The wind swept up the dark red bloodstains on the arena floor, already beginning to congeal.
A rusty, sickly-sweet stench mingled with dust and drifted into every corner of the stadium.
It was enough to make one nauseous.
With Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzo, the two greatest cancers, removed one after the other,
the frenzied unrest that had been suppressed to the extreme within the stadium finally began to subside.
But what replaced it was a deeper silence and confusion, spreading like a plague.
Tens of thousands of Konoha villagers and shinobi were like puppets whose souls had been pulled out.
Some slumped in their seats, while others stood dumbly amid the ruins.
Every face was filled with the emptiness and numbness that followed the collapse of faith.
The Hokage was a criminal.
Heroes had been driven to their deaths.
The village they had protected with their blood and lives had, from beginning to end, been nothing but a joke built on lies and conspiracies.
Then what... had all their persistence and sacrifices over the years amounted to?
In midair,
Uchiha Yoru stood with his arms folded, gazing coldly down at the devastated village below, its faith utterly shattered.
His eyes were as calm as a frozen lake.
There was no pity, no sympathy, not even the slightest trace of satisfaction.
There was only... the indifference of watching the dust of history settle.
"Yoru..."
At some point, Kurotsuchi had drifted over to his side.
Looking at the Konoha villagers below, lost and hollow like walking corpses, a trace of reluctance flashed across her small face.
She tugged lightly at Yoru's sleeve and asked in a low voice,
"Did we... did we go a little too far?"
"No matter what, they're just ordinary people who were deceived..."
"Ordinary people?"
Yoru let out