After Orochimaru left, Uchiha clan shinobi began joining the Tiger Unit one after another, but the quality of the shinobi was truly unsatisfactory.
More than half of the Uchiha shinobi were genin who had not awakened their eyes.
The key was that there were also quite a few genin over twenty and chunin over thirty.
Yoru, as an Uchiha himself, was actually seeing these old shinobi for the first time.
Only then did he learn that they were all bottom-level prison guards in Konoha Prison after failing to awaken their eyes.
They actually sent him a bunch of prison guards.
This was too unreasonable.
These older shinobi had all failed in competition, and after rolling around for many years in a huge dye vat like prison, not a single one of them had a normal personality.
Either their confidence had shattered into dust, making them as humble as dirt, or they had become incomparably slippery. Whatever you told them, they could do it completely wrong, and when they flattered you, they could make it impossible for you to find fault.
It was truly headache-inducing.
Uchiha Shigenobu was only eighteen and could not deal with these old prison guards at all.
He could only seek help from Yoru.
Yoru naturally had a method.
He established a logistics squadron for the Tiger Unit, the kind that did not even have a squadron leader, and stuffed all these people inside before ignoring them.
He forcibly hung this group of people up.
Training had nothing to do with them.
They solved their own meals.
When going to cut giant octopus legs, they would not be called.
When eating meat, they should not even think about it.
Yoru did not block their path upward.
He had instructed several division leaders that as long as anyone among these people voluntarily followed training for three consecutive days, they could absorb him into a combat division.
After arranging all this, Yoru sighed.
"As expected, people gather in groups, and there are all kinds."
"Today I've truly broadened my horizons. The dignified Uchiha clan, the Sharingan clan that produces lunatics and perverts in abundance, actually has so many trash-like shinobi."
Uchiha Kazushi was also full of emotion.
"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have been able to imagine that there were actually Uchiha shinobi like this."
Uchiha Tadamichi sighed instead.
"I do know a little. They are the most miserable group in the clan."
Hearing Tadamichi's words, Yoru turned to look at him and said,
"Tadamichi, if you understand, then tell us their situation in detail."
Uchiha Tadamichi pointed at his own nose.
"Actually, I was one of them. If Big Brother Yoru hadn't pulled me up, Konoha Prison would have been my final destination too."
It turned out that these people all came from the bottom level.
They had been sent to the ninja academy to study, but because their grades were poor, they lost face for the Uchiha clan and were disliked by the clan's upper level.
After graduating from the ninja academy, they had no channel to join ninja squads and no ability to accept and complete missions on their own.
Their personalities also had all kinds of problems, and they could not provide service to the main family or direct line.
Although these shinobi were Uchiha shinobi, their conditions were even worse than civilian shinobi.
Even survival was extremely difficult, and slowly, they wasted away the golden period of a shinobi.
Once they reached twenty and still had no hope of awakening the Sharingan, these shinobi would retire and return home, following their families to learn a craft and becoming civilians within the Uchiha clan again.
Among them, there were some who could be called the unluckiest Uchiha.
Because of various reasons, they lost their parents and relatives while still genin, becoming orphan shinobi.
Yet they still could not awaken the Sharingan.
They became true trash according to the Uchiha clan's common sense.
But because they no longer even had family, even if they retired, they could not find a channel to learn a craft.
With no ability to survive at all, they could only hope the clan would give them a mouthful of food.
Thus, Konoha Prison became the only place these pieces of trash could go.
As an ordinary outstanding Uchiha shinobi, Yoru had always thought that before cultivating immortality, he himself was the bottom layer of the clan.
He had never imagined that the Uchiha clan had people like this.
So they had already experienced a sufficiently tragic fate.
But because of various reasons, they had failed to receive even the feedback of the curse.
No wonder when he had gone to look at them before, what he sensed were all broken wills.
Their hearts had died.
But that had nothing to do with him.
No one could take responsibility for others.
Unless they still held hope themselves and roused themselves, they could just live or die on their own.
That was exactly what Yoru thought.
