As soon as a kilometer remained to the supposed place, Fifth and Sixth rushed to search while the others hid in different places within a hundred meters and began waiting for news.
Half an hour later, Kenshin telepathically heard Fifth's voice, who returned to the designated place.
"Father, not far from here I found two fallen trees and shuriken stuck in some trees" Fifth reported, standing fifty meters from Kenshin, who specially ordered not to gather everyone together in case of possible surveillance.
"Good. Fifth and Sixth, head northwest to the end of the forest and check the entire area up to the mountains. Move separately and maintain a large distance. You have two hours" Kenshin relayed via general connection so other sons would hear him too.
He felt sick at the thought that he might have sent Fifth and Sixth to death and was going to abort the operation if these two did not return. But he understood how much worse it would be if their entire squad was destroyed by one attack. He also realized how much he needed a strong kunoichi from the Nara clan, and he made his choice.
For about an hour, everyone sat in ambush and waited for news, mentally discussing possible event variants, primarily extremely unpleasant ones involving Fifth and Sixth's death. All Kenshin's sons were instructed to avoid capture if possible to prevent reading memories by someone from the Yamanaka clan.
When bad thoughts completely filled Kenshin's brain, he heard Sixth's voice.
"Father, Fifth and I checked the entire area and even deployed your formation. The stone glowed green, so there should be no strangers within a five-kilometer radius. Only seven people, as we assumed" Sixth reported, being in a pretty good mood that everything worked out so well.
Hearing Sixth's report, Kenshin sighed with relief. It was as if a huge weight fell from his shoulders. The nasty soul-gnawing feeling receded a bit. In the past hour, he had cursed this "system" more than once for not giving him combat abilities, and he was even angrier at himself, forced to sit in ambush and "tremble for his life". Every time he wanted to jump up and rush to the place where his sons might be killed, multiple images of two beautiful women and many sons flashed in his head. He did not know how his wives and sons would behave if he suddenly died, but intuition told him that nothing good awaited them.
Twenty minutes later, the entire group separately approached the needed mountains, making a detour. Kenshin was paired with Ichiro and practically did not slow him down. The exo-suit granted many useful properties. Primarily — improved physical characteristics. Running speed increased three times, and jump height five times. This was Kenshin's limit because his legs simply did not want to move faster, and he could not control higher jumps, and falling threatened bruises or fractures.
He still had not mastered tree-to-tree jumping and preferred to simply run on the ground. In the future, he planned to improve the exo-suit, making it at least somewhat combat-ready, but these were distant future plans. At the moment, he hid under a cliff and deployed the formation sewn from several hare skins again, conducting another area scan.
Making sure everything was fine, Kenshin calmed down and headed to Third and Fourth's location, who reported finding the needed cave where an artificially induced collapse occurred.
As soon as he approached the collapse, he began examining it more closely, looking for a possible gap through which the bird with the message could fly out. Accelerating perception, he thoughtfully examined every unevenness between the stones, noting all details, and half a minute later found a small crack, the sand layer on which was disturbed presumably by a hand stuck out from inside.
Approaching closer, he checked the protection formation's functionality and shouted:
"Nara Kasumi, are you there? I live nearby, and your bird accidentally flew to me." he explained in the friendliest tone possible.
In the cave darkness, the girl barely opened her eyes and tried to take a defensive position, but the kunai clenched in her hand during sleep slipped from her weakened hand and fell ringing on the cave's stone floor.
The black-haired kunoichi hid a bit but after the repeated question suddenly said:
"Yes, I am here. Can you pull me out or report about me to the Nara clan?"
"Do not worry, we will definitely pull you out. Are you alright? Are you injured?" Kenshin asked caringly.
"I have chakra exhaustion, slight dehydration, and a wound on one arm." Kasumi said, not understanding why she was laying out all this information to the first person she met. Mentally she scolded herself for talkativeness, imagining the consequences of her talkativeness if the guy on the other side of the collapse turned out to be an enemy. But for some reason she did not believe at all that he was an enemy. Her inner intuition told her that he wished her no harm.
Kenshin warned the girl to move away from the cave edge and together with his sons began clearing the collapse. There were so many stones that after an hour they cleared only small boulders.
Unfortunately, the cave entrance was blocked so unsuccessfully by fallen huge boulders weighing at least several tons. Even at full combat strength, the girl had no way to move or destroy them.
Another half hour Kenshin came up with an engineering solution for how to hook one stone with a rope and conveniently pull it out.
Finally, by five in the evening, they all grabbed the rope tied around a large boulder and pulled aside. Kenshin participated directly and squeezed the exo-suit's power to the maximum.
The boulder trembled but began yielding to the group's strong guys' pressure. Kenshin prayed that the rope would hold, but everything was fine. In half a minute, the boulder crashed outside the cave with a rumble, and the rest of the stones, losing support, folded on each other, and some of them collapsed inside.
As soon as the rumble stopped, the exhausted kunoichi sitting at the far end of the cave finally saw him. An incredibly handsome young man entering from light into darkness to save a fragile dying girl.