Konoha: Starting with Sage Mode

Seeing that Tsunade no longer said anything about kicking him out, Kirito began to slowly explain to her the future direction of Konoha.

If someone else had told her about the future of Konoha, Tsunade would have been dismissive and dismissed it as nonsense. But the person telling her this was the head of Amegakure's intelligence department, who had written "The Will of Rain," so his words must have some value.

Moreover, she personally felt that the other party's analysis made a lot of sense after listening to it.

Her younger brother, Kirito Tohsaka, is indeed a genius who can make Konoha dominate the ninja world again, because she can already see her grandfather's shadow in him. At only 11 years old, he can kill a Kage from a major ninja village. In the future, won't he be able to slaughter Kage-level ninjas as easily as slaughtering dogs?

She didn't see her grandfather make a move herself, but she learned from her grandmother's stories how powerful and influential he was during the Warring States period. Beating a Kage-level powerhouse like her teacher was like beating a grandson for him, without any pressure.

The thought of Kirito leading Konoha to regain its glory filled her with excitement and anticipation.

However, Hattori Masanari is right. The other major ninja villages will not stand idly by and watch Konoha rise again. They will definitely take action against Konoha during its resurgence. They might even put aside their past grievances and unite to deal with Konoha.

She was well aware of Konoha's current situation. While it was indeed the strongest ninja village in the ninja world, it was impossible for it to simultaneously deal with the three major ninja villages of Kumogakure, Iwagakure, and Kirigakure.

Moreover, Konoha is currently plagued by internal conflicts, not only between the Senju and Sarutobi clans, but also by the Uchiha clan's historical legacy. Because of these conflicts, it is difficult for Konoha to fully mobilize all its forces to unite against external threats.

"It seems that Princess Konoha agrees with my analysis of Konoha's future. Konoha is destined to rise again, but the process will be arduous. If it cannot hold on, Konoha may be gone. Therefore, I think that if Konoha wants to rise again, it must learn from other ninja villages and unite with all the friends it can win over to share the pressure brought about by the rise. Amegakure is now very eager to become a friend of Konoha."

Kirito realized that Tsunade agreed with what he had just said, so he decisively pressed his advantage and brought up Amegakure.

Chapter 228: Wood Release Experiment

Kirito's purpose in coming here was to bring Amegakure onto Konoha's side.

"What you say makes a lot of sense, but I am not the Hokage after all, and I cannot make a decision to support Amegakure on my own."

Tsunade sighed, realizing that Kirito's ultimate goal was still to get Konoha to support Amegakure.

To be honest, she was somewhat persuaded by Kirito.

Indeed, Konoha needs allies to share the pressure from other great ninja villages during its future rise, and Amegakure is a good ally at present because it has two powerful Kage-level ninjas, Hanzo of the Salamander and Hattori Masashige.

If it weren't for Amegakure's poor size and insufficient number and strength of its lower and middle-level ninjas, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it the sixth greatest ninja village.

If Konoha can form an alliance with Amegakure, the pressure they face from other major ninja villages will definitely be greatly reduced.

However, no matter how reasonable Hattori Masanari's vision of Konoha's future may be, or how grand and tempting the promises he makes may be, those are all things of the future. If Konoha truly decides to support Amegakure, it will certainly require a massive investment of manpower and resources.

The war between Kumogakure and Konoha might begin here. Konoha has now completely defeated Sunagakure, and the hopeful future of peace will be shattered.

Putting herself in his shoes, based on her understanding of her teacher, she knew he most likely wouldn't agree to send troops to support Amegakure.

"Princess of Konoha, you underestimate your own power. If you are truly willing to help Amegakure, I believe that Hokage will seriously consider it."

Kirito smiled and said, seeing that Tsunade had been persuaded by him.

As Hattori Masanari of Amegakure, it would be inappropriate for him to go directly to Konoha to find the Third Hokage. If he were to communicate with the Third Hokage in the same way he did with Tsunade, the Third Hokage would most likely see it as a provocation against Konoha, and he would not only fail but also become an enemy.

Moreover, the Third Hokage was a kind-hearted but ruthless person. In his eyes, Amegakure was a burden to Konoha. Helping Amegakure would likely anger Kumogakure, ultimately leading to war between Konoha and Kumogakure and shattering any hope of peace.

