Upon learning that the Konoha Hidden Leaf Village ninja were coming to take over the town, the residents were overjoyed and wept tears of relief. Ever since the Daimyo's army arrived, they had begun to plunder the town, seizing anything they needed from people's homes, acting like bandits. The ordinary samurai leaders of the Daimyo's army even self-righteously declared, "This is all for suppressing the rebels. As citizens of the country, you have a duty to contribute."
This greatly angered the Konoha ninja who heard it. Because of the Daimyo's army's absurd actions in the area, even ordinary people who didn't fully understand the country's situation believed that the Konoha Hidden Leaf Village ninja were truly good people and cooperated very well.
After Sarutobi Hiruzen entered the town, he met with the town officials. These civil officials naturally had no power to stop the Daimyo's army's actions. During the Daimyo's army's occupation, they had virtually no authority and had accumulated a lot of resentment.
"We still need to go and confront the national traitors. Due to the previous operations, the town has suffered considerable losses. Please stabilize the situation within the town first and calculate the losses. After the traitors are eliminated, we will discuss further handling," Sarutobi Hiruzen said.
The town officials agreed with Sarutobi Hiruzen's decision. Since it was wartime, it was impossible for Sarutobi Hiruzen and his group to stop and deal with the town's problems. They could only entrust it to these administrative officials. The Konoha Hidden Leaf Village had always had an excellent reputation, and after the civil war ended, they would likely do their best to help the town recover.
After a period of rest, Sarutobi Hiruzen and his group led the main force to set out again, heading towards their next target. Meanwhile, the intelligence ninja remained busy, gathering as much enemy intelligence as possible.
At the same time, Sarutobi Hiruzen received news from Uchiha Kagami's and Shimura Danzo's units that they had pacified the two samurai armies and were ready to rendezvous with Sarutobi Hiruzen's and Akimichi Torifu's units at any time.
Sarutobi Hiruzen immediately beamed with joy. Once the two arrived and joined the main force, the disparity in troop numbers between the two sides would further shrink, to at most about a twofold difference, allowing the Konoha combat forces to end the war more quickly.
Sarutobi Hiruzen quickly had the liaison ninja reply for them to gather swiftly. Then, he and Akimichi Torifu began to discuss the next battle plan. Without a means of high-altitude counterattack, the Daimyo's army was essentially powerless against the high-altitude striking tactics of the aerial combat units, and the ground forces closely following would make the Daimyo's army feel like they were under attack from both front and back.
"I wonder if Uchiha Kokuya has heard this news yet. If he has, he's probably terribly anxious," Sarutobi Hiruzen said to Akimichi Torifu with a smile in the tent.
At this moment, Uchiha Kokuya had already received news of the vanguard army's defeat. He was somewhat surprised, because no matter what, a samurai army of ten thousand, with a town as its base, shouldn't have lost to the ninja forces so quickly.
Upon learning that aerial combat units were conducting high-altitude bombing strikes, he fell silent.
The last time he heard news of aerial combat units was when the Jashin village he supported was destroyed. At that time, Black Zetsu had told him about the power of aerial combat units, and in the battle where he ambushed Minato, he had experienced the helplessness of facing enemies at high altitude.
"As expected of Konoha Hidden Leaf Village. If we don't work harder on our side, this war might end very quickly," Uchiha Kokuya muttered with a grim expression.
After the civil war broke out, Uchiha Kokuya himself did not leave the capital, but instead issued orders in the name of the Daimyo. As for why he didn't go personally, he naturally had his reasons.
If anyone were to see Uchiha Kokuya now, they would notice a strip of cloth wrapped around his head, firmly covering one of his eyes, leaving only the other eye visible. The reason for this was that after much internal struggle, Uchiha Kokuya finally decided to transplant Uchiha Ken's Mangekyo Sharingan into his own eye, hoping to evolve an Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan that would never go blind.
The essence of the Sharingan is that the Uchiha bloodline, due to the loss of love, produces a special chakra that causes a mutation in the optic nerve, much like a dense array of jutsu, thereby unleashing various miraculous abilities. In its normal state, it can revert the optic nerve to its original form, until chakra is injected, at which point it will change again—this is the principle of the Sharingan's activation and deactivation.
The Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan requires the combination of two Mangekyo Sharingan. Of course, this doesn't mean placing two eyeballs together. With the original eye already in place, it only requires transplanting the optic nerve-related tissues of the Mangekyo Sharingan—after all, it is the optic nerve, not the entire eye, that truly unleashes the power of the Sharingan.
