Before dawn, Uchiha Yoru woke up early as usual. Standing at the highest point of Kubota, he and Miwa Masayo drew in purple qi together, then watched the sunrise.
By the time the Uchiha of the Tiger Unit had all gotten up and started moving around, the vanguard of the Kirigakure force had already arrived. They didn't even need to see anyone. The moment they saw the thick fog rolling forward in waves, they knew battle was about to begin.
Uchiha Yoru suddenly frowned and said, "Something's off. The number of Kirigakure shinobi is wrong. There are more than three hundred of them, and their quality doesn't look ordinary either."
Hearing that number, Uchiha Shigenobu took several deep breaths before asking, "Yoru-brother, the enemy situation has changed. Are we adjusting the plan?"
"We're not changing anything. The plan we discussed already accounted for this kind of number. We execute exactly as decided."
"I understand. I'll pass the order on right away."
Very soon, five sections, a total of eighty-five shinobi, charged toward the fog in the northeast under the leadership of their respective captains.
Each four-man team formed an extremely loose diamond formation, with more than ten meters between members, ensuring that even a C-rank ninjutsu could not cover two shinobi at once.
On a larger scale, the four teams within a section also formed a diamond, with thirty to forty meters between teams, ensuring that even a B-rank ninjutsu could not hit two teams at the same time.
Of course, ninjutsu rank described learning difficulty, not raw destructive scope. They were only borrowing the labels here to make it easier for the Uchiha genin to understand the tactical principles of the four-four system.
The Tiger Unit's formation looked sparse and unimpressive, not the least bit majestic. Hidden inside the thick mist of Hidden Mist Technique, some Kirigakure shinobi observing through secret techniques actually couldn't help laughing.
"Haha, I was worried that changing Konoha's force from three hundred to one hundred meant they'd replaced them with the elite of the elite. Turns out it's just a bunch of rookies."
"There isn't even a single chunin in there. All genin, and more than half of them are kids."
"Look, look, what's that paper-faced brat holding in his hand?"
One of the Kirigakure shinobi wracked his brain for a moment and finally dredged up an old term that had long gone out of use. "Th-that looks like… a short spear?"
"It really is a short spear. Weren't those something warriors used?"
"What kind of nonsense is this? Looks like this fight will be over easily."
"Enough. Shut up and turn the secret techniques off. It's time to start killing."
"That's right. Kill them!"
The Kirigakure shinobi hadn't recognized that these were Uchiha clan shinobi, because all the Tiger Unit members had deliberately concealed their clan crests. If they had recognized them, they absolutely would not have stayed this relaxed.
It was true that Kirigakure shinobi were among the best at limiting Uchiha strength, but Uchiha were strong in every aspect. Their chakra reserves were second only to clans like Senju and Uzumaki. Their Fire Release was overwhelmingly powerful, their shurikenjutsu flashy and precise, and their reaction speed exceptional.
Even inside Hidden Mist, there weren't many Kirigakure shinobi who could cleanly defeat an Uchiha. Every time they killed one, Kirigakure usually had to pay several lives, sometimes over ten.
If the Kirigakure shinobi had seen that fan-shaped crest, they never would have been this careless. They would have been tense from the start, using all their focus.
But this was Uchiha Yoru's unit.
And with his style, there was no way he'd let his subordinates reveal information immediately. First, take advantage of surprise and get in a round of cheap kills. Then, once the enemy knew who they were, let the Uchiha name do its work.
That was the best way to maximize the value of the Uchiha identity.
The Tiger Unit plunged into the thick mist, and the Kirigakure shinobi began their usual psychological warfare.
"What can you see? Nothing at all, right…"
"Meanwhile, I can see everything. Every fatal weakness on your body."
"Head, throat, spine, heart… can you dodge my attacks?"
"And even if you dodge once, how many times can you keep dodging?"
Inside the heavy fog, only the voices could be heard, never the speakers themselves.
Each sentence painted a vivid image of fatal injuries, unconsciously guiding the target's thoughts toward death.
This was Kirigakure's most classic tactic.
When vision was taken away inside thick mist, the human mind became unusually active. Guided by the enemy's words, it was easy to sink into a state of cold dread, which would seriously reduce reaction speed.
Then the Kirigakure shinobi would strike by surprise and claim victory.
It was an extremely nasty tactic.
