bookbashuk Chapter 464 The Enraged Civilians
Chapter 464 The Enraged Civilians
The allied forces, numbering eight thousand, suffered more than half their losses overnight. The remaining half were far from loyal; they merely watched coldly, waiting for the conflict to escalate, ready to defect at any moment. The Fourth Raikage, enraged, smashed three chairs in the command center.
However, some insightful and intelligent people had already seen through the nature of this conflict and withdrew from the vortex long before the flames of war ignited.
"In the end, it's just a game of chess played by the big shots at the top. No matter how hard we pawns try, we're just filling the holes in the end."
The one who said these words was a middle-aged wandering ninja.
Before leaving, he distributed all his life savings to several young ninjas around him, hoping they could survive the winter. Then he disappeared into the vast sea of people, never to be seen again.
On January 17, the war between the two sides officially began.
The Fourth Raikage, A, served as the battlefield commander-in-chief of the Shinobi Alliance.
His tactics were simple: he would lead his troops to draw fire from the front, since those cannon fodder were useless on the actual battlefield anyway.
Of course, it wouldn't be a direct confrontation, but rather jungle warfare or street battles, since the flying Seven-Tails is quite terrifying. Only with civilians protecting them could they fight freely.
Afterwards, small units were dispatched to infiltrate simultaneously from all fronts into the territory of New Taki no Kuni, carrying out sabotage and harassment.
A group of two thousand wandering ninjas, divided into hundreds of four-person squads, secretly infiltrated various border areas of the Land of New Waterfall. Their mission was simple: burn down granaries, blow up bridges, kill civilians, and create panic.
This is the oldest tactic: plant fear in the enemy's rear, so that the troops on the front lines lose their will to fight.
The Fourth Raikage sat in the command room, watching the markers representing each squad on the map cross the border one by one, a cold smile appearing on his lips.
"Let's see how they respond this time."
After all, they are professional ninjas. Dealing with civilians who only know how to play with insects is a piece of cake for them.
But he underestimated the land of water.
He also underestimated the people of Taki no Kami.
The moonlight was dim in the border village. Three wandering ninjas squatted on the earthen wall at the village entrance, looking down at the scattered lights in the village.
The leader of the ninjas was named Tesmaru, formerly a wandering Chunin from the Land of Rain, who was quite adept at using Earth Release techniques. His mission this time was to infiltrate the village and kill every living person who could move, leaving no survivors.
"this one?"
Iron Ball scoffed.
He had expected the border defenses of Taki no Kyu to be very tight, but to his surprise, it was just a row of low wooden fences, with not even a single patrolling person.
"Captain, let's make our move," a young ninja whispered from behind, his tone filled with a murderous excitement.
Tiewan nodded, waved his hand, and the three of them jumped down from the earthen wall, landing silently in the village.
The first house at the village entrance had its light on. Through the paper window, an old man could be seen mending clothes under the lamp.
Tie Wan walked over and kicked the door open.
The old man looked up, a look of horror appearing on his wrinkled face.
"Who...who are you?"
"The one who sends you on your way."
Tie Wan drew the short sword from behind his back and plunged it into the old man's chest.
Blood splattered out, staining the cloth under the lamp red. The old man's eyes widened, his mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out, and his body slowly collapsed to the ground.
The young ninja behind him licked his lips excitedly and rushed into the next room, where a woman's scream came from, but quickly stopped.
Three ninjas wreaked havoc in the village, killing their way from one end to the other, from one household to another.
Overnight, all forty-six people perished.
Under the moonlight, the blood formed a small stream, flowing slowly along the dirt road in the village, emitting a nauseating stench.
Tie Wan stood at the village entrance, wiping the blood off his knife with the dead man's clothes. His face was expressionless, even somewhat disappointed. The mission was too simple, so simple that it bored him.
"Report, Squad Eight has completed its mission."
After saying this into the communicator, he and his two men disappeared into the night.
Such massacres of villages were staged more than a dozen times on the same night.
Even a centipede with a hundred legs doesn't die easily. But when slaughter falls on every ordinary person, it's a catastrophe.
The two-thousand-strong force turned the villages on the border of Taki no Kyu into a blood-red hell.
Those ordinary people who had lived in the shadow of ninjas since birth had almost no power to resist when faced with well-trained ninjas.
Some of them were burned to death, some were drowned, some had their hearts pierced by kunai, and some were blown to pieces by ninjutsu.
Overnight, more than a thousand people died.
Dozens of villages on the border of the land of Niitaki were reduced to ashes overnight.
However, what these butchers of the Ninja Alliance didn't know was that they were igniting not fear, but rage.
When the news reached the rear, the Land of Waterfall was in an uproar. The first letter requesting help was delivered to Naoto at 2 a.m.
He was reviewing documents when he saw the scene described in the letter, and his fingers holding the pen paused for a moment.
The second, the third... more and more pleas for help came like snowflakes, each one more urgent and more tragic than the last.
Naoto's expression grew increasingly grim. Finally, he placed the pen on the table and closed his eyes.
He did not immediately order the troops to be deployed. Because he knew that the anger no longer needed to be ignited by him.
The people of Taki no Kuni are not ordinary people.
Over the past few years, Yu Nu Zhicheng has been doing two things: cultivating insect swarms and teaching people how to coexist with insect swarms.
It wasn't for war, but to help people survive on the barren lands of the border.
Insects can help with turning the soil, sowing seeds, fertilizing, pest control, and even helping to establish communication networks.
With the help of these insects, the grain production of the Land of Waterfall increased several times over, and the lives of the people improved day by day.
Most importantly, there are the monitoring insects that transmit information. These insects cannot speak or fight, but they do a very important thing: they record everything that happens and then broadcast it to every household via radio.
Nowadays, every household in the Land of Waterfalls has several Telecommunication Bugs that receive signals to varying degrees.
They lie quietly under the eaves, on the windowsills, and by the doorframes, receiving signals not through sound or smell, but through a method incomprehensible to humans: swarm resonance.
As soon as another insect records the received signal, it will immediately relay the message to all insects within a hundred miles. And the insects within a hundred miles will relay it to those even further away.
Overnight, the people of Taki no Kyushu learned of what had happened at the border, and some powerful citizens immediately rushed to the border with their summoning insects.