Danzo, You Old Dog! Get Out Here and Die!

The male ninja beside her drew a long blade crackling with lightning from his back. One on the left and one on the right, the two of them sealed off the entrance to the second underground level.

Behind them, the fifty elite jonin quickly spread out, vanishing into the shadows around the stone pillars and passages, forming a lethal formation with no blind spots.

"Your name's Yuan, right? That trash who should've been killed by Itachi Uchiha six years ago." The male ninja twirled the lightning blade, his tone full of mockery. "I don't know how you crawled out of the graveyard, but today, Lord Danzo ordered us to cut you into pieces and soak you in formalin as a specimen."

"A specimen?" Yuan stood at the top of the stairs, looked at the group as they took their stances, and suddenly let out a low laugh.

The laughter grew louder and louder, until in this tunnel smeared with blood and flesh, it sounded especially grating.

"You're Root's most famous assassins, the Wind and Thunder Twin Dragons, right?" Yuan stopped laughing, his eyes turning ice-cold in an instant. "You brought fifty trash fish here to die. Who gave you the courage?"

"Arrogant!"

The male ninja roared, but before he could give the order to attack, Yuan had already moved.

No hand seals, no probing. The chakra that had lain dormant in Yuan's body for six years erupted like a volcano.

Blinding red chakra instantly materialized in the air. Layer after layer of enormous red ribs suddenly stretched out from behind him, followed by a skull's head and thick arms.

The embryonic form of Susanoo!

The immense pressure made the air in the entire underground passage grow heavy. The elite jonin hiding in the dark even felt it hard to breathe.

"What... what kind of monster is this!" The female ninja's face changed drastically, and she instinctively took half a step back.

"Go ask in hell!"

Standing inside the skeletal frame of the half-formed giant, Yuan moved with a thought. Susanoo's red bone palm, as large as the front of a truck, carried power enough to destroy everything as it slammed down toward the group of ninjas hiding behind the stone pillars on the left.

Boom!

The hard stone pillars shattered instantly, as if they were made of paper. A pit several meters deep was smashed into the ground. A full twenty elite jonin did not even have time to scream before they and the stones alike were crushed into a slurry of flesh mixed with blood.

The remaining thirty ninjas had never seen a scene like this. No matter how thoroughly Root had brainwashed them, they could not withstand this pure, overwhelming blow from a higher dimension. Their formation fell into chaos in an instant, and some turned to flee deeper into the passage.

"Did I say you could leave?"

Yuan took a deep breath, his chest swelling high as chakra compressed wildly in his throat.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"

This was no ordinary Great Fireball. Flames mixed with Kage-level chakra shot out and instantly became a pillar of fire seven or eight meters wide, roaring down the narrow passage like a fire dragon. The rock walls on both sides of the tunnel turned red-hot and began to melt.

Those thirty fleeing ninjas had no time to form hand seals and use Water Style to resist before they were swallowed by the sea of fire. Their horrific screams lasted only two seconds before turning into dozens of charred, carbonized corpses.

Now, only the Wind and Thunder Twin Dragons remained at the entrance.

The two exchanged a glance, both knowing they had run into a tough one today. The male ninja bit his finger and drove the lightning blade hard into the ground. "Lightning Style: Ground-Crawling Thunder Dragon!"

Violent blue currents raced along the ground, instantly coiling around Yuan's legs like venomous snakes. The current was tremendous, and during the gap when Susanoo withdrew, it forcefully pierced Yuan's surface chakra defense.

The female ninja seized the chance to leap high, her shuriken spinning madly. "Wind Style: Thousand-Faced Wind Cutter!"

Countless sharp wind blades wove into a great net and hacked down at Yuan from above.

Yuan did not dodge at all. He endured the numbness in his legs and allowed several wind blades to cut across his shoulder and cheek.

"Riiip—"

His clothes tore, and a shallow line of blood was drawn across his cheek. A drop of blood slid down his chin and fell to the ground.

Yuan raised his hand, touched the blood on his face, and held it before his eyes to look at it.

"This is the first time I've bled since I woke up six years ago." Yuan's voice was terrifyingly low. "Well done. Truly well done."

The Mangekyo Sharingan in his eyes suddenly contracted.

[Ding! Host detected in an extremely berserk state! Special hidden effect triggered: triple critical hit bonus!]

Before the voice had faded, Yuan's figure exploded with a bang into a ring of sonic-boom cloud. The male ninja did not even see his movement clearly before Yuan had already charged directly in front of the female ninja.

"Die!" The female ninja was shocked. She clapped her hands together and raised a thick Wind Style wall before her.

"Shatter for me!" Yuan swung his right fist, wrapped in blinding red light, and smashed it solidly into the wind wall.

That wind wall, said to be able to block most ninjutsu, failed to last even half a second under Yuan's punch. It shattered like glass into fragments. Yuan's hand passed through the Wind Style and grabbed the female ninja by the hair.

"You... let go!"

"Let go of your mother!" Yuan forcibly swung her entire body up and smashed her down at the hard bluestone floor with all his might.

Bang!

The first blow shattered her mask.

Bang!

The second blow completely caved in her nose bridge and jaw.

Yuan did not stop at all. Gripping her hair, he ground her repeatedly against the floor. By the final blow, red-and-white brain matter mixed with blood splattered across the ground, and the female ninja had completely turned into a lump of mangled flesh.

"A-Feng!" The male ninja's eyes went red, but more than that, there was extreme terror. The lightning blade in his hand fell to the ground with a clang, and he dropped to his knees with a thud.

"Don't... don't kill me! I know where Lord Danzo's secret chamber is! I'll tell you everything!"

Yuan shook the rotten flesh off his hand and stepped in front of him.

"No need."

He raised his foot and stomped down viciously.

With a splat, the male ninja's head burst like a crushed watermelon, shattering on the spot.

The system prompts began flooding his mind like mad.

[Ding! Killed elite jonin ×50! Obtained purple fragments ×1500!]

[Ding! Killed specially titled jonin ×2! Triggered cognition-overturning critical hit! Obtained purple fragments ×100!]

Yuan ignored the numbers on the panel. He raised his right hand, and two entirely different streams of chakra gathered in his palm at the same time.

"System, fuse them."

[Double fragments consumed. Fire Style and Lightning Style successfully fused. New ninjutsu unlocked: Flame-Lightning Chidori!]

A piercing bird cry echoed through the underground passage. This time, dark-red berserk flames mingled within the blue lightning, and the terrifying heat and destructive power scorched the surrounding air until it twisted.

Yuan did not look for a path. Raising this mass of destructive power in his right hand, he aimed at the alloy wall deep in the passage, the one covered in sealing incantations, and charged straight at it.

"Danzo, you old dog! Get out here and die!"

Rumble!

The beam of intertwined lightning and fire instantly blasted through the hundred-meter-long underground passage. All mechanisms, traps, and stone doors were reduced to dust under this single strike.

In the deepest part of the basement, inside the enormous monitoring room.

On the big screen, Yuan, covered in blood, was stepping over the ruins and walking toward the surveillance camera, one step at a time.

Danzo gripped the cane in his hand tightly. His wrinkled face was now as pale as a corpse. He instinctively retreated half a step, then roared into the communicator in a trembling voice, "Activate the barrier immediately! Turn on the self-destruct program!"