An Explosion Release ninja?

Tsunade and Tsukimi exchanged a look, drew their weapons, and rushed out of the tent toward the explosion.

When they reached the blast site, they were far from the only ones there. All the notable ninja in the camp had arrived.

Minato, Fugaku, Shikaku...

The explosion had left a large crater and sprays of blood, destroying all the surrounding trees.

A ninja from the Hyuga Clan lay beside the crater, gravely injured and seemingly on the verge of death.

Tsunade immediately went to his side and began treating him.

A few minutes later, the Hyuga ninja slowly came around.

At first he looked confused, then shock flashed through his Byakugan.

"He exploded!"

The Hyuga ninja was clearly not quite himself, as though he had suffered a fright.

An experienced medical ninja, Tsunade immediately moved to reassure him.

"Take your time. Tell us slowly."

At the same time, she waved the people behind her back, having them move farther away to ease the pressure the gathering crowd placed on the Hyuga ninja.

Tsunade's approach worked, and the Hyuga ninja gradually calmed down.

"At the time, my teammate and I..."

According to the Hyuga ninja, he had been patrolling with his teammate when the explosion occurred.

But for some unknown reason, his teammate's eyes had suddenly turned red. Then the chakra throughout his body had fallen into disarray, and he had exploded.

As a point-blank observer of the explosion, he had taken the brunt of the blast wave.

Fortunately, the Hyuga Clan was a taijutsu shinobi clan. Otherwise, he would have been forced to cosplay Shang Yang, his body scattering across the ground in pieces.

Halfway through the Hyuga ninja's account, his eyes began glowing red. He swayed to his feet as though someone were controlling him.

Tsunade reacted the fastest. Chakra had already gathered in her hands, ready to attack at any moment.

But the Hyuga ninja was still a fellow Konoha ninja, and Tsunade could not bring herself to strike first.

"Everyone, scatter!"

At her shout, all the ninja watching cleared the scene.

Another Hyuga clansman among the onlookers immediately activated his Byakugan. As veins bulged around his eyes, his vision clearly revealed the strange chakra flowing through his comrade's meridians.

"There's abnormal chakra inside his body, moving rapidly along his meridians."

Hearing that the man before her had abnormal chakra inside him, Tsunade's first thought was that he had fallen under genjutsu.

She immediately drove the chakra in her hands into his body, trying to disrupt that abnormal chakra.

This was also a standard method of dispelling genjutsu.

But this time, it failed.

Without hesitation, Tsunade immediately gave the Hyuga ninja two hard slaps.

Pain could also break genjutsu.

To her disappointment, however, the pain method failed as well.

Aside from two trails of clear tears running down his face, the Hyuga ninja's condition did not change at all.

Out of options, Tsunade immediately signaled Fugaku with her eyes, asking him to handle it.

As the Sharingan-wielding head of the Uchiha Clan, if he claimed second place in genjutsu, no one would dare claim first-at least in Konoha.

Fugaku activated his Sharingan. Before he could dispel the genjutsu, the red glow in the Hyuga ninja's eyes immediately faded the instant their gazes met.

Like a Valorant junior facing his CS:GO senior, he was utterly suppressed.

The Hyuga ninja himself blinked in confusion, with no idea what had happened.

Tsunade had also observed the entire process by which Fugaku had resolved his abnormal condition.

She, too, noticed that Fugaku did not seem to have dispelled any genjutsu. He had merely given him a look, and the abnormal chakra had vanished.

"Fugaku, do you have any ideas?"

Fugaku deactivated his Sharingan, his brow tightly furrowed. "I've never seen a chakra reaction like this. It resembles some kind of parasitic ninjutsu. If the Elder were still here..."

He paused before continuing, "He studied forbidden techniques from the Warring States Period more deeply than anyone. He might have recognized it."

"There's no use talking about that now." Tsunade stared at the blood before turning to Shikaku. "What do you think?"

Shikaku Nara crouched at the edge of the crater and picked up a pinch of scorched earth between his fingertips. "The chakra went abnormally berserk before the self-detonation, but there are no traces of explosive tags."

