Sasuke's arm trembled slightly, and the Chidori in his hand gradually dissipated, its piercing whine fading with it.
The entire training ground fell into deathly silence.
Even the faintest rustle of wind through the grass could be heard clearly.
Sasuke lowered his head again to look at Shimura Danzō's corpse. Though he had killed one of his "enemies," a faint sense of satisfaction rose within him.
But when he saw Danzō's disgusting arm in Naruto's hand, along with the horrifying Sharingan embedded in it, the rage in his heart refused to fade.
Especially Itachi Uchiha...
Still, Naruto had kept his promise and given him the chance to personally kill his enemy. Sasuke remembered that favor. Hiruzen Sarutobi stood frozen in place, his outstretched hand drooping limply, his mouth—opened earlier in an attempt to stop them—not yet fully closed.
Looking at the charred fatal wound in Danzō's chest, then at Naruto standing before him, radiating intense chakra fluctuations, and those calm yet terrifying crimson vertical pupils—
An unprecedented sense of exhaustion and helplessness swept through Hiruzen Sarutobi's heart.
He was shaken not merely by Danzō's death, but by the utter collapse of his own authority at this very moment.
His old partner was dead—the Danzō who had done countless dark deeds for the village, and who had opposed him for years.
Just like that, in front of him, the Hokage, and Konoha's many upper-ranking officials and clan heads, he had been publicly executed by a genin of the village.
More crucially, there was the "reason" for Danzō's death.
That arm covered in sin, and Danzō's twisted inner thoughts that Naruto had mercilessly exposed before everyone...
They were so real, so deeply shocking, that Hiruzen Sarutobi could not even bring himself to voice a proper rebuke with any conviction.
The order of