Meanwhile, some time before the Hokage Faction's strike on the Daimyo's palace, deep within the southern reaches of the Land of Hot Water, where Ryusei's division was stationed, the situation remained calm.
Ryusei's main body was positioned there, commanding one of Konoha's quasi-independent combat sections responsible for monitoring the shores.
For months, this region had seen fewer and fewer incursions as Fugaku Uchiha, the overall commander of the Kiri front, was steadily turning the tide, helped occasionally by Minato's lightning-fast interventions.
But from miles away, moving silently through the forested highlands, another figure advanced, a lone masked man draped in a dark battle cloak, the faint rustle of his bandages whispering against the wind.
His steps were deliberate, steady, and filled with murderous intent.
Danzo Shimura.
His right arm still bore the grotesque modification, and the faint pulse of hidden power beneath the wrappings.
His remaining body, however, was battle-hardened and ready.
He was hunting for Ryusei Nishida.
It was clear by now that the Hokage's faction had no precise idea where Ryusei's main base or personal hideout was.
Despite all the spies and informants they'd planted and recruited within his ranks, none had ever managed to trace him.
Ryusei didn't need to show himself to lead. He issued orders through his shadow clones, coordinating everything remotely.
As the section's commander, it was nearly impossible for any ordinary shinobi to know where his real body actually stayed, or if they'd ever seen it at all.
Additionally, every sensor, from the outside, that they sent out was eventually detected and disposed of by him, quietly, efficiently.
Ryusei's sensory abilities had grown far beyond what any of them anticipated, and even among the most advanced trackers, from the entire village, in groups, no one could find him.
Eventually, they stopped trying altogether, each failed attempt only costing them more such valuable personnel, swallowed one by one without a trace.
But the only ones who had ever gotten truly close to him were long since compromised.
Once, they believed they had two perfect informants: Ryusei's old teammates, Renjiro Hatake and Kanae Hyūga.
For months, after the graduation, they thought they were feeding the correct intelligence about Ryusei's actions, his progress, and his attitude toward Konoha.
But everything changed once Ryusei launched his Daimyo operation and relocated his unit to the Hot Water front.
That was when the truth began to surface.
Reports started to dry up.
What intelligence they did receive became fragmented, contradictory, and suspiciously convenient.
Eventually, the Hokage's Faction realized the unthinkable, that both Renjiro and Kanae had defected to Ryusei's side at some point they didn't realize.
And the deeper realization that followed was even worse.
Ryusei knew they once controlled those two.
He had anticipated it.
And yet, instead of eliminating them, he'd turned them.
Silently. Completely.
The moment the Hokage Faction understood that, their internal communication faltered.
They stopped pretending to rely on the pair for any meaningful data, because anything that reached them was now being fed straight to Ryusei.
Then came the message that sealed their hesitation.
Ryusei himself, through intermediaries, issued a clear warning.
If they ever dared move against Renjiro or Kanae, especially if the Hyūga Main Branch tried to activate Kanae's Cursed Seal remotely, under Hokage's urging, across the distance, on her, then he would retaliate immediately, and his retaliation would begin with the Daimyo himself.
It was a simple, terrifying ultimatum.
And they believed him.
Because at this point, they all knew Ryusei could actually do it.
With the Slug Summoning Contract, with his terrifying sensory ability, and with his power now at high-Kage levels, no one could corner him long enough to actually kill him initially.
They knew that, in his mind, he could probably survive even without the Daimyo card now.
Even if he lost that leverage, he had grown strong enough and elusive enough to escape and live on his own terms.
It became a standoff.
They couldn't kill him.
They couldn't exile him.
They couldn't brand him a traitor publicly, not while the Daimyo's life hung in the balance.
And that's what disturbed them the most.
Because Ryusei didn't use this leverage and newfound strength to run, or to build some rogue force, or to flee the system entirely.
He stayed.
He kept fighting for Konoha, officially under their flag, leading troops and taking missions.
That was the most unsettling part.
Why didn't he leave?
Why didn't he rebel outright when he had every reason and means to do so?
What was his endgame?
Did he intend to overthrow them from within?
Replace the Hokage's Faction entirely?
Or was his revenge something subtler, political, long-term, far beyond their understanding?
Nobody could tell anymore.
But Danzo Shimura, trudging silently through the forest now, knew one thing with absolute certainty.
He hated those two traitors, Renjiro and Kanae, even more than he hated Ryusei himself.
To him, they had committed the greatest sin imaginable: betraying Konoha from within, abandoning their ANBU duties, and choosing to serve a single boy over their entire village.
