Naruto returns and discovers that the village has been devastated by Pain's Shinra Tensei attack. Naruto requests that everyone stays back as he prepares to take on all six paths of Pain at once.

During the two-and-a-half-year time period in which Naruto was training under Jiraiya, the latter decided that it was time for Naruto to learn how to repel genjutsu. During this training session, the two traveled to a village which Jiraiya had previously been associated with, but they discovered that something dark was amidst.