"however, you overlooked one important aspect." the sunagakure side tensed up as homura and koharu refused to accept their argument. fujin suddenly sighed and muttered, "when i suggested we discuss civilly, i didn''t mean you should lie through your teeth. are you here to negotiate or did sunagakure just promote two scapegoats to sacrifice?"

    yura and arisa frowned as fujin glanced into their eyes and continued, "i was the one who fought the reanimated fourth kazekage. we had a nice little chat before i sealed him. he accepted that sunagakure had allied with otogakure with the intention of attacking us long before he was killed by orochimaru. while he was regretful of his decision, it doesn''t absolve sunagakure from their crimes."

    the sunagakure ninjas weren''t surprised. on the contrary, they expected konoha to use this point. arisa cursed in her mind, ''talk civilly? not lying? asshole, follow what you preach! as if lord kazekage would accept that after we were defeated!''

    she quickly replied, "no, that doesn''t sound correct. lord fourth would never break his word and renege from our alliance despite our difficulties. i believe that orochimaru might have controlled lord fourth and made him say those things."

    fujin immediately replied, "that''s not the case. by then, orochimaru was defeated by lord third and had escaped like the coward he is. besides, telling whether someone is controlled or not is rather easy to tell. not to mention, he also gave us some more interesting information.

    unlike your claims, he said that sunagakure had been preparing for war for over half a year. thousands of ninjas were trained extensively to attack us and prepare for the aftermath. tell me, do you think we''ll believe that he manipulated everyone in your villages for over 6 months and yet no one realized?"

    before the suna ninjas could reply, inoichi added, "don''t bother trying to cover this up. we cross-checked the recent activities in your village. there is no doubt about this. your village was closed off for others for several months preceding the attack. we didn''t bother looking much into it back then since we had no reason to be suspicious, but now it is crystal clear what you were planning."

    the room became silent as the konoha ninjas stared intensely at the sunagakure ninjas. it was as if they couldn''t wait to launch a war against sunagakure. the two daimyo were nervous. the fire daimyo thought, ''this is very different from konoha''s earlier ways of negotiations. they''ve generally been more forgiving in order to get peace.

    of course, that might be their intention today too and they may be turning up the heat to get what they truly want. still, konoha has become like how they were before the start of the second great ninja war. their recent victories are no flukes. their military might has recovered!''

    the wind daimyo realized the same. as for the sunagakure ninjas, they were well aware of it. unlike the two daimyo, they showed no signs of nervousness.

    yura calmly replied, "it is true that we closed our village for special training around 7 months ago. however, the purpose of this training had nothing to do with our attack. it is related to another incident that made us suffer."

    some konoha ninjas as well as the two daimyo were confused. arisa explained, "around 3 years ago, the land of wind suffered heavily due to the actions of a certain individual or perhaps a group of individuals. they killed dozens of our ninjas and incited a riot in our western regions. he also injured our jinchuriki and caused him to lose control, killing more of our ninjas.

    we had to deploy nearly 2000 ninjas in that region for over 2 years to quell the riots and clear the misunderstandings of our citizens. that incident made our council realize that our ninjas were lacking in several aspects, due to which the special training was initiated."

    while arisa spoke, yura stared at fujin. he wanted to see how fujin would react to this news. however, there wasn''t any change in fujin''s expression. it was almost as if he had nothing to do with the incident. yura thought, ''sigh, this is troublesome. not only is he ridiculously strong, but he is also shameless enough to lie with a straight face and can maintain a perfect poker face. that makes him an even bigger threat...''

    luckily for them, the wind daimyo intervened timely, "if i may..."

    the aggressive glances turned towards him, putting him under a lot of pressure. thankfully, he was used to it. he said, "we seem to be stuck in a deadlock. while there is no doubt that sunagakure shares the blame for assaulting konoha, you can''t prove that sunagakure wasn''t manipulated by orochimaru. of course, they can''t prove that the fourth kazekage was manipulated by orochimaru because such a thing is impossible to prove and there is no way they can provide any proof."

    fujin said, "we can see that. what do you propose?"

    the wind daimyo replied, "i don''t want to see the two countries going to war once again. irrespective of who wins, both sides will suffer. in the end, the only ones who''ll win are our enemies. after our war, kumogakure might launch an assault on the land of fire while iwagakure gobbles up what is left of the land of wind before turning their gaze to konoha.

    it would be the start of the fourth great ninja war and we have seen that no one wins such wars. at the end of a great war, we can only see who is the biggest loser and who lost the least. hence, i''m proposing a compromise so the talks can proceed."

    his words gained the attention of both sides. they paid careful attention to his next words, as they could determine how the talks progressed ahead. nearly all ninjas on both sides hoped he would provide a wise compromise.

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