As Uchiha clan shinobi continued joining, the Tiger Unit's scale continued growing.
Very soon, it expanded to fifteen divisions.
Yoru combined five divisions into one squadron and established a squadron leader.
He also gave the squadron leader a separate four-man squad.
This way, each squadron had eighty-nine people.
The Tiger Unit's combat personnel reached two hundred sixty-seven.
But only the First Squadron led by Uchiha Shigenobu had combat strength.
The other two squadrons had not even completed basic formation and discipline training.
Let alone the thirty-seven-man logistics squadron and twenty-six child soldiers under the age of twelve.
These were not combat power.
They were burdens.
Without a doubt, after completing its great expansion, the Tiger Unit's combat strength had also dropped to the limit.
It had become a useless unit with no combat power.
Fortunately, Orochimaru had promised enough time.
For a period of time, he would not assign missions to the Tiger Unit.
Everything would be decided by Yoru.
There was no other method.
Only training.
Only long enough training could transform these Uchiha into qualified members of the Tiger Unit.
…
Spring left and summer arrived.
As the weather gradually became hot, the summer of Konoha Year 44 arrived.
A shinobi unit quickly advanced across the undulating sea surface.
They were arranged in a standard Four-Four formation.
While advancing quickly, they tried as much as possible to use the waves to hide their figures.
This was a recently very popular tactical formation.
It first became popular in Konoha Village and Kumogakure, and now had spread to Iwagakure and Sunagakure.
Even Kirigakure, which had returned to the battlefield again, adopted a similar tactical formation.
At the same time, the most popular three-man squads in the shinobi world had also changed into four-man squads, greatly increasing the combat strength of battle squads.
And this shinobi division was precisely the source of the Four-Four system.
The Uchiha shinobi of Konoha's Tiger Unit.
They were carrying out the Tiger Unit's routine monthly leg-cutting operation.
Very soon, they reached an uninhabited sea region and found a ring-shaped coral island.
This island had no mountains.
The highest place was only about two meters higher than the sea surface.
If they encountered an astronomical tide, perhaps it would be completely submerged by seawater.
After arriving on the island, the shinobi division's captain took out a special copper whistle.
This copper whistle was nearly half a foot long, and five pearls were embedded on it.
The captain carefully observed the surrounding environment.
After confirming there were no other shinobi, he blew the copper whistle with force.
Strangely, no sharp whistle sounded.
Instead, the five pearls lit up one after another.
Within the pale purple light, thin threads of electric sparks scattered into the air.
At this time, waves of pure lightning-spirit natural energy fluctuations that shinobi could not sense rapidly spread from the copper whistle, transmitting information into the sea.
Not long after, an enormous octopus head floated up from the sea surface.
It waved its limbs and slowly approached the island.
When the Tiger Unit shinobi saw the giant octopus, not a single person revealed fear, nor did anyone prepare to fight.
On the contrary, their eyes were filled with eager expectation.
They even transmitted an uncontrollable appetite, causing the giant octopus being stared at to tremble.
The octopus's watery big eyes contained enormous tears.
Its gaze was full of fear, yet strangely mixed with some kind of expectation difficult to describe.
After dawdling for a while, the octopus finally arrived at the shore.
It hesitated, wavered, feared, and was reluctant.
But in the end, it still stretched the two thickest and darkest octopus legs onto the island, then closed its eyes.
The giant octopus's parrot-like hooked beak opened and closed rapidly, making a clattering sound.
It seemed to be urging the Uchiha shinobi to hurry up and finish the work.
The leading shinobi said,
"Today is our Second Squadron Sixth Division's first mission. Everyone, don't embarrass yourselves!"
"Captain, we understand!"
"We'll definitely finish it in one go and never cause Big Guy a second round of pain!"
The captain ordered,
"Prepare. Begin forming seals!"
Following the order, seventeen shinobi began forming seals.
Fire Release chakra quickly gathered.
The temperature in the air rapidly rose, and even light distortion appeared.
Strangely, the chakra extracted by the shinobi gathered toward the side of the division captain.
