The folding fan, decorated with imitation gold leaf, snapped softly.
The hall fell deathly silent.
Cold sweat ran down the chins of the two Anbu Ninjas standing against the wall and fell onto the flagstones with a faint patter.
Shu Shiraishi lowered his head slightly.
His gaze fell on the rib of the fan resting on his shoulder. There was no warmth in his eyes. He looked at it as though he were looking at a frozen corpse.
The fat man noticed nothing.
He continued bobbing his head, his face, caked in white powder, shining with oil from excitement.
"Scared? If you're scared, hurry up and get the money ready."
The fat man pulled at the fan with a flick of his wrist.
It didn't budge.
A hand had seized his wrist.
It was Shu Shiraishi's hand, with long fingers and thick knuckles.
The fat man froze.
He tugged hard twice. The hand held fast like an iron vise.
"What are you doing? Let go..."
Before the fat man could finish,
Shu Shiraishi's fingers suddenly tightened.
Crack.
A teeth-grating sound of breaking bone burst through the hall.
The fat man's thick wrist was crushed inward.
A stark white splinter of bone pierced straight through his purple silk cuff. Blood gushed out at once, dripping down his palm.
The ivory-ribbed folding fan fell to the floor, snapping two of its ribs.
"Aaah-!"
The fat man's features twisted in pain. White powder sifted down from his face.
His pig-like squeal pierced the roof of the Hokage's building.
His knees buckled, and he fell to them at Shu Shiraishi's feet. Clutching his bleeding right wrist with his left hand, he rolled across the bluestone floor.
"Lord Envoy!"
The thirty-odd armored warriors turned pale with shock.
Their leader whipped out his long sword.
Sunlight from outside the hall flashed off the blade and across the faces of the Anbu Ninjas.
"You're courting death!" the warrior roared.
More than thirty swords were drawn at once, their metallic ringing merging into one.
The warriors charged Shu Shiraishi with heavy steps, their armor clattering.
The two Anbu squad leaders were just about to make Hand Seals to support him.
Shu Shiraishi moved.
He made no Hand Seals and did not draw the short sword on his back.
He charged straight into the thirty-odd heavily armored warriors.
He was so fast that the air exploded with a bang.
The warrior at the front saw only a black afterimage.
He had barely raised his sword over his head
when a fist slammed into his breastplate.
Bang!
The thick, refined-steel breastplate caved in like paper.
Shu Shiraishi's fist punched straight through the metal plate, shattered the warrior's breastbone, and burst out through his back.
The warrior's eyes nearly popped from their sockets. Blood and fragments of his internal organs sprayed from his mouth onto Shu Shiraishi's arm.
Shu Shiraishi pulled his hand free, drawing out a spray of blood.
He followed through with a low sweeping kick.
His black military boot struck the second warrior in the side of the waist.
Boom.
The warrior broke in half at the waist, his upper and lower body twisting at a grotesque angle.
He flew sideways, knocking down three men behind him.
The sound of splintering bones filled the air.
There were no fancy moves, no flashes of Chakra.
It was all pure, overwhelming violence.
The third warrior's eyes reddened. Roaring, he swung his sword at Shu Shiraishi's neck, the blade whistling through the air.
Shu Shiraishi neither dodged nor retreated. He raised his left arm to block it head-on.
Clang.
The refined-steel sword struck his bare arm, and half the blade snapped off and flew away.
The broken blade lodged in a wooden pillar nearby, its end still quivering.
Shu Shiraishi reached out with his right hand and seized the warrior by the throat.
His fingers squeezed.
The warrior's Adam's apple shattered.
Shu Shiraishi threw the warrior, who weighed over a hundred jin, out the window like a tattered sack, smashing the glass.
A fourth warrior attacked from the side, thrusting a spear straight at Shu Shiraishi's lower back.
Shu Shiraishi turned aside to avoid the point and grabbed the shaft.
He yanked hard.
The warrior lost his balance and stumbled forward.
Shu Shiraishi raised his knee and drove it into the warrior's face.
His helmet caved in, and all the bones in his face shattered.
The warrior fell to the floor, twitched twice, and lay still.
The hall had become a slaughterhouse.
The dull thuds of fists striking flesh, the sharp cracks of breaking bones, the dying screams of warriors
mingled together.
Shu Shiraishi moved through the crowd like a merciless bulldozer.
With every punch he threw, a corpse in iron armor flew backward.
With every kick, someone's bones were ground to powder.
Iron armor couldn't stop him. Swords couldn't cut him.
This was no battle.
It was a one-sided massacre.
In less than two minutes,
Shu Shiraishi was the only one left standing in the hall.
The thirty-odd elite warriors from the daimyo's residence all lay on the floor.
Severed limbs were everywhere.
Blood ran through the cracks in the wooden floorboards, gathering into a shallow pool in the center of the hall.
The walls were covered in sprays of blood that reached all the way to the ceiling.
The fat envoy was still on the floor.
He had forgotten the agony in his wrist.
Cold sweat had washed the white powder on his face into streaks, revealing the rough, pockmarked skin beneath.
Sitting in a pool of blood, he braced both hands against the floor and desperately backed away.
His crotch was already soaked. The stench of urine mingled with the smell of blood.
He kept retreating until his back struck the wooden stairs, leaving him nowhere else to go.
Shu Shiraishi shook the droplets of blood from his hand.
His soles made sticky squelching sounds as he stepped through the pooled blood.
He walked toward the fat man step by step, treading over the corpses and entrails covering the floor.
"Y-you... stay away..."
The fat man's voice was hoarse. He was like a fat rat driven into a corner.
"I'm the daimyo's man... If you kill me, the daimyo will send an army to flatten Konoha..."
Shu Shiraishi walked up to him and stopped.
A dark shadow fell over the fat man.
Shu Shiraishi looked down at him.
"I'll wait for him to send his troops."
The fat man opened his mouth wide, a gurgling sound coming from his throat as he tried to cry for help.
Shu Shiraishi raised his right hand.
He brought his palm down.
The movement was casual, as though he were brushing dust off his shoulder.
His palm landed squarely on the crown of the fat man's head.
Thud.
There was no sharp crack, only a dull thump.
The fat man's skull shattered into dozens of pieces.
The tremendous force passed through his brain. Dark blood spurted from all seven orifices at once.
His powdered face instantly collapsed and twisted out of shape.
He didn't even make a sound. His fat body slumped limply,
striking the bloody water heavily and sending up a red splash.
Deathly silence returned to the hall.
Only a few bodies that had not quite died twitched occasionally, making faint noises.
Wind blew in through the doorway, carrying the heavy smell of blood.
The two Anbu Ninjas had long since collapsed against the wall.
Their lips were pale beneath their masks, and their legs were too weak to stand.
They were elites of the assassination force, accustomed to seeing dead bodies.
But they had never seen such violent killing. That had been the daimyo's delegation, and every one of them had been killed.
Shu Shiraishi reached into his trouser pocket.
He took out a yellow Explosive Tag
and held it between two fingers.
He bent down and carefully pasted the Explosive Tag flat against the back of the fat man's corpse.
He straightened up.
Shu Shiraishi raised his right foot and planted the sole of his boot against the fat man's fleshy lower back.
His leg muscles tightened, and he kicked with sudden force.
The corpse, weighing more than three hundred jin, was like a ball beneath Shu Shiraishi's foot.
It flew sideways through the front entrance of the Hokage's building,
tracing an arc toward the open ground outside.
"Explode."
Shu Shiraishi's lips moved slightly, and he formed a seal with one hand.
Boom!
A dazzling burst of fire erupted outside the entrance.
The deafening explosion whipped up a fierce wind.
The wind swept into the hall, sending ripples across the blood covering the floor.
The fat man's corpse was blown to pieces in midair.
The enormous fireball swallowed all his flesh and blood.
Not even one whole bone remained. It all turned to ash that filled the sky and drifted down.
Shu Shiraishi took a pair of clean white gloves from his pocket.
He put them on unhurriedly.
Head lowered, he carefully wiped away the traces of blood between his fingernails that he had failed to shake off.
Once he had wiped them clean, he pulled off the gloves
and casually tossed them into a pool of blood on the floor.
The white gloves were stained red in an instant.
Shu Shiraishi turned
and looked at the two Anbu Ninjas slumped in the corner.
"Go get a jar."
His voice was cold as iron, without the slightest trace of emotion.
"Sweep the ashes outside into it. Send them back to the daimyo."
The two Anbu jolted awake as if from a dream.
"Yes! Yes!"
The two scrambled on all fours toward the door.
They were terrified that if they were a step too slow, they too would have Explosive Tags stuck to them and be kicked out.
The hall fell completely silent.
Debris littered the floor. The stench of blood filled the air.
Shu Shiraishi turned around.
He raised his head.
His gaze passed over the carnage in the hall and settled on the bend in the stairs on the second floor.
The commotion just now had been so loud. The first floor had been in utter chaos.
There was no way the people on the second floor could have missed it.
Mito Uzumaki leaned on her dark brown wooden cane.
She stood there silently, looking down from above.