In the Land of Earth, First Tsuchikage Ishikawa looked at the mission jointly issued by the nobles.
“Mū, this Uchiha Mu stole their money.
Now they’ve pooled their funds and issued a mission asking us to destroy his country.
Do we accept it or not?”
“Tsuchikage-sama, it would be best to accept it through a small squad,” Mū replied.
“Otherwise, the man in Konoha…”
An unpleasant memory surfaced in his mind.
A monster capable of defeating Madara had decided that he wanted to stop wars.
If Hashirama truly committed himself to preventing conflict, nobody could wage war properly anymore.
And what happened if they launched a full campaign against a small country?
If Hashirama intervened, the mission would fail.
No completed mission meant no payment.
They would still spend money mobilizing their forces and gain no territory to plunder afterward.
It would be a guaranteed loss.
A small assassination squad was different.
If they killed Mu, the village made a fortune.
If they failed, the losses were minor.
They could simply retreat.
“Good.
I’ll leave the mission to you.
Avoid exposing yourselves if possible.
Madara may have left the village, but he was still the Uchiha clan head.”
Ishikawa had great faith in Mū.
“The Uchiha, huh?
Fine.”
Mū nodded.
There was only one Uchiha Madara.
There could only ever be one.
This time, Mū intended to overcome his Uchiha trauma.
He would even bring his student with him.
Then another thought entered his mind.
What if this incident drew Madara out?
Mū’s heartbeat sped up.
Not from excitement.
From fear.
The Land of Lightning faced the same situation.
The nobles had pooled together a large sum of money, and the newly established village desperately needed funding for development.
Kumogakure found it very difficult to refuse.
But Hashirama and Madara were still alive, which gave them plenty to worry about.
The Cloud ninja might act like barbarians in the original story, but they weren’t brainless.
Charging straight at Hashirama or Madara was no different from committing suicide.
So the mission could be accepted—but not officially under the village’s banner.
They would send small teams with no visible affiliation.
If they exposed any recognizable ninjutsu, they would need to destroy the evidence with different techniques afterward.
There was simply no other choice.
In this era, Hashirama and Madara’s deterrent power over the entire ninja world was absurd.
Take the tailed beasts, for example.
To other villages, a tailed beast was a natural disaster.
To those two men, the difference was basically whether they used a Wood Dragon, a giant wooden hand, or simply glared at the thing.
With such a visible gap in power, no ninja village dared develop any truly ambitious ideas while those two were still alive.
Small-team friction was different.
Hashirama couldn’t personally stop every skirmish in the world.
So the Raikage dispatched two squads.
In the Land of Wind, Sunagakure had its own meeting.
“Damn Uchiha!
He actually stole Sunagakure’s bloodlines!
We are absolutely taking this mission!”
“Kazekage-sama, calm down!
Those two monsters are still alive!”
Someone hurriedly tried to restrain him.
“Then what are we supposed to do?
Watch that thief walk away with our kekkei genkai?
And strengthen the village intelligence system while you’re at it!
We can’t let people stroll in and out whenever they please!”
The First Kazekage roared.
“Kazekage-sama, publicly we can condemn him and ask Hashirama to mediate so our people are returned.
Privately, we send a squad to assassinate him.”
“Mm.
That works.
The nobles have already issued the same mission.
If we kill him, Sunagakure receives a massive amount of funding—enough to support the village for quite some time.”
The First Kazekage agreed almost immediately.
“Kazekage-sama, I think we should send Chiyo and her brother.
Their talent is exceptional,” one man suggested.
He wanted the village’s future generation to gain experience from this mission.
“Fine.
You go as well.
I can’t personally participate in a mission like this, and I imagine the other Kage will make the same decision.”
The First Kazekage’s expression became solemn.
“Failing the mission is acceptable.
Bringing the future of our village home safely is not optional.”
Young ninja needed to grow.
A greenhouse couldn’t produce warriors.
“Yes, Kazekage-sama.”
The man hurried away to notify Chiyo, her younger brother Ebizo, and a Magnet Release ninja.
