When the blood moon rose, Konoha Hospital was the first to descend into chaos.
It wasn't an enemy attack. More than thirty lightly wounded shinobi in the inpatient ward screamed at the exact same second. On the CT scans, their chakra pathways looked as though someone had poured sulfuric acid over them. Once luminous blue, their energy circuits had become a web of grayish-purple bruises-even the most basic Transformation Technique had begun burning the caster's internal organs from within.
Sakura stood on the hospital roof, staring up at the false moon with its greasy purple sheen. Her communicator was filled with frantic reports from units just before they lost contact.
"Reporting to Anbu! All ninjutsu below C-rank have been classified as out of control! The jonin teams' Byakugan are bloodshot and blind!"
"The Sealing Squad can't form an array! One wrong hand seal and they cough up blood!"
"The monitoring crystal screens in the Hokage Building's underground command room... they've all shattered!"
She snatched up her terminal and dialed the encrypted frequency Lin Ye had left on her wrist guard. He didn't answer immediately. All that came back was muffled thunder from the direction of the waterfall and the sound of machinery breaking in something that wasn't a language of the Shinobi World.
Three seconds later, Lin Ye's voice finally cut in, so calm it bordered on cold:
"Don't use chakra. Evacuate every shinobi into the stone chambers at the Sealing Squad's old headquarters. Use ordinary reinforced concrete to block their connection to the earth's energy channels. Civilians aren't affected. Don't let them panic."
"What about you?" Sakura all but shouted.
"I'm finding a reference point for the blood moon." Lin Ye paused. "Sakura, whatever you see next, don't ask whether I'm human. If you trust me, lock down the