"Your friend, Uchiha Shisui, will die. Your girlfriend, Uchiha Izumi, will die too. Your entire clan will die one by one, following the family tree. The most tragic part is that the ones who massacre the Uchiha will be two Uchiha prodigies!"
Seeing how vigilant Uchiha Itachi was, and that he wasn't willing to enter into a summoning contract with him so easily, Fuyuki stopped trying to sell him on his Elemental Spirits. He made the High-ranking Dark Spirit wear a strange smile and said, "It'll happen this month!"
With that, its body slowly turned indistinct and melted into the shadows among the branches. "I'll be here the whole time. Once you understand what I can do, you're welcome to come find me anytime. The summoning contract for the Elemental Dawn will always be waiting for you!"
The tomoe spinning rapidly in Uchiha Itachi's pupils gradually came to a halt. He murmured, "Genjutsu doesn't work?"
Itachi stood there silently for a moment, the malicious Summoned Beast's words surfacing in his mind.
Uchiha Shisui would die, and two Uchiha prodigies would wipe out the Uchiha Clan. Those words contained a serious contradiction. Right now, the only people in the Uchiha Clan who could be called prodigies were Shisui and himself.
If Shisui died, where would the two Uchiha prodigies who wiped out the clan come from?
So Itachi didn't believe the High-ranking Dark Spirit's words.
Putting the malicious Summoned Beast's ravings aside, Uchiha Itachi headed for Naka Shrine.
Today was another clan meeting. If he could help it, Itachi didn't want to go at all. Every time, he argued with the Radical Faction until they were at each other's throats. Every time, he and Shisui tried to stop the Radical Faction's foolishness. It was heartbreaking that the Uchiha had come to treat him like a plague!
He had also begun to drift away from the Neutral Faction. The Uchiha Radical Faction had already made his heart grow cold.
"Lord Fugaku, the spineless Konoha High Command is actually trying to cut the Police Force's budget. They've gone too far!" Uchiha Yashiro said furiously.
The Uchiha Police Force didn't need to go out or carry out missions. Its only job was to maintain order in the village.
Konoha paid the Uchiha every month—though officially, it was a budget for expenses, not a salary.
When Konoha learned that the Uchiha were planning something big, it immediately cut off their source of funds, drastically reducing the Police Force's monthly budget. That would stop the Uchiha from going mad and buying millions of Explosive Tags to blast the Konoha High Command into the clouds and send them west on a pilgrimage!
"Itachi!"
"Itachi!"
"Uchiha Itachi!"
After three urgent calls in a row, Itachi, who had been sitting beside the wall with Shisui, reluctantly got to his feet. "I'm here."
"As a member of the Anbu, you should know what the Konoha High Command is planning, right?"
Uchiha Yashiro, one of Uchiha Fugaku's trusted men, didn't scold Itachi for his attitude. He simply stared coldly at Itachi, who stood in the corner. "Answer me!"
Itachi: "..."
He really wanted to laugh. Did they not understand the Uchiha Clan's situation?
Would the Konoha High Command really tell him any of this?
"Didn't you join the Anbu to get close to the village's center of power, gather all kinds of intelligence, and then report it to us?"
"Yashiro!"
Trying to help the silent Itachi, Uchiha Fugaku called out to his trusted subordinate. But Yashiro didn't respond to Fugaku; he continued to look at Itachi coldly. "Ever since you joined the Anbu, you haven't brought the Uchiha Clan a single piece of intelligence. Not once!"
"Because I don't know anything, I have nothing to report!"
Uchiha Itachi looked at Yashiro coldly, then swept his equally indifferent gaze over the nearly hundred members of the Radical Faction.
He wasn't afraid of anyone there. Even someone like Yashiro, a trusted man of the clan head, could be defeated by him in an instant—six of them at once. The Uchiha Clan was simply too weak!
As usual, the clan meeting ended on a sour note, and Itachi hadn't revealed any information.
Because he really didn't know anything. He belonged to the Hokage's personal Anbu; it was the Root Division that was targeting the Uchiha.
Standing with Shisui on the cliff beside Naka Shrine, gazing at the beautiful sunset, Shisui suddenly said, "Itachi, I received a clan mission. Uncle Fugaku told me to keep an eye on you."
