"An elder of the clan?"
Aoi Ren grinned maliciously and kicked Uchiha Emiki aside. "You may be nothing but a fool, but your Clan Head is a wily old fox through and through!"
Uchiha Makoto could not have cared less whether Uchiha Emiki lived or died. In fact, he was more than happy to see those elders who had grown too arrogant and overbearing removed from power—so long as Aoi Ren offered him enough benefits in return...
Gaghh...
Uchiha Emiki coughed up another mouthful of blood and collapsed onto the rocks nearby, his face twisted with bitter unwillingness. He gritted his teeth and muttered, "I don't believe you. You're lying. The Clan Head would never dare to conspire with you to kill me—to kill an elder of the clan!"
"Conspire with me?" Aoi Ren shook his head with a smile and turned to leave. "But I didn't kill you. Someone else is responsible for your death..."
Cough... cough... "Don't you dare think you can just walk away!" Perhaps because he was drawing his final breath, Uchiha Emiki's mind had grown surprisingly clear and sharp. "I sent up that flare just now. The Octopus ANBU and the others must have seen it too. You won't be able to escape justice!"
But sadly for him... He had chosen the wrong person to oppose from the very beginning!
"By my calculations, it should be happening right about now!" Aoi Ren said with a smile as he walked away, seeming not to care in the slightest about the dying Uchiha Emiki or Uchiha Moni, who was still trembling and hiding off to the side.
"So now you think you can just run away?" Uchiha Emiki let out a loud, bitter laugh. "I will stay alive long enough to watch your own men come and arrest you with their own hands! Hahaha!"
But suddenly, Uchiha Emiki's laughter died in his throat...
The seawater in front of them began to bubble and churn violently, and a terrifying figure slowly rose up from beneath the waves.
Its body was stitched together from mismatched parts using the grotesque, maggot-like tendrils of the Earth Grudge Fear technique, making it look like some abomination that had crawled straight out of the depths of hell.
"The Gold Devouring Monster—Kakuzu!"
In the distance, the figures of the Octopus ANBU squad were rushing toward them at full speed, but it was already too late. Kakuzu had already raised his twisted appendages and lunged straight at Uchiha Moni.
Uchiha Emiki froze completely. In his final moments, he finally realized that everything he had ever taken pride in had amounted to nothing more than empty air...
Every single thing that had happened had been part of Aoi Ren's plan all along!
Splat!
The terrifying tendrils pierced through Uchiha Moni's body from all directions, turning him into nothing more than a bloodied sieve. Fresh red blood and internal organs spilled out onto the rocks. As soon as he caught sight of the approaching ANBU operatives, Kakuzu gritted his teeth and turned to charge straight at Uchiha Emiki as well...
Seeing this, the ANBU had no time to hesitate or think things through carefully.
"Water Release: Water Tornado!"
"Earth Release: Earth and Stone Collapse!"
"Fire Release: Fireball Jutsu!"
As the three ANBU operatives unleashed their full power, Kakuzu was instantly torn apart into nothing but a pile of mangled flesh and broken bone. Only the appendage that had pierced through Uchiha Emiki's body remained behind where it had fallen.
Five minutes later...
The ANBU medic shook his head helplessly. "Captain Octopus, there is nothing we can do. Uchiha Emiki and Uchiha Moni are both beyond saving..."
Hearing this, Captain Octopus showed no particular emotion on his face and simply nodded as if this were exactly what he had expected.
"Understood. We will return to the village immediately and report this matter to Lord Hokage and our Captain."
One day later, a "perfectly written" report was delivered to the Hokage's office...
"During the joint operation between ANBU and the Uchiha clan to apprehend the criminal Kakuzu, two members of the Uchiha group acted independently and took a small boat without authorization. They were ambushed by Kakuzu, and despite rescue efforts being mounted immediately, they succumbed to their injuries and died on the spot."
Reading only this part of the report, it would certainly seem that the operation had been a major failure for the ANBU. But if one continued reading further...
"Although we were unable to save the lives of our comrades, we successfully eliminated the S-rank criminal and secured his unique secret technique, the Earth Grudge Fear."
Tobirama Senju nodded his head in clear satisfaction and instructed Hiruzen Sarutobi to file the report away for official records, marking it with a large, prominent note that read: EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE.
When all things were taken into account, the achievements of this mission far outweighed the losses...
After all, the loss of one or two personnel during a mission was something that happened all the time in the life of a ninja.
As long as the objective was successfully achieved, by the standards of the ninja world, the mission could still be considered a complete success...
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