The bloody stench at the bottom of the crater, mingled with the rank smell of snakes and rust, grew thicker.
It made their stomachs churn with acid.
Kakashi crouched on a stretch of broken wall above the crater.
His silver hair was coated in dust kicked up by the blast, leaving it dull and gray.
He clutched Icha Icha Paradise in one hand, a large patch of its cover soaked through with cold sweat from his palm.
He lowered his head.
He watched Orochimaru rolling across the crater floor in agony, shrieking until his voice cracked.
Then he looked at Sen, who stood beside the pool of blood without a single drop splashed onto him.
Kakashi's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty.
He swallowed a mouthful of dusty saliva.
He dared not make a sound.
The old Third Hokage, leaning against a pile of shattered rubble nearby, said nothing either.
The old man clutched the broken stem of his pipe, his hand trembling violently.
He watched his once-prized student, now reduced to a limbless torso, writhe in the muddy water like a maggot.
On his deeply wrinkled face.
His muscles twitched uncontrollably.
Standing at the bottom of the crater, Sen rubbed his ears, which itched from Orochimaru's shrieks.
His dark green eyes coldly fixed on the two severed hands still twitching spasmodically on the ground.
All he needed was another slight movement of his fingers to slice off Orochimaru's head too.
But.
Within his Divine Tree Sensory Network.
He could clearly "see."
That nauseating soul presence inside Orochimaru's ruined body was incomplete.
It was as though it had been cut into hundreds of fragments.
Scattered outside Konoha, and even farther afield.
Those chakra seeds scattered everywhere were the Cursed Seals Orochimaru had planted.
Every one of them held a backup of