In the 50th year of Konoha, the Konoha ninja withdrew from the Land of Earth.
As the Land of Earth regained its independence, the situation in the ninja world seemed to have returned to calm. At least national leaders such as the Raikage, Mizukage, and Kazekage no longer shouted that Konoha was a threat.
But no country felt at ease, and everyone was secretly trying hard to expand the ninja team and increase the number of ninjas.
Beneath the calm surface of the ninja world, undercurrents were surging, soon creating ripples on the water.
First of all, in the Land of Earth, just one month after the Konoha ninja withdrew, several ninjas who claimed to be the Fourth Tsuchikage appeared.
They formed Iwagakure villages with strange prefixes and fought against the Iwagakure villages formed by Konoha in the Ten Thousand Mountains of the Land of Earth.
But Orochimaru put a lot of thought into rebuilding the Iwagakure Village. The six leaders he selected were all very powerful Iwagakure jonin, who were no match for these messy wild ninjas.
For example, the Jonin in charge of public security is the Five-Tails Jinchuriki from the old Iwagakure Village era, a Kage-level ninja nicknamed the Steam Ninja. He has no pressure at all in dealing with those rat-like enemies.
Moreover, the Konoha Village has completely delegated power to the Iwagakure Village. The six leaders can truly grasp the power, and the new Iwagakure ninjas are all vested interests. No matter how many conflicts there are between them, they can stand firm and unite against foreign enemies.
For a whole year, no major events of significance occurred in the Land of Earth, and the entire ninja world seemed unusually peaceful.
The ripples on the water surface are just ripples and cannot develop into waves.
But beneath the calm water, two real undercurrents are continuously accumulating strength and extending their tentacles.
The first one was of course Uchiha Yuu, who began to spread the magical existence of the [System] among all the ninja groups, increasing the number of [System] hosts to a full thousand.
After the end of the Third Ninja World War, due to the restructuring of Konoha Village, the number of ninjas did not decrease as after the previous two wars. Instead, it continued to increase, and the total number has exceeded 100,000.
That is to say, one percent of the ninjas became hosts of the [System]. Judging from the proportion, the number of ninjas who have hosts is not large.
But the actual situation cannot be simply viewed in numbers.
Uchiha You is a picky person, and the requirements for the host ninja he chooses are very strict.
The hosts of the [system] are basically three types of people.
The first type is children with excellent qualities and great potential but lack of resources.
The second type is the jonin who has been troubled by a bottleneck for a long time and has not made any progress in strength, but has plenty of life left.
The third type is celebrities who have a name in history and will achieve great success in the future.
After a detailed analysis, it was discovered that among the young people with great potential, as many as a quarter of them possessed the [System], and all the future stars who had the potential to stand out in history were caught in one fell swoop.
Among the jonin who hold real power in the ninja world, one third are hosts of the [System].
Uchiha You implanted almost all the elites in the ninja world with the [System], turning them into his free researchers.
The popularity of the [System] among elite ninjas is already very high, but it is still an undercurrent in the ninja world.
This is mainly because Uchiha You's goal is to spread the practice of immortal ways and recover the results of immortal research, and it does not involve specific struggles for power and interests, so it is not so conspicuous.
In addition, out of instinctive selfishness, every host regards the existence of the [System] as a secret and tries their best to keep it secret.
Even in battle, they would treat magic as a trump card and would not use it until the last desperate moment.
The second ninja revolution led by Konoha Village was in its ascendant period. The conflicts of interest between ninjas were eased, and there were not so many life and death disputes. Even for a whole year, no ninja had used magic to fight with others.
Another potential force that is developing rapidly is the Akatsuki organization.
Nagato and Konan saw the changes in the ninja world, recognized the second ninja reform led by Konoha Village, and took the initiative to transform the Hidden Rain Village into the Rain Country Government.
In the three Ninja World Wars, the Rain Country was one of the core battlefields and the main battlefield where the three major ninja villages gathered. The aristocratic forces in the country had long been destroyed by the war.
Therefore, it was no difficulty for the Hidden Rain Village led by Nagato to rule the Rain Country. Then Konan and Kakuzu referred to the practice of Konoha Village and organized the Hidden Rain Ninjas to implement large-scale infrastructure in the Rain Country.
