The next day.
Early morning.
Uchiha Haruki summoned Uchiha Tekka and handed him a written letter.
"What's this?"
Tekka looked at the letter in his hand, confused.
"It's a message I wrote to Elder Kazen. I need you to deliver it to him."
Haruki explained, noticing his puzzlement.
"Elder Kazen? Got it."
Tekka nodded, not asking about the contents of the letter.
He bit his thumb and quickly formed the seals: Boar–Dog–Bird–Monkey–Ram. Using his blood as the medium, he performed the Summoning Technique.
Poof—
A puff of chakra smoke burst open, and a ninja cat appeared. It wasn't large—looked just like a chubby orange tabby from Haruki's past life.
This was Tekka's personal summoning beast.
"Meow~"
The cat yawned lazily upon arrival, clearly not having slept well the night before.
Tekka didn't pay attention to its mood. He crouched down, looked at the cat, and said, "Little Ju, I need a favor."
As the cat looked up, Tekka held out the letter. "Here, take this and deliver it to Elder Kazen."
With that, he stuffed the letter into the cat's mouth.
The orange tabby rolled its eyes in a very human-like way, clearly annoyed. Still, it opened its mouth, swallowed the letter, and vanished without another sound.
Watching the creature disappear, Tekka stood up and said to Haruki, "It's done. Little Ju will deliver the letter within a day at most."
"Good."
Haruki nodded.
After exchanging a few more words, the two went their separate ways.
Or rather, Uchiha Tekka went to handle his duties—Haruki had other priorities. After eating breakfast, he headed to the forest behind the outpost to train.
Recently, Kirigakure (Hidden Mist Village) had been surprisingly quiet, and Haruki intended to make the most of the time to cultivate.
······
In the blink of an eye, two more days passed.
That evening.
In the woods.
Haruki wrapped up his day's training and recalled all of his shadow clones. He focused on absorbing the gains from the last two days.
Since successfully developing his flight ninjutsu, he had redirected the 7,000 chakra points that were previously earmarked for development into improving skill proficiency.
Now, two days later, his Wind Release: Wings of Wind had risen from Lv1 (70/200) to Lv2 (35/500)!
Upon reaching Lv2, the technique had evolved once again.
Most notably—his flight speed.
Compared to Lv1, it had doubled, from 10 meters/second to 20 meters/second, equivalent to 72 km/hour.
Without a doubt, that was no longer considered slow.
More importantly, maintaining this speed didn't consume noticeably more chakra.
If flying at 36 km/h felt like a drain, then 72 km/h was manageable.
After all, sometimes time is life. Saving half the travel time was worth burning more chakra.
Aside from this, Haruki also noticed a significant change in his physical state—he was on the verge of another breakthrough.
After nearly 40 days of physical enhancement, he had built up enough foundation. In another three or four days, he would reach the critical threshold.
At that point, with the awakening of the Mangekyō Sharingan and the use of Guardian of Humanity to guide him, he could easily shatter the bottleneck and further increase his Constitution stat.
With that, he'd have more than enough chakra to begin developing both the Mind Link Secret Technique and the Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique.
Yes—although he had already committed to progressing in both directions, his chakra reserves had been too tight to begin practical development. These past two days had been spent purely on theory and planning.
Only because he was confident in the upcoming transformation—and the chakra recovery it would bring—had he held off on reallocating chakra.
This way, he could fully prepare mentally, and when the time came, use less chakra to execute things perfectly.
These thoughts passed quickly through Haruki's mind. He shook them off, got up, and walked out of the woods toward the clifftop outpost.
Half an hour later—
After hastily finishing dinner, Haruki entered the briefing room.
A few subordinates had already arrived early.
Haruki didn't waste time. He went straight to having them report on the day's work.
Though he had delegated most tasks to others, he still needed to monitor things personally to stay on top of real-time developments at the outpost.
That way, if the enemy made a move, he'd be ready.
Soon, the reports were finished.
Confirming that nothing major had occurred, Haruki assigned tasks for the next day and then left the room quickly.
Back in his quarters, he didn't go to bed immediately.
As usual, he sat cross-legged and began performing Mystic Palm Technique and Mind Projection Technique—to simultaneously strengthen his body and promote the evolution of his Sharingan.
Time passed slowly.
Before he knew it, it was deep night.
Moonlight shone through the window, illuminating the room.
Haruki opened his eyes, visibly exhausted.
Letting his arms drop, he muttered, "Finally finished."
He didn't linger. Walking over to the bed, he relaxed his shoulders and collapsed.
Just seconds later, soft snores began to rise—he had fallen asleep.
······
At the same time...
Far out at sea, a good distance from Eagle's Beak Cliff.
Under the moonlight, several ships glided silently across the water—no lights, no noise—each one eerily resembling a ghost ship.
But they weren't ghost ships.
They were Kirigakure warships.
Following the devastating loss of their last infiltration squad, the Hidden Mist had lain low for about a week. But now, they were on the move again.
And this time—it wasn't a small raid.
Indeed, the assault was not limited to Eagle's Beak Cliff—multiple strategic locations had been chosen as tonight's targets.
This night, Kirigakure was launching a full-scale attack.
At this moment, the forward base at the southeastern coast of the Land of Waves, previously used as a staging ground by the Mist, had been all but emptied of personnel.
Everyone had moved with the main assault force to the frontlines.
Kirigakure was determined to break through Konoha's defenses at the eastern border of the Land of Fire in a single, decisive strike—and push the frontlines deep into enemy territory.
Of course, they weren't acting blindly.
The selected targets were known weak points along various defensive lines.
After extended conflict, Mist had finally gathered enough intel to identify those vulnerabilities.
Originally, even with that intel, it wouldn't have mattered much—without knowing the exact troop distribution inside the strongholds, they couldn't make precise moves.
But just recently, the Mist ANBU had obtained that very information.
And that intel gave them the opening they needed.
After confirming its accuracy, Kirigakure launched an all-out offensive.
Tonight—was the moment they had chosen to strike.