Shu Shiraishi stood in the center of the hall.
Bloody water rose past the thick soles of his combat boots, making a faint, sticky sound.
He raised his head.
Mito Uzumaki stood silently at the turn of the stairs on the second floor.
A layer of dust coated the hem of her loose, dark green kimono.
The dark brown wooden cane in her hand rested firmly against the wooden floor.
Wind blew in through the door.
It scattered the acrid fumes left by the explosion.
A gust caught the gray-white ashes of the chief financial officer. The powder drifted into the hall, settling on the samurai's shattered armor and in the pools of blood.
Two Anbu Ninja knelt at the entrance with a coarse clay jar, trembling as they swept up the ashes. Their hands shook so badly they could barely hold their brooms.
The air froze for two seconds.
Mito's withered fingers tightened around her cane. Her knuckles turned pale.
She looked at the dark ashes outside, then swept her gaze over the mangled samurai corpses strewn across the hall.
"Good!"
Mito suddenly spoke, her voice hoarse.
Then a harsh laugh rumbled from her throat.
Her laughter echoed through the empty stairwell, making the brass chandelier overhead tremble.
She jabbed her cane hard against the wooden floor.
"Thump! Thump!"
"Good killing!" Mito laughed until tears came to her eyes. She casually wiped them away with her wide sleeve.
"We should have driven those parasites out long ago!"
She descended two steps. The boards creaked beneath her.
"When Hashirama founded the village, he insisted on paying tribute to the daimyo's estate to keep things stable. They demanded money year after year. We were nearly out of men fighting on the front lines, but those fat pigs were still picking out dancers in the capital."
Mito stared at Shu downstairs.
"This fire was satisfying."
Shu did not smile.
He strode up the stairs through the bloody water, leaving several red boot prints on the wooden steps.
"Once you've lit a fire, you have to feed it." Shu reached Mito's side, but did not stop, heading straight down the corridor.
"The daimyo's estate will cut off our food and money tomorrow."
"Today, we have to put our trump card firmly in place."
Mito turned and followed.
"The Tailed Beast Generator." She said the words aloud.
Even the tapping of her cane against the floor grew a little faster.
The two returned to the office on the third floor.
Shu kicked a dead loyalist's desiccated corpse out of his path. It struck the corner of the wall and rolled over.
He pulled out the high-backed chair and sat down.
"I need three days to finish refining the modification sketch for the Sealing Jutsu."
Shu took out a clean sheet of parchment and spun a charcoal pencil in his hand.
"Three days?" Mito sat down across the desk, frowning.
"Once word reaches the daimyo's estate, the Land of Fire's punitive army will be at the Konoha Gate in five days at most."
"Three days is enough."
Shu put the charcoal pencil to paper with a piercing scratch.
He drew a cube.
"For these three days, you don't need to do anything. Get plenty of rest."
The tip of the pencil jabbed hard into the center of the cube.
"I'll have the Akimichi Clan dig a hundred-meter-deep pit in the south of the village. The foundation will be filled solid with concrete."
"I'll personally oversee the carving of the Four Symbols Inversion Array. It'll be cast in refined steel mixed with Chakra-conducting metal."
Mito studied the sketch on the paper.
"If the Nine-Tails fights back with everything he has, the first burst of violent Chakra will break through the refined steel."
"Then we'll increase the pressure."
Shu tossed down the charcoal pencil. Wood shavings fell onto the desk.
"The Uchiha's Fire Style, with the Hyūga's Byakugan to correct errors. I'll build a special steel ball cage ten meters in diameter for him."
"I'll lock the Chakra link ports connecting you and that fox inside the steel ball."
Shu leaned forward.
"If he dares to charge, I'll run electricity through the ball until he lies down and behaves."
Mito took a deep breath.
That method was more ruthless than flaying someone and tearing out their tendons.
But the absolute confidence in the young man's eyes made her aged heart pound twice.
Overbearing. Unreasonable. But effective.
"All right." Mito gripped her cane.
"In three days, I'll enter the center of the array myself."
"It's settled." Shu stood up.
He walked to the window and flung both glass panes open.
The midday sun was scorching. Bright sunlight poured in.
He turned his head and addressed the Anbu outside the door.
"Ring the bell."
"Highest-level summons."
"Clang-"
"Clang-"
The deep, heavy toll of the bronze bell spread from the top floor of the Hokage building.
Waves of sound rippled out over Konoha.
It was an S-rank emergency summons.
The moment the bell rang, ninja in every corner of the village stopped what they were doing.
Genin eating ramen in restaurants threw down their chopsticks, splashing broth across the tables before they had even swallowed their noodles.
Chunin patrolling the rooftops changed direction, pushing off hard enough to smash two roof tiles.
Within five minutes.
In the great square below Hokage Rock.
A dense crowd gathered like a tide.
More than twenty thousand people packed the broad square so tightly that not a gap remained.
Ninja from the various clans stood at the front, civilians at the back.
No one dared make a sound. Everyone kept their breathing quiet.
Sarutobi Sasuke had been beheaded here just yesterday.
His blood had soaked into the flagstones, leaving a large dark red stain that still could not be washed away.
The bell was ringing so urgently today. Who were they going to kill this time?
Akimichi Chōza stood wedged into the front of the crowd.
