Temari and Ren teleported back to Sunagakure, still clad in their luxurious, formal wear, and stiffened at the devastated landscape that greeted them.

After a quick look around, Temari’s eyebrows furrowed in dreadful disbelief. She desperately wanted to ask Ren if he didn’t screw up the teleportation coordinates. But she knew it was just wishful thinking.

These devastated streets, the destroyed houses… she recognized them. She walked through this place just a few weeks ago!

The whole place had corpses and body parts strewn all around, but they were all mostly half-melted or charred, as if somebody tried to flash-cook them.

Upon the hellish sight, Temari swayed on her feet, and Ren supported her with his hands, “Stop!” He harshly rebuked her, jolting her back to reality from her downward emotional spiral. “We don’t know how extensive the damage is. We can’t see much of Sunagakure from here. Maybe it is just this district that was destroyed. There is no time for self-pity.” He said with urgency, but inwardly, he was just as shaken as Temari.

He didn’t know what he expected when he teleported over, but this was not it. It seemed the situation was far more dire than he initially thought.

But… ‘Why didn’t we teleport next to Gaara?’ Ren mentally muttered with a frown as he glanced around, only to notice a half-buried sealing tag underneath their feet.

Crouching down, he was about to pick it up when a massive explosion reverberated from the west. Ren and Temari’s heads instantly snapped toward that direction, while the ground underneath them briefly shook.

In their sight, at a distance that seemed to be a few streets away, they could see an enormous ball of condensed fire expand outward over the devastated rooftops. A second later, an even bigger wave of sand rose high into the air and dropped onto the fiery ball, completely engulfing it.

As the sand met the fire, the air angrily hissed, and steam quickly filled the skies. The sand won the brief clash of elements, and the fiery ball was suppressed as it washed over it. Tons of sand crashed back down onto the ground, causing an even bigger earthquake than the previous explosion, while kicking up a cloud of dust above the rooftops.

But the sand’s victory was a close thing. As the ball of fire clashed with it, a lot of the sand was superheated, leaving behind a massive jagged glassy structure, reaching high above the streets.

Under its massive weight, the glassy structure could not support itself, and cracks quickly spread all over its surface before it completely collapsed, loudly crashing down onto the Sunagakure streets below it.

More clouds of dust were flung into the air, only for the resulting airwaves from the crash to disperse them as they swept through the surrounding streets until they reached Temari and Ren, smashing into them and forcing them to brace against it while their clothes and hair uncontrollably flapped under the wild wind.

For a second, Ren and Temari glanced at each other, seeing the stunned disbelief at the devastating display in each other’s gazes. They could not believe they were witnessing a day when some madman would release techniques like those inside the village!

The civilian casualties alone must have been insane! They could only hope that Sunagakure managed to evacuate its residents in time.

Yet, the moment of daze quickly passed, and after sharing a small nod of understanding, they pushed against the ground, rushing forward, right toward the battlefield.

As they neared the area, they stopped on the somewhat intact roof of a house from which they could clearly assess the situation. The second Ren saw the dark cloaks with red clouds on them, his face fell as he understood what this was about.

In the eastern part of this district, Chiyo was having a group battle against Kakuzu, her puppets clashing with his masked thread abominations. The old woman was holding her own, but she was clearly on the backfoot, sweating as she was getting tired from facing an S-rank ninja in a much better condition.

In the western part of the district, Baki, alongside several other Jonin were in a clash with madly laughing Hidan, who already had his ritualistic black and white markings on his body, stabbing a kunai in his abdomen with an enjoyable smile as his malicious gaze stared at the poor Suna ninja who had instantly received identical wounds out of nowhere because he had failed to prevent Hidan from getting his blood.

Three puppets crashed into the man from behind, sending him hurling out of his ritualistic circle, but Hidan just snarled and rolled back onto his feet before he charged into the crowd of Suna ninjas with wild abandon as he waved his scythe around.

The Suna ninjas panicked and tried to keep their distance from him, already knowing that letting him get their blood would be a fatal mistake. Unfortunately, Hidan might be the weakest member of Akatsuki, but that was only in comparison to other S-rank ninjas.

When compared to the Suna Jonin, he was holding his own. The battle was a stalemate.

Because of the war, the village’s defenses were not as sturdy as usual. Most of the strongest of Suna ninjas were still stationed near the borders or doing various war-related missions.

Out of the dozen ninjas facing off against Hidan, only four were Elite Jonin. Between the evacuation of the people, saving the village’s assets, and preventing the battles from spilling deeper into the other parts of the village, Suna could only muster this amount of resistance against the attackers.

Even Chiyo was only assisted by two Jonin against Kakuzu, but to him, these two might as well be harmless flies buzzing around. He barely paid them any attention.

Further in the distance, another set of explosions reverberated through the surroundings, and Ren noticed that Gaara was clearly fighting…

“Pakura!?” His heart briefly stopped as he exclaimed, and his eyes widened.

Even Temari’s head snapped in the direction where her brother was facing the Sunagakure legendary kunoichi, and her expression sank when she recognized the woman.

Pakura was haphazardly flinging her scorch release fireballs left, right, and center, not at all bothered with conserving her chakra. Gaara was barely able to block the scorch release onslaught while slowly pushing the woman further out of the village’s premises, but it was a dangerous struggle. One mistake could prove fatal with the killing potential of her techniques.

The devastated state of the streets and the half-melted corpses they had passed by now made a disturbing amount of sense.

“She should be dead.” Temari whispered, her body tense in distress.

“Yes.” Ren grimly agreed as he got a very bad premonition. He couldn’t see Pakura’s eyes from this far away, but even though he didn’t want to believe it, he knew they were probably black.

The woman was definitely dead. And now, she was here.

He didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what happened. His Akatsuki enemies clearly somehow managed to get their hands on Edo Tensei while he was having a grand time wasting his time farming.

‘I have grown careless since killing Orochimaru and Danzo.’ Ren realized.

“Pakura.”, “Hidan.” Ren and Temari said at the same time, calling dibs on the opponents.

Ren had shared what he knew about the Akatsuki ninjas with his girls, and Temari knew Gaara was one of their targets. But after seeing the devastation caused by Pakura’s casual scorch release display, she knew she was no match for the woman right now.

Chiyo, on the other hand, was doing just fine and will most likely stay that way for some time. But Hidan was slowly injuring his opponents. Temari’s scorch release techniques were uniquely geared to deal with him, too, so her choice was no-brainer.

Ren, however, didn’t have much of a choice, so he could only sourly pick Pakura. She was an Edo Tensei thingy, and he was a seal master. That pretty much sealed the deal.

“Don’t die.” He quickly kissed Temari on the cheek before disappearing in a body flicker, heading toward Gaara.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep