The night over the Land of Demons' capital was deeper than that of the Leaf Village.
Xiao stood atop the eaves of a side hall in the shrine. The azure glow of the Tenseigan flowed deep within his pupils, taking in every movement of chakra within a five-mile radius. Priestess Miroku had gone to prepare the handover ceremony for the Netherworld Core, but Xiao had not lowered his guard—he never trusted anyone's definition of "safe."
The night wind carried the shrine's distinctive scent of sandalwood, along with a faint, almost imperceptible... stench of decay.
It was not the rot of corpses. It smelled more like old soil being turned over, mixed with the rank dampness of the underground. The scent was extremely faint; if the Tenseigan had not enhanced his senses, an ordinary ninja would never have noticed it.
Xiao's brow furrowed slightly.
His figure flickered, and he drifted down from the eaves like a feather. The tips of his feet touched the bluestone in the courtyard without making a sound. In the Tenseigan's vision, the barrier around the shrine remained intact, but beneath it—three meters underground—several chakra signatures were moving slowly.
It was not Earth Release.
The flow of that chakra was strange, as though some kind of creature were traveling underground. It was mixed with cold, negative emotions: greed, resentment, fanaticism.
Xiao formed a hand seal within his sleeve. The Byakugan's ability, further magnified by the Tenseigan, pierced through the earth. He saw them—three figures in grayish-brown robes, digging through a long-abandoned underground passage toward the shrine's sealing core.
Twisted runes were embroidered onto the backs of their robes: an inverted triangle containing the image of an open eye.
The Yomi Sect.
Xiao had seen that symbol in the Leaf Village archives. It was a local cult of