The head came to a stop beside Hiruzen's leg.
Blood seeped across the bluestone pavement, mingling with the stench of urine.
A deathly silence fell.
More than ten thousand people, including hundreds of shinobi from the various clans, were all like ducks with their throats gripped shut.
The sun blazed overhead, but no one felt hot. All they felt was a chill seeping from their bones.
That had been the head of the Sarutobi Clan. One stroke had cut him down.
At the very front of the crowd,
Nara Rokumei stared at the head, its eyes still open in death. He was highly intelligent, and his mind raced.
The Sarutobi were finished. The Shimura were finished.
The order in Konoha had changed. Whoever dared act tough now would be the next one on that platform.
Rokumei swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.
He grabbed Akimichi Chōza's thick arm and nudged Yamanaka Fūshin's waist with the back of his hand.
The three exchanged a glance. Without a moment's hesitation,
thud.
Rokumei was the first to drop to one knee, slamming his right fist against the scorching stone.
He raised his head, his voice tearing through the deathly silence in the square.
"The Nara Clan swears loyalty to Lord Hokage unto death!"
Chōza and Fūshin followed close behind.
A massive body crashed to the ground, kicking up a layer of dust.
"The Akimichi Clan swears loyalty unto death!"
"The Yamanaka Clan swears loyalty unto death!"
Those three roars were the last straw.
The tension stretched to its limit across the square snapped.
The clan heads, the Jonin, the Chunin and Genin in the back rows,
and even the civilians watching from the outskirts.
In a great rustle,
like a gale sweeping across a wheat field,
more than ten thousand people dropped in unison.
The muffled thuds of knees striking bluestone and the metallic clatter of armor scraping together
joined into a dull rumble of thunder that echoed over all of Konoha.
No one dared raise their head. More than ten thousand bowed heads faced the execution platform.
It was the humblest, most complete submission.
Shu Shiraishi casually tossed the white cotton cloth he had used to wipe away the blood at his feet.
It covered a small pool of blood on the wooden planks.
He stepped over Sarutobi Sasuke's headless corpse, drained of blood, and walked to the very front of the execution platform.
His military boots creaked against the edge of the planks.
From above, he looked down at the dense sea of bowed heads.
"The leadership meeting is over."
Shu Shiraishi spoke, his voice amplified by Chakra and pounding against everyone's eardrums.
"Shimura Danzō is shoveling shit in the sewers. Mitokado Homura is on his way to the coal mines. Utatane Koharu is lying in the hospital, waiting to die."
He nudged Sasuke's corpse with his heel.
The body rolled over and landed on the platform with a dull thud.
"Add this one on the platform, and the old generation's rules are wiped clean today."
The people below bowed their heads even lower.
Hiruzen knelt at the foot of the steps, his forehead pressed to the ground. His urine-soaked trouser legs clung tightly to his skin.
He shook all over like a sieve, his teeth clamped so tightly on his lip that he didn't even notice blood running into his mouth.
"Now, we follow my rules."
Shu Shiraishi pulled a parchment scroll from his trouser pocket. He didn't open it, instead tossing it idly in his hand.
"The Konoha Heavy Industry Five-Year Plan officially begins."
It was so quiet below that only heavy breathing could be heard.
No one cared what the plan was called. All they knew was that this tyrant was laying down new rules.
"Starting at eight tomorrow morning, Konoha is canceling all individual mission assignments."
Shu Shiraishi pointed down at the crowd.
"Finding lost cats, delivering letters, escorting caravans-all of it stops. The Anbu and regular forces are to be disbanded and reorganized immediately."
A slight stir ran through the crowd. If shinobi didn't take missions, how were they supposed to make a living?
Shu Shiraishi gave them no time to think.
"Work starts tomorrow on two large steel mills in the wasteland east of the village."
"In the south, by the river, dig the foundations for a Chakra energy conversion center. In the west, cut into the mountains and build a heavy machinery plant."
"All shinobi, whether you were a Jonin or a Genin, report to the construction sites."
