Tsunade was his only hope. The goddess of medicine, she alone could perform a miracle. Jiraiya waited for her, clinging to this thought like a drowning man to a straw. And then she entered. Despair, clouding his judgment, drove him to a mad act. Without a word, he ripped off his pants. Tsunade's reaction was lightning fast—an instinctive blow sent the hermit flying across the room.
That blow, delivered with all her might, nearly ended his battered life.
Somehow recovering and hastily patching up her own bruises, Tsunade approached his bedside. Guilt weighed heavily on her shoulders. She looked at her half-paralyzed friend, whom she had just nearly finished off. She already knew from the other medics what had driven him to such a fate.
It turned out Jiraiya was just one step away from becoming her sworn sister.
She couldn't have imagined that he'd suffered such horrific injuries in his battle with Uchiha Yue. A moment ago, she'd naively believed Jiraiya had only lost both legs.
"I'm sorry, Jiraiya, I didn't mean to..." Tsunade whispered guiltily, looking at the samurai, who had barely regained consciousness.
"It's okay... Tsunade... you can do it, right? Please tell me you can give them back! I really need them!" Jiraiya shook his head weakly, his gaze filled with desperate pleading. Heaven only knew what those days of waiting had cost him.
"Lady Tsunade!"
At that moment, an assistant flew up to her, holding out a sealed medical container. Inside, floating in a murky liquid, was that very thing, the very thing Jiraiya longed to return.
Tsunade took the container. As soon as she cracked the lid, a thick, sweet smell of decay assaulted her nose. Suppressing the urge to vomit, she peered inside. Her expression was one of genuine disgust.
"I'm sorry, Jiraiya," she said helplessly, hastily slamming the lid shut and handing the container to her assistant like a poisonous snake. "I'm powerless. I'm not a goddess; I can't resurrect dead flesh. This... it's all rotten."
"Nooo ... It was later discovered that during the initial inspection, the severed, necrotic tissue had been disposed of as ordinary biowaste. But Jiraiya's despair was so great that an entire group of shinobi was sent on an unthinkable mission—to dig through the garbage pits of Konoha's temporary camp. And they found it. Among the rotting remains, they found what had once been a part of Jiraiya. They treated it, halting further decay, but it was too late.
When Jiraiya woke up, he lay there for a long time, his eyes red and bloodshot, staring blankly at the ceiling. Tears silently trickled from the corners of his eyes. He regretted it. How he regretted rushing forward so presumptuously! Time machine... where are you, damn time machine?!
Tsunade sat in a chair next to him and, looking at him, sighed heavily.
"Pull yourself together, Jiraiya. At least you're alive! You fought Uchiha Yue for three hundred rounds and lost honorably, only yielding in the end. That means he's not invincible! When you recover, we'll gather all of Konoha's forces and kill him! We'll avenge our teacher and you!"
She spoke these words without knowing the truth. She still believed the lies concocted to keep up morale. In her mind, Uchiha Yue's strength was great, but not nearly enough to compare with that of her grandfather, the First Hokage. After all, if that were true, Jiraiya would already be dead.
"Losed honorably...? Ha-ha-ha... HA-HA-HA!!!"
Jiraiya suddenly burst into laughter—hoarse, insane, sending shivers down his spine. Under Tsunade's stunned gaze, he laughed, coughing up blood and choking on his own despair.
"What 'lost honorably'?! Tsunade, it's all a lie! A brazen, shameless lie! I... I've never even seen his face! Not once! He played with me like a kitten! If it weren't for my comrades who died so I could retreat... I wouldn't have taken a single step!" " he cried out in a trembling voice, a pit of despair swirling in his eyes.
"What?!"
Soon, Tsunade learned the truth from Jiraiya. Konoha's official version wasn't just an embellishment—it was a monstrous distortion of the facts, an attempt to pass off a crushing defeat as an equal fight.
What three hundred rounds? Only in a dream.
"A global cataclysm... Can a human being really achieve such power?" Tsunade leaned helplessly against the wall. Even Jiraiya's simple retelling weighed heavily on her. Uchiha Yue had nearly killed one of the legendary Sannin without even moving.
It was like trying to fight the sun. It just hangs there in the sky, doing nothing, but one direct glance at it and you go blind. Uchiha Yue was that sun.
Even her grandfather, Hashirama Senju, wasn't a natural disaster in human form.
An oppressive silence fell over the room. Soon, Tsunade emerged, determined to get to the bottom of the truth.
After some time, a prophecy of the coming end began to spread from Konoha like wildfire across the shinobi world. With the exception of the nearly destroyed Leaf Village and the Land of Water, long under Uchiha Obito's control, the other great villages received this dire warning.
"Uchiha Yue? The end of the world? What nonsense... What can these savages do?"
Somewhere in the shinobi world, in a secluded temple, Jigen read the report with a mocking grin. But the deeper he read, the more his brow furrowed. A sense of foreboding stirred in his ancient heart.
— The power of the Divine Tree?.. The Uchiha clan... Mangekyo Sharingan... Damn it!