Meanwhile, at the former Takigakure, the village’s ninja were furious.
Their settlement had been developing normally, and then their Daimyo suddenly sold the entire country.
They had wanted to find the Daimyo and kill him, only to discover that he was currently inside Uchiha Mu’s new village learning ninjutsu.
That infuriated them even more.
Was the village they had worked so hard to establish supposed to disappear just like that?
Absolutely not.
So they directed all of their hatred toward Uchiha Mu and resolved to kill him.
Kakuzu led one team personally.
At this point, he had not yet been sent to assassinate the First Hokage.
He still identified strongly with his village and naturally obeyed its orders.
Unfortunately, outside of Kakuzu, Takigakure didn’t have many impressive ninja.
What it did have was numbers.
The newly organized ninja of the former Land of Frost were in a similar situation.
They had finally created some order in their country, only to be told that their Daimyo had packed up and sold everything.
Who could accept that?
Among the great nations, only the Land of Water chose not to participate.
From the Mizukage’s perspective, the numbers didn’t make sense.
The nobles of the Land of Water hadn’t issued a mission, which meant there was no guaranteed payment.
As for the bounty on the black market?
Please.
With this many countries watching Uchiha Mu, what were the odds that Kirigakure would be the one to claim his head?
They still needed intelligence, however, so the Mist sent a team whose only task was gathering information.
And just like that, the eyes of the entire ninja world turned toward this newly founded ninja nation.
Even Uchiha Madara, wandering through the world alone, heard about it.
The moment none of his clansmen chose to follow him from Konoha, Madara had effectively given up on the Uchiha Clan.
He didn’t know exactly when Mu had left.
But Mu had still been there when Madara departed, which meant he had left afterward.
“I’ll go take a look.”
Madara decided on his next destination.
It had been less than a month since he left Konoha, yet he had already witnessed a great deal of ugliness in the world.
He wanted to understand the world more thoroughly and decide whether the method of salvation recorded on the stone tablet was truly correct.
Once the great villages discovered that the former Takigakure and Frost forces were preparing to move, their covert squads all made the same convenient decision.
They would pretend to be bounty ninja.
Officially, they had simply accepted commissions from the former Waterfall and Frost ninja.
Their home villages had absolutely nothing to do with this.
Nothing whatsoever.
Soon, a force approaching one thousand ninja began moving toward Uchiha Mu’s territory.
The two groups whose countries were directly affected mobilized nearly everyone they had.
The great villages contributed elite squads.
Other small countries sent intelligence ninja.
Wandering ninja were drawn in by the enormous bounty.
Together, they formed an army nearly a thousand strong.
There were more people here than in many of the old battles between the Senju and Uchiha.
It was proof that the ninja world had entered a new era.
This would be the first war of that era.
And inconveniently for Hashirama, both sides had reasons for fighting.
Even he struggled to find a legitimate excuse to force them to stop.
Hashirama considered approaching Mu directly and asking him to back down, but Tobirama stopped him.
Hashirama could only sigh.
He knew his brother had a point.
If he forcibly suppressed the conflict now, the hatred between the two sides would only deepen and could persist for generations.
Even peace between the Senju and Uchiha had only become possible after one side won enough battles to force the situation to change.
“Besides, Brother, Uchiha Mu started this conflict,” Tobirama said.
“If you intervene personally, it won’t be good for the peace of Konoha.”
Tobirama knew exactly which argument would reach his brother.
“You’re right, Tobirama.”
Hashirama sounded helpless.
Tobirama wasn’t particularly happy to see the naturally evil Uchiha brat surrounded by enemies, either.
After all, only small squads from the three great nations were participating.
The main force consisted of the former Waterfall and Frost ninja, along with bounty hunters who valued money more than their lives.
Everyone knew what level that sort of ninja usually operated at.
If Uchiha Mu truly had awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan, they might not be enough.
And if Mu survived this crisis, Konoha would need to start treating him as one of its greatest potential threats.