Poison Gas Spreads, Trapping Them in a Dead End-He Presses the Detonator Without Hesitation

The pale yellow smoke, carrying the cloying scent of rotten nectar, did not drift. Instead, like a liquid with real weight, it clung to the cold metal floor and slowly, steadily "flowed" forward.

Wherever it passed, the moss stubbornly growing in the cracks at the corners of the walls withered and carbonized in an instant. The thick, damp stench in the air was replaced by a more aggressive, more nauseating sweetness.

It was the smell of death.

When Haku saw the yellow smoke steadily closing in, her pupils contracted to pinpoints. All color vanished from her little face, leaving it even paler than the ice crystals around Mizuki Han's severed arm.

Fear drove countless icy needles up from the soles of her feet and straight into her brain. She held Mizuki Han upright with all her strength, her arms wrapped around his waist trembling from the effort. Her teeth chattered.

The escape shaft was less than a hundred meters ahead.

But now, that hundred meters had been transformed by the silent poison fog into a dead end leading straight to the underworld.

There was no way forward, and no way back.

They had been forced into a true dead end.

"Han... Big Brother Han..." Haku's voice trembled with tears, filled with undisguisable despair. "Poison... poison gas..."

Mizuki Han did not answer.

His gaze was terrifyingly calm. His dark eyes were like two bottomless icy pools, clearly reflecting the pale yellow that continued to spread, heralding the end.

Agony, weakness, the brink of death...

These words were nothing more than cold streams of data in his mind, not emotions capable of shaking his resolve.

A calculator did not stop working just because its casing was damaged.

His brain continued to analyze at a speed far beyond that of an ordinary person.

Poison gas spread rate: 0.5 meters per second.

Time required to reach their current position: approximately 90 seconds.

Time until death after inhalation: based on how quickly it corroded the moss, no more than 3 seconds.

And they were still fifty meters from the only safe point. In their current condition, even without the poison gas, it would take them at least two minutes to cover that distance.

Every possible escape route had been calculated and sealed off.

The person who had designed this Great Purge had clearly thought of everything. They did not merely want to kill all the "rats" underground in the cruelest way possible. They also wanted to watch them struggle in despair, then see the helpless, pathetic state they were reduced to once they were cornered.

Too bad they had chosen the wrong audience.

Mizuki Han never acted in someone else's prewritten play.

He directed his own.

"Don't make a sound."

He finally spoke. His voice was hoarse, like two pieces of rusted metal scraping together, yet carried an absolute calm that pierced through all the panic.

Those three words seemed to form an invisible barrier, instantly choking back the scream about to burst from Haku's throat. She looked at Mizuki Han's blood-smeared yet still cold profile, and the heart fear had clenched in its fist somehow found a moment's peace.

As long as this person was still here, the sky itself could not fall.

Mizuki Han slowly raised his one intact hand, his right hand gripping the detonator.

He moved so slowly that Haku could see every tiny movement.

His arm trembled slightly from exhaustion, but his fingers—especially the thumb about to press the button of destruction—were steady as ancient ice that would never melt.

Not the slightest tremor, not a hint of emotion.

His gaze calmly swept over the poison fog, now fifty meters away, then dropped to the small LED on the detonator, flashing crimson.

The light was like a devil's eye, making the wildest invitation to him in the darkness.

Destroy everything. Completely.

Bury this steel cage that had imprisoned him, judged him, and tried to erase him, along with every one of the high-and-mighty rule-makers inside it!

If you won't give me a way out,

then I'll make sure no one else can get out either!

That was Mizuki Han's logic.

A pure, utterly mad logic, untouched by morality or emotion—the logic of a ruthless conqueror.

He looked at the red button, and the corner of his mouth lifted by the tiniest, coldest fraction.

It was not a smile. It was the calm satisfaction of having found the optimal solution.

Then, with a composure bordering on blasphemy, he pressed his thumb down.

"Click."

The faint mechanical click of a button, so slight it could almost be ignored, rang clearly through the underground passage shrouded in poison and despair.

Haku's heart skipped a beat.

She watched helplessly as Mizuki Han's thumb pressed the red button all the way down without a moment's hesitation.

At that moment, time seemed to freeze.

The red LED on the detonator, which had been flashing rhythmically, stopped at once and glowed a constant, eerily deep red.

There was no earth-shattering boom.

There was no violent shaking of the ground.

The world fell into an eerie, suffocating silence.

Only the pale yellow poison fog continued to press forward, unwavering, now less than thirty meters away.

Had it failed?

The absurd thought flashed through Haku's mind.

But in the next instant—

"Vmmm—"

It was not a sound.

It was a vibration.

A deep, heart-stopping resonance that seemed to come from the depths of the earth, from the bones of this steel fortress!

The metal walls on both sides of the passage began to groan under the strain. Dust that had accumulated overhead for who knew how many years sifted down like snow.

Then the first explosion came from far beneath the earth.

"Thoom..."

The sound was dull and distant, as if someone deep underground had struck a huge drum wrapped in thick leather with a war hammer.

Then came the second, and the third...

"Thoom... thoom-thoom..."

The explosions drew closer, growing denser and clearer! Like the furious heartbeat of an ancient beast awakening from its slumber underground, every pulse made the entire subterranean base tremble!

B-3 sector, support columns!

C-5 sector, Interrogation Department!

A-1 sector, foundation of the Anbu main building!

One after another, the demolition points Mizuki Han had calculated with precision began to detonate in sequence, like firecrackers being lit in a chain!

"BOOM—!!!"

The first truly deafening explosion erupted not far beneath their feet!

A terrifying blast wave, visible to the naked eye and packed with shattered stone and dust, surged back through the passage from around the bend!

Mizuki Han instinctively shielded Haku with his own body, using his broken frame to withstand the first shock wave!

"RUMBLE—!!!"

The symphony of destruction finally erupted into its wildest crescendo!

The ground beneath them bucked like the sea during a magnitude-ten earthquake, heaving upward before collapsing violently downward!

Haku let out a short cry, her balance gone.

Mizuki Han held her tightly as his back slammed into the metal wall, twisted out of shape by the violent tremors. Agonizing pain tore through the wound on his severed arm, and his vision went black once more.

Above them, the sturdy alloy ceiling split with a series of horrifying metallic groans, jagged cracks appearing across its surface!

Pipes and wires burst apart like veins and nerves torn out by a giant, spraying blinding sparks and jets of pressurized steam!

The entire world began to collapse—violently, irreversibly...

Amid the cataclysmic destruction wrought by the chain of explosions, this underground fortress, a symbol of Kirigakure's darkness and order, was being ripped apart inch by inch from its very foundations by the most primitive force of all: violence from within!

At the heart of the ruins, on the verge of being swallowed up, Mizuki Han lifted his head. Through the falling rubble and dust, his gaze seemed to pierce hundreds of meters of rock and see the blood-red night sky above Mist Village.

What kind of devastating destruction would this grand firework display, which he had set alight with his own hands to bury everything, unleash? And what expressions would the high-and-mighty powers that be wear?