As commander, Jiraiya kept the most ninjas with himself, bearing the greatest pressure.
The small squad he was leading had more than sixty ninjas, even more than the so‑called vanguard squad under Mokgetsu.
With an unknown spy inside the unit, this was actually a very dangerous situation.
So Jiraiya didn't choose any place as a fixed base; he ran all over the place every day to avoid their position being exposed and surrounded.
"This is the advance unit of our reinforcements. More reinforcements will arrive soon, and then it'll be our turn to counterattack!"
Jiraiya assembled the unit and introduced Mokgetsu, who had come to reinforce them, to boost morale.
After suffering a bitter defeat and then being chased all over by the enemy, the morale of the Land of Grass forces was extremely low right now.
"It's Lord Mokgetsu." Very soon some ninjas recognized Mokgetsu and showed delighted expressions.
Mokgetsu was a powerhouse on par with Namikaze Minato. Every additional fighter of that level could have a definite impact on the battle situation.
"Lord Mokgetsu once killed a Jinchuriki on the Hidden Mist Battlefield. If he can also take down one of Hidden Rock's Jinchuriki this time like he did back then, let's see how arrogant the Hidden Rock Squad can be!" a Konoha Ninja couldn't help thinking.
The two fully transformed Jinchuriki from Hidden Rock put considerable pressure on the Land of Grass Konoha Squad. No one wanted to be fighting and suddenly have a Tailed Beast Ball appear in their face.
Seeing the expressions of the Ninja Squad change after Mokgetsu appeared, Obito's heart surged; he longed deeply for that.
The kind of ninja he wanted to become was exactly like Mokgetsu—someone who could give people a tremendous sense of security, who could end wars and save people from fire and water.
Jiraiya and Namikaze Minato both paid close attention to the expressions on the ninjas' faces, but they didn't see anyone showing disdain or any other negative look.
"We'll see how good Mokgetsu's sensory is." Jiraiya wasn't surprised.
After all, to infiltrate a Ninja Squad as a spy, keeping one's emotions off one's face ought to be basic operation.
"Everyone, hold on a bit longer. The main force of the support unit will arrive very soon. The final victory will definitely belong to Konoha." Mokgetsu encouraged them with a warm smile.
Along with serving a bowl of chicken soup, Mokgetsu quickly used Identification on the ninjas in front of him.
[Name: Yamanaka Kousuke]
[Chakra: 4600]
[Skills: Yin Attribute Chakra Nature Changes (proficient), Mind Body Transfer Jutsu (proficient)...]
[Name: Miki Hanpei]
[Skills: Fire Attribute Chakra Nature Changes (proficient)...]
"Victory belongs to our Konoha!" a passionate Konoha Ninja whom Mokgetsu wasn't familiar with shouted.
[Name: White Zetsu]
[Chakra: 13000]
[Skills: Mayfly Jutsu, Disguise Jutsu...]
Mokgetsu's expression didn't change as he memorized the disguised face of that passionate White Zetsu, then continued using Identification Jutsu on the other ninjas.
After the identification ended, Mokgetsu found that the situation was actually not too bad: there was only one White Zetsu in the small unit under Jiraiya.
"Next we need to link up with the other small squads that went out separately and prepare to launch a counterattack." Jiraiya issued the latest order.
The Konoha Ninja Squad had been rushing east and west recently and was already used to sudden movement orders; everyone quickly began to move according to Jiraiya's command.
"Mokgetsu, did you sense anything?" Jiraiya walked over to Mokgetsu with his students and asked in a low voice.
By normal logic, his small unit was the most likely to have a spy, because not only did it have the most people, it also had him, the unit commander.
"There's one ninja who is extremely likely to be a Hidden Rock Spy." Mokgetsu thought for a moment and answered.
Identification Jutsu worked just as well as Mokgetsu had imagined when it came to detecting White Zetsu. However, since he was using sensing good and evil as his cover, he didn't use any absolute terms, only said "high probability."
"Extremely high probability?"
"He harbors an extremely deep malice toward me. If he gets the chance, he'll kill me without hesitation. This level of hatred is practically like we have an irreconcilable blood feud." Mokgetsu said calmly.
"Extremely high probability? That has to be a spy." Jiraiya felt Mokgetsu was being a bit too conservative.
Even if a Konoha Ninja had some personal grudge against Mokgetsu, it shouldn't be that exaggerated.
"Who is it?"
Mokgetsu Summoned paper and pen from a Scroll, then swiftly sketched the face White Zetsu was disguising itself as.
"He looks roughly like this. I don't know him, and I don't know his name." Mokgetsu handed the portrait to Jiraiya.
"If I'm remembering correctly, this guy's name should be Takada Seiichi, a Chunin." Jiraiya looked it over and said.
Originally, Jiraiya didn't know him either. With a ninja squad numbering in the thousands, there was no way Jiraiya could know every ninja; he only knew all the Jonin and the Chunin he'd interacted with.
But once everyone was dispersed, and with spies to ferret out, Jiraiya deliberately memorized the names of all his subordinates to make it easier to investigate related information.
"It's him. Takada Seiichi may not be from a clan, but his family joined Konoha as residents back in its founding days. Didn't expect him to end up a spy." Namikaze Minato sighed.
