although their hard power wasn't enough, bizarre methods gave those newcomers some trump cards.
In the confrontations between a few or a dozen people on both sides, many well-known ninja emerged from both Konoha and Iwa.
On the Iwa side, Neji, Haku, and Shion were the representatives, with Karin, Sakura, Kurotsuchi, and others as the backbone of the younger generation of elite ninja.
To avoid pushing Konoha directly to the point of launching a war, which would eventually attract the intervention of the Sage of Six Paths, Ishiro didn't send too many already famous ninja.
Ishiro used Neji and the others as representatives to cultivate the youngsters.
Ishiro's strategy was to boil the frog in warm water, killing only a few or a dozen Konoha ninja every day. Occasionally, a larger-scale conflict would break out, but only about a hundred people would die.
Konoha's daily losses were not enough to arouse the anger of the Sage of Six Paths.
But over the years, Konoha's foundation was being drained bit by bit!
On the Iwa side, Neji and the others basically fought on their own, without much hierarchy.
He, Haku, and Shion were nicknamed the "Three Whites of Iwa" by busybodies because of their outstanding combat records.
Neji because the Hyūga clan had the Byakugan (White Eye), Haku Minazuki because his name had the character for white, and Shion because she was beautiful and had fair skin.
Although these three were the strongest on the Iwa side, in terms of personnel arrangement and combat command, everyone listened to Aono Shinichi, Shizuka Minamoto, and Rion.
On the Konoha side, there were also heroes who temporarily supported the backbone: Hinata, Sasuke, and Naruto led, with Shikamaru Nara, Shino Aburame, Rock Lee, and others assisting.
Among these Konoha rookies, Sasuke and Naruto only knew how to charge and fight on their own; the real leader was Hinata.
Hinata had become the actual person giving orders to these rookies.
Hinata, Sasuke, and Naruto were also given a title by the outside world, called the "Three Blacks of Konoha."
Sasuke's Amaterasu black flames burned everything, Naruto's black-red state when partially transformed into a Tailed Beast, and Hinata's blackened personality!
As Hinata's reputation grew, her previous personality was also brought up as a topic of conversation.
The pure, kind, and shy princess, after experiencing a family upheaval, rapidly blackened into a cold-blooded, domineering queen who kept her word.
Especially since Naruto never took the initiative to kill consciously, and Sasuke rarely killed, among the Three Blacks of Konoha, only Hinata never left anyone alive when she acted.
Whether it was the people of the Land of Fire, the opponents from the Land of Earth, or other onlookers, they all talked about this with relish.
Land of Fire, mixed battle zone north of Konoha Village, inside the temporary Konoha command center, the Three Blacks of Konoha, Shikamaru Nara, and many other elites were gathered.
At this moment, Naruto and Kiba Inuzuka were arguing fiercely.
"Naruto, you idiot, the west side is definitely a decoy created by Iwa. Neji Hyūga and the others must be in the east," Kiba shouted loudly.
Naruto refused to back down. "How could they be in the east? There's obviously no movement in the east."
Kiba said in a tone reserved for idiots, "It's precisely because there's no movement in the east that it's abnormal. When has Iwa ever been quiet in the past two years?"
Naruto's intelligence obviously couldn't accept this explanation. He quickly found a reason for himself: "Because I, Naruto Namikaze, am here!"
"Iwa is obviously afraid of me, so they don't dare to appear in the east."
Kiba immediately retorted, "Then why would they appear in the west?"
Naruto's eyes glanced at the map, then lit up. "Because the west is far from here!"
This wasn't false; this temporary command center of Konoha was indeed relatively further east.
But the difference in distance wasn't much.
The two argued lively, but the others hardly paid them any attention.
Only Choji Akimichi and Rock Lee were eating while watching the two, wondering if their brains were working.
Shino Aburame, Sai, Ino Yamanaka, and Tenten all turned their eyes to Shikamaru Nara.
Shikamaru looked at Hinata. Hinata was also looking at him. His heart skipped a beat, then he quickly said, "I think there's no need for us to dwell on the specific march route of Neji and the others."
"This time the intelligence shows that Neji and the others left the Iwa temporary command center together, so their target can only be us here."