In the end, it formed an extremely powerful chakra.
This chakra was so powerful that it even surpassed the limit a jonin could reach.
Fire Release: Blue Flame Sword.
A flame jet sprayed from his mouth.
The flame changed from red the moment it appeared, quickly turning orange, then continued changing into gold and white.
Only after stabilizing into a laser-like blue-white flame sword did it fall toward the octopus legs placed on the island.
The blue-white Blue Flame Sword emitted astonishingly high heat and possessed unimaginable ultra-high-speed impact force.
The instant it touched the octopus leg, it gently cut into it.
In the next moment, it pierced through the octopus leg.
The captain took a deep breath and controlled the Blue Flame Sword to spin in place, directly cutting off one octopus leg.
The Blue Flame Sword's remaining momentum did not fade.
Without stopping at all, it charged toward the other octopus leg.
Likewise, it easily stabbed in, rotated, and cut.
In just one second, two enormous octopus legs were cut off.
Compared to the battle more than four months ago, the performance was truly much better.
After the octopus legs were cut off, they disconnected from the brains in the body.
Under the control of the leg brains, they stayed on the shore, bouncing and thrashing wildly.
But the Uchiha skillfully used the second ninjutsu.
Fire Release: Heat Exchange.
This was a new technique carefully developed by Yoru.
With unique thinking, he used Fire Release to drive rapid heat dissipation, achieving a cooling effect through fast temperature reduction.
This was absolutely a ninjutsu that left people dumbfounded.
Even the cooling speed was very fast.
The only flaw was that because the ninjutsu belonged to the category of Fire Release, no matter what, it could not cool things below zero degrees.
When these Uchiha used it, it could only approach six degrees.
But the low temperature of six degrees was enough for octopus legs.
The giant octopus had lost two legs.
Blue blood flowed from its wounds, and the pain caused tears to fall in large strings.
Yet it still refused to leave the shore and return to the deep sea.
It actually guarded the seaside, using its remaining six octopus legs of different shades to ask something from the Tiger Unit's Sixth Division captain.
This Uchiha shinobi was unexpectedly able to keep calm.
He waited until his subordinates packed away the octopus legs before slowly taking out a small iron box from his chest.
He opened the iron box and took out a tiny dried fish.
The giant octopus's body was now extremely huge.
Its two large eyes alone were taller than a shinobi.
Yet it saw the dried fish in the shinobi's hand with one glance.
It instantly forgot the pain and the two octopus legs.
It excitedly shook again and again, and its octopus legs slapped the seawater wildly, like a round wolf king seeing egg-yolk pie.
Uchiha Takayuki held the dried fish, but before his hand lifted, even though the giant octopus was excited, it did not directly stretch out its tentacles.
This old shinobi in his thirties smiled, then raised his hand high.
Seeing this clear signal, three tentacles immediately stretched over.
Using three-point support, they carefully pinched the dried fish and slowly withdrew, placing the dried fish into a mouth that could swallow three shinobi in one bite.
In just an instant, the giant octopus's body color completely faded.
It became snowy white and crystal clear, like white porcelain.
The bleeding wounds also visibly closed and healed.
Then colors began changing across the giant octopus's body.
Multicolored brilliance formed a gorgeous light show like neon lights, displaying the octopus's excited mood.
Even more astonishing was that within just these few seconds, a small new tentacle grew from the healed wound and was flexibly wriggling.
Several minutes later, the giant octopus's emotions stabilized.
It waved its tentacles toward the Uchiha shinobi of the Tiger Unit, then swam toward the open sea without looking back.
Very soon, it vanished into the vast sea.
Uchiha Takayuki also smiled and ordered,
"Mission complete. We return."
"Everyone remember. Only after safely bringing the octopus legs back can our mission be considered complete. On the road, maintain high alert!"
"Understood!"
But the Sixth Division's luck was indeed quite terrible.
On their return route, they encountered a sudden downdraft storm.
In broad daylight under a blue sky, there was thunder and hail.
