Four Root shinobi stood there watching Uchiha Yoru with sweat gathering in their palms. But the surrounded Uchiha Yoru simply remained where he was, as though he were appreciating the sight of Root shinobi slaughtering one another.
In truth, however, he had already made his move.
Amid violent spiritual tremors, all thirteen Root shinobi simultaneously saw a pair of three-tomoe Sharingan. Then, in the very next instant, they forgot it.
That instant of forgetting pressed down their sense of vigilance.
Then came the same exact operation, over and over again.
In the span of only three seconds, Uchiha Yoru repeated sixteen rounds of eye contact with the Sharingan followed by forgetfulness. The repeated cry of "the wolf is coming" numbed the Root shinobi's instinctive alertness.
In those mere three seconds, the two tokubetsu jōnin-level living weapons were hacked down under a storm of blades. To prevent the weapons from self-detonating, the first things the Root shinobi cut off were their arms and legs.
At the cost of only one life and one arm, the nine Root shinobi eliminated the hidden danger.
They could not help feeling that the mission might not actually be so difficult after all, and the tension and wariness in their hearts plummeted from their peak.
People were not machines.
Even shinobi who had gone through cruel training still had psychological highs and lows. Especially after one round of tense combat, relaxation was inevitable.
That was the opening Uchiha Yoru had been waiting for.
The instant they relaxed without meaning to, Uchiha Yoru launched his genjutsu attack.
A real genjutsu attack.
Uchiha Yoru opened his three-tomoe Sharingan. Surging ocular power poured into his eyes without the slightest restraint. Then, through the wind-aspected natural energy, he twisted the flow of light and directed his gaze toward twelve pairs of eyes at once.
Sharingan · Genjutsu · Binding Art.
The suggestion seeds in the hearts of the surviving twelve Root shinobi detonated. As their brains sank into chaos, Uchiha Yoru invaded their central nervous systems and sent false signals through them.
As a result, every muscle in the Root shinobi's bodies tightened to the limit.
And then they never relaxed again.
Each of them was frozen exactly in the instant the genjutsu took hold.
The battle was over.
Aside from opening and closing his eyes, Uchiha Yoru had not made a single other movement.
And yet he had already won.
Throughout the entire exchange, Miwa Masayo had remained sprawled lazily on Uchiha Yoru's shoulder, watching the Root shinobi butcher one another, watching them all collapse under a single genjutsu.
She opened her mouth in a huge yawn and said, "Yoru, you're getting fonder and fonder of using genjutsu, nya."
Uchiha Yoru smiled and answered, "Mm. Genjutsu is very useful. When dealing with more than a dozen enemies, it suits the situation better than large-scale ninjutsu."
"And besides, killing with genjutsu has style…"
He raised his right hand and lightly snapped his fingers.
The hearts of the twelve motionless Root shinobi suddenly convulsed.
Their heart muscles received the signal to exert force, while the life-limiter signals that ordinarily protected them were simultaneously blocked.
Freed from those biological restraints, and aided by the high concentration of adrenaline already secreted in advance, the heart muscles exploded with thirty times the force of an ordinary heartbeat, grinding the hearts themselves into ruin.
Because their nerves had been seized, the Root shinobi could not feel the pain of their hearts being shredded.
But as living beings, they could still feel the arrival of death.
And death was the greatest pain of all.
Though their expressions, like their bodies, could not change in the slightest, the despair and agony of the Root shinobi still reached Uchiha Yoru.
That was how he noticed that one of the Root shinobi's emotions was wrong.
He was different.
He had no despair.
In this world, was there really someone who could face death without despair?
Uchiha Yoru became intensely curious.
He walked over to the one shinobi who stood apart from the others and lifted part of the neural suppression with a wave of his hand, allowing the man to control everything above his neck, as well as part of his intercostal muscles.
Uchiha Yoru asked, "Why don't you feel despair?"
The Root shinobi replied, "How dare you kill ANBU shinobi of Konoha Village?"
Uchiha Yoru: "..."
Uchiha Yoru asked again, "Aren't you going to die from your heart shattering?"
The Root shinobi replied, "Aren't you afraid of Lord Shimura Danzō holding you accountable?"
Uchiha Yoru: "..."
"Pah! You damn—%###, I'll f—beep—beep—beep beep beep—"
Uchiha Yoru, thoroughly exasperated, actually lost his temper for once. He even spat on the Root shinobi frozen in place.
