Naruto: Starting as the Third Hokage with Tears in His Eyes

Chapter 534 Hearing the Cry of a Sword on a Rainy Night

night.

The rain did not stop; instead, it became even finer, shrouding the entire Grass Country in a damp, sticky gloom.

The air was filled with the unique, fishy smell of decaying leaves and damp earth. Unlike the freshness of the forests of the Land of Fire, the smell here was more aggressive, as if constantly reminding outsiders that this place did not welcome them.

"Whoosh—"

Three figures moved swiftly through the forest, their movements almost silent, like ghosts blending into the night rain.

Sakumo Hatake ran at the very front, forming the sharp tip of this stable isosceles triangle formation.

His footsteps landed on the slippery moss and tangled tree roots without the slightest hesitation.

This swampy forest, which would be a nightmare for ordinary ninjas, felt like his own backyard to him.

He didn't even need to deliberately search for a path; his body's instincts had already chosen the safest and fastest route for him.

Every step, every instance of leveraging, was precise as if it were from a textbook.

He is a ninja, now and always will be.

The farm is the home given to him by the Hokage, while missions are an instinct etched into his very bones.

Danzo Shimura and Kagami Uchiha followed closely behind, maintaining a precise distance that allowed the Body Flicker Technique to reach each other within 0.5 seconds.

Danzo ran silently, his presence barely noticeable, like a moving rock.

But only his comrades-in-arms knew the intricate calculations and the power that could erupt at any moment hidden beneath that rock.

Uchiha Kagami appeared the most composed.

The rain only dampened the hem of his clothes, and his face remained as gentle as ever. But behind his specially made non-prescription glasses, his three-tomoe Sharingan was silently rotating, capturing everything within a hundred meters, including the trajectory of raindrops and the flapping of insect wings, constructing an absolutely safe dynamic map.

The group stopped in front of a wide swamp.

Beneath the murky mud and water, countless deadly traps and predators lurk. The miasma permeating the air is somewhat disruptive, even to ninjas.

Danzo was about to speak, suggesting that they go around the rock face on the west side, when he saw Sakumo take a step forward.

Without the slightest hesitation, the white-haired man stepped directly onto a section of rotten wood at the edge of the swamp, which looked as if it could sink at any moment.

The rotten wood remained completely still.

With a slight rise and fall of his body, he leaped across several solid footholds that would be impossible for an ordinary person to detect, like a dragonfly skimming the water, and reached the other side of the swamp in just a few breaths.

The entire process was smooth and seamless, without stirring up a single speck of mud or water.

He stopped on the opposite bank, glanced back, and then made a safety gesture.

Danzo shut his mouth.

He had to admit that in the realm of wilderness survival and stealth, Sakumo Hatake was undoubtedly a legend. In such matters, rather than using his rigorous logic to calculate the risks, it was better to simply trust this man's judgment.

Uchiha Kagami smiled and exchanged a glance with Danzo. The two then followed Sakumo's footsteps.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, the rain in the woods seemed to have lessened, leaving only a drizzling sound.

Sudden.

Sakumo Hatake, who had been advancing with perfect rhythm, suddenly stopped without warning.

It was a seamless transition from extreme motion to extreme stillness, so fluid it was devoid of any trace of human emotion, as if he were meant to stand there. One second he was a fleeting afterimage, the next he had transformed into a sculpture blending into the darkness.

His right hand had already silently rested on the hilt of the short knife behind his back.

"Whoosh!"

"Whoosh—!"

Almost at the same moment that Sakumo stopped, Shimura Danzo and Uchiha Kagami also stopped.

Without a single question or a moment's hesitation, it was as if the three of them were sharing the same neural network.

Danzo lowered his body slightly, like a black panther poised to pounce, his hand already resting on the kunai pouch at his waist, the cold metallic touch giving him a sense of peace.

His gaze was sharp as an eagle's as he scanned the jungle shrouded in darkness and rain ahead, his mind instantly calculating possible sources of threat and the best course of action.

Uchiha Kagami, like a falling leaf, silently drifted down onto a thick tree trunk.

He raised his hand and gently pushed up the non-prescription glasses on the bridge of his nose with his index and middle fingers. The lenses did not reflect any light in the dim light.

Beneath his glasses, three crimson tomoe marks were slowly rotating in his gentle eyes, like three miniature blood moons.

The world around him was instantly deconstructed in the Sharingan's vision.

The trajectory of raindrops, the swaying of leaves, and the flapping of wings of every insect within a hundred meters were all transformed into an incredibly clear stream of data, flooding into his mind.

The tranquility of the forest seemed unusual at this moment.

The sounds of rain, wind, and insects... beneath these elements that constitute the background noise of the forest, there seems to be an extra discordant noise.

"What's wrong?"

Danzo lowered his voice, the sound seemingly squeezed from the depths of his throat, short and forceful, breaking the tense guard.

Sakumo Hatake did not turn back.

His body leaned slightly forward, like a lone wolf listening to the wind's whispers, raindrops sliding down his silvery-white hair.

After a full two seconds, he spoke in a breathy voice that almost melted into the sound of the rain:

"There's the sound of fighting ahead..."

It's not a question, but a statement.

The voice was soft, yet it carried a certainty that could pierce through all noise. It was the instinctive perception of killing intent etched into the bones of a top assassin.

Danzo's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.

Fighting?

He didn't ask any more questions, but instead turned his gaze to Uchiha Kagami on the tree trunk.

In intelligence gathering, no one is more reliable than Mirror.

Uchiha Kagami didn't speak, but simply tapped the frame of his glasses lightly with his fingertip.

This subtle gesture was a silent code among the three-person team—confirmation, and then handing it over to me.

The three tomoe in his eyes spun faster and faster, his vision piercing through the heavy rain and intertwined branches, focusing on a clearing in a swamp hundreds of meters away.

A chaotic and bloody scene was clearly reflected in his pupils.

The sharp clang of clashing weapons, suppressed roars, and dying wails, mixed with the sound of rain, formed a cruel symphony.

About seven or eight ninjas wearing Kusagakure headbands were being attacked by an enemy twice their size.

The attackers wore no uniform clothing and varied in height, weight, and build, yet their actions exuded the ruthlessness of desperate criminals. Their attacks were haphazard yet deadly, driven entirely by the principle of trading injury for life, or life for life.

In contrast, the ninjas of Kusagakure, though outnumbered, were clearly well-trained.

They tried to maintain their formation and coordinate with each other, but their technical inexperience and panicked mentality caused them to retreat steadily under the enemy's fierce attacks.

The formation was already in complete disarray.

A grass ninja was pierced through the chest by a rusty katana, his face still showing disbelief and shock, before his body slumped to the ground.

Just as another Grass Ninja used a Water Release technique to repel an enemy in front, a poisoned kunai silently pierced his heart from his side and rear.

Blood mixed with mud and water, quickly staining patches of dark red across the swamp.

"A rogue ninja, or... a wandering ninja who simply plunders."

Uchiha Kagami's voice remained gentle, yet it dissected the battlefield situation with the precision of a scalpel. His tone was completely unwavering, as if he were stating a fact entirely unrelated to himself.

"The ninjas of Kusagakure are not strong enough; it looks like they won't last much longer."