Shimizu returned to the battlefield where he had fought Nagato. The lake he had created at the cost of enormous chakra had not yet receded, but the calm surface showed no trace of Nagato.
He turned his gaze toward the lakebed. That Lightning Release chakra-infused kunai had to be somewhere down there.
He dove in and conducted a rough search, but found nothing. The area was simply too vast. With the explosion and the violent currents, the kunai might have been swept even farther away.
"This is really troublesome now…" Shimizu frowned.
Setting aside the kunai's inherent value, he had borrowed it specially from his teacher, Maruboshi Kosuke, before setting out.
It had been a gift from the Second Hokage.
According to his teacher, the Second Hokage once possessed an entire set of "Lightning Release chakra weapons": the Sword of the Thunder God, six kunai, and twelve shuriken.
After the Second Hokage died in battle, all his belongings were sealed away. That entire set of divine weapons vanished from the world. This particular kunai could be considered the only one left in existence.
Moreover, the Second Hokage had personally taught Kosuke Water Release and the Konoha-style swordsmanship. Though not officially master and disciple, he had been something close to a mentor. That made the kunai even more meaningful to him.
And now Shimizu had lost it…
"I'll have to come back after the water recedes," he muttered helplessly. If he had possessed sufficiently powerful Fire Release, he could have evaporated the lake and searched more easily. Unfortunately, his Fire Release was mediocre at best. If Sawei were here, it would've been simple—his Fire Release was—
Shimizu cut off the thought abruptly.
Only then did the cruel reality return to him.
Another person had vanished from his life forever.
He could only keep moving forward, carrying everything Sawei had entrusted to him.
Slapping his cheeks, Shimizu forced himself to focus again. He slipped back into the Hidden Rain Village, determined to uncover whatever clues he could find.
His partial familiarity with the "story" might help him reason out more truths—but first, he needed concrete evidence. He could not, and dared not, gamble everything on knowledge from his previous life. In this world, even the slightest misstep could bring calamity.
For now, everything regarding Danzo was shrouded in mist. He needed to know the man's true objective.
He returned to the war-torn building where the negotiations had started. It was now a scene of utter devastation, with over a hundred ninja corpses scattered across the battlefield. Most of them were wearing the attire of mercenaries.
The mercenary group called "Akatsuki" was likely the predecessor of the future Akatsuki. But at this stage, they were still immature—driven back by the joint forces of Konoha and the Hidden Rain.
He just didn't know where the flames of war had spread to now.
Shimizu extended his sensory range to its limit—136 meters—and decided to thoroughly search the entire Hidden Rain Village before the conflict fully subsided.
At some point, the drizzle from the sky had stopped.
"Nagato…"
A Nagato capable of using Shinra Tensei was no longer someone he could contend with. If not for the strange fish that had fused with him and restored him from the brink of death, he would already be lying forever beneath that lake.
Shimizu shook his head and focused on searching each building.
The Hidden Rain Village was filled with tower-like structures. Their main frames were made of steel, partially encased in stone. Large and small steel pipes crisscrossed every building—inside and out. In truth, they were drainage systems. Only the Hidden Rain, with its relentless rainfall, required such an elaborate network, forming one of the most distinctive sights in the ninja world.
Blind searching yielded nothing useful at first.
But eventually, his luck turned.
Not long after, he spotted a Konoha Root ninja behaving suspiciously atop one of the towers.
Shimizu waited patiently. Only after confirming the man had left did he climb to the rooftop to investigate.
What he found shocked him beyond words.
Three corpses floated inside a large water tank.
Their eyes had been gouged out.
On their clothing was the unmistakable red-and-white fan crest.
They were Uchiha ninja.
So the tops of Hidden Rain's towers were being used as temporary storage sites for the dead.
Under normal circumstances, the corpses of Uchiha clan ninja would always be reclaimed by Konoha—whether through payment or force. After undergoing certain procedures, they would then be buried or cremated. It was nearly impossible for the outside world to retain the body of a member of this prestigious Konoha clan—let alone multiple at once.
So the Uchiha bodies appearing in the Hidden Rain Village now could only be those who had died during the Second Great Ninja War. Somehow, Hanzo must have secretly preserved these corpses until today.
Shimizu quickly moved to track the Root ninja.
He now knew that his earlier, seemingly far-fetched suspicions had likely been correct. Danzo had been working through Hanzo to collect large numbers of Sharingan—supplying them to Orochimaru for human experimentation, all to research the secrets of the Sharingan.
As for what benefits the three parties had promised one another—that would require further investigation.
And this was certainly only the tip of the iceberg.
There had to be far more hidden beneath the surface.
He would dig it all up.
Following the Root ninja all the way to the central district of the Hidden Rain Village, Shimizu saw ahead of him, several hundred meters away, the Amekage's office building. It stood in the middle of the village's inland lake.
To approach that building, one either had to cross a long covered bridge—
Or come from beneath the water.
For Shimizu, that made things simple.
He slipped directly into the water. The shark-like gills he possessed allowed him to breathe freely underwater. Slowly, he drew closer from below to the cluster of figures near the central building.
"Is everything here?" Danzo looked at the more than twenty small brown bottles scattered on the ground. Inside each floated a pair of Sharingan. His eyes gleamed with greed and madness.
"Yes! Only the Seventh Squad hasn't reported back yet. They may have been delayed by the Akatsuki mercenary group," a Root ninja replied.
"Windveil hasn't returned either," said another Root ninja—the leader of the Root team that had lain in ambush in the meeting room alongside Shimizu. His codename was Zero.
"And what about Hanzo?" Danzo asked.
"The Eighth Squad that went to support Hanzo hasn't come back either," a third Root ninja answered.
"Hanzo really is useless. Can't even handle three brats," Danzo muttered darkly. Then he gave a decisive order: "Zero, investigate Windveil's whereabouts. Hachi, lead the Sixth Squad to reinforce the Seventh. The rest of you gather the remaining forces and come with me to find Hanzo. The primary objective is complete. Preserve our remaining strength and prepare to withdraw!"
With that, Danzo collected all the Sharingan bottles and left without hesitation.
"Yes!" ×3
"Zero, what is it?" asked one of the Root ninja called Hachi, noticing Zero still standing in place.
"Nothing. Just a fish," Zero replied, withdrawing his gaze from the lake's surface before leaving with the other two.
On the calm surface of the lake, a large green fish floated alone, no longer moving.