Pleasure is always fleeting—whether it's from that kind of act, or the adrenaline high of slaughter.
Once his emotions settled, Gojo Yoru didn't clean up the bodies immediately. Instead, he took out a small scroll and used Flying Thunder God Transfer to send it away.
After sending a signal to distant reinforcements—telling them to surround and wipe out the four–special-jōnin squad—Yoru stepped over the piles of corpses and went to examine Ebizō's body.
Then his mouth curled upward.
"Nice. It's the real body. This is a massive haul."
A few days ago, after teleporting the Konoha Sannin back to Konoha, Yoru received what looked like an ordinary B-rank mission: escort a shipment of supplies to the White Fang line, which was facing the Land of Wind.
In this "probing" stage, every nation's goal was to drain the others' national strength.
And that drain wasn't as simple as "waiting it out."
If it were just waiting, no one could outlast the Land of Fire—the strongest nation with the best resources.
Their real goal was to cut supply lines from behind, or—like the Kannabi Bridge battle in canon—destroy infrastructure to delay deliveries.
At this stage, supply convoys and support corps were the most dangerous targets.
Each supply run usually wouldn't be this enormous, and it would definitely be escorted by one or two special jōnin.
But Yoru proposed a plan to Sarutobi Hiruzen—and Hiruzen backed it.
The plan was to set a trap for the Land of Wind: try to hook a major figure if possible, or at the very least kill one or two strong squads.
The bait was to increase the supply volume, tag it with marks only the Aburame clan and Inuzuka clan could detect, and then move it toward the southwest.
If Sand ninja were there and attacked the disguised "support convoy," they wouldn't abandon a haul of "perfectly fine" supplies. They'd have to bring it either toward the southern sea or into the Land of Rivers.
If they dared move toward the sea or toward the front line, the original plan would be canceled and they'd be killed on the spot.
If they entered the Land of Rivers—wild, undeveloped terrain everywhere—no ninja squad could realistically carry that much supply back to the border base or the Land of Wind.
Their only option would be to request reinforcements.
The enemy's strategists would realize it was a trap… but they'd still have to jump.
Yoru's best-case expectation was that the Land of Wind would send only a few special jōnin squads, or one elite squad made entirely of all-round jōnin.
Or they might dispatch an elite-jōnin trump card—or even… a jinchūriki.
Because for a resource-poor nation like the Land of Wind, strategic supplies in that quantity were impossible to give up.
Even if they did give it up, they'd still lose four special jōnin. Better to gamble.
But Yoru hadn't expected the one who came to be Chiyo's younger brother—Sunagakure's "intelligence king" and the brains of their advisory council: Ebizō.
That was pure, unexpected good fortune.
Killing Ebizō was like chopping off one of the Third Kazekage's arms.
From here on, Sunagakure's intelligence apparatus would no longer move as quickly; their network of embedded lines across other nations would lose contact. For a long time, their "hawk eyes" would become nearsighted.
In a probing war phase where scouts, Anbu, and sleeper lines mattered most… that was fatal.
With his own hands, Yoru had broken the balance of the probing phase.
The Second Great Ninja War might even be forced into its next stage early.
But that was a politician's headache.
After finishing his inspection, Yoru took out Flying Thunder God kunai and stones and papers carved with Flying Thunder God formulas, and buried them with Earth Release so they faintly showed through.
He was staging the scene to look like everyone died to Flying Thunder God and "black lightning."
Then he pulled a camera from his wrist-mounted storage scroll and took photos—capturing even the Flying Thunder God formulas in frame.
During this process, he also took out two storage scrolls and sealed away tissue samples from the fifty-five bodies, along with Ebizō's head.
When that was done, Yoru formed two shadow clones and had them shoulder two super-large storage scrolls—so dense with space–time power and sealing force that they naturally produced an "anti-summoning" effect. Even if Yoru released his Space–Time Strength of a Hundred Seal and spent everything, he could at most teleport just one of them.
After the clones used Earth Hiding to carry the scrolls away, Yoru looked at the field of butchered bodies, then slowly raised his right hand, palm up.
A blue-white whirl appeared above his palm, spinning at high speed with a sharp buzzing hum.
Then it separated into countless smaller whirllets spinning in a tiny area, compressing tighter and tighter—until it formed a marble-sized blue-white sphere.
It was a Rasengan—but not the normal form. It was closer to the "mini Rasengan" Boruto could form.
Except this one had no elemental nature at all.
In the next instant, the sphere's color changed violently.
The countless thread-thin spirals that made up its core shifted from blue-white to deep black at visible speed.
Layers of compressed black stacked together—until a faint red tint emerged.
And around it, like a thin film, a trace of blue remained.
The sphere became a tricolor core: mostly black, with red and blue as accent effects.
Those colors interwove, and the sphere began to shine with an intense black radiance.
Yoru had a strange feeling: maybe Hanzō's "Black Flash" title wasn't actually because of Flying Thunder God…
Maybe it was because of this sphere—the one that had injured the salamander.
After scanning the cave to ensure nothing was missed, Yoru casually tossed the sphere toward the center.
The black-glowing sphere traced a clean parabola through the air.
Before it could hit the ground, Yoru teleported away.
And the sphere… never hit the ground.
When it was still more than ten centimeters above the floor, an invisible force caught it, holding it suspended.
Then every electric lamp mounted on the cave walls tore free and flew toward the sphere—cracking apart mid-flight with sharp snapping sounds.
As the lights vanished, the boulder-sealed cave fell into total darkness.
Rumble—rumble—rumble—
Outside, the mountain containing the cave suddenly shook violently, as if someone was blasting from within.
If someone had x-ray vision and night vision, they'd see a new cavity forming inside the mountain.
Within that cavity, a small vortex appeared—spinning horizontally and vertically—releasing terrifying suction, dragging in broken flesh and ripping at the rock walls.
Chunks of corpse and stone were pulled into the vortex.
The instant they touched it, they began to break down; the closer they got to the core, the more completely they vanished.
Seen from inside the cave, this wasn't just a "vortex" at all.
It was a small black hole.
The visible "swirl" was only the ripple pattern produced by space distortion.
There was no thunderous explosion.
The sphere simply hovered, producing rotating spatial ripples for several minutes—then slowly shrank and disappeared.
When it ended, the cave itself had expanded several times over.
And on the ground—there wasn't a single piece of rubble left.
All matter had been erased into nothingness.
This was… another form of "This."
~~~
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