They intentionally dragged their enemies into the environment they themselves knew best, then relied on their extensive combat experience in fog to defeat stronger opponents.
Just like pigs.
But this time, the situation was completely different.
The moment those eerie Kirigakure taunts began, they were broken apart by sharp whistle blasts.
"Pii-pii, pii, pii—"
"Shii-shii—shii, shii—"
"Bee-bee-bee—bee-bee—bee, bee—bee-bee!"
Three slightly different whistle tones, carrying all sorts of distinct rhythms and pitches, began exchanging information at high frequency.
The five section leaders, twenty team leaders, and twenty deputy leaders were all blowing copper whistles. It sounded like they were all chatting at once, nonstop, creating such a racket that the Kirigakure shinobi's heads started to ache.
And the most fatal problem was that if the Kirigakure shinobi weren't using secret techniques, they couldn't actually see through the mist either. They also relied on hearing to search for enemies.
Once the Tiger Unit's whistle signals began interfering with them, the Kirigakure shinobi were thrown into confusion.
Only then did they realize how terrifying a noisy battlefield in heavy fog really was. They could no longer determine the enemy's location.
Which meant they themselves were equally lost inside the mist now.
This had become a fight between two groups of blind men in the dark.
But Kirigakure's spoken communication was being disrupted, while the Tiger Unit's whistle communication remained rapid and constant. It was as if every member had become the hands and feet of everyone else, and naturally their efficiency in searching and reacting was far higher.
Shinobi combat was always a contest of information.
Between shinobi units, the difference in information exchange was the deadliest gap of all.
Kirigakure shinobi and Uchiha shinobi soon made first contact in the dark. After a brief, violent clash, both sides broke apart quickly, neither willing to commit immediately to a life-or-death struggle.
The Kirigakure shinobi were thinking of finding another chance and launching another surprise strike.
But the Uchiha of the Tiger Unit immediately called for support. They loudly reported the direction and speed of the enemy's retreat, and the whole team launched approximate attacks based on those coordinates.
The Uchiha clan was wealthy.
And through Cat Castle, they had a hand in the underground arms trade. Even lower-ranking Uchiha shinobi were never short on equipment.
Shuriken and kunai rained out like a storm, and the chance of landing hits was extremely high.
Even if they didn't strike a lethal spot, they still forced out pained grunts from the Kirigakure shinobi. Once the location was exposed, the fourth member of each team—the shinobi carrying the short spears—hurled their weapons.
Kirigakure shinobi were especially good at fighting in mist. The instant they made a sound through injury, they instinctively dodged at full speed, expecting a second round of concentrated attacks to follow.
But then they discovered that the dense incoming slicing sounds they expected never came.
Instead, what reached them was a heavy, dull sound—a large, weighty weapon had been thrown.
And the landing point was obviously off.
It landed several meters away from them.
The Kirigakure shinobi let out cold, mocking sneers. They thought these rookies really were pathetic. If it had been a Kirigakure ambush, they'd already be dead.
What they didn't know was that the moment the short spear hit the ground, the team leader blew three short whistle bursts, and the entire team dropped flat.
The instant the spear touched earth, the explosive tags hidden in its shaft ignited. Five explosive tags detonated at once.
The Kirigakure shinobi, who thought he'd escaped, was instantly blown into a scattered mass of flesh.
The moment that first blast sounded, the battle inside the fog entered its peak.
And that peak was a one-sided slaughter by the Tiger Unit's Uchiha.
Following the tactics that had been carved into their bones through illusion-assisted drilling, they mechanically rotated their diamond formations, turning every Kirigakure shinobi they encountered into bursts of bloody mist.
Even the fog created by Hidden Mist Technique began taking on a faint pink tint. The smell of blood spread through the battlefield northeast of Kubota Village, filling every shinobi present with a chill that reached the marrow.
The Kirigakure shinobi panicked.
They were lost. They had no idea what to do.
The Uchiha were also buzzing with adrenaline, their heads roaring, but the section leaders could still keep their teams moving according to training, and the team leaders and members likewise executed orders in numb obedience.
That kind of mechanical execution still produced horrifyingly efficient killing.
Of the thirty-four Kirigakure squads on this axis, in just six minutes more than sixty Kirigakure shinobi had died.
Once casualties reached nearly sixty percent, the maintained Hidden Mist Technique collapsed.
