It turns out that having the advantage of foresight makes judgment of the situation accurate, but even without it, Higashino Shin wouldn't have believed that the Hidden Mist would remain honest forever.
Among the Five Great Ninja Villages, Sunagakure has Puppets and poison; Iwagakure has numbers and group Ninjutsu; Kumogakure has arrogance and 'zero-dollar shopping'; Konoha has... Konoha has a deep foundation, and at critical moments, god-like figures always emerge.
What does the final one, the Hidden Mist, have? They have lunatics who are very skilled at killing their own.
As the most mysterious of the Five Great Ninja Villages, very little information leaks out because they have always followed an extremely isolationist policy.
However, based on limited intelligence, they have been implementing some sort of 'Bloody Mist' policy internally. The pressure caused by cruel infighting is about to explode; rather than blowing themselves up, it's better to blow up others.
At this moment, his four opponents are all scarred by the war and have no cards left in their hands. It is the perfect time to drop a bomb and double the harvest.
Finally, one month after the Battle of Musashibashi Bridge, in August of the 49th year of Konoha, the Hidden Mist decided to join this delightful game of slaughter.
They landed on the eastern coast of the Land of Fire and brazenly launched an invasion against Konoha. In an instant, the east coast defense line collapsed, civilians were killed, injured, or displaced, and towns were destroyed. The situation was extremely critical.
This bunch of madmen displayed an unparalleled desire for slaughter, as if their invasion wasn't for profit but purely to vent their bloody urges.
But Konoha could no longer mobilize enough Ninja forces from other fronts.
The Sandaime, Hiruzen Sarutobi, called a meeting of the various families overnight and came up with the final solution.
Close the doors and release the Uchiha.
Using the Uchiha, who excel at Fire Release, to deal with the Hidden Mist, who excel at Water Release—the Uchiha didn't care. Now was the perfect opportunity for the strongest Ninja clan to earn merit. As for elemental disadvantage? What was that?
Thus, an emergency force was formed with Uchiha Ninjas as the main body, supported by the Hyuga, plus the hidden reserves provided by other families, and sent to the eastern front.
To replenish enough strength, the Village, besides squeezing the civilian Ninjas further, even threw many rookies who had only graduated a few years ago onto the battlefield.
Except for the basic forces left to guard the Village, every available hand had been squeezed out. Fighting on multiple fronts had already left Konoha's military strength severely insufficient.
Finally, to balance the competition between Konoha's two great noble houses, the Third Hokage had no choice but to hand over the command of the eastern front to Orochimaru.
Although Iwagakure had agreed to negotiate for peace under pressure, they had not yet signed a peace treaty. Combined with the attack from the Hidden Cloud Village, Jiraiya and Minato Namikaze simply could not leave.
Orochimaru had long since seen through everything. Although his mind was no longer on the war, he did not refuse. On the contrary, he was very happy to take on this burden. Compared to the single-variety Sunagakure, the Hidden Mist possessed far too many types of Bloodline Limits.
The Shikotsumyaku of the Kaguya Clan, the Ice Release of the Yuki Clan, the Hydrification Technique of the Hozuki Clan, the shark-like bodies of the Hoshigaki Clan... they were all excellent experimental Materials.
Subarashii!!
The entry of the Hidden Mist made the originally clearing situation of the Ninja War once again confusing and unpredictable.
Not only that, while invading Konoha, they also sent troops to the southern sea, using the Land of Tea peninsula as a springboard to target the wealthy southern coastal areas of the Land of Wind.
In his previous life, Naruto fans speculated that the Hidden Mist invaded Sunagakure by crossing the ocean from the other side of the planet, leading to war between the two sides.
But this was unrealistic because it was too far. The Earth where the Ninja World is located is not small, and the Five Great Nations plus the various small countries are almost all concentrated in one small area.
For the Hidden Mist to invade Sunagakure, they only needed to cross the Sea of Rainbows to the west and then establish a base directly in the Land of Tea, which had no Ninja Village power.
The Land of Tea is a vassal state of the Land of Fire, but Konoha has no time to protect them now.
As for going east around the other side of the globe, not only is it distant, but they would also have to bypass two other continents—one large and one small—that are vast and desolate.
Those two continents are almost barren lands with very few humans living on them, and their power styles and cultural customs are completely different from the mainstream world.
The Ninja World is not an ancient era; navigation technology is advanced, so they are naturally not unfamiliar with those places. It's just that because those two continents have virtually no benefits, no country is interested in them.
