The exploding celestial rock showed that Nagato and Konan's final attack had failed. The entire Hidden Rain Village was hit by the waves of the collapsing Planetary Devastation, which turned into giant waves of destruction.
Nagato stood on the ruined land and looked at the broken scenery. A tear fell from his eye.
The Hidden Rain Village and the Land of Rain...
I am sorry, Yahiko!
His final regret and anger made Nagato's blood rush to his heart. He kept coughing up blood and could only let the wind and rain beat against him. But at that moment, a pair of gentle hands softly hugged Nagato from behind.
"Konan... I am sorry."
In the final moments, countless flying paper cranes protected Nagato. Konan's smile was printed deeply into Nagato's heart once again.
The moment the hand seals were finished, the Outer Path Statue slowly disappeared from the earth. Nagato's body dried up and withered, instantly aging by decades...
A flash of light appeared in the darkness, quickly taking Nagato's body away and escaping from the scene.
Sunagakure's invasion of the Hidden Rain Village during the Chunin Exams shocked every faction in the ninja world. Later, when other ninja villages went to investigate the Hidden Rain Village, they were deeply shaken by the scene before them.
The Hidden Rain Village, which was second only to the Five Great Ninja Villages, had been easily destroyed by the Kazekage of Suna. The broken pieces of the planet and the burning fires kept the Hidden Rain Village burning for an entire month.
The bodies everywhere and the tragic scene made the major ninja villages gasp. They understood in their hearts that Suna's war to unify the ninja world would soon come to them. If they were not careful, the Hidden Rain Village would be their future fate.
Jiraiya returned to the Hidden Leaf Village in a daze. Nagato and Konan were dead. The strength of the Kazekage and his own helplessness filled Jiraiya with guilt and self-blame.
This feeling of weakness grew heavier and heavier. Tsunade looked at Jiraiya and did not know how to comfort him.
The saddest thing in this world is for an elder to outlive the younger generation. The Fourth Hokage, Nagato, Konan, Yahiko... his disciples had left before him one by one.
"Jiraiya, cheer up. You still have Naruto to take care of."
Mentioning Naruto brought a bit of light back to Jiraiya's eyes. Perhaps for him now, the most important thing was to make Naruto grow up as quickly as possible.
"Thank you, Tsunade..."
Tsunade smiled gently, which was rare for her. "Jiraiya, no matter how difficult the path ahead is, you and I must support each other and keep going for the village. So do not die easily, understand..."
"I understand."
Next, during the high-level meeting of the Leaf Village, Tsunade directly shared the intelligence regarding Suna. Facing a Kazekage with such powerful combat strength, even Danzo's expression became serious.
If things were truly as Jiraiya deduced, then the Uchiha incident had been secretly planned by Suna for a long time, and Uchiha Kaede was just a clone of Shiraishi. But this matter was simply too unbelievable.
"Lord Jiraiya's deduction might be correct."
Uchiha Itachi attended the meeting. Based on the intelligence brought back from the scene, he quickly thought back to his past encounter with Shiraishi inside Uchiha Kaede's consciousness world.
According to the investigation by Jiraiya and Orochimaru, if Uchiha Kaede really was a part of Shiraishi's clones, then meeting Shiraishi inside that consciousness world made perfect sense.
Inside Sunagakure, Shiraishi sealed the obtained Rinnegan into a scroll.
He did not dare to use the Rinnegan of the Sage of Six Paths easily. There was no telling if it might become a backdoor for Otsutsuki Kaguya one day.
"Kikyo, how much of your spiritual power do you feel you have recovered now?"
"It should be about the same as when I was alive."
Under the Samsara of Heavenly Life Technique, Kikyo was completely resurrected, and her strength was even greater than before. Even the spiritual power boost from the Shikon Jewel had increased a lot.
Nagato's other Rinnegan had disappeared during the later stages of the battle. His body and Konan's body were also taken away. According to Shiraishi's estimation, it was likely done by either the masked man or Zetsu.
Hoshigaki Kisame was the only other person besides Obito and Zetsu to escape the battlefield. As an S-rank rogue ninja from the Mist Village, now that he had lost the protection of Akatsuki, he could only look for other small ninja villages or mercenary organizations to join.
The battle of the Hidden Rain Village was the prelude to the Fourth Shinobi World War. Although the various villages did not make any major moves because of this, and did not even say much in terms of verbal protests, it was as if nothing had happened.
But Shiraishi knew very well that this was the calm before the storm. Looking at the war preparations of each village, the footsteps of war were moving faster and faster.
The joint Chunin Exams at Mount Kikyo were now directly canceled by the Leaf Village, using some excuses. Then, inside the Leaf Village, Tsunade directly promoted all the members of Team 7, who had performed excellently, to Chunin.
Besides Team 7, a large number of other students graduating from the Ninja Academy were placed into various large and small squads. Some squads even began to be led by experienced Chunin, and a few squads were combined under the responsibility of a single Jonin.
The appearance of these battlefield targets showed that the Leaf Village was now going all out to prepare for the upcoming grand battle of the ninja world.
As for Shiraishi's current physical condition, although Deidara had returned to the main body and strengthened his spiritual power, he had still suffered a small amount of damage during the fight with Nagato. He was currently still resting and recovering.
Over the next period of time, Team 9, Team 12, and Team 19 all needed to execute some relatively dangerous missions.
With the arrival of the Ninja World War, Shiraishi also organized the ninjas within Suna into nine large divisions. Basically, each division had a force of six thousand men.
Shiraishi served as the supreme commander and chief strategist. Uzumaki Tomoki served as the general captain; Shikasa served as the acting strategist and captain of the surprise-attack squad; and Nagase Bizen served as the head of the naval division.
In addition, Suna started a military expansion plan. Previously, the production of the giant dragon puppets was only a few units a year, but now it has increased to one unit a month, speeding up the gathering of war potential.
Under this background, the nine most outstanding Genin of Suna in this generation would naturally be given important responsibilities.
After handling these matters, Shiraishi discovered that inside his memory world, the memories of the fifth mirror had finished restructuring.
In fact, the memory organization of the fifth mirror had always been pulled along and completed by its connection with the sixth mirror. Shiraishi had not actively tried to organize it.
However, compared to the previous worlds, the spatial coordinates this time did not require a massive amount of Dragon Vein energy. This showed that the law systems between the two worlds were very close, almost like twin realities.
For a long time, Shiraishi had held doubts regarding his past encounter with Asura. This was because during that mission, the timing of his being surrounded by Mist ninjas was too coincidental, and the way Asura appeared was too perfect.
It was as if a whole series of events had been arranged. The previous times he opened the world barriers were also to find the truth and the source of these events.
Unifying the ninja world was the goal passed down to him under the name of Ninshu.
But behind this goal, perhaps other plots were hidden.
"The ninja world must be unified, but before that, I must thoroughly investigate the plans and traps he left behind..."
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