Chapter 129: War is About to Begin

"Take a look at the nature transformation under the Flame Breathing state, and use a bit more chakra." Muyue thought for a moment and said.

Obito nodded, adjusted his breathing method, entered the Flame Breathing state, inhaled a large amount of oxygen, condensed a great deal of chakra in his throat, and then rapidly spat out a wide sheet of flames.

The flames he spat were too numerous, and uncontrollable fire spread wildly in all directions. Muyue stopped them with a Water Release technique to prevent the forest from catching fire.

Shisui watched quietly. As someone familiar with Obito, he could clearly see the progress in Obito's chakra nature transformation.

It was precisely this kind of rapid progress that caused the flames to fly around chaotically. If Muyue hadn't intervened in time, Obito himself would have been burned.

"Muyue-sensei, eating spicy food really does increase training speed." Although he was soaked all over, Obito was still excited.

He believed that the sudden improvement was due to eating Muyue's cooking.

After all, in his view, yesterday was a very ordinary day—aside from Muyue's cooking, nothing else was different from usual.

"What did you do after you finished training yesterday and went back?" Muyue asked.

Muyue didn't think it was because of the cooking. If a meal could cause such a sharp spike in proficiency, the effect should have appeared yesterday itself. There was no reason for it to only take effect after Obito went home; the culinary illusion had no aftereffects or delayed display.

"I didn't do anything special. I just went home normally, then trained a bit, and suddenly improved." Obito thought for a moment and replied.

"Give me more details." Muyue said.

"On the way home yesterday, Rin encouraged me, and then we promised..."

"You can skip that part."

"After parting with Rin, I met an old lady who had fallen, so I carried her to the hospital for treatment..." Obito recounted all the small incidents on his way home, which basically involved either helping old people or being on his way to help them.

"When I got home, I practiced the Breathing Method for a while. Suddenly I felt a bit hot in my body, and then it turned out like this." Obito answered.

"I see. It must be that Obito's actions and state of mind resonated with the characteristics of Flame Breathing." After listening to Obito's description, Muyue understood the reason for his rapid progress.

Obito perfectly suited the personality requirements of Flame Breathing. Warm and cheerful, Obito would take the initiative to help those in need. His heart burned as hot as a flame.

"Shisui, you should also eat more spicy food. Then your Breathing Method will definitely change quickly like mine." Obito shared his successful experience with Shisui.

"Is it really because of eating spicy food?" Shisui felt it was a bit unreliable.

It wasn't that he suspected Obito of lying—on such an important matter, Obito definitely wouldn't lie. But after listening to the conversation between the two, Shisui felt that the real reason might not be that Obito had eaten very spicy food.

"Stop chatting. Let's eat first." Muyue handed the lunch boxes to the two.

Eating it might not bring a sudden leap, but it was certainly better than not eating it.

Shisui opened the lunch box and saw several neatly arranged large peppers inside. He fell into deep thought. Was he supposed to just eat the peppers straight?

"There's meat inside the peppers." Muyue reminded.

Shisui took a bite and found that the peppers indeed contained meat, but that meat itself was stuffed with minced pepper, making it even spicier than eating just the outer peppers. Still, the taste was top-notch.

After delivering lunch to the two, Muyue went to deliver food to Might Guy. Might Guy's meal was potato stewed with beef.

Muyue appraised Might Guy and found that his proficiency had increased a little, reaching twenty points.

"Looks like he's not stuck—it's just that it's too hard, so the increase is slow." Muyue thought to himself.

Judging by the current progress, Muyue felt he didn't need to worry about Obito's training assignment.

Unless Might Guy had another sudden insight that skyrocketed his proficiency, in a month Obito's Breathing Method proficiency would definitely be much higher than Might Guy's, giving him an advantage in actual strength.

When training ended in the afternoon, Muyue let Shisui and Obito go home together.

Today, Shisui's Flame Breathing proficiency went from fifteen to sixteen, a steady increase.

But if Shisui could learn from Obito and also improve rapidly, that would be ideal. If not, it didn't matter—given Shisui's self-discipline, he would train the same way at home.

"Although you are generally excellent, there are still things you can learn from Obito." Muyue said to Shisui.

Muyue still hoped Shisui could become more cheerful and optimistic.

In the original story, Shisui had very little screen time; he basically only existed in memories. But being able to commit suicide to help his friend awaken his eyes, Muyue felt that wasn't entirely normal.