"This is the middle of nowhere! Accountable, my ass!"
Miwa Masayo was delighted. She slapped Uchiha Yoru's shoulder repeatedly and let out a string of clear, cheerful "nya nya nya."
Uchiha Yoru could only look up at the sky speechlessly. Then he severed the Root shinobi's neural control once more and began directly examining his body, trying to figure out what exactly made this man capable of facing death without despair.
The calico cat, laughing until her whole body went limp, climbed onto Uchiha Yoru's head to avoid the spurting blood and asked, "After killing so many Root shinobi, do you really not need to worry about Danzō coming after you, nya?"
Uchiha Yoru kept both hands busy while his eyes remained fixed on the corpse, carefully examining the body. At the same time, he answered casually, "No need to worry. Once I get back, I'll march straight into the commander's tent, spread the order scroll and the corpses out in front of everyone, report that the mission went wrong and the assigned subordinates betrayed me, then demand an investigation into the mission process."
"As long as I make the matter public and blow it up, then it'll be Danzō's turn to panic."
"But you said before, nya, that the Third Hokage is standing behind Shimura Danzō. If you do this, won't he have no way to cover it up?"
"Mm. At least for now, he doesn't."
"In the forty-third year of Konoha, the Third Hokage is still far from being able to cover the sky with one hand and do as he pleases with the various shinobi clans."
There was a flaw in Danzō's conspiracy that even the Hokage's power could not erase.
That flaw was this:
If Uchiha Yoru's strength was sufficient, and Root's all-out attempt to surround and kill him failed, only for the ambushed target to kill all the attackers instead, then the conspiracy would instantly be dragged out into the sunlight.
The initiative in the entire affair would automatically shift into Uchiha Yoru's hands.
The mission order in his possession was the most fatal piece of evidence.
As long as he publicly displayed that order—complete with seal, insignia, and registration number—it would be enough to prove that those Root shinobi without proper identities had forged a genuine mission order and had even managed to infiltrate the ranks of Konoha shinobi.
That meant the Hokage's authority had been violated.
If the Third Hokage did not wish to step forward and admit guilt himself, then Shimura Danzō would have to step forward and take the blame with his own head, suffering punishment to some degree.
Of course, aside from his reputation, Shimura Danzō would not really lose much. He might even suffer no substantial loss at all.
But Uchiha Yoru, on the other hand, could use the opportunity to gain enormous fame and, for at least the next year, remain free from Shimura Danzō's harassment.
And beyond a period of safety, he could get even more.
If he handled things well, he could describe every Root shinobi here as "unknown enemies." Not only would that earn him an A-rank mission record, the corresponding mission bonus, and perhaps even a long vacation.
With compensation like that, being disgusted by Root shinobi would no longer feel so unpleasant.
During wartime, Uchiha Yoru would be able to live leisurely with Miwa Masayo.
How blissful would that be?
He had already imagined it.
Leave the freezing Land of Hot Water behind and go south, find a place where spring flowers bloomed and the sea faced the front door—Ideally, an uninhabited small island.
There he would build a little thatched hut and live in it.
Every day he would swim in the sea, enjoy fresh live seafood, and quietly digest everything he had gained from months of teaching, attempting to break through to the fourth stage of the Foundation Establishment realm.
The more Uchiha Yoru thought about it, the happier he felt.
Miwa Masayo thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement. "Good thing the Third Hokage doesn't yet have that much power, nya. As long as this gets dragged into the open, this kind of crude conspiracy won't work, nya."
Uchiha Yoru's movements paused for a moment.
He looked at the calico cat and said in a relaxed tone, "Not being able to cover the sky with one hand is actually a good thing. If the Third really could do that, then he wouldn't be far from death."
In the original history, a few years from now, when Hiruzen Sarutobi framed Minato Namikaze and his wife to death, wrongfully sacrificed Hizashi Hyūga, and exterminated the Uchiha clan without suffering any real punishment, that would be the moment his authority reached its peak and he truly covered Konoha with one hand.
At that time, not to mention killing fifteen Root shinobi—even if Uchiha Yoru were surrounded and attacked by Root shinobi, he would not have been allowed to fight back. If he did, then he would be betraying the village and the country. He would be a missing-nin.
But the shinobi world was, in the end, still a supernatural world where fists decided everything.
