One Hundred Thousand White Zetsu! Dawn of the Empire After Thunder and Fire Scour the Land

Yuan did not hesitate at all. He turned and immediately pushed the Ultra-Light-Weight Rock Technique to its limit.

His whole body turned into a black shooting star, crossing more than half the ninja world as he tore toward the Land of Lightning.

Hidden Cloud Village had already been reduced to ruins in that death battle with the Raikage. Now, those ruins had been completely swallowed by a pale-white sea.

An army of one hundred thousand White Zetsu, their bodies pallid, their faces lacking normal features and showing only gaping mouths, packed every inch of the Land of Lightning's valleys like a tireless zombie tide.

They felt no pain and knew no fear. They were killing weapons Obito had mass-produced using the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path and Hashirama Cells.

This was originally a trump card saved for the Fourth Great Ninja War, but now, to encircle and kill Uchiha Yuan, this monster who had completely slipped out of his control, Obito had released them early.

Obito's plan was very simple: use these one hundred thousand White Zetsu to grind Yuan's chakra dry, then have Pain personally finish things.

However, Obito had miscalculated one thing. In front of Yuan, who possessed endless chakra and wide-area attack methods, numbers were the most meaningless thing of all.

Boom!

A deafening crash rang out. Yuan smashed into the very center of the White Zetsu army like a meteor. The hard rocky ground was blasted into a crater dozens of meters deep, and the terrifying shock wave directly shook several thousand White Zetsu within a hundred-meter radius into chunks of white flesh that filled the sky.

Yuan slowly stood up from the bottom of the pit. The White Zetsu around him had no idea what fear was. They immediately roared and surged at him like a tide, trying to drown him with their bodies.

Yuan patted the dust from his clothes. His scarlet Mangekyo Sharingan slowly revolved.

"Sending a bunch of soulless fertilizer to test me? Obito, you really are getting worse the longer you live." Yuan took a deep breath.

The "tailless beast" chakra capacity the system had obtained from Kisame Hoshigaki was completely unleashed at this moment without the slightest reservation.

Dark-red light spiraled up into the sky with Yuan at its center. First came enormous bones, then meridians, flesh, and blood, and finally an indestructible crow-tengu armor.

Under the meaningless attacks of one hundred thousand White Zetsu, a Complete Body Warrior God Susanoo over a hundred meters tall forcibly broke through the thunderclouds in the sky and stood upon the land of the Land of Lightning.

Yuan stood inside Susanoo's crystal and formed hand seals at lightning speed.

The explosive chakra he had just seized from Deidara perfectly fused with his own Fire Release and Lightning Release.

"You want to play human-wave tactics? I'll give you the grandest fireworks show of your lives!" Yuan controlled the Complete Body Susanoo and suddenly spread its enormous arms wide.

"Sage Art: Flame-Lightning Explosive Sea!"

This was not an ordinary ninjutsu, but the ultimate large-scale ground-scouring skill Yuan had created by combining the traits of explosive clay, toxin chakra, and the attributes of thunder and fire.

Thousands upon thousands of fist-sized black fireballs gushed from Susanoo's hands. These fireballs not only contained extreme heat, but were also stuffed full of explosive clay and explosive tags directly materialized from the system space.

Countless black fireballs fell into the ranks of the one hundred thousand White Zetsu like a meteor shower, leaving no blind spots.

The instant the fireballs touched the ground, they triggered a chain of nuclear-like sympathetic detonations!

Rumble rumble rumble rumble—!

The entire crust of the Land of Lightning trembled violently. One enormous black mushroom cloud after another rose between the valleys. The shock waves from the explosive tags tore the White Zetsu bodies apart, and the black lightning-fire followed up by burning those chunks of flesh to ash. Even the powerful regenerative ability of Hashirama Cells became a joke before heat of several thousand degrees.

Half an hour.

It had taken only half an hour.

The army of one hundred thousand White Zetsu that made the Five Great Nations tremble at the mere mention of it had turned into scorched charcoal all over the ground under Yuan's chakra-cost-be-damned mad bombardment. Even dozens of the Land of Lightning's rolling mountains had been blasted flat, and the terrain was completely and permanently changed.

The Complete Body Susanoo slowly dissipated. Yuan stood on a wasteland that gave off black smoke, panting heavily. Even for him, squandering chakra so recklessly made him feel a trace of exhaustion.