The Third Hokage's acceptance of Amegakure's surrender terms, which stipulated no reparations, had already caused discontent among many in Konoha. This time, his actions of provoking Kumogakure in order to help Amegakure overcome its difficulties, thus disrupting Konoha's peace, will undoubtedly further fuel discontent among many.

Clearly, this situation is not in the best interests of the three generations.

He was certain that if he went to see the Third Hokage under the identity of Hattori Masanari, even if he said the words he was about to say, the chances of the Third Hokage agreeing to help Amegakure were not high.

Therefore, he needed to find someone who could persuade the Third Hokage to provide support to Amegakure.

This person is Tsunade.

Tsunade's status in Konoha is not simple. Not only did she inherit the Senju clan's reputation in Konoha, but as a top-notch medical ninja, many of Konoha's strongest ninjas were saved from going to the Pure Land by her.

A life-saving grace is greater than heaven.

If she were willing to ask, at least half of Konoha's Jonin would be willing to help her.

Finally, she now has a very capable younger brother.

With all these factors combined, it was impossible for the Third Hokage to ignore Tsunade's opinion.

Since Tsunade now possesses the ability to overturn tables, if the Third Hokage doesn't want to have a falling out with her, he will definitely support her.

Unfortunately, his sister had always misunderstood his power in Konoha and had never known how to utilize this amazing power.

"..."

Tsunade fell silent after hearing Kirito's words.

She was very intelligent and immediately understood Kirito's meaning. It must be said that her insight was extremely sharp. She did have the ability to influence her teacher. As long as she made up her mind and used all the power at her disposal, she could most likely get the Third Hokage to agree to help Amegakure.

However, if she really does that, her relationship with the Third Hokage will become increasingly strained, and she will definitely be the one to lead Konoha's support for Amegakure this time, since she is the initiator.

She had a premonition that once she actually helped Yu Yin overcome her difficulties, she would be forced to do some things she didn't want to do.

"Princess of Konoha, don't hesitate. As long as you help Amegakure overcome this crisis, Amegakure will be sincerely grateful to you. You will also gain my friendship with Amegakure. I can assure you that as long as I am in Amegakure, Amegakure will be Konoha's most loyal ally."

Furthermore, we at Amegakure will not let Konoha help us for nothing; we will offer compensation.

Kirito continued.

Tsunade remained silent.

She could only believe half of what this Rain Ninja said at most. She was not a little girl who could be easily fooled. She would not trust this cunning and dangerous head of Rain Ninja's intelligence network until she saw tangible benefits.

"If you ever need my help in the future, such as dealing with the Roots left by Danzo, I will do my best to assist you. This is my sincere intention."

Seeing this, Kirito had no choice but to increase the stakes.

No sooner had she finished speaking than Hattori Masanari, a pale-skinned figure, emerged from the ground in front of Tsunade. It was Kirito's spore clone.

He took out a psychic card from his person, formed a hand seal, and used the psychic summoning technique to release the contents of the card.

There were two items: a scroll and a metal block the size of a millstone.

After the spore clone finished doing all that, it seemed to have completely exhausted its chakra and quickly turned into a pile of ashes.

Of the two items, Tsunade's gaze was immediately drawn to the metal block on the ground. The reason was simple: this metal block was an extremely precious chakra metal. She picked it up and estimated its weight, and her breathing became slightly rapid.

This large piece of chakra metal weighs at least half a ton, and according to normal market prices, it is worth at least seven or eight hundred million.

However, chakra metal has always been in short supply. Without a stable channel, ordinary people can only buy a little bit on the black market by spending several times more than the market price.

Therefore, if the chakra metal in her hand were actually converted into money, it would probably be close to several billion.

This is a true hard currency, the kind that's easy to sell. Even if it were available, many people and forces wouldn't be willing to sell it because it's a very important strategic resource.

Iwagakure has a lot of chakra metal, but they prefer to store it in warehouses rather than sell more. The reason is that once these things are sold, they could become weapons used by other ninja villages against Iwagakure.

"I never imagined that Amegakure would be so wealthy, possessing so much chakra metal."

Tsunade was surprised.

As a ninja, she was well aware of the weight of the chakra metal in her hand. Such a large piece of chakra metal was enough for Konoha to forge a batch of excellent ninja tools, effectively improving the overall strength of Konoha ninjas.

She now saw Amegakure's sincerity in getting Konoha to help, and with such a large piece of chakra metal in her hands as a deposit, she had some confidence to ask the Third Hokage to support Amegakure.

Wars are all about money.

