Clarity

That was where his memories began, and where his final obsession lay.

Supporting himself against a broken stone pillar beside him, Genki struggled to his feet and staggered toward the Uchiha compound.

The road beneath his feet was a literal mountain of corpses and sea of blood.

Mangled limbs, shattered Ninja Tools, and congealed blood crusted the ground. With every step, he could feel the sticky resistance beneath his feet and hear the crisp crack of splintering bones.

The pungent stench of blood mixed with the smell of scorched flesh filled his nostrils, but he seemed utterly unaware of it. Relying only on that last shred of clarity, he stumbled over corpse after corpse and made his way deeper into the compound.

In the open space at the center of the compound, two small figures lay quietly amid the ruins. They were Uchiha Izumi and Uchiha Hazuki, whom he had hidden there and who had luckily escaped the indiscriminate destruction.

Their bodies had long since gone cold, and the terror from their final moments still lingered on their faces. Their favorite hair ornaments and toys lay scattered around them, forming a glaring contrast with the ruins surrounding them.

The instant he saw the two bodies, Genki's tightly wound body finally collapsed.

He dropped helplessly to his knees, his knees smashing against the rubble with a piercing pain, but he felt nothing.

He reached out with trembling hands and carefully gathered Uchiha Izumi into his arms, his movements so gentle as though he feared waking her from sleep.

Izumi's body was already stiff, her cheeks ice-cold, yet Genki stubbornly pressed his own cheek to her forehead, trying to pass even a trace of warmth to her.

Then he slowly drew Uchiha Hazuki's body into his embrace as well, clutching the two cold bodies tightly against himself, as though doing so could keep them from leaving.

Around him lay Konoha, reduced to ruins. In the distance was the Land of Fire, utterly fallen. Heaven and earth were deathly silent, leaving only his ragged breathing and suppressed sobs.

Those scarlet eyes that had once brimmed with violent killing intent were now filled with endless emptiness and despair. Tears mixed with blood and grime slid from the corners of his eyes, falling onto Izumi and Hazuki's cold cheeks, yet they could no longer bring back a response from either of them.

Yet compared to the hell within his spiritual world, this despair in the outside world was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Within Uchiha Genki's spiritual world, there was no sky and no earth—only endless darkness and a boundless mountain of corpses and sea of blood.

Millions upon millions of corpses were piled layer upon layer, towering into the clouds. Every corpse retained the agonized posture of its death: some snarled in savage roars, some wore faces full of terror, and some wept in despair.

These were the souls he had devoured in a single night—the civilians and ninjas of the Land of Fire, the lives caught up in the Land of Wind and the Land of Lightning. Nearly ten million souls had all condensed into physical form here.

Thick pools of blood gathered in the gaps between the corpses, giving off a nauseating stench of rot. Black mist coiled above the mountain of bodies, and every wisp contained a fragment of a shattered memory.

At times, it was the cheerful laughter of farmers at work in their fields;

At times, it was the tense slaughter of ninjas carrying out missions;

At times, it was the innocent laughter of children at play;

At times, it was the heartbroken sobbing of loved ones parting ways...

Countless utterly different fragments of memory surged and collided through the dark space like a tide, producing a piercing hum.

And at the very bottom of that endless mountain of corpses and sea of blood, an extremely small figure was pinned beneath it all.

It was Uchiha Genki's spiritual body, no larger than a child. Black blood covered him from head to toe, his hair was a mess, and his eyes were filled with terror and confusion.

His hands were mangled and bloody, yet he still instinctively clawed desperately at the corpses crushing him, trying to break free from this hellish predicament.

For every soul he devoured, another corpse would appear in his spiritual world, along with another memory that did not belong to him.

Had he devoured them gradually, he would still have had time to digest and merge with them. But in his frenzied state, he had long since lost all reason.

First, he had devoured tens of thousands of souls in an instant. Then, in a single night, he had devoured nearly ten million. Such a vast torrent of memories was like a burst dam, instantly washing away the barriers of his spiritual world.

Countless fragments of memory surged into his mind like sharp blades, tearing and crashing wildly through his consciousness.

The joys and sorrows, reunions and partings of others forcefully overlaid his own memories, throwing his consciousness into greater and greater chaos.

He could clearly feel the pain of others, their happiness, their obsessions, but those feelings intertwined with his own memories until he could no longer tell who he was.

In the pitch-black spiritual world, Genki's soul body was becoming transparent at a visible rate.

His memories were being devoured and erased bit by bit by the memories of those ten million souls.

Compared to the immense memories of ten million souls, his own memories were no more than a drop in the ocean—so insignificant as to be worthless.

"Who... who am I..." Genki's spiritual body let out an incomparably hoarse murmur, his voice so weak it was nearly inaudible. His gaze grew increasingly lost, and his movements as he clawed away the corpses grew slower and slower. "No... I'm not them... I am..."

He desperately tried to remember his own name, his past, and the faces of Izumi and Hazuki. But those precious memories slipped through his fingers like sand. No matter how tightly he grasped, he could not hold on to them.

All that remained in his mind were countless unfamiliar images and voices, shrieking madly as they sought to completely drown his final shred of self.

Instinctively, he wanted to break out. He wanted to return to that outside world where Izumi and Hazuki still were. But the mountain of corpses and sea of blood built from ten million souls was simply too vast, too heavy.

Every time he pulled away one corpse, more bodies rolled down from above and buried him beneath them again.

His fingers were cut open by sharp bones, blood pouring from them, yet he continued struggling stubbornly. Even if that struggle was so insignificant before boundless despair.

The darkness of the spiritual world grew thicker and thicker. Countless fragments of memory swarmed toward him like locusts, while Genki's soul body became increasingly transparent and his consciousness increasingly blurred.

That shred of clarity from the outside world was slowly fading before the hell of his spiritual world, about to be utterly annihilated by the torrent of ten million souls.

The darkness within the spiritual world grew even thicker, like indelible ink, tightly wrapping around Genki's consciousness.

Countless black ghostly claws reached out from the darkness, their nails sharp as blades and gleaming with a cold, sinister light. They seized his spiritual body's limbs, torso, and even the core of his consciousness.

Those ghostly claws carried bone-piercing cold, as if they meant to freeze his soul apart. They also carried a strange pulling force, constantly tearing and dragging at his consciousness, seeking to haul it completely into the endless abyss of hell.