Hizashi simply didn't have the bandwidth to oversee the entire battlefield.
Shinobi combat was highly efficient.
Aside from the major characters in the original story who would stop to chat leisurely and trade blows turn by turn—
Normal shinobi battles basically fell into three categories:
When combatants were evenly matched, it might turn into a prolonged skirmish—but the moment an opening appeared, it was usually a one-hit kill. After all, shinobi generally had high offense and low defense.
When there was a clear gap in strength, it was almost always a one-hit kill—or even one hit taking out multiple enemies.
And most shinobi combat was ambush-based—either you succeeded, or you fled.
So for the vast majority of serious shinobi, taijutsu and tool usage made up over seventy percent of their combat ability. The few jutsu they knew were reserved as finishing moves or game-changers. According to statistics, over fifty-five percent of battlefield deaths were caused by shuriken.
In just this short time, the few Iwa jōnin had already cut down a pile of Konoha chūnin.
The squads that consisted of one Konoha jōnin and two chūnin could still hold their own against the Iwa jōnin operating in pairs—but the chūnin were often the primary targets, and casualties were already mounting.
The situation was tipping—Konoha was on the verge of collapse!
By the time Hizashi could glance around at the others, at least another dozen Konoha chūnin had fallen!
Just from this, Tōji understood why over a thousand Iwa shinobi invading the Land of Fire required Konoha to send thousands to intercept and suppress them.
The enemy was sending vanguard elites!
It wasn't hard to understand—the thousands of Iwa-nin killed by the Third Raikage earlier had mostly been chūnin and genin…
What remained in Iwagakure were mostly jōnin and chūnin.
This was why, in the original story, Ōnoki couldn't find anyone from the younger generation to succeed him—the gap was too severe. After the Third War, most of Iwa's remaining forces were middle-aged veterans.
Rather than hand things over to someone like that, he might as well stay in the Kage seat for another eight or ten years.
Too bad his most promising disciple, Deidara, ended up defecting…
And now Tōji and Natchi stood beside Jakkō, watching helplessly as their Konoha comrades were struck down one by one by the Iwa-nin—unable to advance, unable to retreat.
In truth, whether Hizashi gave orders or not made little difference—the overall gap in strength was just too wide.
In his urgency, he used a technique—【Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms】—sending his opponent flying over ten meters. That Iwa-nin was probably dead.
Then he immediately moved to intercept another rampaging Iwa jōnin, while the two chūnin under his command moved to engage another.
Those chūnin under Hizashi were also from the Hyūga branch family. Only by comparison could you see why the Hyūga could claim to be one of Konoha's top two clans. Two Hyūga chūnin could go blow-for-blow with an Iwa jōnin.
This shift in momentum barely managed to stabilize the situation.
Then, the Konoha chūnin finally found a way to restrain the enemy. Several of them worked together to use binding-type jutsu to restrict the movements of two Iwa jōnin.
Most chūnin had virtually no experience fighting against jōnin! Under normal circumstances, on the battlefield, anyone who ran head-on into an enemy jōnin could only take that combat experience straight to the Pure Land. They had no experience to speak of—nine times out of ten, it was a one-hit kill!
The battle was shifting! By the time the second Iwa jōnin was taken down by Hizashi, eight of the remaining ten had immediately retreated.
Two of the Iwa jōnin voluntarily stayed behind to cover the retreat! They held out for another ten seconds or so—before being pummeled to a bloody pulp by the Konoha shinobi…
But those eight Iwa jōnin escaped cleanly!
Naturally, Hizashi couldn't send anyone to pursue.
"Hah…" Hizashi let out a sigh. "Let's get to the camp first."
With that, Hyūga Hizashi pulled out a signal flare and fired it—indicating that the fighting was over and emergency reinforcements were not needed for now.