Three days had passed, and the Iwa forces had finally reached the battlefield set up by Suna, forming up around five hundred meters in front of Suna's fortified position.
It took them three days to arrive here from the borders. Ren couldn't help but chuckle. The minefield clearly gave them a lot of trouble. A part of it was how off-guard he caught them with it. He had a clone hiding near the borders, and the seals were turned off. Thanks to that, the Iwa's forward scouts could go through it, noticing nothing out of the ordinary. It was only when the army marched halfway through the minefield that Ren's clone turned the seals on.
It was a massacre. The explosions started all over their marching formation, and many of the Iwa ninjas panicked. In the chaos, they started to move around, triggering even more mines.
Ren didn't know how many casualties and wounded the Iwa side racked up during the five minutes it took them to calm down their troops, rally them, and start using Earth Release to counter the mines, but it was definitely enough to slow their march down to a crawling pace.
A journey that should have taken them at most half a day by walking at a civilian pace took them three entire days, as they now started checking every hundred meters for more mines with Earth Release and also had to deal with the consequences of that little surprise.
Ren wondered what face Onoki made when he returned from his own failed surprise attack. He doubted the morale on the Iwa side was very high right now. Especially since they were now heading to the battlefield chosen by Suna.
Unfortunately for them, even knowing that this place would give Suna's side all the advantage, Iwagakure could not just go around them. That would allow Suna's army to flank them, and that was a big no-no. Ebizo said so.
It was yet another thing that made no sense to Ren. The biggest advantage of ninja combat was their stealth, and that they could strike where it was the least expected. Yet, for this big clash of armies, both sides were giving that up, acting as if they were samurai or something.
If it were him, he would have sent Suna ninjas to the Land of Fangs and had them act like partisans, constantly harassing Iwa forces and supply lines. Then have the teams try to get further toward the border of the Land of Earth, maybe even beyond it, and cause trouble all over the place.
... Was that short-sighted?
He didn't know. It just sounded like something ninjas should do during a conflict. This whole clash between armies... sigh.
It just wasn't ninja-like?
Ebizo did explain it to him yesterday, but Ren still thought it was bullshit. Apparently, since neither side could just go and cause massive property damage or destroy towns, as that would piss off the Daimyo and merchants, Ren's ideas were impractical. The only things that were left were skirmishes in the shadows and an actual clash between two big armies.
And trying to do skirmishes against a massive army of ninjas was futile. They could annoy them, but the army would advance anyway, taking territories and whatnot, putting the other side at a massive disadvantage.
So, Suna had to meet Iwa's army head-on, even if their numbers were fewer. Plus, according to Ebizo, Iwa no doubt already splintered several skilled teams from their main army once they passed the borders, sending them deep into the Land of Water to do this whole skirmishing in the shadows thingy.
Ren inwardly huffed and reaffirmed in his mind that his brain simply did not work properly when it came to large-scale warfare. He hoped Temari would learn well because this was not going to be his thing.
Suddenly, he heard horns resound through the desert, and his attention snapped back toward the Iwa army, where a line of ninjas broke from the main formation, advancing a few steps forward.
"And so it starts." Ren darkly muttered, feeling a bit worried as he stood on the same edge of the tall rock as three days ago while observing the upcoming battle.
He was also watching out for any attack from an S-rank combatant from Iwa, but so far, neither of those had thankfully shown up.
The line of Iwa ninjas all started doing some kind of jutsu... And Ren unhappily cursed as he realized what they were doing.
The earth between the two armies trembled as the line of Iwa ninjas stomped on the ground as one, using Earth Release to send tremors throughout the ground. A split second later, all the seal mines set up a day ago harmlessly exploded at once, sending a massive cloud of sand into the air and obscuring the vision on both sides.
The Iwa army charged forward.
Down, among the Suna army, Temari stood near the center at the helm of her war fan corps with trenches just behind them where they could easily fall back or take cover if necessary.
As the tremors shook the ground, causing her ninja to fight to keep their balance while some of them fell, and the thunderous explosions that followed made her ranks even more disoriented, Temari saw the clouds of sand go up in the air. Her eyes widened as she realized these clouds were swiftly spreading toward them and would engulf the Suna army.
