When Mugen returned to his original location with Kusagakure's troops, and after he had re-established the command tent in front of Aburame Shino, Jiraiya similarly led Konoha's troops to block Iwagakure's attempt to further penetrate and expand the battlefront.
He and Ōnoki briefly clashed on the battlefield, then both returned to their respective positions, beginning the tiresome ninja skirmishes that neither side enjoyed.
A Kage-level expert would naturally not engage in full-scale combat right at the beginning of a war. However, what surprised Jiraiya was that Iwagakure's ninjas had covertly constructed many small alert points in front. These alert points, of course, couldn't stop a large unit's attack.
But when facing enemies in squad units, they could provide no small assistance. This gave Jiraiya a headache.
Regardless, the old combat system couldn't cause too many casualties. Iwagakure and Konoha both had single-digit casualties every day, slowly proceeding with a war of attrition.
This wasn't to blame them; it wasn't due to a lack of ninja wisdom or strategic vision to cause greater casualties. The root cause of this result was actually the lack of ninja manpower!
The ninja world's population was meager, and those who could become ninjas were even rarer. Thus, every ninja was a precious asset to their village, and the casual death of even one would cause them unbearable pain.
Only someone like Mugen, who could randomly pick up a person from Kusagakure, wouldn't treat their lives as something to be casually spent.
So, the wars in the ninja world actually seemed more like nurturing, where during prolonged battles, heroic figures would always emerge, capable of single-handedly breaking the balance of the battlefield. Just like the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze.
Jiraiya and Ōnoki were watching each other here; they could no longer act casually. The presence of two Kage-level shinobi concentrated here also attracted the attention of the vast majority of people.
Konoha's ninjas had not interfered before. Mugen didn't expend much effort to quickly rebuild the command tent. After Aburame Shino received reinforcements from Jiraiya, his numbers once again returned to over a thousand, but this time, he didn't split his forces again.
He completely abandoned all forward strongholds, concentrating all thousand-plus ninjas in the main stronghold. Various large-scale city defense weapons and defensive tools were also pushed onto the city walls and set up. The bitter suffering of the flashing cold light and the giant shuriken were aimed forward. Once a large enemy force attacked, they would surely face a terrifying full-scale counterattack!
The Barrier Team's sensory barrier was continuously active 24 hours a day. Because they received reinforcements, they also had enough manpower to rotate, ensuring that those barrier ninjas wouldn't be overworked. This was to prevent enemy ninjas from bypassing their strongholds and attacking villages or towns in the rear.
This approach was conservative and lacked ambition, but it did effectively turn them into a giant tortoise shell, making it impossible for others to do anything to them. If Aburame Shino had adopted this defensive approach from the beginning, Mugen would not have been able to inflict so much damage on them.
This precisely echoed the saying: "Those who seek will suffer; those without desire shall be unyielding."
Aburame Shino no longer thought about gaining any merits. He only needed to stabilize the situation, and naturally, he would not expose any weaknesses in front of the enemy.
And so, Mugen also had no choice but to split Kusagakure's troops into small units and begin engaging in boring ninja skirmishes.
Days passed. By now, he had found no more opportunities on this side. So, he found an opportunity to send messages to Danzō and Sarutobi Asuma respectively.
The message to Danzō naturally told him that the thousand ninjas he owed him were now handed over to him, and that the fate of this battlefield would be decided by him. For Mugen, this was not a strange act. Because Danzō needed to act when Konoha was in crisis if he wanted to become a hero, he would use these thousand Grass Ninjas to put on a grand show here.
The duration of this drama was unknown, but the process would surely involve Konoha being heavily wounded, and the outcome would definitely be Danzō stepping in to save everyone in a time of crisis.
Therefore, handing these thousand Grass Ninjas to Danzō would not immediately result in losing these people. In fact, Danzō would become even more diligent than Mugen to protect them!
Danzō would naturally be wary of Mugen's intentions and suspect whether these people would suddenly turn against him at the last moment. But these were all things Mugen didn't need to worry about. Anyway, the people had already been given, and it didn't matter what methods Danzō used to ensure the plan proceeded as he wished.
Of course, what Mugen handed over were just ordinary ninjas. Those Curse Mark ninjas were still in his grasp. These people could not be casually used up by Danzō.
As for the message to Asuma, it was much simpler. He just gave the other party a channel, meaning any action from Kusagakure's side would ultimately be relayed to Asuma. This also allowed her to slowly accumulate prestige here, so as not to be pulled down too far by Danzō and Jiraiya.
And this was also a form of insurance. After all, Mugen didn't want Danzō to immediately gain a reputation that overshadowed Jiraiya. If that happened, he would become very difficult to deal with.