"The Three Whites of Iwa gathered, and Kurotsuchi and the others also came. This situation rarely happens."
"They don't need to send everyone out to deal with scattered squads, and in the current war situation, they won't risk crossing us to enter the southern part of the Land of Fire."
"So I judge that the target of Neji and the others is us. We just need to guard this place well."
Hinata, sitting at the head, thought for a moment, then nodded firmly. She said in an emotionless tone, "Since that's the case, we won't go anywhere."
"We'll stay here and wait for Iwa's attack. But we can't be careless either. Send more scout ninja out to grasp the intelligence from all places in time."
Seeing Hinata speak, Shikamaru and the others didn't hesitate and quickly agreed.
Shikamaru even got up directly to arrange the scout ninja.
Kiba didn't dare to disobey Hinata's order, lowered his head and chose to acquiesce.
Only Naruto mumbled a few words, expressing his dissatisfaction that his opinion was not taken seriously.
As for Sasuke, he kept his eyes closed from beginning to end, sitting in the corner without saying a word.
Sasuke had the most thoughts. In the process of getting along with Naruto, although he gradually dispelled the idea of leaving Konoha for Iwagakure, his idea of revitalizing the Uchiha clan hadn't changed.
Sasuke didn't care about other peers from Iwa; he only cared about Neji, the man who had brought him shame in the Joint Chunin Exam!
So Sasuke didn't care about Shikamaru's analysis, nor did he care about Hinata's decision. He just needed to confront Neji.
Moreover, with Sasuke's arrogance, being willing to sit here and listen to this group of trash discuss was already giving them face.
When he defeated Neji and completely washed away the shame, he would fly solo.
Konoha had nothing worth his nostalgia!
Just as he thought of this, Sasuke couldn't help but open his eyes and glance at that fool Naruto.
Naruto sensed it. He immediately shouted at Sasuke, "Sasuke, you bastard, are you laughing at me again?"
"Idiot!" Sasuke only responded coldly with one word and closed his eyes.
After that, no matter how Naruto roared, Sasuke ignored him.
However, what tactics should be used against Neji? Sasuke began to recall the several battles between him and Neji in the past two years.
Sasuke had been defeated by Neji many times, and with the continuous use of the Mangekyō Sharingan, Sasuke also discovered a serious decline in his eyesight.
Of course, Sasuke didn't tell anyone about this. He didn't know that the Mangekyō Sharingan could be upgraded to the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.
He even less knew that Kakashi had another pair of Mangekyō Sharingan needed to upgrade his eyes.
On the other side, just as Shikamaru guessed, Neji, Haku, Shion, Kurotsuchi, Sakura, Tsuruhime Kamizuru, Kaoru Fujii, and others were slowly approaching Konoha's temporary camp.
In the accompanying team, besides these young people, there was also Chiga.
Karin and Sakura took turns sitting in Iwagakure as usual, while Yakumo Kurama was unwilling to confront Konoha head-on and stayed in the Land of Lightning branch.
Neji walked at the forefront of the team. He had undergone several quickenings in the past two years, and just completed one not long ago, improving his strength again.
According to the estimation of him and Ishiro, he should be only one last time away from fully awakening the Tenseigan.
Neji's evolution speed was slower than Ishiro imagined. In the original story, Toneri Ōtsutsuki didn't take long to awaken the Tenseigan.
Ishiro felt it might be because Neji's Byakugan purity wasn't as good as Hanabi Hyūga's.
Perhaps Neji was originally no worse than Hanabi, but his Byakugan had been restricted by the Caged Bird seal, so the promotion was relatively slow.
It was also possible that Neji's compatibility with the Giant Tenseigan wasn't as close as Toneri's. He hadn't been baptized by the Tenseigan chakra since childhood like Toneri.
Besides these two possibilities, Ishiro thought the most likely possibility was that the Sage of Six Paths was causing trouble. The Sage might be buying time for Sasuke and Naruto.
This action was also initiated by Neji. His purpose was not only to take out Konoha's temporary camp and strike a blow to Konoha's morale, but more importantly, to test the power of his Tenseigan at this stage.
