How Orochimaru planned to deal with the Third Raikage was his business as field commander. Uchiha Feiyu had zero intention of worrying about it.
Since the Third Raikage had shown up in the southeast sector of the Leaf camp, Feiyu simply changed hunting grounds.
I can't beat you, sure. But I can absolutely avoid you.
Once he piled up enough ninja corpses, he was going to head back to the blood pool and take a few more "baths" to further refine his bloodline and talent.
If I can just push my Sharingan up to Mangekyō, then even the Third Raikage won't scare me.
For the Uchiha, reaching Mangekyō meant you were Shadow-level by default—not just because of the eye techniques.
More importantly, opening Mangekyō violently excavated the Uchiha bloodline.
Under its influence, an Uchiha's chakra reserves, reaction speed, physical potential, chakra control, and more all skyrocketed, raising their hardware straight into Kage-class territory.
Feiyu was already a Shadow-level in pure combat power. If he awakened Mangekyō on top of that, he'd be taking another step beyond—maybe not guaranteed to defeat the Third Raikage, but at least strong enough to fight him for hundreds of rounds and still walk away in one piece.
And if the Mangekyō ability he awakened turned out to be broken enough, killing the Third Raikage outright wouldn't be off the table.
"The only problem is… these ordinary ninjas don't do much for my bloodline anymore. To push my blood to Mangekyō level, I probably need at least a thousand sacrifices—and they can't all be random low-level Chunin and fodder."
He licked his lips.
"Which is why… the Shinobi World War is great."
Under normal circumstances, forget a thousand ninjas—even killing a few dozen or a hundred would get you wanted by the Five Great Nations. You'd have Kage-level monsters hunting you down personally.
Only during a world war could he continuously harvest corpses, souls, and black qi for sacrifices.
No matter who lost or won this war, one thing was certain:
Uchiha Feiyu would not be the one at a loss.
After switching sectors, Feiyu stayed just as cautious as before—first cloaking himself fully with his Camouflage Concealment Jutsu, then starting another round of methodical hunting.
But this time, after only taking out a few Cloud squads, he noticed something wrong.
The scattered Cloud units began to pull back, changing direction and concentrating together.
"So they noticed I'm killing too many of them already? Have they sensed my presence?"
Watching the enemy tighten their formation, Feiyu frowned slightly and decided not to press his luck.
In small-unit skirmishes, invisibility turned him into a ghost. But once the enemy numbers passed a certain threshold, they could just burn resources and bodies systematically to smoke him out.
And now that they were aware something was wrong in this area, it was only a matter of time before real heavy-hitters showed up. Feiyu had no intention of being on the receiving end of that.
With that in mind, he silently prepared to leave.
He had just pulled back one or two kilometers when he suddenly felt several blazing soul-fires surging toward him.
Feiyu immediately shifted direction—once, twice, several times.
No matter how he changed course, the other side locked on and rushed his way without hesitation.
His heart sank.
"Crap. I've been marked by a sensor."
Standard chakra-sensing types shared a universal trait: when they sensed you, you would also feel the responding tug of being detected.
But Feiyu's soul-sense operated on completely different rules, so he hadn't realized he'd already been discovered. It was only when his pursuers stuck stubbornly to his position that he confirmed they had a sensor ninja on their side.
Even while he cursed inwardly, Feiyu didn't slow down, sprinting straight toward the Leaf camp.
The closer he got, the higher the chance he'd run into allied ninja—and the fewer Cloud shinobi would dare to appear.
In battles of this level, low- and mid-rank ninja had limited impact…
But "limited" wasn't the same as "none."
"Still… the guy behind me is fast. That soul fire doesn't feel like the Third Raikage. Which means…"
His expression darkened slightly.
"That should be the future Fourth Raikage—A."
In the Cloud Village, every Raikage inherited the name "A," and this generation's successor had already been formally named by the Third Raikage due to his outstanding performance.
Compared to his father, this Raikage-in-training had never managed to achieve the legendary "strongest spear and shield," so he'd poured everything into one thing:
Speed.
If you didn't count broken space–time techniques, then in pure movement speed, the ninja most deserving of "Number One Godspeed" was probably this future Fourth Raikage.
As Feiyu continued running toward the Leaf camp, he felt the soul-fires behind him shift.
They split apart.
Two of the lights suddenly accelerated, reaching a speed that outstripped even Feiyu's current best; the remaining soul-fires stopped moving altogether.
"The others have halted. Only two are still chasing… that should be A carrying the sensor-nin. The rest simply can't keep up."
Soon, the pressure behind him grew sharper and sharper. His pursuers were practically breathing down his neck.
Feiyu's brows knit together. He simply stopped running.
Maintaining this kind of high-speed mode was exhausting both in chakra and in stamina—and the Raikage line was famous for being monsters in both departments.
If the Third Raikage could wage war alone against ten thousand shinobi for three days and three nights, then even if the Fourth Raikage wasn't on that level, his endurance far outstripped Feiyu's.
Once Feiyu realized he wouldn't reach the Leaf encampment before getting caught, he decisively chose not to waste his stamina anymore.
Better to stop at full strength than be run down half-drained.
Barely a dozen heartbeats after he halted, a streak of blue lightning slammed down in front of him.
A towering, heavily muscled giant of a man—almost a mirror of the Third Raikage—stepped out from within the crackling light.
"Damn little rat," the giant snarled. "Why'd you stop running?!"
He swung one arm casually and dropped something to the ground—a fair-skinned, blond young man, clearly the sensor-nin he'd been hauling along this whole time.
So yes—this future Fourth Raikage had literally been sprinting full throttle while carrying another grown man in one hand.
Feiyu clicked his tongue.
"Tch… I'm not some pretty girl. Why are you so desperate to chase me down?"
His mouth was still joking, but his hand had already tightened around the Kusanagi blade, the tip slowly lifting to point straight at the Fourth Raikage.
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