As for why this situation exists, the people of the Ninja World don't know. Curious explorers had gone there to study it in the past, but in the end, they couldn't figure out the reason.
Probably only Ōtsutsuki Kaguya and her three sons, who no longer have human forms, know the beginning and end of the matter.
Higashino Shin had studied the geography of the Ninja World and vaguely guessed the answer.
It must have been sucked dry by the God Tree. The location of the various countries in the Ninja World is the last place of life on this planet. Even so, the vast majority of the Land of Wind, the largest in area, is an endless desert.
Otherwise, what do you think the Ōtsutsuki Clan came to the Ninja World to plant trees for? Afforestation?
Regarding the Hidden Mist's mindless attack, Sunagakure was also furious. They immediately dispatched personnel, with Pakura as the commander, to give these madmen a head-on blow.
If I can't beat Konoha, can I still not beat you, Hidden Mist?
Fire Release countered by Water Release? Pakura expressed that she uses Scorch Release, guaranteed to provide them with a one-stop mummy service from sauna to drying.
In an instant, countless Hidden Mist Ninjas enjoyed a dry and refreshing feeling they had never experienced in their lives. The Third Great Ninja War, which had originally shown signs of stabilizing, became chaotic once again.
---
The chaotic war continued.
The Hidden Mist Village originally thought Konoha was exhausted and unable to withstand their sudden invasion. As a result, after only a few days of joy, they were severely beaten by the Konoha forces led by the Uchiha and Hyuga.
Elemental disadvantage? Uchiha Ninjas stated that as long as you are strong enough, elemental disadvantage does not affect the big picture.
The Hidden Mist Jutsu obscures vision, but the Hyuga Clan stated that in front of the Byakugan, you have nowhere to hide.
The Hidden Mist Ninjas immediately became like the other Ninja Villages, hating this bunch of wall-hackers, yet wanting it for themselves. Thus, they began to stealthily plot for the Byakugan, searching the battlefield for members of the Hyuga Main House.
At the same time, to salvage the war situation, they brought out their strongest trump card: the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist.
Seven powerful Ninjas with different appearances and personalities, wielding various strange weapons, began to hunt wantonly on the eastern front.
They didn't respect each other yet competed with one another, completely treating the war as a pleasant game.
Even if they encountered a rookie team from Konoha, the seven of them could play around like a cat with a mouse for half a day, and in the end, they would frequently turn against each other over the question of who the prey belonged to.
Efficiency in killing enemies? Mizukage's orders? To hell with them.
Then they encountered a weirdo Genin wearing a green one-piece bodysuit. They were beaten into the 'Auspicious Three Treasures'—some fled, some defected.
In October of the 49th year of Konoha, Might Duy died in battle.
The high-level officials of Konoha were overjoyed for a moment; they didn't expect such a good thing. Using only the life of one Genin to trade for four of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist was a massive profit, a total win.
At the same time, they also began to value the forbidden technique of the Eight Gates. After research, they found that this thing really isn't for normal people to practice. It takes an extremely long time, and without extremely high talent in Taijutsu and ultimate endurance, practicing for decades might not yield results, and it's easy to kill oneself. It completely lacks universal applicability.
Fortunately, as the successor of this technique, Might Guy received significant attention from the Village.
Might Duy not only greatly eased the pressure on the eastern front with his life, but also kicked open a future for his son.
Time flew by in the flames of war, and soon it entered a new year.
The undeterred Hidden Mist, under the control of certain wills, quietly prepared a big move. They planned to release the Three-Tails into Konoha Village.
The result was still a failure. Other than the death of a worthless Konoha female Medical Ninja, they achieved nothing.
Not only that, the Hidden Mist temporarily lost the Three-Tails and sacrificed almost all the experts of their Anbu. A massive loss, a total disaster.
But these people didn't know that under the arrangement of someone with ulterior motives, they had personally destroyed the light of an Uchiha boy, causing a kind child to completely blacken, becoming the operations director of a 'conspiracy city of circles within circles' from then on.
At the end of February in the 50th year of Konoha, the Konoha Ninja Rin Nohara died in battle.
The person who killed her was: the Konoha Ninja Kakashi Hatake.
The sliver of light that had just sprouted turned gray once again. He knew his teammate had used his hand to commit suicide in order to thwart the Hidden Mist's conspiracy.
But it was precisely because of this that he was even more in pain. Even Rin, with her average strength, had firmer conviction and courage than he did.