Fugaku has gone mad; he's going to create a new Uchiha clan in Kirigakure.

After confirming that everyone was alright, Naruto led Hinata to the northern area they were responsible for.

With the Body Flicker Technique, Naruto's killing speed was absurdly fast. Hinata could barely see someone appear before that person was already dead, not even having time to scream, collapsing like a stalk of wheat blown down by the wind.

However, she didn't think much of it. After all, what she saw with her disdain was too cruel, and these people deserved to die.

"This is for you."

Finally, Naruto's kunai pierced the lumbar spine of a man trying to escape through the back door, leaving him paralyzed on the ground like a pinned insect, only able to groan in pain.

Hinata nodded, and under Naruto's calm gaze, she walked up to the man. Moonlight shone through the broken window, illuminating the man's face, which was contorted with fear. Hinata's hand, gripping the kunai, trembled slightly, but a cold, resolute determination gradually gathered in her pure white eyes.

"Pfft."

Warm liquid splashed onto my hand.

The man twitched twice and then stopped moving.

"call--"

Hinata took a deep breath, her stomach churning; she felt like vomiting, but she held it in.

She took a few deep breaths, forcing herself to calm down, and then activated her Byakugan to carefully scan the area to the north. After confirming that there were no stragglers and no hidden secret rooms or tunnels, she went outside, took out a signal flare from her ninja tool bag, and pulled the fuse.

"Whoosh—smack!"

A red orb of light rose into the night sky, exploding into a brief but striking spark.

This means the mission is complete, and everyone is assembled.

The whole process took less than five minutes.

This is normal.

After all, there is a huge gap between ninjas and ordinary people.

Imagine a three- or four-year-old child who, after initial chakra enhancement and training, can leap several meters, or even more than ten meters, onto a rooftop. His explosive power, speed, and reflexes have already surpassed the limits of an ordinary adult.

Faced with a group of teenagers who have undergone systematic killing training and possess extraordinary powers, these "villagers" who rely on traps, numbers, and cruelty to commit evil are no different from lambs to the slaughter.

However, as the crowd gathered from all directions, Naruto raised an eyebrow.

Because there were more than a dozen children with them.

They were of varying ages, the oldest looking twelve or thirteen, the youngest perhaps only five or six. They were all bound hand and foot with ropes, like a string of frightened quails, and were being driven over by Kiba and Shino.

Their faces were filled with fear and confusion, and a few of the older ones had undisguised resentment and ferocity in their eyes.

Just as Shikamaru said before, on the surface, this is an ordinary village with men, women, the elderly and children. There are dozens of households, but only a dozen or so children, which is actually considered a small number.

"I remember, my order was to kill them all."

Naruto pulled his kunai from a still-warm corpse, shook off the blood droplets, and calmly stated his position as he looked at his gathered companions.

silence.

"But they are just children..."

After a moment of silence, it was Sakura who spoke first.

After she finished speaking, she immediately closed her eyes, her long eyelashes trembling slightly, and her shoulders subconsciously shrank back, preparing herself to be scolded or even beaten.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm waiting for you to yell at me..."

Sakura said timidly.

Why would I curse you, or anyone else?

"Because we didn't follow orders."

This time it was Shikamaru who spoke. He scratched his head, his face showing his usual troubled expression, but his eyes were very serious.

"Before being a tool, a ninja must first be a human being."

Naruto tucked the kunai back into the ninja tool pouch on his side, his gaze sweeping over the young faces that were either tense, confused, or determined.

"Obeying orders and analyzing orders are not contradictory. This is something my father, the Fourth Hokage, once said."

"What was the purpose of the First Hokage establishing Konoha in the primitive era, and the Second Hokage establishing the Ninja Academy?"

"It means we should go to the battlefield as late as possible. After all, if we allow our forces to be thrown into indiscriminate slaughter without guidance or restraint, what difference would there be between us and the barbaric tribes of the Warring States period?"

"In the past, we had no choice, but now, Konoha has grown into a towering tree, providing us with shelter and rules."

