By the time May rolled around, the air had started to soften. The frostbite wind of early spring finally gave way to damp warmth, though the battlefield still stank of smoke and blood.
After Raizen's scouts returned with intelligence on Qishui Gorge, the Konoha Alliance grew bolder—sending out squads to provoke the Hyūga Coalition, hoping to draw out their formations.
The Hyūga weren't sheep waiting to be slaughtered. They were tigers behind iron bars. Every "probe" Konoha sent was shredded before it reached the gorge, their bodies left to rot on the slope. Even Raizen's own ruthlessness found limits against an enemy this entrenched.
A week-long stalemate followed. Two great forces staring each other down across a ravine of corpses—neither side blinking, both suffocating under tension thick enough to chew.
Finally, Raizen moved.
Five thousand shinobi marched under his banner toward Qishui Gorge. Word of it reached the Hyūga camp within hours, and Hyūga Tennin—patriarch of his clan and commander of the coalition—personally led ten thousand to meet them head-on.
When Raizen's army crested the final ridge, a massive hill loomed before them—the mouth of the gorge itself. Down below, across a shallow basin, stretched a sea of white tents and banners. Sixteen clan emblems flapped over the Hyūga camp like the fangs of some ancient beast.
Raizen's shinobi fell silent.
"What a defense line," someone muttered, voice dry.
Raizen squinted toward the gorge. Even from this distance, he could tell how steep and narrow the passage was. A fortress of stone and chakra.
And down there, ten thousand Hyūga-allied shinobi waited for them.
Five thousand against ten thousand.
Suicide odds.
Perfect.
Inside the Hyūga camp, pale eyes glimmered in the shade as dozens of Byakugan activated at once, their users scanning the enemy ranks across the valley. Every chakra pulse, every heartbeat, mapped in real time.
"Konoha's mad. Five thousand soldiers against the gorge? They don't know the meaning of death."
The words came from a younger Hyūga. But before his sneer could finish curdling, Hyūga Tennin cut him off.
"Hold your tongue. Did you already forget how our three thousand died last month?"
The reminder hit like a thrown kunai. The camp fell silent. Everyone remembered—the ambush, the beast, the slaughter.
Tennin's gaze turned toward an older shinobi beside him. "Sarutobi-dono. What's your read?"
The elder stroked his beard, eyes narrowed. "In numbers, we're even stronger than before. But I'm not afraid of Raizen's army… I'm afraid of the thing he brought with him. The tailed beast."
Tennin's expression hardened. The coalition's last major loss was burned into his memory—half their casualties, thanks to that monster.
"If he dares unleash it again," Tennin said quietly, "I'll deal with it myself."
The Sarutobi elder bowed slightly. "Understood."
That afternoon, the forests between both armies exploded with movement.
Scouting teams turned into skirmishes. Skirmishes into massacres. Within hours, a kilometer-wide stretch of forest was slick with blood and ash.
Raizen watched from a ridge, his face blank, hands behind his back. "Their defense line's too thick. Small probes won't cut it."
He inhaled, exhaled, and then—cold resolve. "Fine. We burn it all."
With one motion, he raised his hand.
"Full advance!"
The five thousand surged forward like a living wave.
Across the basin, Tennin's eyes widened as the enemy closed the gap faster than expected. "Fools…" he muttered—and then shouted, "All units, to arms!"
Kunai glittered in the sunlight. Paper tags hissed.
The two armies collided.
The world went white.
Explosions ripped through the trees. Fire roared skyward, devouring smoke and screams alike.
"Fire Style: Great Firework Technique!" Raizen's frontlines bellowed the jutsu name in unison. Dozens of throats drew in air, chakra blazing in their lungs before erupting outward in synchronized firestorms.
Walls of flame swept the Hyūga vanguard, turning men to silhouettes before ash.
But Tennin didn't flinch. "All Hyūga units—counterstrike! Push them back!"
More shinobi flooded out of Qishui Gorge, reinforcements doubling their numbers. The initial three thousand defenders ballooned into eight thousand within minutes. The pressure crushed Konoha's advance like a wave hitting stone.
Raizen saw the shift instantly. His jaw tightened.
"All units—split!" he ordered.
"Daisaku Inuzuka!"
"Sir!"
"You'll take half our forces and break through the gorge itself. Don't stop until you've taken it!"
The man's eyes went wide. "My lord, what!? You'll be facing eight thousand alone—"
"Shut it," Raizen snapped. "The gorge is the real heart. They've pulled every guard off the side roads. Only one or two thousand remain inside. You take five thousand and carve through them. Leave the rest… to me."
Daisaku's throat went dry. He wanted to argue, but the look in Raizen's eyes—the calm of someone already walking into hell—froze him solid.
"…Understood, Raizen-sama!"
He slammed a fist to his chest, turned, and bellowed the order. The Konoha lines split like a living organism, half surging sideways toward the gorge.
The Hyūga troops shouted in confusion.
"What are they doing? Trying to flank us?"
Before they could react, Raizen stepped forward, cloak snapping in the wind.
"Let's dance, Tennin," he muttered, forming seals.
Then the ground itself trembled as he leapt into the fray—alone against thousands.
...
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