Thanks to the great power of many Kage-level ninjas, the Rain Country was soon built into a brand new look, with rain shelters running through the country and farmland with smooth drainage that would not be flooded.
When production in the Land of Earth resumed, the infrastructure in the Land of Rain was also completed, and it was fully capable of meeting the skyrocketing logistics demand caused by the rapid recovery of business.
As a result, the Hidden Rain Village gained a huge amount of profits and developed rapidly.
The Hidden Rain Village became rich, and the Akatsuki organization also had abundant funds and began to expand wildly.
A large number of ninjas who could not accept a stable environment joined the Akatsuki organization.
For example, after all the members of the Seven Ninjas of the Hidden Mist Village defected, almost all of them joined the Akatsuki organization and became core members. The Akatsuki organization suddenly became a powerful organization with combat power second only to the Konoha Village.
The growth of Akatsuki naturally does not only rely on Nagato and Konan, but more importantly on the thousand-year-old ghost Black Zetsu, who uses his experience to help Nagato make decisions, help Konan with their implementation, and help Kakuzu manage accounts.
The reason why Black Zetsu is so proactive is because he has seen the tremendous changes in the ninja world.
The changes in the ninja world led by Konoha Village are full of vitality, and its powerful vitality is pushing the ninja world towards lasting peace.
In the past, Black Zetsu was not afraid of peace, because peace could not stop his plan to save Kaguya Otsutsuki. The ninja who mastered the Rinnegan would possess power that exceeded the sum of all the power in the ninja world.
But now he no longer has such confidence. He was surprised to find that this round of peace was accompanied by a surge in the overall strength of the ninjas, and the growth momentum was getting stronger and stronger, with no sign of slowing down.
The current situation of the ninja world completely overturned Black Zetsu's cognition, making him realize that Konoha Village had broken the upper limit of the ninja world, and everything was different from the past thousand years.
If we don't speed up the plan and allow the situation to continue to develop, the power of the ninja may exceed a certain limit.
By then, even with the Rinnegan, Nagato would be unable to suppress the ninja world. How could they collect the nine tailed beasts, resurrect the Ten-Tails to create a Jinchūriki, and gather the minimum amount of chakra to help Kaguya Otsutsuki escape?
Therefore, Black Zetsu must take the initiative to speed up the development of the Akatsuki organization and prepare sufficient forces to capture the tailed beasts.
But Black Zetsu didn't know that his anxiety and panic were not only caused by his own heart, but there was a dark hand behind him quietly pushing him.
It was the Six Paths Sage Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo who reached out his hand in the Pure Land and pushed his younger brother, magnifying his anxiety a hundredfold and causing him to make a radical decision in his anxious mood.
If there hadn't been the push from the Six Paths Sage, given Black Zetsu's character, he would have chosen to continue to wait and see.
Especially after judging that there is no chance for the time being, Black Zetsu will most likely choose to retract the Rinnegan, and then lurk deeply, waiting for the next historical opportunity for the decline of the ninja world.
As the mastermind who has been observing the ninja world for thousands of years and secretly planned and created the Rinnegan, Black Zetsu's patience is unquestionable.
Especially since he has already obtained a pair of Rinnegan, and the only condition left is to resurrect the Ten-Tails, so waiting a few hundred more years is not a problem at all.
But the Sage of Six Paths could not wait any longer, ever since he helped his brother Hamura to descend a second time and develop from infancy on the moon, he had noticed his increasing uneasiness.
He knew that some great crisis was approaching him, but he didn't know what it was.
Maybe it's from the alien Otsutsuki clan, which is the clan my mother is from.
Maybe it was the god who had fought a battle once, the Shinto Tentei who stood behind Uchiha Yuu.
Perhaps some other enemy or disaster of which he was totally unaware.
In short, the future crisis will be a major crisis that the Six Paths Sage will have to face, and it will inevitably put his life in danger.
Before that, Otsutsuki Hagoromo needs to eliminate the hidden dangers he knows about, such as his mother Otsutsuki Kaguya.
