Uchiha Yōrin already had a plan.
He'd let the Five Great Nations keep limping along for a few more years—an interim phase. Once he was truly ready, he would erase them in one sweep.
If he simply turned the Five Great Nations into his "colonies," that wouldn't be great either—it would rot the Ninshū from the inside just as quickly. So the best arrangement was to leave them as defeated, hostile states for now.
Give it a few years. Let them convince themselves they'd "recovered," let them launch a revenge war… and then wipe them out in one clean motion. Happy ending.
Of course, there was one tiny—almost negligible—problem in his way:
The Land of Fire's three-hundred-thousand-man army.
Sure, "a million troops across the Five Nations" wasn't wrong—but it wasn't evenly split into two hundred thousand each. The Five Nations' strength wasn't equal.
The strongest—the Land of Fire—could scrape together three hundred thousand plus. The weakest—the Land of Wind—might not even reach a hundred thousand.
So Konoha's shinobi weren't facing "some army."
They were facing the single strongest conventional force on the planet.
Three hundred thousand soldiers—top-tier numbers, top-tier equipment, top-tier training.
They had money, so before the war they sprayed it everywhere, buying morale in bulk. Samurai and ambitious recruits, dreaming of status, were pumped full of confidence.
"Those Konoha shinobi? We've seen them. Sure, their throwing blades are nasty—but can they beat a gun?"
"We'll show them what modern weapons can do. Heh heh heh…"
Uchiha Yōrin clicked his tongue.
To be fair, before the fighting started, he had given them a chance: envoys, broadcasts, newspapers—every channel pushing the same message.
Lay down your arms. Go home early. He'd overlook it. No punishment.
No one listened.
And if that was their choice, then they didn't get to complain about his.
If you stood in his way, you were the enemy.
"Modern weapons? Machine guns, submachine guns, 155mm howitzers…"
"Sure. But do they beat Amaterasu?"
"Amaterasu—do you understand what that means?"
…
After founding the Ninshū, fully absorbing the Five Great Villages, and purging countless nobles, Yōrin's power had surged again—into something almost unbelievable.
He was still a step short of "Six Paths," but calling him pseudo–Six Paths was fair.
And for ordinary people, was there really any difference?
There wasn't.
So this time, he didn't even need anything exotic—no "Truth-seeking Orbs," no grand theatrical annihilation.
Using Amaterasu alone was already generosity.
Of course, almost nobody on the receiving end would call it "generous."
When Yōrin released Amaterasu shaped and directed through Kagutsuchi—falling like a scattered rain of meteoric fire across the Land of Fire's formations—everyone understood him as a god of calamity.
A bringer of ruin.
From the sky, the black flames came down like endless bombing runs—like a thousand bombers dumping payload after payload.
Worse still, this era of war had almost no concept of air defense.
No shelters. No trenches.
Their three hundred thousand stood there in dense ranks, openly exposed—as if they were inviting him to wipe them out.
Explosions chained together. Fire after fire. Detonations rolling without pause.
The "mighty army" went from stunned silence to ash and char in moments.
In a grim way, Yōrin was still "merciful": those caught directly by Amaterasu died almost instantly. No drawn-out suffering. They were simply gone.
The ones who survived the first wave had it worse.
A dense formation is perfect for mass bombardment. One strike cut three hundred thousand down to about one hundred fifty thousand.
The survivors saw their comrades reduced to that horror and immediately broke.
Panic. Stampedes. People crushing their own. Then the Ninshū's forces—high on momentum—cut through the fleeing remnants.
No heroic "samurai spirit," no noble last stand. Just collapse.
Three hundred thousand men, and in front of Yōrin they weren't even an obstacle.
The road ahead was wide open.
"Keep moving," Yōrin ordered. "Warriors of the Ninshū—press forward and take the Land of Fire in one push!"
…
If the Ninshū's declaration of war had felt like the sky falling on the Land of Fire, then the annihilation of that three hundred thousand was a true extinction event.
They had known they couldn't win. Still, three hundred thousand had been their hope—not victory, but delay.
Delay meant time. Time meant diplomacy. Time meant groveling, concessions—anything.
But nobody imagined the army would disappear in a single afternoon.
The capital dissolved into rumor and terror. Anyone with connections fled immediately—another city, the countryside, anywhere.
Anywhere that wasn't here.
"It's over."
"It's the end of the world."
"He'll kill us all—run!"
"No—wait! I've always supported Lord Yōrin! We should go welcome the new era!"
Before the shinobi army even arrived, the capital was already ripping itself apart: the connected fleeing, the powerless trembling, and a few desperately rewriting their loyalties in real time.
And in the middle of it, the Fire Daimyō sat with a dead-white face, mind gone blank.
Others could run.
He couldn't.
Even if he somehow fled, would it matter? Shinobi could find him anywhere. If they wanted him alive, they'd drag him back from the ends of the world.
"Konoha… hah… shinobi… hahahaha… the Land of Fire… is really going to fall…"
The thought cracked him. He started laughing and crying at once, teetering on madness.
…
Meanwhile, out in the field:
"We can't let him die," Yōrin said flatly, when scouts reported chaos in the capital. "If he dies, who exactly are we supposed to sign the surrender with?"
"And we can't let him run, either."
"So send an envoy. Calm him down. If he panics and kills himself, it gets… annoying."
"Would he really kill himself?" his companion, Uchiha Hikari, asked with genuine curiosity. "Aren't daimyōs and nobles the type who cling to life?"
"Usually, yes," Yōrin said. "But 'usually' isn't a plan. We don't take that risk."
Hikari nodded with an expression that looked like she understood everything—though Yōrin suspected she probably didn't.
Then again, even people who'd been beside him for years often couldn't keep up with his tempo.
He moved too fast.
…
So Yōrin's envoy went to the Fire Daimyō's palace and delivered the message.
The Daimyō nearly collapsed with relief when he realized he wouldn't be executed on the spot—though he still didn't know what kind of "life" he was about to be allowed.
He'd live.
But as what?
A puppet?
A captive?
A symbol?
He didn't know. And that uncertainty swallowed the relief almost immediately.
…
The capital itself wasn't destroyed. Yōrin exhaled a little at that.
A city of over ten million—possibly the largest on the planet—falling intact into the Ninshū's hands was the best possible outcome for what came next.
Once the Land of Fire—the strongest of the Five—formally surrendered, the world entered a new era.
Konoha's victory became absolute. On the other fronts, the other four shinobi armies were also advancing, winning, closing on the remaining capitals.
The Fifth Great War looked like it was about to end.
To prevent any last-minute surprises, Yōrin made a final decision:
He would unleash a wave of Amaterasu against each nation's main army.