As Ryusei waited for feedback from his clone network, reports started streaming in: intel on troop movement, chakra fluctuations, and small skirmishes across the northwestern front.
From what he gathered, Minato and Kushina were nowhere near this sector currently, which Ryusei expected.
They were the captain and vice-captain of that new mobile unit that traveled everywhere across all fronts.
Only Jiraiya was stationed here now, of the Konoha elites, still acting as the commander of this winning front.
That was fine with him.
He preferred it that way.
As he watched the horizon, his thoughts drifted toward everything that had unfolded across the shinobi world in the last six months.
The Daimyō's palace was stable, no issues from that side so far, which in itself signalled that something even worse was brewing there for Ryuse.
So, Pakura hadn't shown herself since then, but they stayed in contact through letters.
She remained loyal to the plan, and Ryusei often reassured her that the real path to her next level of power was close, as he promised.
He hadn't lied. He and Kanae really had been researching Hashirama's cells nonstop during that period alongside the Byakugan.
The difficulty was staggering. Integrating them safely and in controlled doses into a foreign body without cellular collapse was no small feat.
Even Orochimaru had struggled with that.
And though Ryusei didn't know exactly what Orochimaru was researching lately, he could tell from the man's tone and secrecy that his work had reached new heights.
That research mattered not just for Pakura, but for Kiyomi too.
A few months ago, Ryusei and Orochimaru had traded breakthroughs.
Ryusei gave him Kanae's Yang cellular enhancements and cloning advancements in exchange for Orochimaru's findings on Sharingan evolution, knowledge Ryusei had indirectly enabled by giving him several Sharingan samples back then.
Orochimaru's results were impressive. They showed him new ways of manipulating the eye's structure through chakra conditioning and genetic adaptation.
Those notes, in turn, were what allowed Ryusei to begin his current project: awakening Mangekyō Sharingan artificially within Kiyomi's transplanted eyes through a direct soul-synchronization procedure.
It would be his first "soul surgery", something only he could attempt after what he'd learned from Ashina Uzumaki as well.
In return, Orochimaru also shared some of his Senju research, derived from his experiments with a peculiar test subject named Shin.
Those were groundbreaking. They helped Ryusei glimpse the day when safe Hashirama cell implantation would become truly viable. Not yet, but close enough that he could see the path ahead clearly now.
Their correspondence continued steadily. And Ryusei could tell Orochimaru was plotting something enormous of his own.
His disinterest in Minato's achievements lately only confirmed it.
He carried himself like a man who had already found something greater, a discovery Ryusei suspected was a ripple effect of his own existence in this world.
For now, Ryusei and Kanae could cultivate and multiply Hashirama cells with ease, but controlled transplantation remained the main challenge.
During all these months, Ryusei met Tsunade many times, sometimes through Katsuyu's reverse summons in Shikkotsu Forest, sometimes in his own section, and other times at her command post on the northeastern front.
Their meetings started as routine check-ins, but with time, and with Ryusei's body and strength rising fast, the tone between them changed.
He was slowly molding her, without forcing it, letting things flow naturally.
And now, it had become… complicated.
He never went too far, but he had a bad habit of creating those little "accidents."
During sparring, for example, he'd always find himself close, too close, blocking her strikes just in time, his hand catching her wrist, or her body pressed against his for a heartbeat too long before she broke free.
She'd pretend it didn't happen. Usually.
Other times, when the air got too heavy, she'd lash out and punch him, more flustered than angry. He'd take it with a grin.
Even outside battle, it wasn't much different.
While they talked, he'd lean in just a bit too close, his fingers brushing her shoulder or hand in that deliberately casual way of his.
She'd either ignore it completely or glance away, pretending she hadn't noticed, though the faint color on her cheeks always betrayed her.
Ryusei knew her well enough to read the signs.
That wasn't rejection, it was embarrassment.
Her rationality was mainly still hung up on the obvious: his age, their more than twenty-year-old gap, the fact that she'd known his parents and was technically from their generation.
But Ryusei didn't care about that in the slightest.
And even if she did, she wasn't pushing him away either.
So, he kept advancing, little by little, bolder each time.
By now, she had to fully know what he was doing.
He wasn't exactly 'subtle' about it anymore at his point.
And yet she never stopped him, never called him out, never once told him to drop it.
That alone said everything.
If Tsunade truly wanted to shut him down, she'd have done it long ago, directly, bluntly, just like she always did with everything else in her life.
She would've looked him in the eye and said, "Don't waste your time. It's impossible."
At the very least, she would have ended it early, before it grew into something way more messy, used any of those familiar excuses women give when they only see someone as a younger brother or someone they cared about in another way.
Especially her, who so afar looked at him almost maternally, as someone she had to directly shield from the world.
But she hadn't.
And Ryusei, an expert in reading between the lines, knew exactly what that meant.
Maybe she didn't fully realize it herself, but another part of her also already enjoyed and even welcomed it.
The attention, the tension, the feeling of being seen, not as a legend, not as the Senju Princess, but as a woman again, when she was left all alone in the world in the present.
He could see it in the way her eyes softened sometimes after a spar, or the way her laughter came easier when he teased her.
And he couldn't help but feel that his recent, growing strength, proven time and again through those sparring sessions that somehow always began on their own naturally, one way or another, had something to do with it.
After all, it was hard, no, impossible, for any woman to be truly drawn to someone weaker than her, in any way, especially someone like Tsunade.
Power, status, and strength all played into female instinct in every universe.
And now, Ryusei was finally strong enough that she couldn't ignore it.
They shared the same summoning contract, both capable of calling Katsuyu, and both had mastered Creation Rebirth to the same level, but Ryusei's ninjutsu arsenal was way stronger and far more broad.
In taijutsu, he already commanded five open gates, his speed and explosiveness rivaling hers in the short term, though Tsunade still held the advantage in raw Yin Seal reserves, mature physical energy from being in her full prime, and decades of refined medical precision that only experience could bring.
Still, things were changing.
Their sparring sessions had become intense, often ending with Ryusei winning more than he lost, unlike ever before.
And that fact, perhaps, lately changed something between them, the most, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
Now, when they stood face to face, it wasn't just student and master anymore; it was two equals testing each other.
And maybe, just maybe, she was starting to see him as more than that.
Ryusei smirked whenever he thought about it.
"You're not fooling anyone, Tsunade," he'd think to himself. "If you really wanted to draw a line, you would've done it already. But you haven't… have you?"
Nonetheless, Ryusei soon pushed aside thoughts of that tempting, maddeningly curvy and thick dream woman, forcing the image out of his head as his expression hardened again and his focus shifted back to the flow of sensory data around him.
He slowly mapped the entire frontline from Iwagakure's perspective through his sensory network, nearly every squad, every route, every chokepoint.
Han, the Five-Tails' jinchūriki.
The walking furnace of Iwa.
Therefore, soon enough, the image of his next target, the one he intended to rob this time, too, alongside those who were accompanying him currently, was very clear in his mind.