At the same time, Kakuzu had followed the merchant ship from Kusagakure and had already set foot on the land of Takumi Village. In the plan, Kakuzu would first begin to attack Takumi Village, and then the merchant ship would arrive. Takumi Village would cry to the merchant ship for help, and finally, Ryuzetsu would bring them to the Land of Whirlpools.
So, even before the merchant ship arrived at Takumi Village, Kakuzu had already taken a small boat ashore and arrived near Takumi Village.
Kakuzu opened a scroll and checked the intelligence gathered by the Akatsuki organization. Although the Akatsuki organization hadn't done anything major these past few years, their intelligence gathering was very detailed. For every precise target he had found before, aside from the clues provided by bounties, intelligence from the organization was extremely important. After all, their intelligence chief was an old man who had lived for a thousand years. Much of it, Black Zetsu even remembered directly in his head.
The intelligence scroll provided by the organization marked the positions and strength of most people in Takumi Village, while Mugen's commission was to kill as many combat ninjas as possible, leaving behind the technical ninjas. This mission was not complicated; Takumi Village, as a village of craftsmen, didn't have many combat ninjas to begin with.
After simply marking the targets, Kakuzu began his operation at midnight. Takumi Village's strength was extremely weak. If it weren't for their technique of forging ninja tools, they would have probably been forced to disband their village due to poverty long ago.
At this time, the strongest individuals in Takumi Village were four Jonin known as the 'Four Celestial Carriages'. Kakuzu cautiously approached their location, planning to attack by surprise and reduce the threat of one or two of them. According to the organization's intelligence, the four ninja tools they held were still quite powerful.
After confirming that the Four Celestial Carriages were all together, two masks suddenly sprouted from Kakuzu's back. He then aimed at the houses in front of him and immediately whispered, "Combination Ninjutsu: Blazing Wind Formation!"
Fire Style and Wind Style instantly fused together. The fusion of wind and fire immediately created a huge sea of fire, which instantly engulfed the houses in front, utterly destroying them!
Kakuzu then manipulated the wind style to form a vortex, and a massive fire dragon wrapped around the houses, continuously burning them to ashes. After unleashing the combination ninjutsu, Kakuzu cautiously retreated two steps, giving himself enough time to counter any enemy attacks!
But...
Even after the fire vortex had ended, no enemy counterattack arrived. Kakuzu walked forward suspiciously, and then in the ruins of the houses, he found four charred corpses and four blackened ninja tools...
"How... how weak..." The ninja world's ninja levels were extremely strict. The strongest were Konoha ninjas, then ninjas from the other four Great Ninja Nations. Further down were mid-level nations like Rain and Grass, and as for small villages like Takumi Village, their combat power might not even compare to the Star Village, which was destroyed by Mugen before!
At least Star Village was a combat ninja village, while Takumi Village was merely a village that survived by relying on forging ninja tools.
The rest was simple. Kakuzu quickly destroyed all their ships connecting them to the outside world, and then, like a ghost, he began to guard the port, destroying the fields and houses. The constant casualties immediately filled the people of Takumi Village with panic.
Not two days later, the merchant ship from Ryuzetsu arrived at Takumi Village to order ninja tools. However, because of the attack, the craftsmen of Takumi Village had no heart to continue forging ninja tools.
And it was at this moment that Kakuzu began to intensify his destructive power. Various wind and fire disasters gradually appeared, and with a large number of casualties, the people of Takumi Village had no choice but to prepare to flee this place.
But Ryuzetsu, who commanded the only ship, naturally wouldn't agree to this. She repeatedly refused Takumi Village's requests and even wanted to leave due to concerns about being attacked. This immediately made the craftsmen of Takumi Village anxious, but most of their combat personnel were practically dead, and they themselves had no combat power. They dared not fight Ryuzetsu and her people or forcefully seize the merchant ship.
In the end, Ryuzetsu abandoned a large amount of "high-value" cargo to take on those craftsmen and their families. To compensate for these losses, those craftsmen had no choice but to sign slave contracts, settling permanently in the Land of Whirlpools from then on.
Fortunately, Takumi Village wasn't originally large, and Mugen provided an extremely spacious merchant ship. After some squeezing, Ryuzetsu managed to fit over a thousand people onto the ship.
Kakuzu also perfectly completed his mission at this point and began his return to the Akatsuki organization.
Meanwhile, after handing over the thousand Grass Ninjas to Danzō for handling, Mugen and Karin also began to move towards the Land of Whirlpools.
After the war began, Tsunade had already renamed the Land of Waves to the Land of Whirlpools. She had also officially become the acting Daimyo of the Land of Whirlpools. So, even if someone disliked the Uzumaki and wanted to cause trouble there, they would first consider if they could handle Tsunade.
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