The reason why the people of Konoha were tired of war was largely because war was too costly and exhausting.

Konoha had been fighting Amegakure and Sunagakure for seven or eight years, and the resources they had accumulated were almost exhausted. Now, every household in Konoha Village has very little food left.

That's why the Third Hokage's acceptance of Amegakure's surrender terms, which didn't require reparations, angered many in Konoha. On the surface, it was because he lost face, but in reality, he threatened the interests of many in Konoha.

Amegakure was indeed very poor after its defeat, but even a broken ship has three pounds of nails.

As long as Konoha completely defeats Amegakure, and the Land of Rain is not destroyed, there will always be ways to extract enough benefits from it.

After all, the Land of Rain is in such a good location that just collecting tolls would be a considerable income.

"Princess of Konoha, this is the last bit of our Amegakure's resources. Please do your best to persuade the Hokage to lend a hand to Amegakure."

Soon, Hattori Masanari's voice appeared in Tsunade's mind again, a voice filled with deep reluctance.

To be honest, Kirito felt a pang of regret at having to take out so much chakra metal at once. This chakra metal was something he had painstakingly accumulated little by little from Iwagakure, and he had originally planned to use it to create powerful puppets.

However, Amegakure's current situation is extremely precarious. Not long ago, they also subdued a large sum of money from the Kirigakure that came to their aid, leaving them with little surplus funds. They can only offer this hard currency to attract Konoha's support.

However, it was all worth it. As long as Amegakure was preserved, he could gain more from Amegakure in the future.

He had painstakingly cultivated Hattori Masanari into a top-tier leader in Amegakure, whose current status was even better than Hanzo of the Salamander, and he did not want to see Amegakure destroyed.

Tsunade didn't say anything upon hearing this. She wasn't someone who made promises easily, and she wouldn't make a promise just because Hattori Masanari was complaining about being poor.

She put down the chakra metal, then picked up the scroll on the ground, opened it, and her face quickly turned pale.

Is everything on this page true?

Tsunade gripped the scroll tightly in her hand, her body trembling uncontrollably, and she cried out.

"Of course it's true. Your Hokage is no ordinary man. If you don't believe me, I can take you there right now to verify it. These guys have opened a secret laboratory right here in the Land of Rain."

Kirito said in a cold voice.

The scroll he gave Tsunade contained some of the secret Wood Release plans carried out by the New Root and the Old Root, things that had been buried in the dark.

In order to obtain the power of Wood Release, the New Root and the Old Root have been researching Hashirama's cells and have conducted many inhumane human experiments.

Human experiments with such a high mortality rate could not possibly involve a large number of people volunteering. Many of the test subjects were secretly plundered by Root from all over the ninja world, with ninjas and civilians from various countries being their targets.

Moreover, they also set their sights on the Senju and Uchiha clans.

This is because they discovered that the people of these two major ninja clans were far more adaptable to Hashirama cells than others, and they persisted in fusing with Hashirama cells for a longer period of time.

Furthermore, they even targeted children, because they discovered that children had an advantage over adults in fusing interstitial cells.

Due to the recent war between Amegakure and Kumogakure, many cities and villages in the Land of Rain have been destroyed, and people have been displaced. Taking advantage of Amegakure's temporary inattention, these despicable individuals have set their sights on the large number of displaced people in the Land of Rain and are using them for experiments.

He had destroyed several Wood Release laboratories, but unfortunately, the people in these laboratories were just low-level soldiers carrying out orders, and they knew very limited information. He couldn't find much clue or evidence about Root.

However, the wooden fragments left behind in these laboratories that couldn't be processed in time cannot fool those who truly understand Wood Release.

"How could this happen? How could he have fallen so low?"

Upon hearing Kirito's answer, Tsunade became completely distraught.

Although she doubted the authenticity of the scroll's contents, Kirito had said so, which clearly indicated that there was solid evidence that the Root members were secretly conducting Wood Release experiments in the Land of Rain.

Looking at the scroll detailing the atrocities caused by the Wood Release experiments, her heart ached.

Wood Release was her grandfather's proudest power, but now someone was using his cells to conduct inhumane human experiments. Even though she knew that this had nothing to do with her grandfather who had passed away many years ago, she still felt extremely guilty.

Ultimately, the Hashirama cells were taken from her grandfather, and now these things have become harmful, which is definitely not what her grandfather wanted to see.

If her grandfather knew about these things, he would definitely regret not destroying his own body back then.