When visibility returned and the Kirigakure shinobi saw the scale of their losses, their morale hit zero instantly. The remaining forty-two fled without hesitation.
According to plan, the Tiger Unit's main force launched pursuit.
The cleared visibility restored their excitement in full. Section leaders, team leaders, and deputy leaders all activated their Sharingan, and then swept the fleeing shinobi with precise barrages of kunai and shuriken.
It had to be said—once enhanced by the Sharingan, and now able to supplement whistle commands with hand signs, the Tiger Unit's four-four tactical system became even smoother, and their efficiency in harvesting lives rose even further.
By the time Uchiha Shigenobu reached the stop line, the fleeing Kirigakure force had been almost completely annihilated. Only one extremely fast shinobi managed to escape farther and farther away.
This man wasn't just fast.
His strength was obviously a tier above the rest, and he was very likely a jonin.
Confronted with the reality that over a hundred subordinates had been butchered in mere minutes, that jonin had been scared senseless. He fled without looking back, not even stopping to retrieve his dropped ninja pouch.
Uchiha Shigenobu watched the distant black speck grow smaller and smaller and let out a regretful sigh.
In the end, they were still too weak to keep that jonin.
If they could have used a unit of genin to kill a Kirigakure jonin, then the Tiger Unit's name would have exploded across the battlefield immediately.
But once they reached the stop line, Shigenobu and the other four section leaders didn't dare pursue further. Following Uchiha Yoru's order, they wheeled around and charged toward the fog on the northwest side of Kubota Village.
Before entering the mist again, each section had its fourth team—acting as the support team—resupply the other three with expended weapons under the captain's direction.
Their combat power was restored in full.
And when the Tiger Unit entered the mist a second time, their mentality was already completely different.
The state of mind Uchiha Yoru had projected into them earlier had shattered under the impact of real battle, replaced by the confidence of those who had already proven themselves strong.
They had entered the enemy's home environment with eighty-five men.
In only ten minutes, they had killed more than a hundred enemy shinobi and let only one suspected high-level expert get away.
Most importantly, only three of their own had been lightly scraped—and all three injuries had come from falling during combat.
Not a single serious wound.
Not one.
Zero versus over a hundred.
This wasn't even a casualty ratio anymore.
This was zero losses.
If this didn't count as sweeping across the battlefield, then what did?
And what was the strongest shinobi unit on the field?
It was them.
They were a unit formed entirely from a little over a hundred genin, and they had forced even a jonin to drop his gear and flee.
If that didn't make one confident, then what would?
...
The battle was progressing so smoothly that Uchiha Yoru's sixth section had still not yet come into contact with the enemy.
He didn't rigidly cling to the earlier arrangement. Instead, he led his team into the mist from another angle.
At this point, there was no need to rely on the village itself to pin down the third axis of attack.
If the Kirigakure shinobi wanted Kubota Village, let them take it for the moment. Once the Tiger Unit smashed and killed the enemy on the northwest side, they could turn back and clean up the rest.
With calm confidence, the Tiger Unit executed its predetermined tactics even more effectively. The sharp cries of copper whistles rose and fell through the fog, throwing the Kirigakure shinobi into utter confusion.
The Kirigakure shinobi couldn't communicate with their own comrades either, so they could only rely on their own individual strength to resist the Tiger Unit's teams.
What they were facing was not just the strength of four Uchiha shinobi at a time.
They were also facing the equipment advantage provided by the Uchiha clan's wealth, along with the organizational power of a seventeen-man section.
The Kirigakure shinobi had never seen anything like this and were battered into disarray.
The second wave of battle lasted only four minutes before Hidden Mist could no longer be maintained.
And after that came the familiar sequence:
morale collapse, full retreat, and then slaughter in pursuit.
There was also an especially strong shinobi among this second wave.
But unlike the previous one, he was not lucky enough to get away. He was trapped by the Tiger Unit's formation.
Then Uchiha Yoru, displaying the finest shinobi spirit, attacked him from behind and crippled him with ease.
Considering that his tactical system lacked a stable rear area for holding prisoners, Uchiha Yoru deliberately left the Kirigakure jonin one arm and allowed him to take his own life.
Only after the jonin was dead through and through did Uchiha Yoru search the body and confirm his identity.
He turned the shinobi credentials over in his hand several times and asked, "Kirigakure jonin, Kamiya Kisho. Does anyone know this man?"
