Chapter 302: Ch.302 Ripple Effect
Upon receiving official news from Hidden Leaf, the villages of Cloud, Sand, and Rock, much like Mist, did not display overly intense reactions to the reappearance of "Wood Release" in Hidden Leaf.
Everyone understood that the Akatsuki organization, coveting each village's tailed beasts, was the greatest threat facing the five major shinobi villages at present.
But "Wood Release" was, after all, "Wood Release"!
Hidden Leaf's First Hokage had relied on the power of "Wood Release" to almost single-handedly reshape the millennia-long Warring States pattern of the shinobi world, ushering the shinobi realm into a new era of villages.
Now that "Wood Release" had resurfaced, whether someone in Hidden Leaf might reignite ambitions of unifying the world was something no one could predict.
Thus, beneath their outwardly mild responses, each village secretly activated contingency plans—some dispatched spies to Hidden Leaf to steal Tsunade's surgical data, while others formed teams to initiate their own experimental surgeries.
In short, regardless of whether they had previously coveted "Wood Release," every village, for the sake of their own security, now had to do their utmost to get their hands on it.
Rain Village.
News of "Wood Release" resurfacing quickly reached here as well.
In the Akatsuki organization's break room, Biwa Juzo, while polishing his Decapitating Carving Knife, asked Itachi, "Itachi, you've probably heard about the recent events in Hidden Leaf, right?"
Before Itachi could respond, Scorpion snorted from the other side, "Hmph, I didn't expect Hidden Leaf to start that kind of surgery again!"