The mother's seal has been worn out by thousands of years and no longer has the perfect characteristics it had thousands of years ago. It is time to reseal it and reinforce it.
And there is also the younger brother Black Zetsu who was born a thousand years ago.
Over the past thousand years, he has jumped up and down, and has tampered with the moon seal countless times. No matter how good the seal is, it cannot withstand such day-to-day wear and tear.
If it weren't for Black Zetsu's unremitting efforts, such a big loophole should not have appeared in a thousand years, allowing Kaguya Ōtsutsuki's soul to seep out and be resurrected in the body of the Ten-Tails Jinchūriki.
This time, we must catch this guy Black Zetsu and seal him together with my mother's soul. It would be best if we could seal him in my mother's Ame-no-Go-Chū space.
That way you won't have to worry about the risk of being sabotaged.
But whether it is the spread of immortal cultivation forces or the expansion of the Akatsuki organization, there are various reasons that require a lot of time to develop slowly.
Ninjas can quickly get started with the way of immortality with the help of the system, but their progress thereafter is extremely slow.
After Uchiha You obtained the big data of thousands of ninjas, he realized that the talents of himself, Miwa Masayo, and Uchiha Shisui were so incredible.
Even Uchiha Ayumi, whom he had despised for a long time, could be considered a genius.
In fact, the ninjas who are hosts do not think they are bad. They even feel that their training is progressing very quickly.
Especially those jonin hosts, after just one year of training after entering the door, they broke through the bottleneck that troubled them and their strength began to improve significantly.
They are really satisfied.
In view of the slow progress of ordinary ninjas in practicing the immortal way, Uchiha You could only suppress his anxiety and wait patiently for time to give him the results he wanted.
The situation of Akatsuki was not ideal either. Akatsuki had absorbed too many rebellious ninjas, causing instability within the organization.
Even with the powerful strength of Nagato and Konan, it would still take a long time to unite the Akatsuki organization, which has expanded several times, and form a strong fighting force.
Nagato wants to test the members, select the real core members through elimination, and then through repeated actions, let his invincible strength be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, so as to unite the hearts of the people in the Akatsuki organization.
After receiving huge financial support, Akatsuki's next target is the nine tailed beasts. They need to arrange spies to gather specific information about the Jinchūriki and the tailed beasts.
The tailed beasts are the deterrent weapons of the major ninja villages. The gains and losses of any tailed beast are the focus of attention, and it is unknown how many ninjas are watching them.
As long as one of the tailed beasts is captured or goes missing, it will inevitably cause a huge shock in the ninja world, thereby increasing the chances of Akatsuki being exposed.
The tailed beasts that Akatsuki wants to obtain are not one or a few, but all nine.
Because of the existence of Uchiha Yuu in Konoha Village, Nagato knew that he was not invincible in the ninja world.
Without knowing that Uchiha Yuu was facing a threat from the Six Paths Sage and did not dare to show up casually, Nagato did not have the confidence that he could wipe out the ninja world as he did in history.
Therefore, the consensus of all the people in Akatsuki organization is that capturing the nine tailed beasts must be accomplished in a very short period of time, so that all the forces in the ninja world do not have time to react and the world-destroying weapon can be completed.
After that, he can use the world-destroying weapon to help Nagato defeat Uchiha Yu and become the highest force in the ninja world. The Akatsuki organization can also replace Konoha Village and dominate the fate of the ninja world.
"In order to create eternal peace, I have the patience to wait for the right time."
Nagato expressed his determination to Konan.
Konan nodded in agreement with her best friend, and also raised her own question: "If Akatsuki replaces Konoha Village to control the ninja world, it will definitely have enormous power."
"Nagato, I am worried about the core members of Akatsuki. They are all ninjas who defected from various major ninja villages. They are not idealists like you and me. I can conclude now that they will definitely become the most terrible corrupt people."
“What do we do with these members now?”
Nagato smiled and said, "Don't worry about them. They are just tools for us to realize our dreams. I won't let them live until victory."
Konan was silent. She stared at the thoughtful Nagato in a daze and asked hesitantly, "They are all elite jonin, some are even Kage-level ninjas. Do you want to kill them?"