As long as Hiruzen Sarutobi's strength had not reached the level of the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama, and as long as he did not possess the ability to suppress Konoha Village all by himself, then he had no qualification to do whatever he wanted inside Konoha.
In fact, the extermination of the Uchiha would be the final weight on the scale, triggering Konoha's backlash against the Third Hokage. A few years later, Konoha's shinobi would tacitly borrow Orochimaru's hand and give Hiruzen Sarutobi a respectable funeral.
Suddenly, Uchiha Yoru pointed into the Root shinobi's chest cavity and let out a startled cry. "So that's it—so that's it! He has two hearts!!"
Miwa Masayo poked her head over to look.
Sure enough, inside the Root shinobi's chest cavity, on the left side there was a collapsed heart split with several large tears, while on the right side there was another intact one, obviously smaller, still weakly beating.
Uchiha Yoru kept shaking his head, exclaiming and praising again and again.
"The positional selection… perfect!"
"The suturing of the blood vessels… exquisite!"
"The nerves were actually connected like this… genius thinking!"
He immediately thought of one person.
"Orochimaru. This has to be Orochimaru's handiwork!"
"Ah, right. If I count it out, Yamato of the Wood Release should be seven this year. The Wood Release awakening project must have ended by now, which means Orochimaru finally has time to put his hands on other things."
"It looks like the kind of Root shinobi I'm most familiar with are about to make their appearance."
Miwa Masayo circled the Root shinobi's corpse a few times. After hearing Uchiha Yoru's words, she could not help asking, "Yoru, will Orochimaru affect your plans in any way?"
"Of course not."
Uchiha Yoru answered with perfect confidence, "All I want is control of the Uchiha clan. As long as I follow the development of the situation and execute the plan accordingly, I'll steadily walk toward final victory. There's no need to contest details like this with Danzō just for the sake of winning a momentary point."
The calico cat remembered how severely Uchiha Yoru had criticized Uchiha Fugaku for not caring about the study group, so she asked, "How are new Root shinobi only a detail, nya? Doesn't this fundamentally change the balance of power?"
Uchiha Yoru replied, "It's different. The goals are different. If what we were fighting over were the supreme power of an independent organization, then foundational strength would be everything. But Root is not an independent organization. It is part of Konoha's Hokage power structure. It doesn't possess any real independence."
"The danger of Root doesn't lie in how strong the Root shinobi are. It lies in the fact that Shimura Danzō can freely borrow the Hokage's authority without bearing the Hokage's responsibilities."
"No matter how strong Root shinobi are, they're still only at jōnin level, with the occasional elite jōnin appearing."
"The Uchiha clan, on the other hand, can more or less always maintain over thirty three-tomoe Sharingan. That means over thirty elite jōnin."
"Compared to the power of the Uchiha clan, Root's strength is hardly worth mentioning."
Uchiha Yoru swiftly finished tidying up the corpses, then clapped his hands and said, "Alright, everything's cleaned up. Let's go."
Miwa Masayo knocked hard on her servant's head and asked, "You're just leaving the corpses here, nya?"
"Of course. Let them stay here and wait for Konoha's follow-up investigation. They're the enemy. If I just say so with an empty mouth, that doesn't prove anything. There has to be evidence for others to investigate."
Miwa Masayo gathered her strength, swung with all the force she could muster, and smacked the top of her servant's head again, then shouted, "Yoru! Did water get into your brain, nya? If you leave such a clean battlefield behind, won't that expose your genjutsu, nya?!"
After taking that hard blow, Uchiha Yoru instead looked as if he had been jolted awake. His eyes swept over the surroundings, and he did not say a word.
The calico cat suddenly worried that she might have hit too hard and asked with concern, "What's wrong, nya?"
"Thank you for the reminder. I don't know what happened, but I somehow completely forgot that my own intelligence needs to be concealed."
Uchiha Yoru repeatedly slapped his own forehead to keep himself alert.
Then he began bombarding the entire valley with ninjutsu.
One Fire Release after another swept across nearly half the valley floor, erasing every trace of his battle and also destroying several corpses.
Among the destroyed corpses was the Root shinobi with two hearts, as well as the two Root living weapons, covering up both the traces of his dissections and the traces of him taking away the mental monster.
After several rounds of inspection by both Miwa Masayo and Uchiha Yoru, confirming that no flaw remained on the battlefield, they finally left at ease.
…
Just as Uchiha Yoru had expected, once the matter grew large enough, it spread rapidly.