Shu Shiraishi's voice was as cold and hard as iron.
"Earth Release will lay the foundations. Fire Style will fire the boilers. Wind Release will fan the blast furnaces. Water Release will cool the equipment."
"The smokestacks must be taller than Hokage Rock. Railway tracks must cover every street and alley in the Land of Fire."
He slapped the scroll hard against his left palm with a sharp crack.
"Anyone who dares waste Chakra on infighting or slack off at a construction site-"
Shu Shiraishi pointed at Hiruzen beneath the steps, then at the head swarmed by flies.
"The Urban Management Brigade will break your legs. Then, just like the Sarutobi Clan, all your property will be confiscated, and you'll be hung up in the square to dry."
It was absolute, crushing pressure, with no room for negotiation.
He meant to turn every one of those lofty shinobi into cogs in an industrial machine.
No one dared object.
The corpse still dripping blood on the wooden platform showed what happened to those who objected.
"Do well, and the village will pay you a high wage and give you housing. Do badly..."
Shu Shiraishi gave a cold laugh.
"There are plenty of empty plots in the cemetery."
"Konoha doesn't need a village chief. It doesn't need a council of elders, either."
Shu Shiraishi glanced up at the scorching sun.
"I am the only law."
"Meeting dismissed."
With those words, he turned and walked down from the wooden platform.
Leaving sticky, bloody footprints, he walked out through the passage the crowd made for him.
The people on either side kept their heads bowed, terrified of meeting the demon god's gaze.
Only when his back had disappeared completely around the street corner
did the more than ten thousand people in the square dare let out a long breath.
Akimichi Chōza collapsed limply to the ground. The back of his clothes was soaked with cold sweat, and when the wind blew, the chill cut to the bone.
At the northwest corner of the square, above Hokage Rock,
a huge ancient tree blocked the sunlight, casting a deep shadow.
A woman stood behind its trunk.
Mito Uzumaki.
The wife of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, and the Nine-Tails' first Jinchūriki.
She wore a loose, dark-green kimono. Her long red hair was pinned up behind her head, and deep lines marked the corners of her eyes.
She leaned on a dark wooden cane.
The authority of someone long accustomed to power seemed to suppress even the leaves around her, leaving them afraid to stir.
She had stood there and watched the entire execution.
She had watched Sarutobi Sasuke's head fall, watched Ino-Shika-Cho lead the others in submission, and watched Shu Shiraishi use force to press the entire village into a single slab of iron.
Mito's thin lips moved.
She lowered her head and looked at the faint red glow rising on the back of her hand.
It was the restless stirring of the Nine-Tails Chakra inside her.
Even that violent fox had felt the unreasonable baleful aura emanating from the young man just now.
"Hashirama," Mito murmured.
Her voice was hoarse, weathered by decades.
"Back then, you distributed the Tailed Beasts and preached conciliation. You wanted everyone to understand one another."
She remembered the severed limbs sent back during the First Shinobi World War.
The young people of Konoha who died on the battlefield filled an entire mountainside behind the village.
"You failed."
Mito's fingers tightened around her cane, her knuckles turning white.
"Reason won't work in this Shinobi World."
She raised her head.
Her gaze passed through the gaps in the leaves and fixed on the direction Shu Shiraishi had gone.
This young man's methods were outrageously brutal. He had ground the great clans' dignity into the mud, with no regard for tradition or rules.
But Mito looked at the great clans, each usually harboring its own schemes, now kneeling obediently on the ground.
She felt the resentment that had weighed on her chest for decades lift.
Troubled times didn't need a saint.
They needed a tyrant who could crush every troublemaker into submission.
"Iron-fisted methods... heavy industry..."
Mito rolled the unfamiliar words around in her mind.
Her cane struck a tree root with a dull knock.
"Rather than let the Nine-Tails' Chakra rot away inside this old woman..."
Mito stepped forward, crushing a dry fallen leaf underfoot.
"I might as well let him try it."
She turned and headed down the mountain path, straight toward the Hokage building.
"It's time I met this new Hokage."