Avoiding the Sand-nin, Yagami and Purple Cat quickly made their way out of the town and regrouped with their squad.
White Sheep released his kikaichū, while the others raised binoculars to observe the distance.
Rain fell steadily from the sky, thick mist blurring their vision.
"Captain! It's Mache—the elite jōnin from the Hidden Sand Village!"
The ANBU carried intelligence files on key figures from other villages. Mache was one of the Sand's most notable jōnin, famed for his mastery of Wind Style ninjutsu.
He wore a sand-proof bandage around his head—a distinctive mark.
Yagami hadn't expected to encounter a Hidden Sand elite here.
In the distance, Mache was leading over a hundred Sand-nin, charging toward the town.
"White Sheep," Yagami ordered quickly, "take your squad and report this to Captain Yellow Dog. I'll continue the reconnaissance."
"Yes!"
White Sheep departed with his team.
The Fox Unit's mission was reconnaissance. Taking on an elite jōnin commanding such numbers was impossible.
Yagami assumed Mache would lead the Sand-nin into Teigoku Town—but halfway there, Mache suddenly turned, directing his men toward the river embankment.
Once at the Yoshimizu River, more than a hundred Sand-nin—two full platoons—began setting explosive tags along the ground.
They weren't just sticking them to the surface, but using Earth Style to drill deep holes, burying the tags within the embankment itself.
The riverbank was over fifty meters thick and more than ten meters high—extremely solid.
The Sand-nin formed hand seals in unison.
A chain of explosions erupted—some on the surface, others deep underground.
The soil expanded, loosened, and softened.
Then the Sand-nin rushed forward, using Earth Style to completely rupture the river embankment.
At the side of the levee, the old man who patrolled the river was bound tightly with ropes, trussed up like a roll of straw. A Sand-nin's foot pressed down on his back.
He shouted in pain, powerless to resist.
The Yoshimizu River, nearly a hundred meters wide, burst through the shattered embankment. A flood surged outward, roaring straight toward Teigoku Town.
The destructive power of ninja was terrifying. To build a structure like this had taken the townspeople's ancestors years of labor—but to destroy it took a squad of ninja less than half an hour.
Outside the shinobi villages, ordinary people feared and hated ninja alike.
The river water poured into Teigoku Town, submerging the first floors of buildings in an instant.
Chaos erupted as people screamed and scrambled.
From afar, Yagami could hear the cries echo through the storm—rising and falling—then fading beneath the roar of the flood.
"Captain! The Sand-nin spotted us!"
"Fall back!"
The two teams of the Fox Unit were no match for the enemy.
Yagami led them to withdraw farther, and fortunately, the Sand-nin didn't pursue.
They instead gathered at the breach, expanding the gap even further.
Some followed the cresting flood downstream.
"Let's move," Yagami said. "We'll find out what they're doing breaching the river."
The Yoshimizu River ran through the southern reaches of the Land of Rain. Because it flowed too close to the Kichikō Mountain Range, there wasn't much room for development—few people lived nearby, and there were no valuable targets.
Why go to all this trouble? To drown one town and a handful of villages?
Two full platoons of Sand-nin could have killed that many civilians with kunai in less time.
Following the floodwaters for two or three kilometers, Yagami saw more Sand-nin ahead.
They stood in two long rows, forming hand seals one after another.
Between them, the earth sank, forming a wide trench.
The flood no longer flowed aimlessly—it now streamed neatly into the channel the Sand-nin had created.
Following its direction from afar, the Fox Unit arrived at the foot of the Kichikō Mountain Range.
The Kichikō Range was made of hard stone. Any layer of soil had long since been scoured away by rain.
The cliffs rose steeply, sheer and imposing—rising hundreds of meters straight from the ground.
And there, beneath the mountain, Yagami saw the Sand-nin's true work.
A massive cavern mouth yawned open in the rock.
Endless torrents of floodwater poured into it.
What were the Sand-nin trying to do? Were they trying to collapse the entire Kichikō Mountain Range with water?