The fusion of the Mangekyo Sharingan is not an instantaneous process. During the fusion period, the eye must be carefully protected. The cloth Uchiha Kokuya used had various jutsu applied to it to ensure no infection or other accidents would occur, allowing the Mangekyo Sharingan to fuse safely.
However, although Uchiha Kokuya's bloodline and Uchiha Ken's were from the same clan, there was a difference in closeness of bloodlines among clan members. The Mangekyo Sharingan had the highest success rate when the relationship was that of biological father and son or brothers. The more distant the relationship, the lower the success rate of fusion.
If the Sharingan fusion failed, at best the Sharingan would become useless and could no longer be used; at worst, it would endanger life. This was because the impact of the power generated during the Sharingan fusion process would be directly transmitted through the connected nerves, and if unlucky, it could impact the brain and cause death.
Uchiha Kokuya dared to make such a decision because he had a certain degree of confidence. He was not a pure Uchiha clan member; the soul within him came from the ethereal Pure Land. After arriving in this world, he gained some eerie special abilities. Although there was a difference in blood relation, it was not impossible for the evolution to succeed.
Each time, Uchiha Kokuya could feel various unusual sensations emanating from the fusing Mangekyo Sharingan. The pupil powers of the two collided and stimulated each other, causing a throbbing pain in his nerves. This was the point where the two Mangekyo Sharingan mutually repelled each other.
While enduring the painful stimulation, Uchiha Kokuya also used his special ability to convert the souls indirectly obtained from his "dependents" into chakra and apply it to himself, helping his body recover—this was also one of his special abilities.
It was because of this ability that when Uchiha Kokuya felt intense pain, he almost thought the evolution would fail, but he was fortunately spared.
Uchiha Kokuya silently gazed at the sky. He raised his hand and looked at his forearm, only to see a strange purple color appearing on it, as if it wasn't human skin. This was a situation that emerged as he absorbed more and more souls, and he couldn't even stop it himself.
Uchiha Kokuya could feel that as he gained more and more soul power, his body was transforming into a completely new form. Currently, he still appeared human, but he could already transform his body into a shape no one had ever seen before.
Uchiha Kokuya felt that it was somewhat similar to the tailed beast transformation of jinchuriki in legends, but jinchuriki's tailed beast transformation was due to a tailed beast inside them. What was the reason for his own transformation?
That year, Black Zetsu transplanted the dying soul into Uchiha Kokuya's corpse. Because the soul was unconscious and unaware, the resurrected "Uchiha Kokuya" only had the memories of the body's life, knowing nothing else. The traces of that soul were the special abilities Uchiha Kokuya possessed and his subconscious hatred for Fumori Masaki.
Now, Uchiha Kokuya seemed to be gradually remembering what he truly was and why he had come to this world in the first place... In the days that followed, Uchiha Kagami and Shimura Danzo quickly led their troops to rendezvous with the main force. The four happily shook hands. By this point, Sarutobi Hiruzen and Akimichi Torifu had already captured several towns. The enemy forces, as usual, had no ability to counterattack. Facing the high-altitude bombing of the aerial combat units, it was truly a scene of utter defeat.
When Shimura Danzo and Uchiha Kagami arrived, Sarutobi Hiruzen was just launching an attack on a town. At this point, they were getting closer and closer to the main force of the Daimyo's army, so the resistance also became stronger.
"Is that all?" Shimura Danzo shook his head, looking at the occasional flashes of fire on the distant town walls. "Those are imitations of explosion cannons, right? The power is indeed impressive, but that's about it."
The weapons used by the Daimyo's army on the city walls were cannons, much like those in Fumori Masaki's previous life. Unlike chakra-based technologies like the explosion cannon, these were genuine normal technologies. However, due to differences in craftsmanship, they also had certain problems.
The projectiles used by these cannons were solid shot. Unlike explosion cannons, which used explosive tags as their core and were exploding "projectiles," these solid shots would not explode after being fired. Their primary purpose was to smash people with immense impact. Exploding cannonballs did exist, but they were used infrequently, possibly because the Daimyo's army didn't have many in stock themselves.
The destructive power of these cannons was not bad, but their drawback was their slow rate of fire. The solid shots were large and heavy, and only one could be fired at a time, making them extremely slow. The Konoha Hidden Leaf Village's explosion cannons, however, were different: they fired many projectiles quickly. The disparity between the two sides was significant.
However, deploying such weapons did have some effect, causing a certain number of casualties to the Konoha combat forces. But they were quickly suppressed by the aerial combat units, unable to stir up any more trouble.