After reaching Neji's level, normal sparring could hardly play any role. After his strength rapidly increased, he could only adapt to the new power through battle.
Neji looked at Chiga beside him and asked, "Senior Sister Chiga, is there any movement on the Konoha side?"
Chiga said, "Naruto Namikaze has been at the Konoha camp and hasn't left!"
Unknown for what consideration, Ishiro would swallow some blood of the Uzumaki clan members every few days so that Chiga could locate Naruto's whereabouts at any time.
In the past two years, Naruto had been to Mount Myōboku, and Chiga also promptly helped Ishiro determine the exact location of Mount Myōboku.
But Ishiro didn't ask Chiga to stop; instead, he asked her to pay closer attention to Naruto's movements.
Neji brought Chiga this time to judge Konoha's reaction through Naruto's position.
Hearing that Naruto was in the direction of the Konoha temporary command center, Neji nodded.
Just right, solve the Konoha ninja at once, and destroy Konoha's temporary command center along the way.
Neji was still young. Although he had become Kage-level, he hadn't entered the Iwagakure advisory group.
So he didn't know that the Sage of Six Paths was standing behind Konoha, which was why he said such things.
But precisely because Neji didn't know the existence of the Sage, Ishiro handed the main task of dealing with ordinary Konoha ninja to him.
If Sōkai and Uchiha Izumi were to do it, they would definitely be constrained.
At the back of the team were Haku and Shion.
Haku's expression was relatively calm. He was a normal ninja, going all the way from Genin to Chunin, then to Jonin, Elite Jonin, and finally to Kage-level.
Haku's growth was steady, one step at a time, so although his strength had steadily reached Kage-level, his mentality was very stable.
But Shion beside him was completely different. She appeared eager for the upcoming war.
Shion's promotion was six months ago.
That night, Ishiro was diligently studying his five-attribute fusion.
Because the progress of the White Sphere research team wasn't enough, Ishiro also joined in during these two years.
This could speed up the research progress. After all, Ishiro's strength and insight were there, and the work efficiency of others was far lower than his.
This could also train Ishiro's soul power, which had skyrocketed in the past two years.
Ishiro, who worked late in the laboratory outside the village as usual, suddenly sensed violent Yin Release fluctuations in the village.
Ishiro was startled and immediately put down the work in hand and rushed to the source of the fluctuation.
There were quite a few Kage-level ninja in Iwagakure, but these people's attainments in Yin Release were far inferior to Ishiro's, plus they didn't have Ishiro's perception.
So these people only felt that there was a disturbance in the village, but they couldn't distinguish what happened, nor could they locate the source of the fluctuation immediately.
They only locked onto the source when they saw Ishiro flying quickly towards Shion's residence.
So Ishiro was the first to see Shion in the wrong state.
Shion was wearing fluffy pajamas, lying on the bed with a painful expression.
Ishiro checked briefly and figured out the reason. It should be Mōryō inside Shion fighting back.
As Shion's strength grew stronger, her ability to suppress and digest Mōryō also became stronger.
However, logically speaking, Mōryō shouldn't have a chance to fight back. Mōryō's consciousness had long been beaten out by Ishiro.
Ishiro observed for a while. After Han arrived first, he gave him a few instructions and used the Spirit Transformation Technique to enter Shion's body.
After entering Shion's body, Ishiro quickly found her soul.
Shion's soul was obviously excited to see Ishiro coming.
Although Shion in soul state couldn't speak, she still used actions to express her unease to Ishiro and ask for help.
Around Shion's soul body, a large number of Mōryō tentacles were entangled.
The other end of the tentacles led to a place similar to a Tailed Beast seal.
There were continuous runes, emitting a special purplish-red light, looking beautiful and fantastic, like a fairyland.
But Ishiro knew that on the other end of the seal was the incredibly ugly and ferocious Mōryō.
Ishiro shifted his gaze back to Shion and found that rather than saying the tentacles were entangled around her, it was better to say these tentacles had merged with her.
Shion and Mōryō were fighting for control of these tentacles, and Shion was obviously at a disadvantage.
Seeing this scene, Ishiro understood what was happening.
Shion should have absorbed enough soul power and was about to advance to the third stage.