"The Radical Faction has completely given up on you. At next week's clan meeting, they'll start planning a coup..."
"Itachi said nothing. He gazed blankly at the sunset, lost in thought.
"You idiot! I told you to steal ninjutsu scrolls, not to go spying on people. Why are you following Uchiha Itachi?"
The two-meter-tall giant scolded him helplessly as it flipped through the scrolls on a bookshelf. The High-ranking Dark Spirit was currently in the Uchiha Clan's library, and Fuyuki was controlling its body.
"He's special. I sensed a pure Yin Release Chakra in him, and I want to investigate that energy," the High-ranking Dark Spirit said aggrievedly.
"Forget about him. Investigating the Uchiha's ninjutsu scrolls is your mission."
Fuyuki didn't care about Uchiha Itachi. The pure Yin Release Chakra in him was probably because some recent experience had stimulated his brain to produce a special substance, amplifying his Sharingan's ocular power.
When members of the Uchiha Clan were stimulated, their brains produced a special substance that strengthened their Sharingan. If they had enough talent, a stimulus that brought them close to a mental breakdown might even awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan all at once.
"How am I supposed to get them? The Uchiha Clan Head can see through my disguise. Their important ninjutsu scrolls are mostly kept at Naka Shrine or in Uchiha Fugaku's house. I can't get anywhere near either place. And then there's that big-eyed, curled-up-haired freak, too," the High-ranking Dark Spirit complained.
"It's investigating, not stealing. When it comes to ninja, how can you call it stealing?" Fuyuki set down the scroll. "The Fire Release techniques here are all too weak. The strongest is only A-rank. I'll have to rely on you for high-level Fire Release techniques."
"Come to my house tonight. I'll prepare a Summoning Scroll for you later. Find some people with relatively large chakra reserves and get them to sign contracts. Have them help me accumulate pure chakra. I need it!"
When Fuyuki summoned a High-level Spirit, he had known that it required a great deal of chakra, but he hadn't known how much. Now that he had summoned the High-ranking Dark Spirit, he finally had a rough idea of the amount needed to summon a High-ranking Elemental Spirit.
Based on the chakra visible to the Byakugan, creating one High-ranking Elemental Spirit took as much chakra as a Jonin had!
The Elemental Spirits were Jonin-level in strength, but they didn't have any corresponding ninjutsu. They could only fight by instinctively wielding elements of their own nature.
Summoning a Low-ranking Elemental Spirit required only one-fifth of a Genin's chakra. Summoning a High-level Spirit required as much chakra as a Jonin. What about the Spirit King? Just how terrifying an amount of chakra would it need?
Summoning the Spirit King required summoning seven pure High-ranking Elemental Spirits and then fusing them together!
Fuyuki didn't dare calculate it or think too deeply about it. He was afraid he'd get so upset that he'd bite his bedsheets that night and roll around clutching them!
So, over the six years before he graduated from the Ninja Academy, he planned to rent out his Summoned Beasts and have them help other ninja in battle. In return, their contractors wouldn't just have to provide the chakra needed to summon them and the chakra they used in battle; they'd also have to pay him chakra every week!
Fuyuki planned to summon the seven High-ranking Elemental Spirits as soon as the Uchiha Clan Massacre was over. He'd send them out to make a name for themselves in the Ninja World, becoming Summoned Beasts everyone wanted, like the Three Great Sage Regions!
He'd already thought of a name for the Summoned Beast organization: the Elemental Dawn. Their home would be called the Dawn Rift. He even had a backstory ready: they were spirits from another dimension who had accidentally come to the Ninja World and hoped to grow stronger by receiving chakra offerings from their contractors.
Thanks to Chou Yiyun for the hundred-point tip. Thank you!
PS: The description of Itachi here comes from the official account. Uchiha Itachi started out in the Neutral Faction. But after arguing again and again at clan meetings and witnessing the Radical Faction's madness, he grew disillusioned. He didn't give up, though; he kept trying to persuade his clanmates, not wanting those lunatics to drag the other Uchiha into it.
Well, in the end, the whole clan got wiped out. Only two were left alive.
Before you continue