The Land of Fire, Konoha.
A cold wind howled past. A solitary figure stood atop a cliff, gazing down at the river flowing below as if lost in thought.
Just then, a sound came from the distant forest. The figure turned around, revealing a youthful face.
He was a young man of seventeen or eighteen. His expression was calm, almost indifferent, though it seemed somewhat forced. Only his clenched fists and slightly hurried breathing betrayed his nervousness.
The trees parted, and a ninja in a flak jacket bearing the Uchiha Clan crest staggered out, one hand covering half his face.
Blood stained the ninja's palm and half his sleeve. Judging by where he was holding his face, his eye had clearly been injured.
"Shisui! What happened to you?! Your eye... Who did this?!"
The ninja standing at the edge of the cliff looked shocked and furious. He hurried forward and caught Uchiha Shisui.
"I failed... Shūichi, Danzo doesn't trust me or the Uchiha. He has his own plans. He ambushed me just now..."
Uchiha Shisui spoke hurriedly, his voice tinged with sorrow.
"My plan to use Kotoamatsukami to prevent a clash between the Uchiha and the village has completely failed. There's only one way to make the Uchiha calm down a little and delay the uprising."
The Uchiha ninja named Shūichi frowned at his words.
"Don't say any more. You've lost so much blood... You should recover from your injuries first!"
"No, there's no time. And I don't intend to recover!"
Uchiha Shisui placed a hand on Uchiha Shūichi's shoulder. When he took it away, his right eye was revealed as a bloody socket.
Without the slightest hesitation, Uchiha Shisui raised his hand to his left eye. The next moment, with a muffled groan, he plucked it out as well.
"I'm entrusting this eye to you... Shūichi, you and Itachi are both geniuses among the Uchiha Clan, truly capable of seeing beyond the narrow concerns of your own clan..."
"I've already left a suicide note. I'll kill myself now. That should delay the Uchiha Clan's coup for a while... It'll be up to you to find a way to bridge the divide between Konoha and the village during that time."
Uchiha Shūichi took the eyeball from Uchiha Shisui. As he looked at Shisui, now blind in both eyes, the panic and tension on his face gradually faded. Instead, an irrepressible smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"Suicide seems like such a waste. A living Uchiha and a dead Uchiha are worth completely different things!"
"What?!"
Hearing the slightly twisted voice, Uchiha Shisui froze. But blind in both eyes, he had barely a fraction of his strength left. Before he could react, a senbon pierced his lower abdomen.
As soon as the senbon entered, the little Chakra left in Uchiha Shisui's body rapidly seized up. At the same time, numbness spread through his entire body. He collapsed to the ground, still wearing an expression of disbelief.
"Y-you... Who are you? Uchiha Shūichi would never do something like this!"
"That only means you're too naïve, Shisui, and too quick to trust others. Then again, if you weren't so naïve, how could Konoha's upper echelon have led you around by the nose so easily?"
Uchiha Shūichi sneered. If I had Uchiha Shisui's talent and Mangekyo ability, I wouldn't just have ended the conflict between Konoha Village and the Uchiha Clan. I'd have taken power long ago and become Konoha's Hokage.
Unfortunately, Shisui has already leaked the details of Kotoamatsukami. Konoha's upper echelon will surely be on guard now.
Still, if Shisui hadn't naïvely revealed the secret and given Konoha's upper echelon a reason to target him, I wouldn't have been able to get my hands on this Mangekyo. In that sense, it's better that this Uchiha genius was a little naïve.
As the two spoke, Uchiha Shūichi had already put Uchiha Shisui's Mangekyo in a prepared test tube. Then he formed hand seals. With a puff of smoke, a giant snake more than ten meters long appeared on the ground.
Uchiha Shisui was numb all over and blind in both eyes, but the instincts of an elite ninja remained. He needed only to hear the hissing in the air and the scrape of scales against one another to identify the creature Uchiha Shūichi had summoned.
"A snake summon... You... Shūichi, you're in contact with Orochimaru?!"
Almost all snake summons came from Ryūchi Cave, and everyone knew that its most powerful contractor was Orochimaru, the notorious missing-nin from Konoha.
"What's so surprising about that? I'm an Uchiha, an evil one in the eyes of Konoha's upper echelon. Isn't it only natural for me to collude with Orochimaru, a missing-nin from Konoha?"
"Did you really think that you, me, and Uchiha Itachi were any different in the eyes of Konoha's upper echelon? If we were, Shisui, you wouldn't be in this state!"
Uchiha Shūichi finished speaking with a mocking smile. Without waiting for Uchiha Shisui to say anything else, he controlled the giant snake to swallow him whole. Then, with a poof, both the snake and Uchiha Shisui vanished.
"A living Uchiha who's already awakened the Mangekyo... Even though nine-tenths of the Uchiha Clan's bloodline essence lies in the eyes, Uchiha Shisui is still incredibly valuable without them. If Orochimaru doesn't pay a hefty price this time, he can forget about getting such a high-grade test subject from me."
"Wait... Now that I have Kotoamatsukami, why do I need to make a deal with Orochimaru?"
Uchiha Shūichi was a transmigrator. In his previous life, he'd worked selling heavy-duty trucks.
Perhaps too many transmigrators had been sent off by heavy-duty trucks, and their resentment had cursed him. Whatever the reason, he'd gone to sleep and awakened in this world.
By the time the transmigrator came to his senses, Konoha Village had just suffered the Nine-Tails' Attack.
During the Nine-Tails' Attack on Konoha, most of the Uchiha were kept under close watch by Root and Shimura Danzō. As a result, the Uchiha Clan was the ninja clan that suffered the least damage.
But suffering the least damage didn't mean the Uchiha Clan had emerged unscathed. A small number of Uchiha Police Force members had been on duty that day, away from the Uchiha Clan Grounds, and had taken part in the battle against the Nine-Tails.
Uchiha Shūichi's parents had been on duty that day. When the battle against the Nine-Tails broke out, they had stayed at their posts and died in the chaos.
The shock of losing them caused ten-year-old Uchiha Shūichi to pass out. When he awoke, he had not only awakened the One-Tomoe Sharingan but had also become a transmigrator.
After learning who he was and when he had arrived in this world, Uchiha Shūichi immediately realized that the situation was bad.
After all, the Uchiha Clan had lasted only seven years after the Nine-Tails' Attack before falling to the blades of Uchiha Itachi and Uchiha Obito.
At first, Uchiha Shūichi had tried to find the Golden Finger he'd expected to receive after transmigrating. In the end, he discovered that he did have one, but it would take ten years to activate.
It was a mysterious Light Orb, appearing and disappearing in his mind. But the moment he saw the Light Orb in his mind, Uchiha Shūichi instinctively received a message: it would take another ten years for the Light Orb Dimension to fully form.
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