This could be seen from Shion's ability to control her soul body.
Precisely because her soul intensity was strong enough, Shion could see Ishiro and transmit a distress signal.
But precisely because of this, Shion saw Mōryō's ugly true face.
Although Shion always knew there was a monster inside her body, thanks to Iwagakure's propaganda about Jinchūriki, she didn't feel how awkward this was.
But when she truly saw Mōryō in a soul state, and her soul was deeply entangled with Mōryō, that disgusting feeling was too unbearable.
So Shion's heart was in chaos. At this time, she only had instinct left. She was instinctively resisting those disgusting tentacles.
She completely forgot how to use the power of the priestess.
Fortunately, Mōryō's consciousness was beaten out after being heavily injured by Ishiro. Its counterattack this time was unconscious, an instinctive behavior.
So Shion could persist until Ishiro's arrival. Otherwise, Mōryō would have reversely merged Shion by now.
Ishiro quickly stepped forward and cut off all those tentacles with a few swipes.
Ishiro's current level was no different from Mōryō in its prime, just less in quantity.
So dealing with these tentacles could be said to be easy.
After cutting off these tentacles, Ishiro applied a soul seal around Shion to block the tentacles extending from the priestess seal again.
Then Ishiro said to Shion, "Shion, calm down, close your eyes, take a deep breath first, adjust your mindset."
"Don't worry, with me here, nothing will happen."
Ishiro's current soul level could already transmit information to Shion, who was also a soul body, but Shion could only listen and not speak.
Shion trusted Ishiro's words very much. She hurriedly closed her eyes and began to take deep breaths as Ishiro said.
Although there was no breathing in the soul state, doing this action still made Shion slowly calm down.
Then Ishiro said, "Very good, let's continue. Try to mobilize the priestess power to suppress these tentacles on your body."
The calmed Shion quickly demonstrated the priestess's restraining ability against Mōryō. After she erupted with priestess power, the broken tentacles on her body were absorbed by her at a speed visible to the naked eye.
A moment later, these tentacles were completely absorbed. Then Ishiro said, "Alright, open your eyes and look at Mōryō."
Hearing this, Shion opened her eyes and looked in the direction of the priestess seal.
Ishiro said, "This should be the first time you've seen Mōryō since you grew up. Actually, you don't need to be afraid at all."
"For you, Mōryō is just a special kind of chakra. You've been absorbing this chakra since you were young."
Seeing Mōryō again, Shion was still a little scared and disgusted, but generally, it was fine.
After Shion adapted for a while, Ishiro said, "Alright, get ready. I'm going to unlock the seal and let these tentacles in. Use your priestess power to absorb the power in these tentacles."
Shion nodded. She put her hands in a special pose. Then the priestess power on her body instantly reached the extreme, and purplish-red light lingered around her.
Ishiro smiled. Making such a big fuss meant Shion was still a little scared, but it didn't matter.
Ishiro unlocked the soul seal. The next moment, those Mōryō tentacles instinctively entangled towards Shion again.
But before these tentacles could get close, they were immediately digested and absorbed by Shion's priestess power.
This time, these tentacles continuously transmitted Mōryō's power, which was then quickly digested and absorbed by Shion.
As time passed, the priestess power on Shion became stronger and stronger.
The power transmitted by Mōryō instinctively could no longer satisfy Shion. She began to actively extract Mōryō's power through the tentacles.
And with Shion's active absorption, the priestess seal sealing Mōryō was trembling slightly.
Just when Ishiro was worried whether the priestess seal would have problems, the priestess seal resonated with the priestess power on Shion.
The next moment, the beautiful and fantastic priestess seal shone brightly, and then a large amount of Mōryō's power began to be directly converted into priestess power.
This conversion happened inside the seal, which was the location of Mōryō's main body.
Ishiro was stunned. So the priestess seal had this ability?
If Mōryō had subjective consciousness, it should be very painful at this time, but Mōryō in the seal was very calm, allowing the priestess power to convert it.
After a while, Shion opened her eyes.
Ishiro sensed it and immediately confirmed that Shion had reached the third stage of Yin Release.
(End of this chapter)
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