The Land of Wind was a desert nation. Its resources were scarce, and its supply lines were a nightmare that could break any conventional army. If not for the fact that shinobi were very different from ordinary soldiers, Sunagakure wouldn't even have the option of going on the offensive.
Even with ninja logistics—storage scrolls, chakra techniques, and various transport tricks easing part of the burden—the Land of Wind's poverty and supply problems were still a hard limit. You couldn't conjure food out of sand.
But the comparatively fertile Land of Rivers took some pressure off the Sand Village. By plundering the smaller country's towns and villages, Suna's thousands-strong force had at least avoided being reduced to chewing bark and grass roots.
"So basically," Feiyu summed up, "all the richer farming villages and towns in the Land of Rivers are natural targets for Sunagakure."
"That's correct, Captain Feiyu," Yamanaka Seiichi replied. "Aside from guerrilla warfare, the Sand squads have another key mission: strip the Land of Rivers bare."
"In that case," Feiyu said, lips curling, "we don't need to chase them all over. We just wait by the tree for the rabbit. We find the major granary regions. No way Suna ignores those."
Land of Rivers, Hegu Town.
The Land of Rivers had gotten its name for a reason: it was laced with waterways, rivers and streams intersecting like veins. Water was the source of life; with all these rivers, agriculture flourished.
And among the most fertile areas in the country, Hegu Town had to rank near the top. Nestled in a valley between two mountains, with a river running straight through it, the region benefited from constant moisture and a steady flow of nutrient-rich silt washed down from upstream. The soil was dark, deep, and generous.
In peacetime, the villagers in the area around Hegu Town lived relatively well. As long as they bothered to plant crops, a good harvest was almost guaranteed.
But once war began, wealth without the power to protect it turned those villages and towns into easy prey for the ninja of the Land of Wind.
Suna squads had pushed into the region around Hegu, raiding the outlying villages and stripping their granaries bare. Any brave souls who tried to resist were rewarded with a kunai for their trouble. In just half a month, several villages around Hegu Town had been cleaned out down to the last sack of rice.
"As expected—Sand has stationed a lot of squads out here. If Konoha hadn't sent its own ninja to intervene, Hegu Town itself probably would've been looted by now," Feiyu murmured.
The moment they entered the region, Yamanaka Seiichi had already picked up multiple chakra signatures. Once Feiyu heard the report, he couldn't help but sigh.
Konoha ninja weren't idiots. Whatever Suna desperately wanted to accomplish, Konoha would try just as hard to sabotage. The result was an interlocking mess of forces. In the area around Hegu Town alone, over a hundred shinobi from both villages were already in play.
"Captain, what's our move?" Seiichi asked. "Should we link up with one of our own squads fir—"
He'd only gotten halfway through his sentence when Feiyu shook his head.
"No need to make things complicated. You just give me directions. Leave the rest to me."
Seiichi fell silent at once and focused. Using his telepathic ability, he fed the locations of nearby chakra signatures directly into Feiyu's mind.
Feiyu grinned, drew his short blade, and lightning flared around him. A moment later, he vanished.
In a dense patch of forest, several Sand ninja lay in ambush among traps they'd carefully laid out. Watching a Konoha squad approaching along a predictable path, they smirked to themselves.
Then came the crackle of lightning, the sharp sizzle of electricity tearing through the air.
The Konoha team halted immediately, tense and alert, scanning their surroundings.
The ambushing Sand shinobi, meanwhile, felt a sudden lurch of unease in their guts. One of them, a sensor, shouted out reflexively:
"Watch out! Someone's coming—"
He never finished.
A bolt of lightning tore the forest open, and a figure wreathed in crackling blue light exploded through the undergrowth. A blade of pale light descended in an arc like pure thunder.
The Sand ninja in the lead didn't even manage to scream before he was neatly split in two.
Of the three remaining, one thrust up his hands and cried out, releasing a spray of poisoned senbon that tore through the air toward Feiyu—only to pierce nothing but an afterimage.
Another slammed his palms into the ground.
"Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld!"
The earth around Feiyu churned and liquefied, turning into a sucking mire that spread outward. This technique was a classic answer to high-speed opponents.
Unfortunately for him, the man currently in control of Feiyu's body was Hatake Sakumo—who had a lifetime of battlefield experience, and counters for tricks like this ingrained into his bones.
Faint bolts of lightning crackled down around Feiyu's ankles. The churning mud sizzled, hardened, and dried out under the assault of his lightning chakra.
Earth was weak against lightning. Once you understood chakra nature interactions, this kind of thing was just application.
The swamp slowed Feiyu for an instant before it was neutralized. Before the Earth-natured ninja could weave a second set of seals, a blade of blinding light crossed his throat. Blood sprayed, and his head tumbled free.
Of the two remaining, the one who'd used the poisoned needles suddenly lunged forward, arms spread wide, clearly intending to grapple Feiyu. With a grinding series of ka-ka-ka noises, the man's clothing split open in multiple places as sharp spikes stabbed outward from beneath his skin.
Sunagakure had never produced a true Kaguya with Shikotsumyaku. That meant this spiky "ninja" was almost certainly a puppet.
The last Sand shinobi—the sensor—turned and ran, retreating into the deeper forest with all the speed he could muster.
Feiyu's short blade blazed, its white aura extending until it was nearly a four-meter-long beam of light. He gave it a casual sweep.
The lunging puppet was instantly chopped into eight neat pieces.
Feiyu kicked off from the scattering fragments, body blurring as he shot after the fleeing sensor. The blade hummed through the air again.
A choked scream cut off halfway as the Sand sensor was sliced clean in half at the waist.
At that moment, the puppeteer hiding inside a hollow tree trunk was already shaking, face drained of all color. Feiyu turned, eyes narrowing, as the "tree" itself shuddered and rattled audibly from the man's uncontrollable tremors.
Feiyu snorted and quickly formed hand seals, inhaling deeply.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
A massive ball of flame roared forth, swallowing tree and puppeteer both.
A shrill scream rang out as the tree trunk exploded outward, a man on fire staggering out. He flailed, ran a few stumbling steps, then collapsed. When the flames finally died, only charred remains were left behind.
"Tch. Guess I actually killed someone with Great Fireball," Feiyu muttered, stepping back a couple of paces and wrinkling his nose. "Pretty sure, in all of Konoha, my Great Fireball has the best kill record."
He joked, but his face tightened slightly as the smell hit him—burnt flesh, that awful mix of cooked and charred protein.
Even for someone who'd already crossed that line once, his second real bloodbath carried its own weight.
He raised his hand, and small globes of light that only he could see—souls—floated toward him and sank into his palm one by one.
Just then, branches rustled, and the undergrowth behind him parted. Yamanaka Seiichi emerged from the trees, leading a few Konoha shinobi toward the site of the slaughter.
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