The Old Man

After that, Yukan's dreams were shattered.

He lit the bonfire and sat in front of it with Sakumo while they both warmed their hands.

After some time, it got dark and they both set up a tent.

"So, who will be protecting in the first half?" Sakumo asked.

"I will do it, you go and sleep." Yukan answered Sakumo. He used to think that not being interrupted during sleep would be the best so he would sleep in the second half of the night.

Sakumo agreed to what Yukan said, he went into the tent to sleep first.

When it was almost time to switch with Sakumo, Yukan felt a presence in the bushes near him.

Yukan was worried if he would have to miss his sweet sleep to fight some shinobi, but he still went into the bushes and checked them.

After searching for a while, he saw an old man looking at their tents and hesitating to do something.

Yukan appeared in front of him and asked the old man," What do you want?"

Yukan wanted to make sure that the old man was not a ninja.

When Yukan saw the old man's skin all dried and his cheekbones visible, he was sure that the old man was not a ninja.

'His state is not even suitable to walk, there is no way he is a ninja, how can he even fight a rabbit?'

The old man saw Yukan but was not surprised, he had seen ninjas a lot in his life.

"My lord, do you have any extra food or even any leftovers to give to this old man? My granddaughter has not eaten anything in the last 4 days, please help us, we even lost our home in the war." The old man knelt and begged Yukan to give him some food.

Yukan felt bad that the war the shinobi fought made the old man lose his home, it was not only him, a lot of people did not even survive this long.

But Yukan also knew that wars were inevitable.

Yukan was not cruel enough to send off a dying old man, so he took out the scroll which had all of his and Sakumo's rations and gave the old man a day's worth of food.

"Here, take this, you should eat this." Yukan handed the old man the food.

The man accepted the food and he thanked Yukan as he hurried back to feed his granddaughter.

Yukan went back and woke Sakumo up.

"Hey Sensei, it is your turn now." Yukan woke Sakumo up.

"Did anything happen?" Sakumo asked as he woke up and stretched his body a little.

Yukan narrated everything that happened with the old man.

Sakumo heard and then he went out of the tent.

After that Yukan had a peaceful sleep.

In the morning, Yukan came out of the tent while yawning.

He saw Sakumo dozing off.

Yukan woke him up and asked," How long have you been sleeping?"

"I did not see the daybreak," Sakumo answered sleepily.

Yukan hit his palm on his forehead, he was never going to give the job of protecting the camp at night to Sakumo ever again.

Since then, 1 week has passed.

Now, Yukan is learning how to tread on water.

Sakumo had promised to teach Yukan how to infuse chakra into his weapon and for that Yukan needed to have a high degree of chakra control.

It took Yukan a day to be able to completely climb the tree and now it is the second day that Yukan is trying to tread the water.

"Sensei, at least give me a tip or something," Yukan shouted in Sakumo's direction.

"You know, I heard that Minato has been able to do it since a year ago," Sakumo answered.

He wanted to make the fighting spirit in Yukan light up.

"You know, Sensei, that is a very childish way to try and motivate me," Yukan answered

Sakumo was embarrassed. He had hoped that his student would do better but…

As Sakumo was getting embarrassed, he felt some shinobi movement.

"Hey Yukan, come back. I sense some shinobi, they may be the ones we are waiting for." Sakumo called Yukan as he took out his blade.

Yukan also took out his katana.

He had decided that this would be his last fight with the katana since it had gotten old and was not as good as before.

Yukan and Sakumo were hiding in a dense group of trees.

"There are around 15 jonin and 34 chunin and almost 100 genin. This shit is going to be very very tough." Sakumo said.

He was sure he would be able to kill all of them if he was alone and make it out alive without any injuries but now, he was worried about Yukan.

"It is OK, we can either go with the plan that you kill the jonin and some chunin while I kill all the genin or vice-a-versa. We also have the explosion tag right under where the jonin are standing. How old have you gotten to forget so easily?" Yukan gave a very brief plan.

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot about it. Tee-Hee." Sakumo made a playful expression.

Of the Kiri Shinobi who just appeared, some started talking.

Yukan and Sakumo heard them carefully in hopes that they would get some useful information.

"Hey, are you sure those two are here? We were given the mission at the last moment." One of the jonin asked.

"Yes, I am sure. Mizukage-Sama himself told me. Let's search for them. We have to kill them for sure."

Sakumo and Yukan were wondering how the Kiri Shinobi knew that the two of them would come here.

It was not possible unless there was a mole in Konoha's camps.

"Looks like I'll have to clean the camp after this," Sakumo mumbled.

As the Kiri shinobi were about to search, the explosion tags activated.

There was no formation the Kiri Shinobi maintained, all the jonin were gathered in one place.

All the jonin were able to sense explosion tags as soon as they went off but only some were able to dodge.

Due to a large number of people, many were not able to move and ended up dying a fool's death on the battlefield.