And yet, in his heart, Danzo didn't blame them completely.
He blamed Hiruzen.
Because those two had been Shinsuke's personal recruits, ANBU prospects chosen under the Hokage's direct supervision.
The failure of their loyalty, the corruption of their will, was a stain that fell squarely on Hiruzen's and his son's leadership.
"This time," he muttered coldly to the wind, "the village's rot starts ending with him."
Actually, the reason Danzo dared to come here personally, and why Hiruzen even allowed it, was obvious.
Danzo's version of Edo Tensei had long surpassed that of the other two elders by some margin currently.
His mastery and performance were on a different level entirely, and Hiruzen lacked the leverage to coerce him into sharing that perfected version.
For now, Danzo held the upper hand.
After all, he could now personally summon Sasuke Sarutobi, Kagami Uchiha, Mito Uzumaki, an "enhanced" Izuna Uchiha, and even that new, legendary, strongest one.
With such a lineup at his command, if Hiruzen, even with his control of the wider village apparatus, and Danzo ever clashed directly, the outcome would be uncertain.
Neither could claim an assured victory, and the village couldn't afford that kind of internal war right now.
So, for the first time in their lives, Hiruzen was forced to compromise with him, at least temporarily.
Until his own team and Homura and Koharu perfected their own Edo Tensei variant to match Danzo's, the old balance of power couldn't return.
Danzo, of course, was proud of this.
He basked in that temporary supremacy, using the opportunity to grow stronger than ever, physically and politically.
At the same time, he was still pursuing those two other targets across the world, whom he had met a few months ago, those "mysterious individuals" whose existence had shaken his entire worldviews: one with the Rinnegan, the other with a possible Mangekyō Sharingan.
He vowed that when he found them again, he wouldn't fail as before.
With his newfound plans, how to stop them from running away again, and the inexplicable, even better Edo Tensei arsenal, which was like another gift of fate, he intended to take the Rinnegan for himself and finally ascend to become the true ruler of the shinobi world.
All this was precisely why he had chosen to come personally to the Hot Water front.
He didn't trust anyone else with this task.
He possessed the best Edo Tensei in existence, and with the Senju cells integrated into his body, he could sustain and manifest all those strongest summoned souls simultaneously when the time came to face Ryusei.
He didn't fear the boy, despite knowing that, in pure individual combat, Ryusei might still outmatch him, because his army of the dead and his Hashirama-enhanced stamina would more than make up the difference.
Before setting out, Danzo, together with Hiruzen's inner circle, had already summoned and explained their intentions to the reanimated figures of Kagami, Mito, and Sasuke Sarutobi.
They had all agreed to cooperate, bound not only by jutsu but by conviction.
Each had strong ties to Konoha's foundation, to its leadership, and to the institution of the Hokage itself.
Sasuke Sarutobi, though he hadn't lived to see the village's founding, was still Hiruzen's biological father.
Kagami Uchiha and Mito Uzumaki were the same; their bonds to the Leaf and its ideals had not faded with death.
So even if they were unleashed freely, without Danzo's constant chakra control, they would still obey.
They would strike down Ryusei willingly, on their own, believing it to be for the village's sake.
And that distinction mattered immensely.
The Edo Tensei technique consumed far more chakra when the summoner had to actively control the revived.
But when they were allowed to act on their own, guided by their original will and loyalty, the chakra drain was minimal.
The majority of the energy was spent only at the moment of summoning, not in maintaining dominance over them.
For this reason, Danzo would only need to maintain perfect control over a single one, Izuna Uchiha, since he was the only summoned soul who was not aligned with their vision.
Everyone else would act of their own accord, as though alive again, united by purpose.
Even that new, strongest summon he had acquired, through means so inexplicable that even they couldn't uncover how, was also, somehow, aligned with this particular goal as well.
And that made Danzo's confidence absolute.
However, the true reason this entire operation could be launched so swiftly wasn't just planning or coordination; it was something else entirely.
A strange stroke of fate.
Over the past few months, a series of "gifts" had fallen into their hands, regarding the Edo Tensei, each more improbable than the last.
But the final one, the one that arrived just a few weeks ago, changed everything.
Danzo himself had received it.
At that point, their strategy sessions were stagnating.
They couldn't figure out how to approach Ryusei covertly enough to deploy their full power.
Every time they simulated a strike, they ran into the same problem: his sensory ability.
Ryusei could sense Danzo's presence before he even came within a few kilometers.
