Avoiding the Sand shinobi, Yako and Purple Cat quickly slipped out of the town and regrouped with their squad.
White Ram released his kikaichū, while the others raised their binoculars to watch the distance.
Rain poured steadily from above, thick mist blurring the world and cutting visibility short.
"Captain! It's a Sand shinobi elite jōnin—Mache!"
ANBU carried intelligence files on key figures from other villages, and Mache was among those to be taken seriously—an elite jōnin of Sunagakure, famous for his mastery of Wind Release.
A distinctive bandage wrapped around his forehead, shielding him from the desert winds.
No one expected to encounter him here.
In the distance, Mache charged toward the town with more than a hundred Sand shinobi at his back.
"White Ram! Take your squad to find Captain Yellow Dog—report the situation! I'll continue scouting!" Yako ordered.
"Yes!"
White Ram led his squad away.
The mission of Fox Squad was a scouting one. Facing down an elite jōnin commanding entire battalions of Sand shinobi was out of the question.
At first Yako thought Mache's force would storm into Teigu Town—but midway, the column suddenly veered and thundered toward the riverbank.
There, over a hundred Sand shinobi—two full units—were planting explosive tags.
Not on the surface, but buried deep: they used Earth Release to bore holes, then stuffed the tags into the pits.
The embankment was fifty meters thick, over ten meters tall, a fortress of earth.
The Sand shinobi finished their seals in unison.
A chain of detonations boomed. Some tore through the surface, others roared from deep within the embankment.
The earth swelled and loosened.
Earth Release tore open the weakened riverbank completely.
Nearby, a river warden had been tied up like a bundle of straw, crushed beneath a Sand shinobi's heel. He screamed in pain, powerless to stop them.
The Yoshimizu River, nearly a hundred meters wide, burst through the breach. A flood roared downstream, smashing into Teigu Town.
The destructive power of shinobi was overwhelming. To build that embankment had taken the townsfolk years of labor. To destroy it? Shinobi needed only half an hour.
Outside the shinobi villages, all common folk lived in fear—and hatred—of shinobi.
Water poured into the town, instantly swallowing entire floors of buildings.
People were swept away, animals shrieking.
From afar, their screams echoed.
Then the flood smothered them.
"Captain! The Sand shinobi spotted us!"
"Fall back!"
Fox Squad's two platoons were no match for them.
Yako withdrew his forces to a safer distance. The Sand shinobi didn't give chase.
Instead, they crowded around the breach, widening it further.
Some moved with the flood, following its surge downstream.
"Let's go," Yako said coldly. "See what they're planning with this breach."
The Yoshimizu River cut through the southern reaches of the Land of Rain. Too close to the Yoshigane Mountains, the surrounding land was sparse, little of value to target.
Would they flood a town and a dozen villages just for this?
Why? With two battalions, a wave of kunai would've been faster.
After following the flood for two or three kilometers, Yako saw more Sand shinobi.
They stood in two lines, hands flashing through seals.
Between them, the ground sank, forming a trough.
The flood stopped raging blindly. Instead, it flowed neatly into the trench they had carved.
Trailing the channel's path, Fox Squad reached the foot of the Yoshigane Mountains.
The mountains were hard stone, their thin soil long ago stripped bare by endless rain.
Steep cliffs rose hundreds of meters from flat ground.
And there, beneath the mountains, Yako saw the Sand shinobi's masterpiece.
A vast cavern mouth yawned open.
Floodwater poured endlessly into it.
'What are they doing?' Yako thought. 'Do they mean to collapse the Yoshigane Mountains with water?'
"Everyone else fall back, await Captain Yellow Dog. Purple Cat, with me. We'll grab a prisoner."
The roar of water grew louder near the trench, thunderous as if no deluge could ever fill it.
The Sand shinobi looked on with bright eyes, proud as though they'd accomplished something monumental.
Yako and Purple Cat crept close.
With the Mind Body Switch Technique, Purple Cat seized control of one Sand shinobi and drew him back. Once close enough, she released the jutsu. Yako flashed forward with the Body Flicker Technique, slitting the man's throat and dragging him off.
Three minutes later, Purple Cat had the intel.
Yako's expression hardened. Mache truly was an elite jōnin of Sunagakure—a dangerous talent.
The Yoshigane Mountains divided the desert of the Land of Wind from the rain-soaked basin of the Land of Rain.
For months, Mache had scouted these mountains, eventually uncovering a network of underground caverns.
The Land of Wind lacked water.
He devised a plan: select caverns, tunnel them through the mountains, and funnel the Yoshimizu River into them.
Flood the caverns, and water would burst out onto the northern Gobi plains of the Land of Wind—creating fertile new land.
"Captain, the townsfolk are here!" Purple Cat suddenly gasped. "Captain—it's Lan!"
Amid the raging flood, planks of wood bobbed. On one, a little girl huddled tight, clutching a broken umbrella.
But around her, hands pushed the board upward.
Several townsfolk, half-drowned, fought to hold her aloft.
Yako recognized one—the shoemaker he'd seen days ago, the thimble glinting on his finger.
Other boards floated past, each carrying one or two children.
Some were townsfolk's children, others orphans.
They didn't know. Their desperate effort meant nothing.
The current would drag them into the bottomless caverns.
Who knew how long it would take to fill the caves? But none of them would ever emerge on the other side.
"Captain…" Purple Cat whispered.
Even as ANBU, she could not bear it. Watching a child like Lan fight so hard to live, only to be swallowed by the flood…
Yako gauged the Sand shinobi at the cavern mouth. He might not save many. But at least—he could save Lan.
"Wait for me," he said. "I'll go to the cavern."
In a blur of motion, he struck.
Two Sand shinobi fell, cut down. Yako leapt, soaring over the cavern mouth.
The cave gaped like a dark maw, water churning within, swallowing endlessly.
In midair, Yako hurled a steel wire weighted with an iron ball.
It looped around Lan's waist, yanking her upward.
Lan screamed, thrashing in panic. "Uncle! Auntie! There's a huge hole ahead!"
The cavern devoured the plank—and the men below it.
They tumbled into the falls, vanishing into blackness.
At that moment, Mache appeared.
"Wind Release: Wind Slash!"
Blades of wind screamed through the air, slicing Yako's wire apart.
"Lan!"
The girl, newly plucked from death, plummeted into the dark abyss.
Her broken umbrella spun from her grip, vanishing with her into the flood.
Yako himself was ripped open by the wind, hurled into the cliff face above the cavern.
He stabbed his kunai into the rock to cling on. Below, voices of the fallen rose from the cavern depths, muffled screams lost in the roar.
"Lan!"
Yako flung another iron ball, desperate to snare her again.
Lan stretched out her hand.
Just one meter short—then the water crushed her, dragging her down.
Dangling from his kunai, Yako froze. A thought bloomed in his heart.
For the first time in his life, he wanted to die.
He wanted to change Lan's fate.
His gaze snapped upward, locking on Mache.
'Sand shinobi. Even if you wish to bring water into the Land of Wind—did you have to do it like this?'