Takada Seiichi's family had been sheltered by Konoha, and he himself grew up under Konoha's protection. Why would someone like that become a Hidden Rock spy? Namikaze Minato couldn't quite figure it out.
But then he remembered that even the Sarutobi Clan had produced a spy, and Minato suddenly felt it wasn't so surprising.
With a Jonin from the Sarutobi Clan as a precedent, even if a spy showed up among the Ino-Shika-Cho, Minato wouldn't be all that shocked.
"If he's a native-born Konoha man, why would he betray his own village?" Obito found it hard to accept.
He had assumed spies were ninjas from other villages using disguises; he hadn't expected it to be one of their own ninjas defecting.
"Could it be someone from another village using Transformation Jutsu to pose as him?"
Namikaze Minato shook his head and explained, "No matter how advanced a Transformation Jutsu is, it can't hide from a Perception Ninja's sensing."
"All ninjas have Chakra, but in truth each person's Chakra is different. It's just that ordinary ninja can't perceive those differences."
Obito's face fell. Minato's meaning was clear: if it were just a Transformation Jutsu disguise, there's no way it would slip past the squad's Perception Ninja.
"Money, life, power, status… this world is full of all kinds of temptations." Jiraiya sighed.
He didn't know what benefits Hidden Rock had promised, or what leverage they had on Takada Seiichi and the others. Either way, the fact of the spy was already established.
"This is a real headache. If this gets back to the village, it might affect all of Konoha." The more Jiraiya thought about it, the more irritated he felt.
This spy was not only hard to uncover; even once exposed, making it public would easily hurt morale and could even have a negative impact on Konoha as a whole.
"Wait until the squads finish regrouping and then decide. For now, don't take any action, or we'll spook the snake out of the grass." Mokgetsu reminded them.
If they wanted to use White Zetsu to screw over Hidden Rock, then before the information got relayed back, they couldn't let the White Zetsu realize their cover had been blown.
Jiraiya and the others all nodded. None of them knew whether there were still spies lurking in other small squads.
Worried that dragging things out would cause trouble, Jiraiya issued a top-level assembly order, demanding all mobile teams regroup at maximum speed.
With ninjas' high mobility, Mokgetsu's group rapidly swelled in size, going from a hundred to two hundred, then three hundred, and by the time the regrouping was complete there were roughly seven hundred people.
Throughout this process, Mokgetsu was constantly using Identification Jutsu at high intensity to hunt for White Zetsu, and in the end he found three of them.
Besides the Takada Seiichi they'd identified at the start, there was the injured Aburame Clan Jonin, Aburame Ryuya, and the last remaining Hyuga Clan ninja in Jiraiya's squad, Hyuga Sa.
When he learned that the only Byakugan Ninja left in the squad was a spy, Jiraiya was stunned.
Even ninjas from the Hyuga Clan had turned out to be compromised—no wonder they'd lost so miserably.
"What the hell is going on in this world? Even a Hyuga Clan ninja would defect?" Jiraiya truly couldn't understand.
Within Konoha, the Hyuga Clan was a rather peculiar clan.
The Hyuga Clan had a strict Main Family and Branch Family system. The Main Family wasn't just a rung higher in status—they also possessed absolute control over the Branch Family, able to easily manipulate the Branch ninja's life and death through the Caged Bird Curse Seal.
Hyuga Sa, in Jiraiya's squad, was of course from the Branch Family. Main Family members of the Hyuga were extremely rare and seldom went to the battlefield.
"It's way too abnormal. There has to be some hidden secret behind this." Namikaze Minato frowned deeply.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call this the worst spy incident since Konoha's founding.
The Hyuga Clan, the Aburame Clan, the Sarutobi Clan—these three major clans were all founding-level ninja clans of Konoha, with many of their ninjas holding key posts across various departments.
Among them, the Sarutobi Clan was the most weighty: their Clan Leader, Sarutobi Hiruzen, currently serves as Konoha's Third Hokage.
If word got out that members of their clan were spies from another village, the consequences would be hard to predict.
If even such ideologically "pure" clan ninjas could become spies, didn't that imply there might be many more spies with ordinary backgrounds?
"Probing the secrets behind these spies is important, but right now the top priority is still thwarting the Hidden Rock Squad." Mokgetsu pointed out the current focus.
Mokgetsu knew the underlying reasons, but he couldn't state them outright. The best way was to guide them.
"Mokgetsu's right. What matters most now is we can't let the Hidden Rock Squad break into the Land of Fire." Jiraiya nodded.
The spy issue was critical to morale, but if the Hidden Rock Squad broke into the Land of Fire's heartland, the impact would be on the entire country, totally different from what happened with the Hidden Mist.
Next, the group began discussing how to use the spies to set traps for the Hidden Rock Squad.
They had already uncovered the spies. The situation now was that the Hidden Rock Squad believed they were on the first layer, their enemies on the second, when in fact the Konoha Ninja Squad had already reached the third.
Directly arresting the spies was the dumbest approach. The optimal solution was of course to use the spies and the support squads lurking in the shadows to create an information gap and give the Hidden Rock Ninja Squad a "surprise."
PS: Even though this is being posted today, this chapter actually counts as yesterday's and doesn't take up today's update slot.