More than ten days later, a red-haired kunoichi burst into the remote rainforest, crying as she ran.
"Yuka! Yuka! It's terrible!"
Yuka leapt down from a treehouse. The other Uzumaki women rushed over at the sound of her anguished voice.
After only a few words, every woman in the Uzumaki camp collapsed into the mud, sobbing in the rain.
Only Uzumaki Yuka remained standing, trembling, her tear-streaked face turned toward the sky as rainwater mixed with her grief, dripping into the soaked ground.
The young leader of the Senju clan, Senju Nawaki, was dead.
Yoru(Yoru), her informant inside Konoha's Anbu, had already uncovered the truth, had even sent word to warn the young master in advance. And yet, Nawaki had still died.
According to the reports, Hidden Stone Village had claimed responsibility, proudly announcing that they were the ones who killed the Senju heir, Konoha's brightest genius of the past decade, as retaliation for the trap of the Jinchuriki.
But Nawaki had been guarded by Orochimaru, an elite jōnin with immense experience. How could he possibly have been killed by some Iwa assassination squad?
Only then did Yuka fully understand why Yoru had warned her not to reveal the truth to the Senju clan too soon.
Since the death of Tobirama Senju, Konoha had become a cold, unfamiliar place. Everything had changed.
The Uzumaki clan had angered Konoha's leadership when they tried to make Princess Kushina the new Three-Tails jinchūriki. Because of that, the Hidden Whirlpool Village was ruthlessly abandoned by Konoha's elders.
The Senju clan faced the same fate. They, too, had conflicted with the leadership over the second Nine-Tails jinchūriki. Now, their misfortune had arrived.
The Konoha leadership could not tolerate any dissent. The village had to be ruled under their absolute authority, one voice, one will.
Even the Senju clan would be crushed without mercy if they defied that authority.
This was Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzō's Konoha, no longer the Konoha it once was.
After leaving Uzumaki Yuka, Yoru reunited with his squad in the Land of Rain.
"Captain, are you okay?" Purple Cat ran up to him, worried sick.
She had seen the Yoru Captain carried off by a giant Spear Heron, the Yatagarasu, and feared the worst.
Circling around him, she checked him from head to toe.
"I'm fine," Yoru replied calmly. "I was taken by a summon belonging to the remaining Uzumaki, but I gathered important intel from them. Let's go, we're heading back to our camp in the Land of Grass to report."
Halfway there, they received a shocking transmission, one that spread through the entire Land of Rain like wildfire.
Even ordinary civilians heard it:
Konoha's genius, the young heir of the Senju clan, was dead.
Hidden Stone Village was loudly proclaiming that they had killed him.
Yoru instantly understood.
This was Ōnoki trying to glorify himself.
Of course, Ōnoki had wanted Nawaki dead, he wanted every talented Konoha prodigy dead.
But he couldn't have done it this way.
If he sent too few men, they could never break through Orochimaru's protection.
If he sent too many, the Konoha frontline would notice, and it would escalate into a full-scale battle, costing far more lives.
Yoru realized what must have really happened.
Captain Yellow Dog had received urgent intel:
Senju shinobi at the front had made contact with Uzumaki remnants. Furious, he had rushed back, disguised his team as Hidden Stone ninja, and personally laid a trap.
The frontline commander, Mitokado Homura, had assigned Nawaki's team a special mission, one that Captain Yellow Dog knew every detail of.
On the route, Yellow Dog set his trap, and Nawaki was killed in the explosion.
The trap was so sophisticated that even Orochimaru might have been caught by it.
So, even though Yoru had warned them in advance, Nawaki still couldn't be saved.
Yoru had deliberately designed a decoy mission to track "Spear Heron," so he wouldn't be used as bait, because the bait was always doomed to die.
When Yoru returned to the frontline camp, he saw Orochimaru and Jiraiya standing outside a tent, one on each side. Inside, Tsunade knelt on the ground, weeping over her brother's body.
Nawaki had been dead for days, yet Tsunade still refused to leave him.
Outside, Orochimaru stood stiffly against a tent post, eyes half-lowered. Jiraiya glared at him angrily, perhaps Orochimaru had said something cruel again.
Nawaki's death had shaken Orochimaru deeply. He wasn't as emotionless as he appeared.
Inside the tent lay not only Nawaki but many other corpses, Konoha's Senju forces had clearly suffered a heavy loss.
A bit of digging told Yoru that the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, and Danzō had both come to the front.
At a small jōnin conference, Tsunade furiously proposed that every ninja squad must include a medical-ninja.
"If there had been even one medical-ninja from the Senju in Nawaki's team," she argued,
"then no Sarutobi or Shimura 'teammates' could've let him die like that."
Those two had been placed in Nawaki's squad by the leadership, weak links meant to "foster bonds."
It was said that Nawaki had been killed by a two-stage explosive tag trap:
one tag exploded first, launching a bundle of tags to waist height, then that bundle detonated, obliterating his internal organs completely.
Yellow Dog's trap, terrifyingly precise.
Among all the jōnin, only Kato Dan supported Tsunade's proposal.
Their bond deepened; after Nawaki's death, Kato Dan became one of her emotional pillars.
Amid the chaos, Yoru made his way to the Anbu tent.
Inside were Danzō and Captain Yellow Dog. Yoru stepped forward and reported formally:
"Lord Danzō, Captain, I have confirmed intelligence. The Uzumaki remnants are moving unpredictably between the Lands of Rain and Grass, they are extremely hard to track."
After his report, he bowed and waited.
Yellow Dog gestured for him to leave.
Yoru exited quietly.
The atmosphere around the Anbu camp was tense, suffocating. It felt as though Danzō had just unleashed a storm of fury.
The Anbu had had no choice but to kill Nawaki.
Yellow Dog's major failure, allowing contact between the Senju heir and the Uzumaki remnants,
had forced Danzō's hand. To prevent the truth from spreading before the Nine-Tails' transfer ritual,
they had taken ruthless action and eliminated Nawaki.
For Anbu, this decision carried a terrible price. If Orochimaru or Tsunade ever discovered the truth, the consequences would be disastrous, especially with the powerful Senju clan behind him.
Late that night, Yoru's team stood guard outside Danzō's tent.
Yoru saw Orochimaru approach and enter.
He listened, trying to catch the conversation, but after several minutes, there was nothing.
There must have been a barrier to block sound.
Inside the tent, Orochimaru's slit-pupiled eyes fixed coldly on Danzō.
Danzō's face remained expressionless, betraying nothing of the fact that he had ordered Nawaki's death.
After several seconds of silence, Orochimaru finally spoke:
"Human life is so fragile, Lord Danzō. I once had high hopes for my disciple, Nawaki, but who could have imagined that a few sheets of explosive tags could end him? The craftsmanship of those traps was astonishing, so precise that even I might have fallen for them. Since when has Hidden Stone Village produced such a master of explosive tags?
Nawaki's potential far exceeded mine. What a waste.
Lord Danzō, I accept your earlier proposal. Let us begin the research on enhancing, modifying, and transplanting the human body, for the sake of Konoha."