"Ninjas must undergo this transformation. We must have sufficient reasons for killing. It can be morality, the interests of the village, or the foundation of humanity. If you kill these unarmed beings, who are at least 'children' on the surface, without thinking, it will only make the First and Second Hokage regret it in the Pure Land."

"but."

Naruto changed the subject, his gaze falling on the group of children who were tied up.

"This doesn't mean we should simply release them. Living in a village like this, can you be sure their hands are clean?"

"so what?"

"Of course, it's about reading their memories, Ino. I remember your Yamanaka clan has a secret technique called mind reading. As the clan leader's daughter, you should know it, right?"

"this..."

Ino scratched her blonde hair and chuckled dryly.

"I've learned the hand seals and their principles, but my chakra and mental strength aren't strong enough. I can only read a little bit of the surface, the most recent fragments of memory. Also, I can only use it on one person once in a short time, and then I need to rest for a long time..."

"It doesn't matter."

Naruto waved his hand, pointing to the group of children.

"They know each other and live together. If you read information from one of them, you can roughly deduce the situation of the others. That's it."

He randomly pointed to a boy with the fiercest look in his eyes.

As he spoke, Naruto's figure flashed and he instantly appeared in front of the boy. Before the boy could even react, Naruto had already punched him in the stomach. The boy groaned and collapsed to the ground.

Ino took a deep breath, walked to the unconscious boy, squatted down, and began to form hand seals. A faint blue chakra aura emanated from her fingertips, and then she gently pressed them onto the top of the boy's head.

"Secret Technique: Mind Reading!"

Ino closed her eyes, her brows furrowed tightly, and her face turned pale at a visible speed.

Then...

"Wow--!"

She abruptly released her grip, turned her head, and began to gag violently, tears streaming down her face.

"Ino!"

Tenten and Shikamaru quickly stepped forward to help her up.

"I'm fine."

Ino wiped her mouth.

"They were sitting around eating, something was cooking in the pot, and one of the children had a finger bone in his mouth..."

She didn't finish her sentence, but the meaning was clear enough.

The scene was deathly silent.

Naruto's face remained expressionless, as if he had anticipated this outcome.

"Hurry them into that room, then you leave. Leave this to me."

Why?

"Your hearts are not as 'firm' as mine. Even if you know they can no longer be considered human, the thought of personally ending the lives of these beings who still look like children will leave a shadow in your hearts."

"And you?"

I can't help but ask every day.

"Of course I'm different. For ten years, I've been hated, rejected, and treated like a monster by the whole village. My heart has long been hardened enough that dealing with these things won't be an extra burden for me."

"this..."

Sakura looked at Naruto's calm profile and felt a mix of emotions welling up inside her.

"That's an order!"

The others exchanged glances, and finally, silently herded the bound children into the designated room, then quickly withdrew...

...

Naruto entered the room and closed the door behind him.

Blocked from the moonlight, the room was filled only with sparse light filtering through the broken window, illuminating the distorted, childlike faces.

When they saw that only Naruto had entered, the children's eyes changed instantly. Fear was replaced by a desperate frenzy. Then, Naruto easily kicked them one by one, sending them to the corner of the wall, making them dizzy and temporarily unable to move.

He took a deep breath, looked into those eyes, pondered for a long time, and then casually flicked his wrist, sending several shuriken flying toward the children's throats.

"Ding ding ding ding!"

Several identical shuriken shot in through the window, striking Naruto's kunai with pinpoint accuracy. Then, the window shattered, and a tall, imposing figure descended like an iron tower, standing between Naruto and the children.

It's Sarutobi Asuma.

With a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his mouth, he exhaled a thick cloud of white smoke at the children. The smoke seemed to have a life of its own, rapidly spreading and condensing into a thick, hot cloud of "ashes," which rushed toward the children in the corner like a living thing.

"Fire Release: Ash Pile Burning!"

There was no deafening explosion, only a tooth-grinding, faint "sizzling" sound, as if flesh and bones were being instantly carbonized by high temperatures, and an indescribable smell of burning. As the ashes dissipated, only some black, human-shaped traces and scattered, fine dust remained in the corner.

Then, he turned around and looked at Naruto, who was standing quietly in place.