There were many lunatics in this world, but Muyue didn't want his disciple to become one.

Shisui wore a thoughtful expression and nodded, preparing to carefully observe Obito on the way home.

In cultivating secret techniques like the Breathing Method, Obito always seemed to progress faster than him, so there must be something Obito did better.

And so, Shisui began his journey of observing Obito.

"Little Rin, did my shadow clone do anything strange at school?" Obito asked.

"No, it was just like you, Obito," Rin Nohara replied with a smile.

"That's good. I was worried the shadow clone might affect my image at the Ninja Academy."

Watching this, Shisui silently noted that Obito really liked chatting with Rin Nohara.

No one knew better than Obito himself whether his shadow clone had done anything strange, but he still asked. The question was meaningless—it was clearly just Obito wanting to talk to Rin Nohara.

However, today they didn't encounter any elderly people in need of help, and the two of them went home smoothly.

The next day, Shisui and Obito gathered together to go train in the Southern Border Forest.

On the way to breakfast, Obito helped an old lady. Shisui noticed that Obito was smiling after helping her.

After arriving safely at the Southern Border Forest, Shisui stopped paying attention to Obito and focused on training.

When they returned in the afternoon, he continued observing Obito.

But this time was a bit more eventful than yesterday. They encountered an old man carrying a large sack who had come to Konoha to visit relatives.

The old man was from a village near Konoha. His daughter had married into Konoha, and the crops in his fields had recently been bountiful, so he wanted to deliver some for his daughter's family to try.

The sack the old man was carrying wasn't really that heavy—it might be a burden for ordinary people, but for ninja with chakra like them, it was nothing.

But when they took the old man to the place, they found that his daughter's family had moved. Not wanting to waste the old man's kindness, Obito went door to door to ask for information and search. By the time they found them, it was already very dark.

Shisui finally understood why Obito's arrival time at the Southern Border Forest was unreliable. If he encountered situations like this from time to time, it would indeed be hard to be on time.

"Thank you so much. These aren't worth much, but please take some home," the old man said gratefully, wanting to share the contents of the sack with Obito and Shisui.

"No need, grandpa. Even without us, I'm sure you would have found them eventually," Obito refused with a simple smile and a wave of his hand.

Declining the reward, Obito and Shisui returned to the Uchiha clan grounds and went to their respective homes.

Lying in bed, Shisui was still recalling his memories of Obito from the past two days.

After observing Obito closely, Shisui truly felt that Obito was a very unique Uchiha, different from any Uchiha he had ever seen—so different that he hardly seemed like an Uchiha.

Most of the time, Obito seemed very careless. Even though he was already considered excellent among his peers, he would sometimes not pay attention while walking and trip or bump into things.

Moreover, Obito rarely controlled his emotions; nearly all his feelings were written on his face.

When it came to noticing people in need of help, Obito's observational skills were maxed out—he could notice things that even Shisui missed.

After three days of observation, Shisui went to find Muyue.

"Teacher, if Obito's breathing technique progresses because of his enthusiastic help to others, I'm afraid I can't learn that way. I can't genuinely seek out strangers in need like he does from the bottom of his heart," Shisui said honestly.

Shisui didn't reject helping others, but he couldn't go as far as Obito did.

Hearing Shisui's words, Muyue smiled. He ruffled Shisui's hair and said with a laugh,

"You can learn from Obito, but you don't need to imitate him. Perhaps you are kinder inside than you think."

He didn't know exactly what Shisui and Obito did, but he could see that although Shisui's Flame Breathing progress was not as fast as Obito's, it was still not slow.

At noon on Monday, Muyue once again received news of a jonin meeting being convened.

Since it was at the Ninja Academy, Muyue went alone this time.

Minato and Kushina arrived a little earlier than Muyue. When Muyue reached the meeting room, they were already standing inside.

Muyue went up to greet them.

"It's only been a few days, and they're having another meeting," Kushina said in exasperation.

Muyue smiled and didn't join in the complaining. There were too many people here; some things couldn't be said carelessly. He was different from Kushina—Kushina had a special status, so not only could she complain about meetings, but even swearing a little wouldn't be a big problem.

At the last meeting, he had briefly gotten to know some jonin. This time, Muyue continued to make his face familiar, not saying much, just chatting a little.

