Sage Chakra

Even though he had acquired the Mangekyou Sharingan, Uchiha Keshiro didn't show it to anyone on the frontlines again. He never felt the need to. He could easily deal with a lot of Shinobi without even using his Sharingan…

The Tsuchikage received the news of Shimoda Takeo's death. Alongside grieving the death of great shinobi of Iwagakure, he was absolutely angered that someone from Konoha had managed to kill him. Moreover, he heard that it was someone from the Uchiha Clan. Someone with that accursed Sharingan!

No one in Iwagakure hated the Uchiha Clan members more than the Third Tsuchikage. Perhaps it stemmed from the time when he had been humiliated by the Legendary Uchiha Madara. Those damn eyes…

However, instead of taking revenge for Shimoda Takeo, he pulled back the Shinobi stationed near Ame. There was no need to add more to the casualties. They must conserve their forces for the Third Shinobi War. Or else, even if Iwa and Kumo joined hands and managed to deal with Konoha, Iwa would be far too weak to make any further movements. Kumo or maybe Kiri could use that chance to attack them as well.

After all, in the world of Shinobi, one simply couldn't trust a mere agreement. That would be the peak of naiveness. Almost all the village leaders were aware of this fact.

Iwa had seemingly pulled back from the frontlines against Ame. Hanzo was quite delighted to know of this. Now, he could keep the people under him by force even without the support from Konoha. After all, Iwa shouldn't try anything in a short time.

Knowing that they wouldn't be fighting for quite some time, Minato had started to meet with more people from Jiraiya's Spy Network. In this nearly one year or so, he had grasped all of Jiraiya's contacts in the Land of Rain. He had also doubled his time in studying the Flying Raijin Jutsu seals and started writing his notes. Uzumaki Isao would naturally help him out a little here and there, but he let Minato work alone most of the time.

Now that one year had come to an end, these surviving Konoha Shinobi were returning while another batch of 100 Elite Shinobi from Konoha was going to be dispatched for Ame.

Hanzo was quite satisfied with this. He told the Hokage that in return of such a favour, he might ask for Hanzo's personal assistance at any time. And Hanzo promised to do everything in his power to accomplish the task given to him.

Naturally, the Third Hokage was aware of Hanzo, the Salamander's pride. He normally wouldn't give out such a promise. But since he had given it out now, he would do everything in his power to fulfil it.

A plan formed in his head as he readily accepted this offer.

Meanwhile, in Uzushio…

The 'Samazaki' Clan from the Land of Waves had been given a command. The command was to change the seals around the island.

The last time he had given this suggestion to the Uzumaki Clan Head, Uzumaki Hishin, the man had mentioned that it would take a long time to accomplish that.

Now… Out of 2000 or so Uzumaki Clan Members, 300 Uzumaki Clan Members would regularly work on the seals around the island. They were changing the routes and also adding quite a few twists on Araki's demand.

They had even used clones to increase their work rate, but it still took them nearly 1 year to change all the seals.

He hadn't asked them to work on it before because although the Uzumaki Clan had been destroyed, the Great Villages would naturally get intel from the movements in the wave. If they received intel that 300 or so Shinobi were doing something suspicious, it would have aroused their suspicion, and they might have come to check.

Perhaps they might have discovered the Uzumaki Clan members as well…

Although this risk existed right now as well, that was why Araki had personally come to this place. Under his sensing range, any and all spies were ruthlessly silenced. A few innocent people who had seen it were threatened into silence as well…

Their relatives were captured and taken into custody. Although Araki didn't want to do this to the people who really were innocent, he couldn't take any chances. He couldn't let the information spread.

Not even a single spy managed to send a letter back to their village.

Araki guessed that Great Villages' spies in the Land of Waves were passive infiltrators. These people were living their life normally, and would only contact their respective Great Village to report some sort of suspicious activity in the Land of Waves.

After all, there was no way a Great Village would be interested in information from civilian areas like the Land of Waves. They probably wouldn't even bother for information unless an incident related to Shinobi or Samurai occurred there.

At the most, these infiltrators had informed their respective Great Village about the sudden appearance of 'Samazaki' Clan. But surely nothing else…

As for why Araki was sure of this… It was because not a single Great Village had dispatched their army towards Uzushio. If they had even a slight inkling of what Araki was doing, they would have dispatched a huge army to destroy Uzushio before it could be revived.

And while they were changing the seals for this one year, Araki had unsealed the Gedo Statue in Uzushio and would send his chakra inside it.

He was trying to match the level of his Wood Chakra with the Gedo Statue.

It was a rather taxing job for him. The Gedo Statue's wood was a lot denser than his own. However, he felt that he was improving the denseness of his chakra at an abnormal rate.

Moreover, not just his Wood Element, he felt that his sensing skill was getting better.

Perhaps it was because he had understood how to retrieve his chakra from Gedo Statue. The Gedo Statue would seemingly refine his chakra and return it 5 times purer than before.

Every week, he could only do it for a single time.

Meaning, within a whole year, Araki had refined his chakra for a total of 52 times. Araki didn't dare to try this out back at Konoha.

In this one year, he had faintly understood that there was a consciousness in this Gedo Statue. Although faint… It was still there.

After he realised it, he stopped refining his chakra using the Gedo Statue. He understood although he gained a lot with this method, he was awakening an unknown consciousness inside of Gedo Statue.

However, since it hadn't completely woken up, the situation was still good. Now, he needed to keep it sealed as before.

This wasn't all he had achieved in this one year though…

In this one year, he had meditated a lot, one reason was to keep his emotions under control. And the other reason was, he was checking if there would be any improvement of his sensing range or not.

Meditation normally helped in purifying the spiritual portion of chakra. Perhaps it would be able to boost his strength even further… With these thoughts, Araki spent a lot of his time meditating.

And this one year of meditating was bearing fruit…

Even if it was only faintly, he could sense some sort of mysterious energy in the surroundings. Mysterious energy far stronger and denser than chakra, yet, instead of the suppressing chakra, it seemed to give it a boost.

"So… This is Sage Chakra?" Araki murmured while absorbing that stream of chakra into his body. As the stream of chakra entered his body, he felt a strange battle had started between his chakra in the body and the sage chakra he had just absorbed from the surrounding.

He didn't know, but some faint dark marks appeared over his eyes and forehead. They formed rings over his forehead and dark marks underneath his eyes.