She could allow that!
Ranged combat was Sunagakure's bread and butter. This way, Iwa could get to close quarters with no trouble.
Adrenaline flooded Temari's veins, and she yelled a command at her ninjas. She didn't have the time to let those disoriented or on the ground regather their wits. The sandy cloud was almost upon them.
Hundreds of war fan users spread their fans as one and swung. Gales of sharp winds instantly shredded the clouds of sand in front of them and blew further until they hit an obstacle in the form of raised rocks three hundred meters away. The sharp winds crashed into these rocks, creating cuts and gashes, but the damage was only superficial. The rocks were too dense and thick for their techniques to do much.
Temari's lips thinned. The Iwa blockheads clearly expected them to disperse the clouds and didn't just recklessly charge forward. In such a short while, they advanced two hundred meters and had their Earth Release specialists raise fortifications of their own.
If they advanced one hundred meters more, the Suna lines would be in the range of Iwa's ranged ninjutsu...
Gritting her teeth, Temari glanced at the battlefield to the sides, and her heart sank as she noticed that while her ninjas at the center managed to disperse the clouds in time, the left and right wings had way fewer war fan users and thus, less success.
There were places along the Suna battle lines that were engulfed in the sandy clouds, and Temari wanted nothing else than to aim her war fan corps toward them to disperse these clouds, but could she really do that? It would just give the Iwa troops in front of her a chance to attack.
Glaring in front of her like a fox, Temari fondly brushed an edge of a seal line on the handle of her war fan and made up her mind. She wanted to keep her new ability under wraps a bit longer, but under these circumstances, she had no other choice.
Straightening up, Temari loudly shouted, "Teams Five and Six, blast the clouds on the right side, Teams Thirteen and Fourteen, the clouds on the left side, others, more wind jutsu to the center!" She commanded through the screeching sounds of wind techniques her ninjas were conservatively using to keep the Iwa forces hunkered down behind their rock fortifications.
She had only fourteen teams, each with fifty war fan users, under her command. The war fan users were the elites of Wind Release from her village. There weren't that many of them. And they were supposed to cover a large stretch of the battlefield. Using four teams to help the ninjas at the wings would create gaps that Iwa forces could use.
But she didn't have a better option. The Iwa forces were prepared for their tactics and even unexpectedly found out how to use the desert terrain against them.
Unless she did something surprising herself...
Gripping the handle of her war fan, she fed her wind chakra into the technique while simultaneously letting the seal on the weapon devour her normal chakra.
'Scorch Release: Summer Breeze!' Temari inwardly intoned as she silently swung her war fan, sending the only Scorch Release technique she managed to put together in the previous week and a half at the enemy lines.
Temari's completely normal-looking gales of wind blended with the storm of winds generated by other war fan users and crashed into the rock fortifications on Iwa's side, but this time, the effect was different.
The surface of the rocks heated up within a split second to the point of liquifying, while the superheated air went up, and up, until it reached the top of the rocks and proceeded to naturally flow around them nearly instantly.
Before the Iwa ninjas behind the rocks could react, the winds bent around the rocks and engulfed them in superheated, scorching hell boosted by the other wind techniques. Their screams and squeals reverberated through the battlefield as their eyeballs popped and they were steamed alive, much to the horror of their comrades that stood further behind them, enough that Temari's winds only caused their skin to experience uncomfortable heat.
The normal wind techniques could flow around the fortifications, too. But they were weakened enough that, at best, any remnants that got around the rocks would cause a bit of wind pressure to descend on the shoulders of ninjas hiding behind, giving them a small nick or two for their trouble. It wasn't a threat.
Because of that, they were caught completely unprepared when Temari's Scorch Release hit them. Their fortifications only assured that death would not be instant and that they would suffer for several seconds before they were cooked alive. Weakened or not, Temari's scorching winds were still highly deadly.
The entire Iwa central battle line seemed to recoil as many advancing ninjas rushed back, away from their most forward fortified position in fear of another scorching heat wave.
And the flow of the battle had irrevocably changed.