And without the element of surprise, all the strongest Edo Tensei in the world wouldn't matter if he just, on time, reverse summoned himself away thanks to those hateful slugs, in their minds, he acquired from Tsunade.
That's when it happened.
As Danzo's Root research team was dissecting and experimenting on theoretical jutsu derived from Edo Tensei's structure, testing its summoning logic and soul-chakra mechanics, Danzo himself had secluded deep within the Root base, experimenting personally with a series of soul-binding arrays.
He was searching for ways to refine his connection to the dead he summoned, to draw out not only their obedience but perhaps a fraction of their ability.
Then, suddenly, something went wrong, or right, depending on the perspective.
A surge of foreign insight flooded his mind like a breaking dam.
The images, memories, and fragments of another consciousness blended into his own.
His body shuddered, his chakra coils flaring and twisting violently.
And when it was over, he realized what he'd received.
It was some of Mu's knowledge—the Second Tsuchikage's.
The understanding of the Dustless Bewildering Cover, Mu's legendary invisibility and concealment jutsu, the one that allowed him to erase his chakra presence entirely, even to the most skilled sensors.
No one had been able to master it since Mu's death.
Yet now, Danzo not only understood its structure—he felt it.
His chakra coils had changed, subtly reshaped, like a new layer of refinement had been added to them.
It wasn't just mimicry; he had gained a fragment of Mu's very soul essence.
His sensory perception sharpened beyond what even his Hashirama cells had granted.
It was also as if Mu's own sixth sense, the ability to perceive life and chakra directly through atmospheric disturbances, had fused with him.
For the first time, Danzo could truly hide from the eyes of the living.
With this, he no longer needed to fear Ryusei's detection.
He could approach the boy directly, suppressing his presence to nothing, slowly shift into that transparent state, half-visible, half-absent, becoming a phantom even Ryusei's heightened sensory field couldn't register until too late.
It was almost poetic. Ryusei, the boy whose greatest advantage was his sensory mastery, would be undone by a stolen echo of one of the greatest sensors in history.
Could Ryusei detect Mu if the man were alive today?
Perhaps, but by the time Mu was already relatively close.
Therefore, by the time he sensed Danzo now, it would be too late.
That "somewhere near" position was all Danzo needed.
The moment he reached striking distance, he would unleash his perfected Edo Tensei sequence, a pre-rehearsed simultaneous summoning of all five of his legendary reincarnations, synchronizing their release in a way that would completely overwhelm Ryusei's reflexes.
Even if Ryusei tried to perform the slug reverse summoning, he would never make it in time.
And if, by some miracle, he did, they had another plan: mark him with the Flying Raijin seal during the chaos.
That way, even retreating into another dimension would no longer guarantee safety.
They would follow him anywhere, after finding him again later for another attack.
Danzo had prepared for every possibility.
He did feel a flicker of dissatisfaction, though.
If fate had granted him such a rare boon, why hadn't he also inherited Mu's other great gifts, at that time, specifically his strongest and most legendary ability, the Dust Release itself?
The answer was simple.
He lacked the right elements.
Dust Release required Fire, Wind, and Earth.
Danzo had only Earth and Water.
The Hashirama cells he had now already granted him enough chakra and sensory potential to be able to accept the essence of Mu's sensory and counter-sensory abilities; since those insights now only gave him the required finesse and sensory principles he'd always lacked, along with the techniques themselves, on top of his own base, saving him decades of time.
On the other hand, the Dustless Bewildering Cover was more attuned to water release, an element he already possessed a strong affinity for, which made it all the easier for him to assimilate and perform it, unlike the Dust Release.
Still, he consoled himself.
He already possessed everything he required.
And when the time came, his ambush would be absolute.
Perhaps all those new developments they'd gotten through the Edo Tensei, but didn't anticipate, leading up to this operation, were nothing more than coincidences, fortuitous accidents born from persistence and pressure rather than destiny.
After all, Danzo knew that the Pure Land, souls, spiritual dimensions, mindscapes, and all that lay beyond life had always been among the most mysterious and least understood forces in the shinobi world.
Maybe there was no higher power guiding any of this, no divine intervention or fate at play.
Maybe they were simply lucky, like Ryusei Senju was his entire life to survive until now.
Or maybe, Danzo thought, luck itself was the only god that personally favored him finally.
Either way, Danzo was ready to end Ryusei next.
Using his near-invisible presence, he planned to position the Edo Tensei summons around him in secrecy, encircling the boy completely before activating the technique remotely with a single command.