"There are some things that you shouldn't be carrying at your age. Also, they eat people; they can't be considered human anymore, from their souls to their bodies."

"I have no pity for them."

Naruto Uzumaki shook his head.

"It's just a lament that this world has turned people into ghosts."

Asma was taken aback. It was as if he saw, through the figure of the blond boy in front of him, another man from long ago, who also had brilliant blond hair, a warm smile, but would also show a heavy expression when talking about certain topics.

"so."

Naruto's voice interrupted Asuma's recollection, and a bright smile suddenly bloomed on his face.

"Have I earned your approval, Uncle Sarutobi Asuma?"

Do you know me?

"Not only do I know you, but I also know you've been following me all along. My father is Minato Namikaze, but my mother is Kushina Uzumaki. As a member of the Uzumaki clan, it's normal to know a little bit of sensory ninjutsu, right? So, old man, did you temporarily join the guard just to see me?"

Not entirely.

Sarutobi Asuma shook his head, took out an old scroll from his pocket, and handed it over.

"Mainly, I was planning to give this to you. The old man asked me to give it to you because he felt bad for you."

"Thank you, Uncle Asma."

Naruto Uzumaki accepted the scroll without hesitation.

"Also, I don't blame my third-generation grandfather. He was a very 'twisted' person. In fact, he was more upset than I was."

Upon hearing this, Asuma stared blankly at Naruto for a long while before letting out a soft "heh" and shaking his head with a smile.

"Let's go..."

---Divider line

The Land of Fire, its capital.

Beneath the bustling surface lies a crisscrossing, dark, and damp sewer system.

This is the city's shadowy side, filled with the gurgling of flowing sewage, the squeaking of rats, and a lingering stench of decay.

Deep within one of the side passages, behind a hidden door that blends almost seamlessly with the surrounding stone walls, lies a space completely out of place with the dirty environment outside.

The air was thick with the pungent smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant, and the place was filled with all sorts of intimidating instruments: glass containers connected to tubes of different thicknesses, organ specimens soaking in unknown liquids, and trays displaying all kinds of sharp surgical instruments.

Danzo Shimura lay on the cold metal bed.

Orochimaru stood by the bed, a thin metal needle piercing Danzo's neck, penetrating the muscle layer, and precisely probing the crevice of the spine...

...

"Incredible..."

Orochimaru held a deep blue test tube containing liquid extracted from Danzo Shimura's body.

"The cells of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, are almost the most potent poison in the world to anyone other than himself. Once someone is contaminated with them, they are inseparable."

"However, I have taken multiple samples from your body and found absolutely no trace of the activity of the first generation of cells."

"In other words, Fugaku's Mangekyou Sharingan can completely separate and suppress the First Hokage's cells. It's a pity. If he could cooperate with me, I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of searching for various test subjects. It's incredible, the Mangekyou Sharingan..."

"I didn't come here for you to lament these things. What I'm asking is, is there any possibility that my body can be strengthened again?"

Orochimaru shrugged.

"I don't know, but it's highly unlikely."

"After all, you don't have the Sharingan anymore, do you?"

"Oh, right, there's another piece of bad news, Lord Danzo. Your body has been eroded by the First Hokage's cells for too long. The First Hokage's cells were the backbone of this house, and now they've been removed. I feel that you won't live much longer."

"I know."

Danzo Shimura slowly stood up.

"Don't you have the Sharingan anymore?"

If there is.

Orochimaru spread his hands.

"I used it myself, and I admit, I underestimated the Sharingan. It's incredibly powerful..."

He glanced at his left hand, where he wore a uniquely shaped ring with the word "empty" clearly engraved on it.

"To this extent."

"Experiment with me."

After a long silence, Danzo Shimura suddenly spoke.

"Now?"

"Now."

Danzo looked around.

"Based on my understanding of Tsunade, although she has temporarily compromised due to the situation and the pressure from the Daimyo, she is still that naive woman at heart. If she sees your 'sewer laboratory,' she will most likely tear up the contract."

"After all, in her heart, you might still be the same 'Orochimaru' you used to be..."

"Yeah?"

Orochimaru remained expressionless.

"That is indeed... ridiculous."