Danzo Reappears! The Old Dog Who Won't Die

Yuan watched the paper ash drift from his fingertips, his scarlet Mangekyo Sharingan refracting a chilling light beneath the morning sun. The Akatsuki's movements had been completely exposed to his view, and those moving high-grade fragments were beckoning to him.

However, just as he was about to set out for the outskirts of the Hidden Leaf Village and lay an interception net.

"Whoosh—!"

An extremely faint sound of something cutting through the air came from the abandoned bell tower on the edge of the clan grounds. Immediately after, an ordinary Leaf Anbu, covered in severe sword wounds and with his forehead protector dyed red by blood, fell out of midair and slammed heavily onto the stone slabs five or six steps in front of Yuan.

"Cough, cough... Uchiha... Lord Yuan..." The Anbu coughed up mouthfuls of black blood. There was a penetrating wound in his chest so deep that bone could be seen, and the edges of the wound had turned black; he had clearly been poisoned by Root's specially made lethal toxin. "The Administrative Department was attacked... Lord Shikaku... has been trapped by Danzo's assassination unit in the underground base of the Old No. 3 Training Ground... please..."

Before he could finish, the Anbu's head tilted to the side, and he breathed his last.

The red light in Yuan's eyes flashed sharply.

"That old dog isn't hiding in his hole eating shit, and he still dares come out to bite people?" Yuan sneered aloud. He did not care whether Shikaku lived or died. Whether the head of the Nara clan who played politics lived or died meant nothing to him. But since Danzo's men had shown themselves, that rat hiding in the gutter had to be nearby!

"Boom!"

The bluestone slabs under Yuan's feet instantly exploded into powder, and his whole body became a storm laced with black lightning, shooting up from the ground. The sheer violence of his starting speed tore a visible white sonic boom cloud through the air, even ripping away a large swath of roof tiles from the houses along his path.

West side of the Hidden Leaf Village, the abandoned Old No. 3 Underground Training Ground.

The air here was filled with the sharp stench of blood and the foul stink of scorched Fire Release. Shikaku clutched his left arm, which had been cut by a kunai, and leaned against the cold, damp concrete wall. Around him lay more than a dozen Leaf Jonin who had been protecting him, while opposite him stood nearly thirty fully armed Root killers wearing patternless masks.

Surrounded by the Root killers, an old man leaning on a cane, half his face wrapped in bandages, slowly walked out. It was Shimura Danzo, who should have been fleeing like a stray dog.

"Shikaku, you're too smart—smart enough that you shouldn't have blocked my path at a time like this." Danzo's remaining left eye looked down at Shikaku as if he were staring at an insect about to be crushed. "I am the Hidden Leaf's only savior. Hiruzen's womanly kindness ruined the village. Now it is time for me to take over everything. Do it. Send him on his way."

Several Root killers raised their cold, gleaming ninja blades and slashed down at Shikaku without the slightest hesitation.

Shikaku closed his eyes. His chakra had already been exhausted; he could not use the Shadow Imitation Technique at all.

At the critical instant just before the blades cut open Shikaku's throat!

"Rumble—!!!"

The reinforced concrete dome above the training ground, two meters thick, suddenly let out a deafening groan. Immediately after, an enormous, demon-god-like Susanoo hand bone burning with dark red chakra forcibly pierced straight through the entire dome from above!

Huge chunks of stone and several tons of rebar came crashing down like rain. The Root killers who had raised their blades did not even manage to scream before a falling concrete ceiling slab crushed them into meat paste.

Dust mixed with violent air currents rampaged madly through the underground space.

"Who's there?!" Danzo cried out in alarm, instinctively retreating two steps.

"Someone here to collect a debt!"

A voice colder than a demon's exploded from above the smoke and dust. Yuan did not even draw his short blade. His whole body was like a meteor carrying an aura of destruction as he dropped vertically through the huge hole. He did not even deign to form hand seals; during his fall, his right foot was wrapped in red chakra that had been driven to an extreme frenzy.

"Bang!"

Yuan landed with both feet, and the terrifying impact directly stomped a crater more than ten meters across into the underground rock layer. A visible ring-shaped shockwave swept out, sending the remaining twenty-odd Root killers flying like bowling pins and smashing them into the walls with snapped tendons and broken bones.

Yuan slowly straightened, his long black trench coat whipping wildly in the surging chakra turbulence. His scarlet Mangekyo Sharingan locked firmly onto Danzo not far away.

"Uchiha Yuan!" Danzo saw who had arrived, and a trace of fear first flashed across his wrinkled old face, but in the next instant it was replaced by a sick fanaticism and arrogance. He tore off the thick bandages wrapped around his right arm.

On that deathly pale arm, there had originally been more than a dozen Sharingan densely sewn into it. But now, Yuan keenly noticed that three of those eyes had closed forever, turning into grayish-white dead flesh.

"What, stunned?" Danzo looked at Yuan's eyes fixed on his arm and let out a hoarse, rampant sneer. "You thought that just because you killed me a few times last time, you could completely destroy me? Let me tell you, with Hashirama cells and your Uchiha eyes, I have already developed the most perfect forbidden technique. For the duration of this technique, I am a god! An undying existence!"

"Izanagi. I'm more familiar with it than you are." Yuan did not want to listen to even one more word of his nonsense.

"Swish!" Yuan's figure vanished directly from where he stood. He was so fast he did not even leave an afterimage behind.

Danzo's pupils abruptly shrank. His left eye simply could not keep up with such inhuman speed. Before he could react, a force like a collapsing mountain and overturning sea had already smashed viciously into his chest.

"Chakra Enhanced Strength Punch!"

Yuan's right fist carried an ear-piercing sonic boom as it punched through Danzo's chest without the slightest suspense. The enormous fist pressure directly blasted apart the clothes and flesh on Danzo's back, and fragments of his internal organs mixed with blood sprayed all over the ground.

Danzo's body suddenly stiffened, his eyes bulging wide as his life force was instantly cut off.

But in the next second!

The space before Yuan's eyes suddenly distorted like ripples on water. Danzo's corpse, which had originally been impaled on Yuan's arm, along with the blood all over the ground, actually dispersed eerily like an illusion.