No shinobi could accept that a mission assigned to them might actually be a trap meant to kill them.
What was even less acceptable was that the ANBU, a direct force under the Hokage, had somehow mobilized fifteen shinobi to hunt down a Konoha shinobi who was simply carrying out his mission normally.
So which was it?
Had the Third Hokage betrayed the very Will of Fire he preached?
Or was the Third Hokage simply incompetent, having lost all secure mission information to the point that the enemy could successfully issue a flawless official order?
No matter how one looked at it, it was all the fault of the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi—unless…
Unless the one in charge of Root, Shimura Danzō, stepped forward.
And so he did.
He announced that the whole disaster had been caused by his own negligence. A complete set of task-order ciphers, seals, and other confidential materials had been lost through his incompetence, resulting in the present vile incident.
The Third Hokage was furious.
He stripped Shimura Danzō of his title as Hokage Advisor and ordered him to… return home and reflect on himself.
As for Uchiha Yoru, the victim of the incident and the meritorious shinobi who had killed fifteen unknown enemies single-handedly in self-defense, he received a public commendation from the Third Hokage.
And based on that merit, Uchiha Yoru was placed onto the list for the next round of jōnin promotions.
Uchiha Yoru looked at the Uchiha clansman who had come to notify him, excited beyond measure, then spread his hands helplessly and asked, "And then?"
Uchiha Kin was stunned. "What do you mean, and then?"
"Other than confirming that I'll be promoted to jōnin in the next round, there's nothing else?"
Uchiha Yoru started counting on his fingers. "I was ambushed, and while under ambush I killed fifteen enemies. Fifteen whole enemies. Shouldn't that at least count as an A-rank mission record? What about the mission bonus? What about leave?"
"N-no…"
"Tch. The Third Hokage is really stingy."
"You can't say that. The Third personally gave you a public commendation. Every shinobi and every villager in Konoha knows your battle record now. You're famous, brother!!"
Uchiha Yoru looked at Uchiha Kin.
He had known this man, who had been conscripted together with him, belonged to the dove faction. But he had not expected that he was actually one of the Hokage faction.
He shook his head and stopped speaking with someone whose values did not even operate on the same level as his own.
After Uchiha Kin left, Miwa Masayo emerged from her hiding place. Her beautiful big eyes looked at Uchiha Yoru as she asked with a smile, "Well then, my contractor—where's the vacation you predicted, nya?"
"Ahahaha… looks like I predicted wrong."
"I caused such heavy losses to the old man. There was no way he was going to give me any real reward."
"Doesn't the Hokage's public commendation and your promotion to jōnin count as a reward, nya?"
"Heh. I killed fifteen enemies in a single battle. That's the best individual battle record among Konoha shinobi this year. The matter also blew up so badly that my name had already spread on its own. The Hokage's public commendation only counts as a formal stamp of recognition after the fact. It doesn't even qualify as icing on the cake."
"As for the jōnin promotion, that was already decided long ago. The Hokage merely made the news public earlier than planned."
"Clan Head Fugaku personally told the Third Hokage that I had already awakened the three-tomoe Sharingan. Rika-chan, in Konoha's Uchiha clan, how many shinobi who awakened the three-tomoe Sharingan are not jōnin?"
Uchiha Yoru jabbed his thumb at his own nose and pulled a face. "Only me."
"Now that I think about it, when I killed those fifteen Root shinobi, I never once factored in that, rounded off, they could be counted as the Third Hokage's ANBU power too."
"How rare, nya. Uchiha Yoru actually got a prediction wrong. Did something go wrong with your brain, or did something go wrong with your foresight, nya?"
Uchiha Yoru pointed at his heart and smiled bitterly. "My heart was the problem."
"One who toys with time will eventually be toyed with by time. And someone like me, who plays with people's hearts, getting tripped up by human greed… that's only natural."
After getting Little K from the Root living weapon, Uchiha Yoru had been unable to find any suitable way to store it. Seeing that the strange lifeform was about to dissipate, he had panicked and stuffed Little K into his own mental world.
That was when the problem began.
After the battle ended, his thoughts had been wholly consumed by the spoils, and he forgot to clean up the battlefield.
And when he considered the aftermath, his mind focused entirely on the rewards he might obtain, forgetting to account for the Third Hokage's own interests in the matter.
These were not small problems.
At the right moment, mistakes like these could very well become fatal.
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