He pointed in the direction of the blood spray. "The pattern of the injured man's ruptured organs is strange. It wasn't from the inside out. It's more like external chakra forcibly burst them."

Minato Namikaze suddenly interjected, "Could ninja from Iwagakure have done this? Iwagakure has ninja who can use Explosion Release."

"Impossible," Fugaku cut in firmly. "I've fought Iwagakure's Explosion Release ninja before. Explosion Release ninjutsu doesn't cause hallucinations."

With their discussion yielding no answers, Minato, as commander, could ultimately only call for heightened vigilance.

Fugaku, meanwhile, planned to go back and look through the notes the Elder had left behind, hoping to find some clues.

"Lady Tsunade, what exactly happened?"

Seeing that the four had finished their discussion, Tsukimi immediately approached Tsunade and asked about the situation.

Tsunade considered it for a while, then voiced her guess.

"The enemy used some unknown means to control Konoha's ninja, making them self-destruct without their knowledge."

As an experienced ninja, Tsunade had guessed correctly.

She had deduced the enemy's methods from the Hyuga ninja's condition earlier.

The enemy had indeed used blood combined with dōjutsu to turn Konoha ninja into Crazy Ivans.

This dōjutsu, which had all but vanished from the shinobi world, was called the Ketsuryūgan, a dōjutsu unique to the Chinoike Clan.

The reason the Chinoike Clan had all but disappeared from the shinobi world and never joined any shinobi village was that they had been imprisoned before the Five Great Shinobi Villages were founded.

And the ninja responsible for imprisoning their clan back then had been the Uchiha.

When that history unfolded, Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju had not yet been born. Even their fathers might still have been tadpoles.

Although the Uchiha Clan was now part of Konoha in the Land of Fire, many years ago, they had lived in the Land of Lightning.

At the time, a woman from the Chinoike Clan had married the then Daimyo of the Land of Lightning, becoming his concubine.

Legend had it that this Chinoike woman was extraordinarily beautiful-the sort who would keep a ruler from attending morning court.

Although no portrait had survived, one thing could attest to it: not long after the Daimyo of the Land of Lightning married her, he kicked the bucket.

After the daimyo's death, his principal wife, jealous of the concubine, falsely accused the Chinoike concubine of killing him.

The Land of Lightning authorities immediately hired the Uchiha Clan to arrest the entire Chinoike Clan and imprison them in Hell Valley in the Land of Lightning.

The Uchiha Clan was being paid to do a job, after all. They paid no heed to whatever injustice the Chinoike Clan had suffered and simply arrested them.

The Chinoike Clan truly had rotten luck. Not only had the Land of Lightning authorities falsely accused them, but the ninja those authorities hired were the Uchiha Clan, their natural counter.

Not a single member of the clan escaped. They were all captured.

The Chinoike Clan's Ketsuryūgan dōjutsu also enhanced genjutsu, and it was known alongside the Sharingan as a hypnotic eye.

Together with their secret Blood Control technique, it had once made them a clan renowned far and wide.

But the Sharingan naturally countered the Ketsuryūgan. It could counter the Ketsuryūgan's genjutsu and automatically dispel its Blood Secret Technique.

That was why the Hyuga ninja had returned to normal the instant Fugaku activated his Sharingan.

After hearing Tsunade's guess, Tsukimi felt both angry and afraid. She feared that her comrades, especially Yūto, might also become the enemy's targets.

Her anger came from the enemy resorting to such underhanded schemes. Ever since the war began, Kumogakure had kept playing tricks.

Just as Tsukimi's little face shifted between expressions, Yūto appeared.

He was yawning, still somewhat groggy, his steps unsteady.

"Tsukimi, what's wrong?" Yūto rubbed his eyes and asked her.

Tsukimi gritted her teeth, having completely forgotten how she had joined Tsunade in "molesting" someone younger just earlier.

After she told Yūto what had happened and what Tsunade suspected, his eyes grew brighter and brighter.

Something this good existed?

Being controlled meant dying?

This was really...

Such a hassle!