The scene shifted underground.
Konoha's sewers were dark and damp.
There was no light except for a dim yellow kerosene lamp hanging on the wall every ten meters.
A powerful stench filled the air. The smell of fermented swamp gas mingled with the sour reek of excrement, drilling straight into the nostrils.
It was strong enough to make a person's eyes sting.
The channel was filled waist-deep with blackish-brown sewage.
A layer of greasy, dirty scum floated on the surface. Every so often, a few fat rats darted along the bank, squeaking.
Shimura Danzō stood submerged in the sewage.
The dark kimono that had once represented Konoha High Command had long since been stripped from him. Now he wore only a coarse hemp garment so ragged its color was impossible to make out.
A heavy wooden cangue hung around his neck. The wood was covered in black mold and dried excrement.
His Chakra was completely sealed.
He was now worse off than an ordinary old man. His shattered jaw had been crudely set, but it had healed crooked. His lips wouldn't close properly, and drool mixed with filthy water kept running down his chin.
He gripped a long-handled iron scoop in both hands.
The handle had worn rough and splintered, digging into his sore-covered palms.
Danzo bent over and dipped the scoop into the black sewage.
He scooped with all his might.
He brought up a scoopful of thick filth. It was so heavy that his old legs wobbled in the muck.
He struggled to turn around, trying to pour the filth into a wooden bucket on the bank.
His foot slipped.
Splash.
All the sewage in the scoop spilled onto his chest. The stench was overpowering.
Danzo gasped for air, his chest making a noise like a broken bellows.
On the bank.
An Uchiha Jōkan wearing a red armband stood there.
He covered his nose and mouth with one hand, his face full of disgust.
He looked down at the once-lofty "Darkness of the Shinobi."
"Didn't you eat?" The Uchiha Jōkan raised the leather whip in his hand.
Crack!
The whip came down.
It traced a blurred arc through the air and struck Danzo squarely across the back.
His coarse hemp garment split open. The tip of the whip left a bloody welt two fingers wide across his back.
"Aah-!"
Danzo's jaw had healed crooked, and air leaked through his scream, making him sound like a drake with its neck pinned underfoot.
His knees buckled. He and the cangue plunged headfirst into the waist-deep cesspool.
The filthy water closed over his head in an instant.
A few murky bubbles rose to the surface.
He flailed twice underwater, grasping wildly with both hands. He caught nothing.
Then he stopped moving altogether, unconscious.
"Useless."
The Uchiha Jōkan cursed.
He took out a long bamboo pole with an iron hook and pushed it into the sewage.
The hook caught in a gap in the cangue around Danzo's neck.
He gave it a hard yank.
As though dragging a dead dog.
He hauled Danzo bodily out of the cesspool and onto the bank.
Danzo lay on his back on the wet, slippery flagstones. His face was covered in black filth, and his belly was swollen.
The officer raised his leather boot and kicked him in the stomach.
"Blegh."
Danzo vomited a mouthful of foul-smelling sewage and slowly began to breathe faintly again.
The officer turned away in disgust.
"Stop playing dead. If you don't fill these two buckets today, you'll get nothing but swill for dinner."
Meanwhile.
At the Land of Fire's border. The Black Rock Mine.
It was a coal mine that reached two hundred meters underground.
There was no sunlight. The air was full of black coal dust. One breath made a person's lungs feel as though they were stuffed with sand.
The torches on the walls gave off a dim light, illuminating only two meters around them.
"Clink. Clang."
The dull, monotonous sound of a pickaxe striking the coal seam echoed back and forth through the mine.
Hiruzen Sarutobi bent over.
He stood in black water that rose above his ankles.
His ragged hemp clothes had long since turned black, blending in with the coal around him.
Two thick iron shackles were locked around his ankles. With every step, the chains dragged across the ground with a grating clatter.
They were as heavy as two thousand-pound stones hanging from him.
He mechanically swung the cast-iron pickaxe in his hands.
He struck the hard coal wall.
Once. Twice. Large chunks of black coal fell.
Hiruzen's hands were covered in blood blisters.
The old blisters had rubbed raw and oozed yellow fluid. New ones had formed in their place.
Blood and coal dust had mixed together and formed a hard black scab. Every time he tightened his grip on the pick handle, the scab tore, sending pain to his core.
Sweat mixed with coal dust on his forehead, carving black muddy streaks down his face.
"Move faster! Blast furnace number two is asking for fuel!"
The overseer's roar rang out from deep in the mine. His whip cracked against the rock wall.
Hiruzen stopped.
He straightened his aching back, his chest heaving.
He gasped for breath, and even the air he breathed out was black.
He lowered his head and looked at the hands that had once formed three seals in a second.
Now those hands could only hold a pickaxe.
Humiliation surged over him like a tide.
Hiruzen's eyes reddened.
Tears streamed down his face beyond his control. They rolled through the coal dust on his cheeks, leaving clear tracks.
He thought of Konoha. He thought of the Hokage building.
He thought of the Will of Fire he had taken such pride in.
Now, all those things had been crushed, reduced to the endless coal dust in this mine.
"Konoha..."
Hiruzen's voice was hoarse, like two pieces of dry wood rubbing together.
"It's completely turned into a monster..."
A cold, merciless industrial monster that cared only for efficiency, chewing up and swallowing all the glory of the old era.
Hiruzen had yet to wipe away his tears.
Bang!
A large foot kicked out from beside him.
It struck the aluminum lunchbox Hiruzen had left on the ground.
The lunchbox tipped over.
The pitiful portion of brown rice and two pieces of pickled vegetables inside spilled into the black coal water.
The muddy water dyed the rice black in an instant.
"What are you crying for, like someone's died?!"
An overseer wearing a red armband walked over, pointing the whip in his hand at Hiruzen's nose.
"You're still two cartloads short of today's quota! If you don't meet it, you won't get any food tomorrow either!"
"Pick up your axe! Get back to work!"
Hiruzen looked at the rice in the muddy water.
His stomach gave a hungry rumble.
He bit his lip and tasted the salty tang of blood.
He didn't dare resist. He didn't even dare glare.
He bent down, picked up the heavy iron pickaxe, and turned around.
"Clink. Clang."
The pickaxe struck the coal wall again.
Before this rumbling industrial behemoth, the old era's lament was utterly crushed before it could even be heard.
And in the very heart of Konoha.
Laboratory Number One.
There was no sewer stench here, nor any coal dust from the mine.
Only glaring lights and the smell of machine oil.
An ultimate creation, one capable of overturning the Shinobi World's understanding, was about to be born.