"What exactly happened here?"
Looking at the unfamiliar scene before her, Tsunade stood there in a daze, almost thinking she had gotten lost.
In her memory, the Land of Whirlpools was a beautiful place of green trees and rolling waters.
The trees dyed the rippling water a lush green, reflecting the vast azure sky above.
But now, Uzushio Village had sunk into darkness, though it was not a pure darkness.
A moon hung in the night sky, its image warped by the scorching air.
That lush green forest had vanished, leaving behind only withered, burned-out trunks.
Beneath the twisted moonlight, the lingering flames on the trunks gave off a faint red glow.
They could not illuminate the night. Instead, they added a touch of deathly stillness to it.
Like a black curtain closing after the performance, decorated with intricate crimson patterns yet still so dark it was horrifying to behold.
Crack.
Jiraiya-sensei unconsciously took a step forward and seemed to have stepped on something, producing a sharp snap.
"...What was that?"
Jiraiya-sensei looked down and saw only a patch of charred blackness and a section of "branch."
A branch?
Only when he narrowed his eyes and examined it closely did he finally recognize what it really was.
That was not a tree branch at all!
It was clearly a human arm!
What should have been a strong, powerful arm now brought only two words to mind.
—Crispy.
It was a somewhat chilling description, but an extremely fitting one.
Shriveled like firewood, it had contracted drastically.
No, rather...
"Th-these are all severed limbs?"
Jiraiya-sensei lifted his other foot in shock, producing another crisp snap that sent a chill into everyone's bones.
Beneath his foot was a corpse, completely carbonized from head to toe, visibly fragile and no different from a withered