Everyone initially thought that with such a battle method, they could advance like a hot knife through butter. However, they didn't expect the enemy to employ an exceptionally despicable tactic: the Daimyo's army actually used civilians as hostages, forcing them to stand in front of the city walls, and also made civilians act as shields during battles outside.
Using civilians as shields outside was not a major problem, because Konoha's combat forces could have samurai use individual combat weapons for precise, single-target strikes against enemies, and then have ninja use Earth Release ninjutsu to create barriers, allowing civilians to safely leave the battlefield.
But in a siege, this was impossible. The enemy pushed civilians to the city walls, and Konoha's combat forces couldn't use explosion cannons for bombardment, nor did the civilians have any space to escape.
This put Konoha's combat forces in a difficult position. They could, of course, choose to disregard the lives of the civilians, but that would severely damage the Konoha Hidden Leaf Village's reputation after the civil war ended. Sarutobi Hiruzen and the others did not want to leave the impression of "disregarding civilian lives" among the people of the Land of Fire, as they were going to take over the country in the future.
The only fortunate thing was that the enemy also couldn't come out to attack Konoha's combat forces—because in that case, Konoha's combat forces would have a way to separate the enemy troops from the civilians—they could only hide inside the town and counterattack, and that would cause very limited damage to the Konoha Hidden Leaf Village.
Such actions couldn't inflict a major blow on Konoha's combat forces, but they could prolong the battle time, a situation Sarutobi Hiruzen and the others were unwilling to see.
Sarutobi Hiruzen slammed the table, extremely annoyed by the Daimyo's army's actions. However, the Daimyo's army wouldn't care what Sarutobi Hiruzen thought, because holding civilians hostage also prevented the aerial combat units from conducting concentrated bombing—in the past, because civilians were hiding in houses, aerial combat units could specifically target enemy concentrations, but now the Daimyo's army had civilians mixed in, so concentrated bombing could naturally not be adopted, as that would also harm civilians.
The Daimyo's army could disregard civilian lives and insist on attacking Konoha Hidden Leaf Village's side, creating an obstacle to Konoha Hidden Leaf Village's smooth war progress.
"This won't do. If we lose the firepower suppression of the explosion cannons and aerial combat units, our combat power will be severely affected," Akimichi Torifu said worriedly.
"Ah, we must find a solution," Sarutobi Hiruzen mused, then discussed it in detail with the other three. The Daimyo's army's actions showed their disregard for civilian lives, which was actually a good thing because it ruined the Daimyo's reputation, making it easier for Konoha Hidden Leaf Village to take over the entire country. Precisely because of this, Konoha Hidden Leaf Village couldn't tarnish its own image. Although they could argue in public opinion that it was unavoidable, unless there was truly no other option, they couldn't choose that path—if there truly was no other option, even if they had to resort to a frontal assault, there would still be room for maneuver. But if they made such a choice when the situation was still unclear, people might eventually question why they didn't try to find a solution, and the seriousness would be much higher than the former.
If they abandoned the explosion cannon bombardment, everyone thought they could have the ninja forces conduct rapid, individual strikes. The enemy's actions, to some extent, were indeed troublesome, but they also lost the samurai's most skilled formation—because civilians were mixed in—the ninja forces would have a huge advantage, but it would require careful planning and be somewhat troublesome to execute.
After some discussion, everyone reached a conclusion: letting the ninja forces conduct small-team assaults would be put aside for now. They would first choose some gentler methods. They decided to use medicine! They would fire a large number of anesthetic darts instead of cannonballs. Anesthetic darts would not harm people's lives, only cause them to fall unconscious. Even the chakra samurai, who were like puppets, relied on nervous activity, so anesthetic gas would also be effective.
In the last Shinobi World War, Sunagakure Hidden Sand Village had used a similar gas tactic, but the gas they used was poison gas. Konoha Hidden Leaf Village, however, had to consider the safety of civilians and couldn't use such dangerous gas. At that time, Konoha Hidden Leaf Village relied on a large amount of antidotes developed by Tsunade to solve the problem and did not adopt the approach of researching defensive tools—mainly because the situation at the time did not allow it. Later, Konoha Hidden Leaf Village had already developed corresponding protective tools in its own village, but these were not promoted to the samurai armies nationwide.
"It looks like we need to prepare a large number of anesthetic gas bombs," Sarutobi Hiruzen said. Anesthetic darts that could knock people out were part of traditional ninja tools, but for large-scale operations, the quantity needed would be considerable.