But compared to exhaustion, what he felt far more was an indescribable ecstasy.

[Ding! Killed White Zetsu individual ×100,000! Obtained a massive amount of green fragments!]

[Detected massive amounts of low-grade fragments of the same source. System automatically fused them into high-grade energy! Host's basic meridian width increased by 300%! Cell strength increased by 500%!]

Yuan clenched his fist, feeling the terrifying power in his body that almost seemed about to burst his muscles apart. His chakra reserves had completely broken the boundaries of common sense and stepped into an unprecedented realm.

Peak Kage level? No. Right now, in terms of chakra quantity alone, he had already surpassed the Nine-Tails.

While Yuan was crazily slaughtering and clearing the field at the front, far away in Hidden Leaf Village, within the heart of the empire—the New Uchiha Clan Compound—another scene was unfolding.

Morning sunlight spilled over the streets of the newly built city within a city. Shops opened for business, and children carried ninja-tool bags as they laughed and chatted on their way to the academy. The prosperity here formed a stark contrast with the blood and storms of the outside world.

Aunt Mihui wore a crisp, plain-colored kimono and sat at the desk in the governor's office, rapidly reviewing the memorials sent in from the various provinces. Her brows were slightly furrowed, but her gaze was exceptionally firm and sharp.

Shikaku, the former Hidden Leaf Village strategist, stood before the desk with a thick stack of logistics dispatch forms in his hands and said with a wry smile, "Lady Mihui, because the Hidden Sand Province is mining a new vein, they need Hidden Leaf to allocate medical supplies for five hundred people. Also, Hidden Mist Village's fishery tax revenue dropped another twenty percent last month. That kid Chojuro is almost unable to keep the water demons below him in check."

Mihui set down her pen and rubbed her temples.

"Transfer the supplies for Hidden Sand directly from the third warehouse in the north. Tell Temari this account will be counted against their ore tribute quota for next quarter. As for Hidden Mist..." Mihui's gaze instantly turned cold. "Have the First Dark Guard Brigade make a trip. Arrest a few of the ringleaders and publicly execute them on the docks. The realm Yuan conquered was not meant for them to use as a bargaining chip."

Shikaku felt his scalp go numb when he heard that and immediately nodded as he wrote it down. He secretly glanced at this Uchiha widow who had once only known how to simmer soup in the kitchen, and his heart filled with emotion.

Just then, the office door was pushed open, and Temari, governor of the Hidden Sand Province, strode in. She slapped a trade agreement down on the desk.

"Madam Mihui, I've already implemented the oasis renovation plan in the Land of Wind. These are the funding details." Temari unceremoniously pulled over a chair and sat down, picked up the teacup on the desk, took a sip, then looked at Shikaku and complained, "That mad dog called Yuan only knows how to kill people outside. If Madam Mihui weren't holding the fort, this damned empire would have fallen apart from broken logistics long ago."

Shikaku sighed in deep agreement. "Yes. Uchiha Yuan has the deterrence he does today partly because his fists are hard, but the other half is entirely because Madam Mihui is patching things up for him from behind. This woman... is far more reliable than Yuan."

Mihui listened to the two of them complain and merely smiled helplessly. She turned to look out the window at the Uchiha clan crest hanging high.

"He isn't good at reasoning with people. He only knows how to kill." Mihui's voice was very soft, yet it carried a stubborn protectiveness. "So he can be the villain, and he can bear the burden of offending people. I have to help him watch over this home and take good care of these clansmen. When he grows tired of killing, there has to be a place where he can sleep in peace."

Night fell low.

Yuan stepped on a withered branch and slowly walked along the forest path back to Hidden Leaf. With the one hundred thousand White Zetsu dealt with, Akatsuki's outer wings had already been clipped clean by him. Now, only those few turtles hiding in their shells remained.

Suddenly, Yuan stopped.

His perception had now become terrifyingly sharp. In a direction less than ten kilometers away from him, an extremely faint chakra fluctuation, yet one cold to the bone, caught his attention.

That chakra carried an old scent of blood, as well as the decaying aura of someone on the verge of death.

Yuan abruptly turned his head, and his scarlet Mangekyo shone with a piercing light in the dark night. He stared fixedly in the direction of Hidden Leaf.

"This smell... these eyes." Yuan's fist clenched instantly, his nails digging deep into his flesh. "Six years. You're finally willing to show yourself."

"He's not far from Hidden Leaf now."