The Tiger Unit's genin all shook their heads one after another. None of them had any idea.
Uchiha Yoru's question had been pointless from the start.
This was a group of first-time battlefield genin. Their attention had been consumed entirely by their own ninjutsu and tactical training. None of them had spare mental space to memorize enemy intelligence.
And in truth, aside from staff officers, almost no shinobi bothered learning the identities of all enemy jonin in detail.
Because jonin was not a safe rank.
It was said that in the Second Great Ninja War, the average lifespan of a jonin had been only 106 days.
Barely over three months.
A shinobi could work hard memorizing detailed files on a whole list of enemies, only to discover after one campaign that not a single one of them was still alive. All that effort would have gone to waste.
Most shinobi only made the effort to learn the identities of the very strongest few.
That way, if they accidentally encountered one of them on the battlefield, they wouldn't throw away their lives out of ignorance.
Since no one knew who this jonin was, Uchiha Yoru didn't force the matter. He shrugged and said indifferently, "Then collect the body. No matter what, he's a real Kirigakure jonin. He counts as a Tiger Unit battle record. Killing a jonin can be submitted as a separate mission and converted into a reward."
Then he pointed toward Kubota Village, now once more shrouded in fog.
"There's only one enemy force left. Charge in. Eliminate them."
"Kill!!"
At once, the Tiger Unit's shinobi all turned to look at the support teams in their sections, eyes full of hope that they might be handed one of those explosive short spears so they could enjoy the feeling too.
Charge straight into Kubota Village and engage Kirigakure shinobi at close quarters?
Of course not.
The buildings in the village were too dense. Both the collection and transmission of information and the proper deployment of the four-four formation would be heavily disrupted.
Within the Tiger Unit, only Uchiha Yoru himself—thanks to the sharpened senses granted by his breakthrough in foundation building—could gather enough information across a sufficiently large area.
And only with the tacit understanding forged through mental suggestion could the section under his direct command fight freely within a village environment.
Otherwise, he never would have insisted on such an extreme force distribution.
Once the enemy entered Kubota Village and cast Hidden Mist over it, the dense chakra-laced fog intensified information blockage to such a degree that even Uchiha Yoru found it difficult to sense clearly.
Kubota Village was a battlefield ideally suited for the weak to challenge the strong.
But under current conditions, the Tiger Unit was the stronger side.
Charging in would be no different from weakening themselves on purpose.
The tactical system Uchiha Yoru taught came from the rabbits.
And when the strongest light infantry on the surface of the earth faced village assaults, they certainly did not line up rigidly and rush inside.
Once they got close, it was simple:
Boom, boom, boom.
And besides, what kind of person was Uchiha Yoru?
Kubota Village was his defensive position. Since he had felt safe enough to leave it with the defense force, how could he possibly have failed to leave anything behind?
At his order, forty-five explosive short spears were hurled into the village, blowing apart one building after another.
But that was only the warm-up.
Of those forty-five spears, twenty concentrated on an utterly ordinary house—except for the fact that a tall bamboo pole stood beside it. Those twenty detonations triggered the explosive tags hidden beneath the floor.
Fire Release chakra traveled through dedicated ignition cords, setting off every linked tag in sequence. A chain of huge blasts erupted throughout Kubota Village, turning large parts of it into rubble.
The Kirigakure shinobi had never encountered an enemy this extravagant.
To bury expensive explosive tags underground and use them as landmines—this kind of money-smashing excess was far beyond anything they had imagined. They were immediately blown into chaos.
In truth, Kirigakure's losses were not that severe.
After all, Kubota was a village for ten thousand people, and the Kirigakure shinobi searching through it had been fairly spread out. Only a small number were caught directly in the explosions.
But the spectacle itself was simply too grand.
This kind of unprecedented chain detonation frightened the Kirigakure shinobi badly.
Kirigakure stood isolated overseas.
In the previous two wars, it had always held absolute superiority in naval maneuverability. They could fight when they wished and leave when they wished, and the Kirigakure shinobi had enjoyed all the advantages.
But great advantages also came with a hidden cost.
Kirigakure had never fought a truly hard war.
It had never experienced the harshest kind of large-scale head-on struggle.
And because of that, Kirigakure shinobi fundamentally lacked the proper understanding of what full-scale continental war really looked like.
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