The wind howled, carrying a faint, intermittent wail like metal grinding against metal. A long-brewing judgment was about to begin.
Torrential rain washed over the mottled bloodstains on the abandoned shrine, blending fresh crimson with old as it flowed into the blood pool below the steps, churning with an ominous aura.
Ten war criminals from different ninja villages knelt at the edge of the blood pool in the most humiliating posture possible, their hands bound behind their backs by pitch-black chains and their collarbones pierced by vicious metal. Cold rainwater and warm blood soaked through their prison garb.
On the raised platform, Konan, Akatsuki's "Angel," stood expressionlessly as white paper butterflies circled her like spirits escorting the dead.
Her cool voice rang out between claps of thunder, reciting crimes grave enough to keep the upper echelons of any great nation awake at night.
At the very end of the line, a man in a tattered cloak kept his head lowered. Rain dripped from the edges of his cloak, gathering into a small puddle before him.
He had been marked as a "Hidden Mist Village rogue ninja," an unlucky man recorded as having died in the Land of Water coup three years ago.
At this moment, that identity had become Xuan's perfect disguise.
The [Information Anchoring] ability within him operated at astonishing efficiency, precisely simulating the dead man's unique chakra wavelength. Even the residual frequency of Black Lightning within his body had been cleverly used to fine-tune his emotional fluctuations, giving him an utterly lifeless air of fear, numbness, and despair.
This disguise was enough to fool the Rinnegan's basic wide-area scan outside of combat.
Ten miles away, amid the shadows of a mountain ridge, Sasori's incarnation Saori and former Root ninja Baba Tesshin stood like two statues merged with the