Naruto: Uchiha Youngjo's Konoha Spring

Chapter 220 Naruto's Doubts

The battlefield, which had just experienced a major battle, was now bathed in the light of a new day. This once lush forest was now a scene of devastation after yesterday's bloody fighting.

The morning mist clung to the canyon like a shroud, and the broken lightning blade was stuck in the remains of a giant cedar in this battlefield. The remaining lightning chakra on the blade was still flickering faintly, scorching the bark with charred spiral patterns.

The land washed away by the torrential rain three days ago has been stained dark brown again, and the blood in the gullies has congealed into translucent amber.

The crow's claws dug into the hollow eye sockets of a Konoha ninja. The Konoha Chunin's throat was completely severed by the ninja sword, and the broken trachea was crawling with milky white maggots.

He clutched half of the Cloud Shadow Headband until his death, the metal edge deeply embedded in his hand bones—perhaps the last trophy left to the world by an enemy before he snapped their neck.

Neji chased away the crows, laid his companion's body flat, and waved to the group that came to collect the body.

The stream carried the scroll covered with sealing talismans eastward, and blood foam gathered in the eddies to form a bizarre human face. Downstream in the shallows, the charred corpse of a Cloud Village Jonin knelt in the river, seven still-burning explosive kunai stuck in his back. His hands were in the "Never" seal, which is usually the second to last seal in Lightning Release ninjutsu. But what ninjutsu he wanted to use is probably an eternal mystery.

A crater tens of meters in diameter on the ground was filled with honeycomb-like holes, the result of hundreds of explosive tags detonating simultaneously.

Ribs blown away by the shockwave lodged obliquely in the crack, with half a tattered green vest hanging from it. A severed hand clung tightly to the crevice, its fingernails stuffed with blue and white strips of cloth—from a Cloud Village ninja who had tried to block the explosion with his own body.

A soft rustling sound of papers turning over suddenly came from the pile of decaying leaves. A gentle breeze blew by, revealing the scene below. At the very bottom, the Konoha Chunin had not yet closed his eyes. His pupils reflected the Cloud Village headband that had been melted by the raging fire, and molten metal droplets were slowly sliding down the enemy's distorted mask.

The wind swept through the thicket of metal thorns made of thousands of thorns, emitting a mournful sound similar to that of a shakuhachi.

In the center of the battlefield, the Konoha Special Jonin, whose chest had been pierced by Lightning Release: False Darkness, still stood tall. His spine was impaled in the scorched earth by lightning-struck wooden nails. His left hand remained in a hand seal position, and the earth spear extending from the fingertips of his right hand formed a precise symmetry with the enemy's heart.

With some difficulty, Sasuke separated the body of a Konoha ninja wearing a Konoha headband, who was entangled with a Kumogakure ninja, from his opponent. This Konoha Chunin, with his abdomen pierced, still managed to use his last breath to plunge a kunai into his enemy's chest. The two died entangled together in this way.

After Sasuke laid the body flat, he reached out and closed the person's eyes. Then he signaled to the body collection team that had come from Konoha to properly preserve the body and bring it back to Konoha for burial later.

"Naruto, don't just stand there. We need to collect our comrades' bodies and bring them back to Konoha before noon," Neji said softly as he approached Naruto.

"Neji, is this war?" Naruto stood up, his lips pressed tightly together. After a while, he managed to say with difficulty, but after taking only two steps, his foot suddenly slipped.

Naruto staggered backward, his heel crushing half of his ribs. The stench suddenly became thick and sticky, like snakes crawling into his nasal cavity and coiling around his stomach. He covered his mouth tightly, and the whimpers that leaked out between his fingers startled the crows that were pecking at the brains.

Two different styles of headbands gleamed coldly amidst the pile of corpses. The Konoha ninja at the very top, lying face up, had a kunai with cloud patterns pierced into his right eye socket.

"Ugh!" Sour water mixed with the leftover instant noodles he had eaten as a midnight snack before setting off last night splashed onto the scorched earth burned by lightning. Naruto's trembling fingertips sank into the mud and touched something wet and stringy—half of an intestine wrapped with explosive tags was hanging in the gap of a corpse's leg armor.

Sasuke's kunai suddenly appeared in front of him, the tip of the blade slicing away the bluish-purple organ.

"Don't move around carelessly." Sasuke glanced around at the surroundings. "Stepping on an explosive tag trap would be troublesome."

"Are you alright?" Neji patted Naruto's back and asked with concern.

Naruto jerked his head up, his azure eyes flashing with bloodshot veins: "Why...why are they tearing people to pieces?! I'll tell you!"

The screech startled the crows that were pecking at the mangled carcass hanging on a tree branch twenty meters away. The crows scattered at the sound, and black blood trickled down from the severed neck of the headless torso.