After everyone had gathered, the Third Hokage explained why the jonin meeting was being called so quickly for the second time.

"The Hidden Cloud Village of the Land of Lightning has declared war on us," Sarutobi Hiruzen said with a grave expression.

"Cloud Village? Aren't they in the middle of invading the Wind Country and waging war on Sand Village?" a jonin said in surprise.

Although the Third Kazekage of Sand Village had disappeared, as one of the five great ninja villages it still had its foundations; Cloud Village couldn't defeat Sand Village in a short time.

At this moment, Cloud declaring war on Leaf meant only one thing: Cloud wanted to fight on two fronts, attacking both Leaf and Sand simultaneously.

"Those damn Cloud barbarians, they deserve to die!" Kushina cursed without restraint.

Hearing this news, Mu Yue wasn't surprised. After all, Leaf would later be besieged by four great ninja villages; declaring war was just two declarations, not even a full-scale fight yet.

Mu Yue could roughly guess the thoughts of the Cloud Village ninja.

Before the Third Kazekage disappeared, Cloud and Leaf had already had considerable friction, showing that Cloud had strong designs on Leaf.

However, because the incident in Sand Village was so big—the Kazekage himself disappearing—Cloud struck first at Sand Village, which was leaderless.

If Rock hadn't declared war on Leaf, Mu Yue estimated that Cloud wouldn't have declared war on Leaf without achieving a major advantage over Sand.

But Rock's declaration of war on Leaf changed things. Although Cloud was fighting on two fronts, Leaf, which had to deal with Rock, also had to fight on two fronts.

Would the Third Raikage think that under the same circumstances Cloud was inferior to Leaf? Of course not. If that were the case, Cloud wouldn't be so cocky in the ninja world.

Mu Yue guessed that the Third Raikage's thinking was: while fighting Sand, simultaneously wear down Leaf's strength, then defeat Sand first, next sweep Leaf, and finally take down Rock, which was fighting Leaf, thereby dominating the continent.

Mu Yue could only say the idea was good, but they overestimated their own strength and underestimated Leaf's strength and Rock's ambition.

From the later course of the Third Ninja World War, it wasn't hard to see that Ōnoki was very ambitious. If not for the Third Raikage being tough enough, a large number of Cloud ninja would have died in Rock's encirclement.

"We should immediately send spies to interfere with their operations against Sand," Danzō said.

As long as Sand could tie down enough Cloud ninja, Leaf wouldn't have to worry about too much pressure from fighting on two fronts.

Nara Shikaku fell into deep thought. Cloud's attempt to attack Leaf would be somewhat easier than Rock's.

Because for Cloud to attack Leaf, there were generally two options: one, enter from the northeastern Country of Hot Water; two, enter from the directly northern Country of Rice.

The Country of Hot Water had weak ninja strength, and the Country of Rice was even weaker, not even having a ninja village.

This meant Leaf had to guard a large area—the entire border with the Countries of Rice and Hot Water had to be defended.

"We need to prevent Cloud from defeating Sand, and at the same time strengthen border defenses," Nara Shikaku said.

This time he agreed with Danzō's opinion: Cloud absolutely must not be allowed to free up its hands to fully attack Leaf.

Mu Yue could sense that the atmosphere at this meeting was heavier than last time. Many jonin showed serious expressions.

"Sand and Cloud have already engaged, and Rock will soon be at war with the village. This time, a Third Ninja World War is likely to break out," Minato said worriedly after finishing his recollection.

Minato had extensive mission experience, but he hadn't experienced a ninja world war. When the Second Ninja World War ended, he was still studying at the Ninja Academy.

Yet just from reading the written records, he could feel the cruelty of the ninja world war: countless ninja dead, and even a village's Kage could die in the war.

Kushina had a special status. Once the war intensified, Kushina would have to go to the battlefield, and that was exactly what Minato worried about.

"Those black-skinned Cloud barbarians really fear no chaos under heaven!" Kushina's expression was also ugly.

But Kushina wasn't worried about herself going to the battlefield; rather, she remembered her country, which had been destroyed by war.

Kushina hated war. She had personally witnessed how her country and village perished amidst the chaos of war. That memory was still vivid.

"Obito's training mission, student exam rewards, Class One's improvement rewards..." Mu Yue silently thought about the rewards closest to him.

War was approaching, and his current strength was not enough to protect himself in a chaotic environment.

There's still more to come...