Everyone returned wounded, drawing ridicule from the other divisions of the Tiger Unit.
Four months ago, the leg-cutting mission required five divisions to act together.
And either Yoru or Miwa Masayo had to lead the team.
Only then could they guarantee no casualties from the giant octopus's resistance.
There was no helping it.
There were too many newly joined novice shinobi.
And these new Uchiha were poor in strength and experience, did not obey commands, and always wanted to show off by dueling the giant octopus.
There was simply no way to guarantee their safety.
But the situation quickly improved.
After fighting the giant octopus, the newcomers finally clarified their own positioning.
They were trash.
They obediently accepted training and seriously studied tactics and ninjutsu.
After all, they were shinobi of the Uchiha clan.
Their basic foundation was still much higher than purely civilian shinobi.
As long as they became serious, their progress was extremely fast.
As Yoru led them to learn stance training and entering stillness, the Sharingan awakening rate also began recovering quickly.
The Tiger Unit's combat strength also rapidly recovered.
The other reason was that while Miwa Masayo was leading a team, she accidentally dropped a few dried fish.
After the giant octopus ate them, this fellow was actually suddenly tamed.
For one mouthful of dried fish, it could willingly contribute its own legs.
In any case, they would not cut all of them off at once.
In any case, they would grow back.
Trade!
Very quickly, Miwa Masayo and the giant octopus reached an agreement.
They agreed on a trading location, and even agreed on a calling signal.
Based on this signal, Yoru used his old copper whistle and pearls produced by the octopus itself to create the first—
The octopus would sense this vibration and actively climb onto the island from the bottom of the sea, carrying out the exchange of legs and dried fish.
Starting from last month, the leg-cutting mission became something one division could execute.
The biggest difficulty of the mission was whether they could skillfully master the combined ninjutsu: Fire Release: Blue Flame Sword.
The risks in the mission mainly came from the sea.
On their round trips, the Uchiha might encounter strange weather, as well as the scattered Kirigakure shinobi that had gradually increased this month.
Tonight's dinner was a collective feast for the Tiger Unit.
The three combat squadrons and the child soldiers could all enjoy the octopus meat feast.
Only the logistics squadron, used as the garbage basket, was not allowed to participate, as a distinction.
Yoru still personally cooked.
Because as the giant octopus began taking in dried fish, its constitution was also continuously changing.
The ingredients used while cooking had to be adjusted every time.
There was simply no way to teach it to others.
This time, the feast was very formal.
Yoru actually pulled the entire logistics squadron over and made them stand separately in front of the dining tables, smelling the heart-scratching fragrance and personally watching the other Uchiha enjoy delicious food.
The reason he made it so cruel was because the Sixth Division's captain, Uchiha Takayuki, was very special.
He had worked hard and jumped out from the logistics squadron.
Uchiha Takayuki had joined during the expansion four months ago.
Thirty-two years old.
A chunin who had not awakened his eyes.
His parents and brothers had died in the previous war.
Even his child and wife had passed away unexpectedly.
After experiencing such a tragic life and still not awakening his eyes, he was the most despised one even in the logistics squadron.
Yoru loudly recounted Uchiha Takayuki's situation, then said in an even louder voice,
"But this Uchiha, publicly recognized as trash, did not give up on himself!"
"He voluntarily followed the First Squadron's training. If he did not complete the training volume, he would practice extra without sleeping or resting!"
"He used his own effort to satisfy my conditions and officially joined the Second Squadron."
"And only fifteen days later, he awakened the Sharingan!"
"The suffering of fate had long filled his heart."
"Uchiha Takayuki soon awakened the two-tomoe Sharingan and became the captain of the Second Squadron's Sixth Division!"
"He is not trash!"
Clap clap clap—
According to the habit of military training, intense applause rang out.
Uchiha Takayuki's face flushed red.
The gazes of everyone made him completely at a loss.
By habit, he followed everyone and clapped along.
The trash of the logistics squadron suddenly felt as if their hearts had been struck heavily by a hammer.
Their dead hearts actually became a little warm and hot.
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