Chapter 90: Guerrilla Warfare Promotes to Mobile Warfare

Hearing Yamanaka Chujiu's words, the Konoha ninja's laughter shook heaven and earth.

The laughter brimmed with pride and arrogance, and with the absolute certainty of imminent victory.

Yamanaka Chujiu continued, "Originally, the idea Teacher Orochimaru and I had was to use Kumogakure as a bargaining chip to negotiate with the Fourth Raikage and achieve peace this way." Read novels every day on Haoshu, ttks. tw saves you worry

"But the Fourth Raikage clearly didn't appreciate it—he actually mustered an army of twenty-three thousand ninja."

"The absolute numerical advantage made the Raikage overconfident. He ignored the unstable morale and intense internal conflicts among the Cloud ninja, and stubbornly split his forces into three routes to surround and attack us, trying to crush us with sheer momentum."

"He's seeking his own death!"

"Since the Fourth Raikage has revealed a fatal weakness, we won't negotiate with him for now. We'll exploit the Cloud Hidden Army's weakness and ruthlessly annihilate a portion of the Cloud ninja, to let the Raikage know that the pain has no end!"

Yamanaka Chujiu's words were like a powerful stimulant, instantly igniting the fighting spirit of the Konoha ninja.

They raised their weapons and gazed fanatically at the young commander before them.

Over the past month, it was he who had led them to achieve one unbelievable victory after another, pulling Konoha's northern line from teetering on the brink of collapse to being invincible.

Especially since they had followed Orochimaru and Yamanaka Chujiu on campaign and accomplished a village-breaking feat the Ninja World had never seen before.

The Konoha ninja had no reason not to trust Yamanaka Chujiu.

If he said the Cloud Hidden Army had a weakness, then it definitely did!

If he said they could defeat a superior force with inferior numbers, then they would definitely win!

Since another battle would surely bring victory, charge in and fight!

Yamanaka Chujiu waited for the cheers to slightly subside before continuing, "Next, we will adopt guerrilla warfare tactics."

"But I won't break everyone up into weak squads or platoons. I'll split out a few large units as bait, making a great show of force to keep the Cloud Hidden Army chasing us."

"None of the bait units will engage the enemy head-on. Instead, they'll circle around through the mountains, forests, and canyons on the outskirts of Kumogakure, using terrain advantages and rotating the bait units to harass and confuse the enemy."

"Our main force will remain hidden and on standby, waiting for the Cloud ninja's morale to collapse and for them to split up again in their anxiety."

"Then, we can choose favorable terrain and resolutely annihilate one of those forces."

Orochimaru quietly listened to the end of Yamanaka Chujiu's deployment, a flash of unconcealable surprise and approval in his eyes.

In fact, among the more than four thousand Konoha ninja present, only he could understand the subtleties within.

Even judging by his own experience commanding over ten thousand ninja, Yamanaka Chujiu's tactics could no longer be called guerrilla warfare.

The scale of the bait units and the main force had been magnified tenfold by Yamanaka Chujiu, yet their combat power and destructive capacity were nearly equivalent to the entire army gathered together.

This was no longer the guerrilla warfare of delay, trading space for time, but rather seeking opportunities— even actively creating opportunities— while on the move, thereby scattering the enemy and annihilating them.

The objective of the battle had changed.

This was a brand-new form of warfare developed on the foundation of guerrilla warfare.

Orochimaru had always been self-confident, and rarely acknowledged others' abilities.

But his view of Yamanaka Chujiu had gone beyond mere acknowledgment—he felt admiration.

Orochimaru was only slightly surprised by Yamanaka Chujiu's powerful perception.

But the ability to simultaneously command a battle of over ten thousand ninja and precisely direct every single one of them shocked him for the first time.

Especially the Battle of Sakurahara that Orochimaru had personally commanded—despite being a defensive battle, it still suffered casualties numbering in the hundreds.

Yet the withdrawal before the enemy that Yamanaka Chujiu took over commanding achieved a result of zero casualties.