Yagami said quietly, "Everyone else, fall back and wait for Captain Yellow Dog. Purple Cat, you're with me—we'll get close and grab a prisoner."
The flood vanished into the ground, the roaring sound growing louder the nearer they drew.
The Sand-nin stood beside the trench, their faces alight with excitement—as if they'd just accomplished something grand.
Yagami and Purple Cat crept closer, hiding in the rain-soaked shadows until they reached the outermost guards.
Purple Cat formed the Mind Body Switch Technique and seized control of one Sand-nin.
He slowly stepped backward. When the distance was safe enough, she released the jutsu—
Yagami flickered forward, struck the man down, and dragged his body away.
Three minutes later, Purple Cat had extracted his information.
Yagami listened in silence, then sighed inwardly.
Mache truly lived up to his reputation as an elite jōnin of the Hidden Sand. He was a genius.
The Kichikō Mountain Range divided the deserts of the Land of Wind from the rain-rich basin of the Land of Rain.
Mache and his squad had spent months scouting the mountain, discovering several massive underground caverns.
The Land of Wind lacked water.
Mache had devised a plan: he would select several of these caverns and connect them together, forming a continuous subterranean passage beneath the range.
By redirecting the Yoshimizu River into these caverns, he could flood them—letting water emerge on the southern Gobi plains, creating fertile new land in the northern reaches of the Land of Wind.
Purple Cat suddenly gasped. "Captain! The residents of Teigoku Town—they're being swept down by the flood! Captain—it's Aoi!"
Floating among the surging waters were planks of wood.
On one of them sat a small girl, curled up tight, clutching a broken umbrella to her chest.
Around the plank, several hands pushed desperately from beneath the surface.
Aoi wasn't alone—there were others.
Yagami recognized one hand—it belonged to the old shoemaker, the one with the thimble-bound fingers.
Dozens more planks floated by, each carrying one or two children—some townsfolk's, some orphans.
But none of them knew their struggle was meaningless.
The flood would carry them straight into the dark depths of the underground caverns—into a place from which no one could return.
To fill such a vast system with water would take who knew how long.
They would never make it to the other side of the mountain.
"Captain…" Purple Cat whispered.
Even as ANBU, watching Aoi—such a brave, bright little girl—about to be swallowed by the flood was unbearable.
Yagami assessed the Sand-nin guarding the cave entrance.
He couldn't save everyone—but he could save Aoi.
"Wait here," he said. "I'm going to the cavern entrance."
In a blur, he vanished.
Two Sand-nin fell before they even realized it, their blood washed away by rain.
Yagami leapt high, clearing the cavern mouth.
The cave below gaped like a black maw, swallowing wave after wave of floodwater.
The roar was deep and endless, as though nothing could fill it.
In midair, Yagami flung a steel wire tipped with an iron weight.
The iron ball looped around Aoi's waist and jerked her upward.
She flailed in panic. "Mister! Auntie! It's a big hole up ahead!"
The cavern swallowed the plank—and the townsfolk beneath it—tumbling them into the torrent's depths.
Just then, Mache appeared.
"Wind Style: Wind Slash!"
Countless blades of wind shot forth, slicing Yagami's wire.
"Aoi!"
The girl, just freed from danger, plummeted into the dark cavern mouth.
Her broken umbrella slipped from her hands, spinning into the depths with her.
A gust slammed into Yagami, cutting through his shoulder and hurling him against the rocky wall.
He stabbed a kunai into the stone, dangling by it as screams echoed up from below.
"Aoi!"
He threw another wire down—the iron ball snapped through the air toward her.
She reached out for it, fingertips brushing its surface—then the flood struck again, and she vanished into the abyss.
Hanging rigid from his kunai, Yagami froze.
For the first time in his life, a single thought rose in his mind.
He wanted to die.
He wanted to change Aoi's fate.
Lifting his gaze, he locked eyes on Mache above.
"Sand ninja… even if you want to bring water to the Land of Wind… did you have to be this cruel?"
***
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