Chapter 204
2-in-1-chapter
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His voice dropped to a whisper at the last sentence, and it carried the bitter regret of someone lamenting wasted potential. They had indeed used Kotoamatsukami, yet instead of directly altering Yugito's will so she would believe she was a spy placed by Konoha inside the Hidden Cloud, the technique had instead made Yugito into a genuine pacifist who abhorred war.
It was an utter waste.
At that thought he glared at Shisui again.
Shisui shrank his neck and kept silent, because Rēn had already scolded him harshly about the Two-Tails' jinchūriki when they had last met. Even now Shisui still firmly believed that, rather than do what he had done, it would have been better to kill Yugito outright.
Death had never been the most terrifying thing.
There were far worse horrors than death, such as having one's will altered and then turning on one's friends and family in a slaughter. That was more tragic than death itself.
"You are still too soft for a Uchia."
Rēn sighed without much choice. "Put that aside. In short, the Kumogakure shinobi have effectively lost two jinchūriki. Without two perfect jinchūriki and relying only on the Fourth Raikage, do you think he can withstand you, me, and Elder Fugaku together?"
"They cannot hold," Shisui answered before Rēn finished speaking.
Rēn continued, explaining the situation as if answering himself. "If the three Susanoo join together, no matter how well the Fourth Raikage fights, he will not be our match. Our manpower is far less than Kumogakure's, but ninja warfare has never been decided by numbers. A numerical advantage does not apply the same way among shinobi."
"Mass slaughter of the Cloud shinobi has no meaning. It only creates vast death and hatred. I am not afraid that the Cloud will hate us, but I see no point in senseless slaughter. According to my operational plan, the Genin will play little role in the coming battles, so their lives or deaths will not affect the overall outcome."
"Shisui, do you still have questions, or do you think that to prevent the Cloud from rising in the future we should eradicate them completely?"
"No, no, I did not think that," Shisui said, shaking his head hard.
The idea of extermination was monstrous to him. He could strike without hesitation on the battlefield to protect Konoha, to protect his clan and comrades, but he had never taken pleasure in killing. He despised the idea of total annihilation most of all.
The three Great Ninja Wars had left an unshakable impression among people of the Five Great Shinobi Villages. No matter how disastrously a village had fared in those wars, the standing of the Five Great Villages remained steady. Even the most beleaguered Sand Village had only faced the loss of some shogunate funding; no one had openly or directly attempted to abolish Sunagakure.
The one-village-per-land system had its faults, but in terms of stability it had worked remarkably well. Each war had its own causes, mostly material interest and sometimes hatred, but no village had gone to war with the goal of utterly destroying another village.
This time, the Cloud was simply taking advantage of a chaotic situation, trying to carve a piece from Konoha rather than to wipe it from the map.
Shisui had never imagined an invasion that would push all the way into the Land of Lightning to remove Kumogakure from the atlas. At most he envisioned routing the Cloud's forces and driving them back to their borders.
"I was mistaken, Rēn. No, Clan Head, your decision is correct."
Shisui bowed his head and admitted it plainly. He had feared Rēn might call for uprooting the Cloud entirely. For some reason he felt Rēn might actually make such a decision.
"Very well, that will do."
Rēn didn't press the topic any further. Instead, he turned his gaze elsewhere.
"Someone get over here—where's the Sealing Division? Hurry up and temporarily seal this one for me."
At his call, the members of the Sealing Division quickly surrounded Killer Bi. The group was a mix of older and younger shinobi, three generations working together.
Like the Barrier Division, the Sealing Division consisted of a small number of specially trained ninja. The village selected children with talent in sealing arts and cultivated them internally through inherited training systems.
Because Kumogakure had both the Eight-Tails and the Two-Tails Jinchūriki, Konoha had specifically deployed the Sealing Division to the front.
Until now, however, Konoha had suffered successive defeats, and the Sealing Division hadn't had any real opportunity to act. They had spent the entire campaign retreating with the main forces. This moment was their first time being put to actual use—and contrary to what they had imagined, they didn't end up facing the Eight-Tails or the Two-Tails in battle. Instead, the Eight-Tails Jinchūriki had already been taken down and was just lying there, waiting to be sealed.
But—
After whispering among themselves for half a minute around the unconscious Eight-Tails Jinchūriki, one of them finally stepped forward.
"Hokage's Advisor."
The deputy squad leader of the Sealing Division, a man in his fifties with graying hair, approached awkwardly.
"What is it? Is the sealing process going poorly?" Rēn asked.
"No, the sealing itself isn't a problem. It's simple enough that even an old man like me doesn't need to step in," the deputy replied. While they spoke, the Sealing Division members had already begun laying down the new seal on Killer Bi's body. Their movements weren't particularly practiced, but they were orderly.
"Then what's the issue?"
Rēn looked over in confusion.
"Well… the seal isn't complicated to place, but we have no way of confirming whether it will actually work. Based on the intelligence we've gathered, this Eight-Tails Jinchūriki from the Cloud is a perfect Jinchūriki. This is the first time we've encountered a situation where the tailed beast and the host are fully in sync. So, uh…"
"I see," Rēn said with a nod.
That explanation did make some sense. Although Killer Bi didn't have a flashy golden chakra cloak like Naruto's, having a tailed beast that cooperated fully with its host was an entirely different situation from most Jinchūriki. In the typical case, tailed beasts couldn't care less whether their hosts lived or died.
"So, based on the standard case for a Jinchūriki, how long can this type of seal hold?"
This casual question left the elderly man stumbling, unable to respond.
"…Don't tell me even that's uncertain?" Rēn frowned.
"Yes, Advisor," the man replied with a dry laugh, nodding his head.
"The thing is, Konoha only ever had one Nine-Tails Jinchūriki at a time, and as you know, all three Jinchūriki up to now came from the Uzumaki clan. That clan's practically the forefather of the sealing arts. There was never any need for people like us to intervene. We've examined the seal placed on the third Nine-Tails Jinchūriki, and it's so stable we couldn't even find anything to assist with…"
"So, ah, to be honest—it's a little embarrassing—but ever since the Sealing Division was formed, we've never actually sealed a tailed beast or a Jinchūriki. All we've done is organize and theorize from the Uzumaki clan's old scrolls and documents."
Rēn stared wordlessly at the man who spoke of embarrassment with not a trace of it on his face—his composure thick as stone walls.
Wonderful.
So that was the Sealing Division's true state. On paper, they had inherited most of the Uzumaki clan's knowledge, but in practice, they were purely theoretical — lacking real combat experience.