His fat face was covered in sweat. Both hands gripped his broad belt tightly.
Beside him, Nara Rokumei kept his head down, staring fixedly at the tips of his shoes.
The three Ino-Shika-Cho clans had just offered their pledge of allegiance that morning. Now they could only hope the fire would not reach them.
At the very front of the crowd, below the steps.
Kagami Uchiha stood in a line with more than a hundred men.
They all wore short black outfits, with striking red armbands tied around their right arms.
The Urban Management Brigade.
Their hands rested on their sword hilts as their gazes swept back and forth across the crowd like hungry wolves, searching for prey.
Footsteps sounded.
Shu climbed the wooden steps at the side and walked onto the platform.
He had not changed clothes. Dried mud and clots of blood still clung to his soles.
He stood at the edge of the platform. The wind caught his white Hokage hat.
More than twenty thousand heads below tilted up in unison.
No one dared utter a sound.
Shu said nothing.
He extended his white-gloved right hand and pressed it downward.
Below the steps, Kagami Uchiha saw the gesture.
His straight sword turned in its sheath.
"Seize them!" Kagami bellowed.
More than a dozen Uchiha elites wearing red armbands charged straight into the crowd.
The crowd scattered to either side as if scalded by boiling water, leaving a clear path through the middle.
"What are you doing?! Have you Uchiha gone mad?!"
A harsh, raspy voice erupted from the crowd.
The Uchiha men roughly seized three gray-haired old men by their collars.
They dragged them bodily out of the crowd.
These three men were the leaders of several small, neutral ninja clans in the village.
They usually followed the Sarutobi and Shimura, picking up their scraps.
They were also the diehard elders who had clamored loudest about the daimyo's estate at the previous leadership meeting.
"Let go! These old bones of mine..."
The old man at the front struggled desperately. One of his wooden sandals came off, and his bare foot scraped along the flagstones until the sole bled.
The Uchiha man paid him no attention.
He kicked him in the back of the knee.
"Thud."
The three old men were forced down hard in the open space below the steps, kneeling in a row.
The Uchiha drew their straight swords halfway and pressed the cold, hard backs of the blades against the old men's necks.
Shu looked down at them from above.
"Just now, I killed the financial envoy sent by the daimyo."
Shu spoke evenly. He did not amplify his voice with Chakra, but everyone in the deathly silent square heard him clearly.
"Along with his thirty guards. Their ashes are in jars, already on their way back to the capital."
The square was plunged into an ice cellar in an instant.
More than twenty thousand people stopped breathing.
He had killed the daimyo's envoy?
That was even more hair-raising than beheading Sarutobi Sasuke.
This was rebellion. It was a capital crime that would drag the whole village into revolt and bring about the destruction of their clans!
The old man kneeling in the middle jerked his head up.
His face was scarlet, and the veins on his neck bulged from extreme fear and anger.
"You're mad! Shu Shiraishi! You've gone completely mad!"
The old man roared, spraying spittle onto the steps in front of him.
"The daimyo's estate will cut off supplies. Once the Land of Fire's punitive army arrives..."
The old man twisted desperately, and the back of the blade scraped a red mark across his neck.
"Tens of thousands of people in Konoha will all be buried with you!"
"You're not fit to be Hokage! The daimyo won't let you off! You've ruined us all!"
The other two old men began wailing as well.
"Konoha is finished! It'll be destroyed in this brat's hands!"
Their voices were shrill and piercing.
Several people in the crowd began whispering among themselves, their gazes darting about, their faces full of panic.
Shu snorted coldly.
He offered no explanation about industrialization, nor did he waste any words.
He simply raised his hand, his five fingers held together.
Then he brought it down in a gentle sweep.
Below the steps.
Kagami Uchiha's gaze hardened.
"Cut them down!"
Three straight swords left their sheaths at once.
Silver light flashed beneath the blazing sun.
"Pfft. Pfft. Pfft."
Three dull sounds of blades chopping through flesh.
Three graying heads rolled to the ground at once.
Blood spurted more than half a meter from their necks, splashing straight onto the bluestone pavement.
A few drops of hot blood splattered onto Kagami Uchiha's black trouser leg.
The headless corpses pitched forward and fell heavily into the pool of blood.
The old men's wails stopped abruptly.
The panic and murmurs that had just begun to rise among the crowd were strangled in their throats by those three crisp, decisive chops.
No one dared whisper to anyone else again.
Kagami Uchiha flicked his wrist, shaking the blood off his blade.
He sheathed it.
The red armband was glaringly bright in the sunlight.
The wind blew across the square.
The strong stench of blood spread, filling the nostrils of more than twenty thousand people.
No one dared cover their nose. No one dared move.
Shu Shiraishi stood on the raised platform beneath Hokage Rock.
He looked down.
Tens of thousands of Konoha villagers and ninja stood silent as cicadas in winter.
The entire square was deathly silent, with no more murmurs to be heard.
Shu Shiraishi reached into his trouser pocket.
He pulled out the parchment scroll speckled with dark red bloodstains.
He flicked his wrist.
"Rustle."
The scroll unfurled in the wind.
"The internal purge is over."
Shu Shiraishi's voice came crashing down on the heads of twenty thousand people like a block of iron.
"Now, the new laws will be promulgated!"