"Whether these people are our comrades or enemies, whose fathers or sons are they? They should have family members waiting for them at home, but now they are all dead here!" Naruto roared excitedly.

“You’re right, but that’s war.” Sasuke glanced at his best friend, who was now completely emotional, shook his head, and said, “Our teacher said that war is a continuation of politics. As long as there are dirty politicians in this world trading their interests, war will never stop.”

Before Sasuke could finish speaking, he suddenly saw Naruto rushing towards a collapsed earthen wall.

Naruto was digging through the collapsed earthen wall with his bare hands, trying to drag a wounded Cloud Village soldier whose legs were trapped under the wall out.

Neji's expression suddenly changed drastically. He stepped forward and stopped Naruto, urgently reminding him, "Are you crazy? He has explosive tags hidden in his sleeve!" "But he's still alive!" Naruto's face glowed with a golden light in the early morning sun. "Hold on!"

He haphazardly wrapped medical bandages around the wounded man's still-bleeding wound, completely unaware that the man's left hand was gradually gathering chakra.

The dull thud of a kunai slicing through flesh mingled with a burst of lightning. Sasuke coldly pulled out the purple lightning bolt piercing Naruto's heart. The gleaming blade reflected Naruto's frozen expression—he had only been pulled away by Neji and had only suffered a minor arm injury. "This is what you wanted to save."

"I..." Naruto's left arm, which had been slashed, slowly recovered after a puff of smoke appeared. Neji put him down, and Naruto collapsed to the ground again, muttering repeatedly, "Why did this happen? I was trying to save him."

“The teacher is right, the ninja system in this world is seriously flawed,” Neji couldn’t help but say at this moment.

At this moment, inside the sealed space, Naruto looked up at the Nine-Tails behind the sealed gate.

Instead of lying down and sleeping as usual, Kurama sat up and looked down at Naruto.

"Kid, stop overthinking. I can feel your negative emotions, and they're keeping me up at night," Nine-Tails said after a moment of silence.

"I'm sorry, Kurama-nii-san," Naruto said apologetically. "Also, thank you for the previous battle."

"Hmph, I just don't want my Jinchūriki to die such a disgraceful death," Kurama said with a cold snort.

"Nine-Tails, tell me, why must chakra be used in war, as a weapon for mutual slaughter?" Naruto suddenly sighed and asked.

Nine-Tails' gaze sharpened, his thoughts traversing time. He remembered that once, a fool just like the silly boy before him had asked him a similar question: Why, when the Sage of Six Paths founded the Ninja Cult with the intention that chakra could become a bond of communication between people, enabling them to understand each other, did chakra end up as a weapon for people to kill each other?

Back then, Kurama was carefree, living a life of eating, sleeping, and beating up Shukaku whenever it was unhappy. So, Kurama couldn't answer the question posed by that boy back then.

But thousands of years later, when faced with the same question from Naruto, Kurama recalled his experiences over those thousands of years and found that he still couldn't answer it.

"I don't know," Kurama said in a deep voice. "In my long lifespan, I have witnessed countless instances of you humans killing each other. You humans always say that we tailed beasts are the embodiment of calamity, but what I have seen over the past few thousand years is that in order to increase the efficiency of slaughtering our own kind, humans have spared no expense in spending a long time and effort to transform chakra into more powerful ninjutsu."

It has to be said that Naruto now is really like that boy from back then. They are both kind-hearted and also just as... naive.

"Is there really no way to get everyone to give up the war?" Naruto muttered to himself.

“Even powerful figures like Hashirama Senju, the First Hokage of your village, and Madara Uchiha, couldn’t completely solve this problem. Although they brought a brief period of peace, the flames of war in the ninja world reignited after they left,” Kurama said. “You humans are such a strange race.”

Hearing this, Naruto fell silent again. After a while, Naruto left the sealed space without saying a word.

"Hey bro? Naruto? Hey? Are you alright?" Deidara waved his hand repeatedly in front of Naruto.

"Brother Deidara." Naruto, looking somewhat tired, greeted him after snapping out of his daze, only to find himself atop Deidara's flying clay bird. "This is..."

“Hey, kid from the Uchiha clan, you don’t seem to be in a good mood, so I asked you to take you back to the village first,” Deidara said.

"Um, thank you," Naruto said, forcing a smile.

"Why are you being so polite with me!" Deidara slapped Naruto on the shoulder forcefully. "By the way, bro, you saw my performance last night, right? Wasn't it amazing!"

It would have been better if Deidara hadn't been mentioned, because the mere mention of it brought to mind the horrific images of enemies being engulfed by the explosions Deidara created, their final moments filled with horror.

"Big brother, do you remember how many people you killed yesterday?" Naruto asked, his voice trembling slightly.

"Who knows?" Deidara shrugged. "Anyway, they were all enemies who were blown up. If they can become part of my art, they can die without regrets."

(End of this chapter)