At that time, Orochimaru already knew that his own talent for commanding warfare was far inferior to Yamanaka Chujiu's.

The subsequent surprise attack on Kumogakure further reinforced this realization.

But today, Yamanaka Chujiu's tactical deployment utterly shattered Orochimaru's confidence.

What seemed like a simple arrangement was actually tightly interlocked, not only able to target the Cloud Hidden Army's weakness, but also applicable against any enemy of comparable strength.

So when Yamanaka Chujiu turned back to ask, "Teacher Orochimaru, do you have any suggestions?"

Orochimaru's reply was, "In ninja combat, you are not my equal; in commanding operations, I am not yours."

"Execute according to your own ideas. I won't cause you trouble."

Once the deployment was complete, the Konoha ninja immediately sprang into action.

According to Yamanaka Chujiu's arrangement, they split into three bait units and a main force of three thousand, and withdrew from Kumogakure.

By the time the Cloud Hidden Army closed in from three sides, the Konoha army had long vanished into the towering mountains of the Land of Lightning.

The Fourth Raikage recaptured Kumogakure without a fight.

But Ai stood at the high ground of Kumogakure, looking at the nearly ruined village, his face darkly terrifying.

His operation had come up empty. He had originally intended to spare no cost to annihilate Orochimaru's Konoha ninja and recapture Kumogakure.

Now he had only recaptured a wasteland.

Such a Kumogakure could no longer serve as a support base for the army, and the prisoners left behind by the Konoha ninja would consume Kumogakure's precious resources.

The problem was that these prisoners were the Cloud Hidden Army's parents, wives, and children. If he dared to abandon these people, the Cloud ninja would turn on him, their Raikage.

So the Fourth Raikage could only grit his teeth and take them in, doing his utmost to settle them.

Coupled with the consumption of resources to repair Kumogakure, supplies were being depleted at a terrifying rate. Kumogakure simply could not continue to concentrate an army of twenty-three thousand ninja.

But the Konoha ninja had not been annihilated; instead, they had vanished like ghosts into the heavy mountains, very likely lurking near Kumogakure.

As long as the Cloud ninja dispersed throughout the Land of Lightning to settle down, Orochimaru could lead the Konoha ninja back to attack at any time.

The Fourth Raikage felt a bone-chilling cold.

He fully realized that the Konoha ninja's danger had not receded in the slightest, and was quietly closing in on him.

On the third night after recapturing Kumogakure, screams shattered the night's tranquility.

The Konoha ninja had struck back!

Yamanaka Chujiu commanded three bait units to attack Kumogakure from three directions.

He detected the killing intent within Kumogakure in time, changed the plan to attack Kumogakure, and instead attacked Cloud patrol squads.

As always, the Konoha ninja launched a saturated assault with fierce attacks.

When the Cloud Ninja patrol discovered a clue and saw several dark figures leaping down from the mountain—

They had barely finished preparing for battle when three blasts of Fire Style: Phoenix Sage Fire Technique forced them together.

Immediately after, five blasts of Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique rained down, and the six Cloud Ninja were swallowed by flames in an instant, dying in terrible screams.

The human-shaped decoy that had first drawn their attention only now landed with a couple of "thuds"—it turned out to be a crudely carved wooden dummy.

Similar ambushes occurred fifteen times outside Kumogakure, resulting in the deaths of nearly a hundred Cloud Ninja.

For an army of twenty-three thousand, such casualties amounted to nothing.

But when day broke and over a hundred corpses of their comrades were laid out in the village, the Cloud Ninja's fury of vengeance utterly burned away their reason.

Not even the Fourth Raikage could restrain the Cloud Ninja's wrath for revenge; he could only go along and lead the march out, using the chance to organize a large-scale encirclement, trying to catch the Konoha Ninja by the tail.

Walking along the rugged mountain path, the Fourth Raikage kept feeling that the scene before him was oddly familiar, yet no matter how he tried, he could not recall where he had seen it before.