Nagato had obviously thought about how to deal with this group of people for a long time. When he heard Konan's question, he answered directly: "First, in the next screening, some of them will be eliminated."
"Then, in the process of hunting the tailed beasts, they will have to fight against the Kage-level ninjas from various ninja villages, and they will inevitably suffer a number of losses."
Konan frowned and said, "This is not enough. As long as we want our plan to hunt the tailed beast to succeed, we will inevitably let most of the core members survive."
Nagato shook his head and said, "Don't worry, the big head of death will be there after the tailed beast is captured successfully."
"When we create the ultimate weapon, the attempt to seize the tailed beasts will inevitably be exposed. Before experiencing the power of the ultimate weapon, Konoha Village will inevitably form an alliance with the major ninja villages and start a war with the Akatsuki organization."
"If you and I were just a little slower in this final battle, the core members would have suffered heavy casualties, or even all of them would have been wiped out, clearing the way for eternal peace."
Konan was stunned for a few seconds, then nodded: "It's a perfect plan. Although it's a bit cruel to them, it's the price that must be paid in order to achieve eternal peace in the ninja world."
But she immediately asked, "But I don't think this is what Nagato thinks. Did someone else tell you?"
Nagato frowned and said, "No, I just came up with it myself, but..."
When Konan saw Nagato frowning, she also frowned and looked at Nagato waiting for his follow-up words.
But Nagato hesitated and remained silent for a long time, and finally said: "It's nothing, I just thought of it myself."
A look of suspicion flashed across Xiaonan's eyes, but he said nothing and let this little episode pass.
Nagato's original personality was gentle, shy and introverted, but because of Yahiko's death, his personality changed 180 degrees and he became suspicious, sensitive, fierce and crazy.
But Konan knew that this was just a protective shell, and that Nagato was still the same gentle and kind boy at heart, it was just buried deep inside.
Nagato has indeed changed. He will take crazy revenge on the Rain Ninja and kill any enemy cruelly.
But he has not changed. He will accept innocent ninjas from the Hidden Rain Village and will do his best to protect ordinary people in the Rain Country.
Regardless of whether a person is a ninja or not, as long as he does not directly block Nagato's pursuit of his dream, he will never be actively attacked by Nagato.
Konan knew Nagato so well that of course she could sense that there was something wrong with Nagato's plan.
This murder plan was thorough and natural, but it was full of malicious speculation from the beginning, and it was determined that these core members would become a scourge to peace in the future.
Based on such malicious predictions, without considering the possibility of saving these members, and without thinking about designing a system to prevent them from corruption, a plan was formulated to eliminate them on the eve of success.
This plan is definitely not Nagato's style.
Xiaonan was extremely certain.
[Who is it? ]
[Who influenced Nagato's thinking and made him change like this? ]
Konan actually doesn't care about the lives of the rebel ninjas from the major ninja villages. It doesn't matter whether they live or die, but she cares very much about Nagato's changes.
She didn't know what this person who was hiding in the dark and influencing Nagato actually intended for Nagato.
If this person had malicious intentions, he would most likely harm Nagato.
Konan can't accept Nagato being hurt, she must find this man and figure out what his purpose is.
But she didn't know how to do it.
The entire Akatsuki organization has no secrets from Konan, and Nagato has no secrets from Konan, but she doesn't know of this person's existence, so she has no idea how to investigate.
Xiaonan raised his head and looked at the dome of the house that was painted as the blue sky, and thought of someone in his heart.
[Uchiha Yuu, although our positions are hostile, he doesn't know this. ]
[Under the watchful eyes of the Emperor of the Divine Court, he would not dare to deceive me. As long as the price I offered was high enough, he would definitely give me the right advice.]
In the past year, several Divine Court meetings have been held.
Because there are only a few members, after many transactions, they have guessed each other's identities, and the blurring of faces and voices seems unnecessary.
After soliciting opinions from everyone, the Emperor of Heaven removed the blurring of images and voices, and even stopped forcing people to use code names when addressing others.
He also announced at the time that if new members were added in the future, he would ask for the opinions of every new and old member and shield each person's identity individually.
After nightfall, Xiaonan came to the most secret corner of the Hidden Rain Village and prayed to the Emperor of Heaven.