Fugaku Uchiha!

Konoha.

Senju Clan Compound.

Sarutobi Hiruzen had chosen to back down.

Chiba turned toward Danzo, who was still rolling on the ground.

Soon,

Danzo's screams faded.

He lay in the dirt, gasping for breath.

Cold sweat and mud coated his deeply lined face.

One of his arms had been torn off.

But he was a Kage Level fighter. He would not lose consciousness so easily.

His rolling and screaming

had been a signal to Sarutobi Hiruzen.

He had been waiting for Hiruzen to step in.

Waiting for Hiruzen to use his political power to save his life.

But

Hiruzen had failed.

Danzo knew it.

To protect the Hokage Position, Hiruzen had abandoned him completely.

There was no escaping now.

Danzo could not keep playing dead.

He braced his remaining left hand against the ground and staggered to his feet.

Blood dripped from his shoulder, quickly staining a broad patch of earth red.

Danzo looked around.

The Uchiha Clan's crimson Sharingan.

The Hyuga Clan's cold Byakugan.

The undisguised contempt of the Ino-Shika-Cho clans.

Every great clan in the village looked at him as though he were trash.

Danzo suddenly laughed.

It was a hoarse, grating sound, like a night owl's cry.

"You know nothing!"

"Konoha is a towering tree!"

"Where sunlight shines, darkness must exist!"

"I am that darkness!"

Danzo suddenly laughed.

It was a hoarse, grating sound, like a night owl's cry.

He raised his remaining arm and pointed at everyone present.

"If I hadn't handled the things that couldn't bear the light these past few years,"

"Konoha would have been swallowed by the other Four Great Ninja Villages long ago!"

"You think peace fell from the sky?"

"No!"

"I bought it with countless schemes, assassinations, and betrayals!"

Danzo's voice grew louder with every word.

His wrinkles bunched together in his fervor.

Then

he whipped his head around and fixed his eyes on Chiba.

"The Senju Clan has fallen."

"The Uchiha Clan is full of ungrateful curs."

"Was I wrong to want control of your powers?"

"Only by perfectly combining the First Generation's Wood Style with the Uchiha's Sharingan"

"can Konoha give rise to a new Deity!"

"Everything I did was for Konoha!"

"You fools have no right to judge me!"

Danzo's voice rang across the clearing.

It was met with an even stranger silence.

Not a single person was swayed by his twisted reasoning.

"So it was all for Konoha."

"That gave you the right to use your comrades' corpses as experimental material?"

"And to plunder the legacies of Kekkei Genkai clans?"

Chiba let out a cold laugh.

It was full of contempt.

Then

Chiba seemed to remember something.

He turned toward Fugaku Uchiha at the front of the crowd.

"Clan Head Fugaku."

"Since this old dog covets the Uchiha's power so much,"

"here's an idea."

"Show him some mercy and take him as your adopted son."

"Let him change his surname to Uchiha."

"If he knocks his head on the ground three times for you every morning,"

"perhaps you could reward him with a pair of Sharingan when you're in a good mood. What do you say?"

The moment he finished,

the entire crowd fell silent.

No one had expected Chiba to say that.

He was grinding Danzo's dignity into the dirt.

"Lord Chiba, you jest."

"The Uchiha Clan may be struggling lately,"

"but we don't take just any piece of trash into the family."

"Danzo is worse than a pig or a dog."

"If he crossed our threshold, I'd fear he would offend the eyes of our ancestors."

At Chiba's words,

Fugaku Uchiha immediately understood what he meant.

Without hesitation, he straightened his back and answered with open disdain.

The two played off each other.

Every word landed on Danzo's face like a resounding slap.

"You brat... How dare you humiliate me!"

Danzo's face turned dark red.

His eyes went bloodshot, and his remaining hand clenched tight.

The cold smile vanished from Chiba's face.

He had no interest in wasting more words on this scum.

Emerald-green Wood Style Chakra began gathering around him at a furious pace.

The air grew oppressively heavy.

His killing intent locked onto Danzo.

Chiba was about to crush the menace himself.

"Lord Chiba!"

Just then,

Fugaku Uchiha stepped forward.

He clasped his hands and bowed deeply to Chiba.

"This old dog desecrated the Senju Clan and insulted the Uchiha."

"I ask that you stay your hand."

"Leave this old dog to me!"

"The Uchiha must collect their own blood debt!"

Fugaku Uchiha's request caught everyone by surprise.

He was usually so timid.

Under pressure from the village leadership, he had retreated time and again.

Yet today, before the Third Hokage, he dared to ask for the right to execute Danzo.

Chiba raised an eyebrow.

He understood what Fugaku Uchiha wanted.

The Senju Clan had commanded the spotlight today, and Wood Style had awed everyone present.

If the Uchiha did not want to fade into the background,

they had to show strength worthy of standing alongside it.

Killing Danzo was the perfect opportunity.

"Suit yourself."

Chiba gave an indifferent shrug.

It made no difference to him who killed Danzo.

From the beginning,

all Chiba had wanted was for Danzo to disappear.

"Thank you, my lord!"

At Chiba's consent,

Fugaku Uchiha's spirits soared.

He turned and walked toward Danzo, one step at a time.

The gathered ninja backed away without needing to be told.

Within seconds, they had cleared a space more than two hundred meters across.

Hyuga Hiashi activated his Byakugan and stared into the clearing.

Shikaku Nara frowned, his mind racing.

Sarutobi Hiruzen gripped his pipe, veins bulging on the back of his hand.

But he remained rooted to the spot like a wooden stake. He neither intervened nor pleaded for Danzo.

As Third Hokage, he had given his tacit consent to the execution.

At the center of the clearing,

Fugaku Uchiha faced Shimura Danzō.

A cold wind swept dust across the ground. The air was thick with killing intent.

Danzo had lost an arm.

But he was still a Kage Level fighter.

Decades of life-and-death battles had given him experience few could match.

More importantly,

he knew he would not leave this place alive today.

If he had to die,

he would take someone with him.

Chiba was too strong. Danzo could not kill him.

But if he could drag the Uchiha clan head down to hell,

he would at least have removed a great threat to Konoha.

"Fugaku."

"Even with only one hand left,"

"I can kill you as easily as a chicken!"

Danzo spoke coldly, his left hand already gripping a Kunai.

At Danzo's taunt,

Fugaku Uchiha stopped.

There was no anger on his face, only icy killing intent.

"Danzo."

"You keep saying you want the Uchiha's power."

"Today, I'll show you the Uchiha's true power!"

The words had barely left his mouth.

Fugaku Uchiha's Three Tomoe Sharingan suddenly began to warp.

The tomoe stretched, merged, and intertwined into an intricate pattern.

In an instant.

A cold, violent surge of Chakra erupted from Fugaku Uchiha's body.

The Mangekyō Sharingan!

It was the trump card Fugaku Uchiha had kept hidden for years.

Not even his wife and son, the people closest to him, knew about it.

But today.

He needed to assert his authority.

He needed to put an end to the village leadership's designs on the Uchiha.

Fugaku Uchiha revealed his Mangekyō Sharingan for all to see.