The tension between Sasori and Yubi was only a brief episode.
Soon after, everyone inside the stronghold settled into a different kind of silence.
They waited.
Not for rest. Not for rescue. Just for intelligence from the battlefield.
By this point, Yubi no longer needed to treat the wounded.
As the war intensified, those Sand shinobi who went out injured had almost no chance of coming back alive. If they were hurt again, then most likely, that would be the end.
There was no one left to carry the wounded back.
No one left to spare.
And if they themselves had to retreat, then whether even a fraction of the few dozen people still inside the stronghold would survive was anyone's guess.
"Prepare to move," one of the older Sand shinobi suddenly said.
His voice was calm, but there was something grim beneath it.
"Yubi. Sasori. You two medical ninja. And the younger ones. You leave first."
He looked around at the others, then said the next words in the same even tone.
"We're probably not making it back to the village alive. So the least we can do is buy you a little more time."
Yubi fell silent.
Because at the moment, this was the best option.
And perhaps the only one.
Even deep underground, they could hear the battle outside growing fiercer. Every now and then, a muffled rumble or tremor would ripple through the hideout, a reminder that this final refuge in the canyon could be exposed at any moment.
If they waited until the enemy found them, it would be too late.
Better to move now.
According to the latest reports, the village's frontline defenses had already been broken by Amegakure's main force. More and more enemies were spilling into the surrounding region.
The pressure would only grow.
Hearing that, the people in the stronghold exchanged glances and began gathering what little they could carry.
The shinobi who had already accepted death began discussing routes, ambush points, and fallback positions.
They were planning not for survival, but for delay.
For sacrifice.
For how best to escort the younger ones away.
And just as everyone was preparing to withdraw—
Footsteps sounded from the underground passage.
At first, every face tightened.
Then a figure stepped into view.
A familiar figure.
It was Granny Chiyo.
Behind her came an entire medical unit.
Reinforcements had arrived.
The mood in the stronghold shifted instantly.
It was like watching men dragged back from the edge of death in a single breath.
Relief washed over the room so sharply it almost hurt.
Even Yubi finally exhaled the breath he had been holding.
"Treat the wounded immediately!" one of the Sand shinobi shouted the moment the relief team entered.
A flood of medical ninja carrying packs rushed toward the injured where they lay.
Bandages, medicines, tools—everything the hideout had run out of was suddenly here.
Granny Chiyo swept her eyes over the miserable state of the room, over the blood, the exhaustion, the half-dead men clinging stubbornly to life.
Then, instead of going straight to Sasori, she came to Yubi first.
A wrinkled smile appeared on her face.
"Yubi, right?" she said, laying a hand on his head with obvious satisfaction. "I remember you. You did very well this time. Thanks to you, things didn't collapse."
Back when Yubi had been interning at the village hospital, he had already met Chiyo.
His medical knowledge and strange, incisive ideas had made a strong impression on her even then.
At the time, she had only thought of him as a promising child with a head full of medicine.
Now she knew better.
Because medical knowledge and true battlefield value were not the same thing.
A medical ninja only proved their worth when blood was flowing, when the wounded were piling up, when panic and death pressed in from every side.
Yubi had done that.
Not in theory.
In practice.
And that was why Chiyo's praise was so direct.
She did not ask how he had learned the Palm Healing Technique.
She did not question what else he might be hiding.
This was not the time.
Instead, she finally moved on to Sasori.
She crouched beside her grandson and checked his injuries, her expression growing complicated.
"Amegakure and Konoha have already made peace," she said after a while. "That old man with the respirator couldn't swallow his defeat. So he turned around and tried to bite us again. He thought he didn't need to worry about Konoha anymore, that he could focus all his strength on us."
Her eyes sharpened.
"But this time, he's the one who's going to choke on it."
The old man she meant was obvious.
Hanzo of the Salamander.
This was not the first time he and Chiyo had clashed. During the height of the war, Amegakure and Sunagakure had collided more than once, and Hanzo had even given her the nickname Puppet Granny.
If Konoha's reserves and overall strength had made Amegakure desperate, then Sunagakure had been its own natural kind of counter.
Hanzo's poison was useless against Chiyo.
Sunagakure's puppeteers were a nightmare for ordinary Rain shinobi to deal with.
And above all, the Third Kazekage's iron sand techniques were the kind of battlefield force Amegakure had no answer for.
The one thing Hanzo could rely on—his poison—was blunted by Chiyo.
Without that, his advantage shrank dramatically.
Even if a direct fight with Konoha was unwinnable, a fight with Sunagakure was no easy victory either.
This time, the Third Kazekage himself had already taken the field.
According to Chiyo, he intended to deliver Amegakure a crushing blow.
What mattered now was restoring the defenses along the front. Once the gaps were patched and the front line stabilized, enemy forces would naturally lose the ability to continue flooding deep into the rear.
That was the real reason Chiyo had come here personally.
Not only to restore order.
But to see Yubi and Sasori for herself.
"It's over," Yubi thought, and at last, truly relaxed.
Even if the Third Kazekage had not taken action, just having Chiyo and the other high-ranking shinobi present would already have made it difficult for Amegakure to gain much more ground.
For the first time in what felt like forever, the worst outcome was no longer right in front of him.
And the moment that realization settled in, everything he had been suppressing came crashing down.
The exhaustion.
The weakness.
The strain he had been carrying for days.
His body gave out without warning.
Thud.
Yubi's vision went dark, and he collapsed where he stood.
"Chiyo-sama!"
A nearby Sand shinobi immediately rushed over and caught him before his head hit the ground.
Granny Chiyo took one look and sighed softly.
"Let him sleep," she said. "He's just too tired."
No one argued.
At that moment, however, Sasori—who had been sitting there with his usual cold face—suddenly let out a short, openly mocking laugh.
It was gone almost as soon as it appeared.
But Chiyo saw it.
For a moment, she froze.
Ever since Sasori's parents had died, she had not seen a genuine smile on his face.
Not once.
Even if this one had been smug and a little mean-spirited, it had still been real.
A natural expression. A true emotional reaction.
That alone was enough to make her pause.
Sasori noticed her stare at once and immediately returned to his usual blank expression.
But Chiyo kept looking between him and the unconscious Yubi in silence.
Something was there.
Some thread she could not yet name.
And for the first time in a very long while, it felt like a small crack had opened in the wall around Sasori's heart.
In the end, she did not linger on it.
There was no time.
After giving Sasori a few instructions, Chiyo rose and left with the rest of the medical unit.
She still had to hurry to the front lines.
Because by now, there was little doubt that Hanzo himself had already taken the field as well.
And when monsters like that moved, the war moved with them.