River of Calamity

The room fell deathly silent.

The temperature seemed to plummet, and Shisui and Itachi, seated beside Mirai, felt a faint chill.

Uchiha Mirai intended to plant the will to destroy the Uchiha Clan in Danzo's mind?

Shisui and Itachi said nothing, but the slight tremor in their pupils exposed the shock in their hearts.

"Mirai, are you really going to do this?"

Shisui took a deep breath, suppressing the shock within him.

"Of course."

Uchiha Mirai smiled faintly as he looked out the window.

"I once heard an old saying: if you want someone to perish, first drive them mad."

"Danzo is the easiest target. He already harbors incomparable hatred for the Uchiha Clan, so even if this will is planted in him, no one else will notice anything amiss."

"But at the critical moment, it can become the blade that destroys him!"

Behind the smile in Uchiha Mirai's eyes lay depths as profound as a dark sea.

People possessed reason.

Even the craziest person, when their life was at stake, would have their instinct for survival take over.

What he wanted to do was completely destroy Danzo's reason.

To make that enraged beast lose the reins that restrained its madness.

Only then, only then!

Would Sarutobi Hiruzen and the others be unable to stop it, forced to watch as the beast marched toward its destruction...

The cold smile in Uchiha Mirai's eyes deepened.

Three years ago—long before, three years ago.

He had already been waiting for this moment.

After leaving the clan head's residence, Uchiha Shisui's heart was still pounding.

Only now did he understand Uchiha Mirai's scheme.

Simply protecting the Uchiha Clan had never been his goal.

His goal was to destroy the entire Hokage faction and place the Uchiha Clan above Konoha!

The lingering shock in his eyes revealed the unrest in Shisui's heart.

Back in their student days, he and Uchiha Mirai had been classmates.

But Mirai had been inconspicuous then.

In contrast, Shisui had been a renowned genius throughout the Ninja Academy. Even the academy teachers often marveled at his talent.

Uchiha Mirai had been like an unremarkable speck of dust, passing through his student years in obscurity.

Then the Third Shinobi War broke out.

Uchiha Mirai rose to prominence in a battle, earning the name Calamity Uchiha with his terrifying poison.

But by then, Shisui had already earned the title Shisui of the Body Flicker in the campaign against the Mist Hidden Village.

At the time, Shisui of the Body Flicker was even more renowned than Calamity Uchiha.

Though Shisui had been surprised by Mirai's sudden rise, he had not taken it to heart. After all, during their student days, aside from often coming to him to talk about incomprehensible things like Marx and Engels, Mirai had never stood out in any way.

But before long, one astonishing tale after another about Calamity Uchiha reached him, leaving Shisui utterly stunned.

Was this really Mirai?

Slaughtering over a hundred shinobi in a single battle?

Was that truly something Mirai could accomplish?

The shinobi world erupted into an uproar, and Calamity Uchiha became a super genius on par with the Yellow Flash.

Meanwhile, Shisui, the genius who had been famous since his student days, fell far behind in both achievements and prestige.

That continued until the decisive battle against the Stone Hidden Village.

Calamity Uchiha had single-handedly crushed the Stone shinobi forces.

That blue pillar of light, as though it had split the heavens, swept across the border of the Land of Grass and extended deep into the Land of Earth.

After the war, the long, narrow trench left behind by that battle gradually became a flowing river.

Yet the river seemed to contain the power of Uchiha Mirai's terrifying poison as well.

Its banks were high and narrow, while its pale purple waters reflected a fluorescent glow.

Helplessly, the villages along the river could only be forced to relocate.

Yet a small number of villages still remained there, living off the river water.

Because of that river's unusual origins, the villagers there called it...

the River of Calamity.

Uchiha Shisui shuddered and pulled his thoughts away from those memories.

Uchiha Mirai's deeds were too horrifying. Even recalling them slightly gave him a suffocating sense of pressure.

No wonder Konoha's higher-ups had immediately moved against Uchiha Mirai after the war ended.

If he were Sarutobi Hiruzen, he probably would not have been able to eat or sleep in peace either.

Shisui felt a lingering chill of fear.

"Good thing Mirai is from the Uchiha Clan."

If Uchiha Mirai had belonged to the Sarutobi Clan or the Shimura Clan, then the Uchiha Clan's fate would have been completely rewritten.

"I need to figure out how to complete Mirai's mission."

As he traveled, Uchiha Shisui began to ponder it.

Mirai's mission was difficult, yet not entirely difficult.

Hit Danzo with a Kotoamatsukami.

And he could not let anyone else discover it.

That made timing extremely important.

Acting rashly would only ruin everything and leave himself in a passive position.

He had to find the right opportunity.

Uchiha Shisui silently considered it.

Before long, he left the clan grounds and prepared to head to the Hokage Building.

As an ANBU personally appointed by Sarutobi Hiruzen, he could not stay away for long and had to return quickly to fulfill his ANBU duties.

The next second.

Shisui's gaze suddenly sharpened.

He came to an abrupt stop in the forest.

"Come out!"

He calmly swept his gaze across his surroundings.

"As expected of Shisui of the Body Flicker. You noticed me so easily."

That unfamiliar voice immediately made Shisui frown.

The space several meters away suddenly twisted. A masked figure abruptly emerged from within a black vortex.

That eye...?

Shisui's pupils contracted sharply!

"You're from the Uchiha Clan!!!"