Naruto: Starting as the Third Hokage with Tears in His Eyes

Chapter 495 Personal Arrival, The Dawn of Order

at the same time.

In the remote village of Sunagakure, deep underground, in that dry expanse.

Black Zetsu is controlling the body of the Third Kazekage, Retsumon, and is carrying out the most crucial step in his millennium plan.

In the cold stone chamber, only the eerie green minerals embedded in the walls emitted a ghostly glow.

On the obsidian platform in the center, Uchiha Ran lay quietly, his face pale, like a corpse.

The only proof that he was still alive was the slightly wriggling black spore on his chest and the black tubes that wriggled like venomous snakes throughout his body.

This is Black Zetsu's laboratory, and also the cradle of new hope.

Liemen, or rather Hei Jue, slowly walked to the stone platform and looked down at his masterpiece.

"Perfect……"

A flicker of satisfaction flashed through Black Zetsu's mind.

He took control of the Liemen Gate and began his work again.

He carefully pulled out the thinnest one from the black pipes suspended above the platform and slowly and precisely inserted it into several key acupoints on the boy's body.

A viscous substance, delivered as a special nutrient solution, repaired his collapsing bodily functions.

The boy lying on the stone platform suddenly convulsed, as if he was enduring great pain.

Black Zetsu, controlling the gate, leaned close to the boy's ear and spoke his first words of instruction in a hoarse, almost dreamlike voice.

"Remember this feeling..."

"...This is what it feels like to be abandoned by the world."

"Go to sleep."

"Before you wake up, I will weave the most beautiful dream for you."

"A dream that lets you bury your own past with your own hands."

On the stone platform, the boy, who had been unconscious, began to move his eyeballs violently and restlessly beneath his tightly closed eyes.

His face was contorted, as if he were experiencing a nightmare from which he could not wake up.

A drop of scalding liquid seeped from the corner of his tightly closed eye and slid down his pale cheek.

That tear was pure black.

At the border of the Land of Lightning, in front of the command tent.

Hiruzen Sarutobi's words about his father being a respectable warrior were like an invisible wedge, precisely and ruthlessly driven into the cracks of the Fourth Raikage's armor forged from anger and hatred.

Time seemed to be forcibly stretched at this moment, becoming sluggish and long.

His bloodshot eyes, filled with anger and hatred, contracted sharply.

In his mind, the string of revenge was stretched to its limit, almost tearing his reason apart.

But now, that string has been snapped by a single, casual remark from Hiruzen Sarutobi.

It was not an insult, not a joke, and certainly not a victor's boast.

It's certain.

An affirmation of his father from his most powerful enemy.

Ai froze on the spot.

In those eyes surging with violent lightning, a raging fire, enough to burn everything in its path, was brewing. It sizzled as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over his head, but it was not completely extinguished.

Instead, it transformed into even more scorching and painful boiling steam, which gnawed at his internal organs.

He had imagined countless scenarios for their meeting.

Mockery, humiliation, arrogant pronouncements from a superior position, and even direct physical attacks—using absolute power to utterly crush the dignity of the new Raikage into the mud.

He was prepared for this, arming his heart with an indestructible lightning-resistant block, ready to face everything with an even tougher stance.

But what I never expected was that I would receive such a response.

A word of affirmation for the father.

That sentence was like a key, prying open the iron box deepest in his memory without any explanation.

He thought of his father.

Not the Third Raikage, hailed as the strongest spear and the strongest shield on the battlefield.

Instead, it was his father who would slap him on the head and call him an idiot when he slacked off during training.

It was his father who, after he had perfectly executed the Thunder Plow Blade for the first time, remained silent for a long time before finally squeezing out a "not bad" through gritted teeth.

When I was a child, I challenged my father countless times, and each time he easily flicked me away with a single finger. Then I would see a barely perceptible smile flash across his serious face.

When the news of his father's death came from that damned sea of ​​the Land of Whirlpools, he roared like a wounded beast in the Raikage's office.

The village elders looked at him with a mixture of pity and doubt, as if to say that this young, impulsive son was simply incapable of bearing the heavy burden left behind by the Third Raikage.

Before setting off for the Land of Whirlpools, he patted his shoulder one last time and said in a deep, mountain-like voice, "Ai, the village is in your hands until I return."

That was an entrustment, a trust.

But he...didn't get back.

boom--

The torrent of memories breached the dam of reason.

Hiruzen Sarutobi's words precisely pierced through his hard shell as the Raikage, directly striking his softest and most painful spot.

All his anger and hatred seemed so pale and powerless at this moment.

Like a lion whose spine has been removed, its muscles, stretched to the limit, suddenly lose all their power.

The Fourth Raikage opened his mouth.

But he found that it felt like a hot iron was stuck in his throat, squeezing and burning, and he couldn't say a word.

His eyes welled up uncontrollably, and a feeling of grievance, which he had never experienced before, surged up within him.

Hiruzen Sarutobi didn't speak again, but just watched him quietly. His deep eyes were calm and still, as if he were watching the struggle of a trapped beast, or as if he was just waiting for a storm to pass.

He gave the young Raikage enough time to process this cruel respect on his own.

Hijiri, the chief strategist of the Hidden Cloud Village, felt an unprecedented chill.

For the first time, a look of fear appeared in his only remaining right eye.

As the last remaining brake pad in the village, he was used to analyzing everything with data and logic. But what was happening before his eyes was completely beyond his comprehension.

This is not war.

Or rather, this was not the kind of war he was familiar with, a war of mutual destruction using ninjutsu and taijutsu.

Hiruzen Sarutobi didn't release a single trace of chakra, yet it was more destructive than any S-rank ninjutsu.

With just one sentence, he dismantled the Fourth Raikage's strongest psychological defenses from within.

This is a crushing force that transcends power and belongs to civilization and order.

Tsuchishiro suddenly realized that what made Konoha so terrifying was not just that they possessed geniuses like the Yellow Flash, nor simply that they could cultivate highly efficient war machines like the Uchiha and Hyuga.

It's because they possess Hiruzen Sarutobi.

A man who is extremely special and possesses unparalleled charm.