"Sarutobi!"
A roar like that of a wounded beast thundered through the ruins of the enormous crater in Konoha!
Shimura Danzō knelt on one knee. His only remaining hand, his left, clamped tightly over his severed right arm.
The wound was a bloody mess, with several Sharingan that had completely lost their luster embedded in the flesh like dead fish's eyes, looking utterly grotesque and disgusting.
Not a trace of his usual gloom and composure remained on his face, only endless madness and venom!
"Look! Look at what you've done!"
Danzo raised his head, his lone eye bloodshot as he glared at Hiruzen Sarutobi, who was receiving treatment from medical-nin nearby.
"For your laughable mercy! For your hypocritical Will of Fire!"
"You personally let a monster capable of destroying Konoha go!"
"You handed over a thousand pairs of Sharingan that should have belonged to Konoha to the enemy!"
"Hiruzen Sarutobi! You are a sinner against Konoha!"
His roars echoed over the deathly silent ruins, leaving every surviving Konoha ninja around him too frightened to speak.
Hiruzen Sarutobi's face was pale, his lips trembling, yet he could not utter a single word in rebuttal.
Regret, humiliation, anger-all these emotions tangled in his heart, making this Hokage hailed as the Shinobi Hero look like a gambler who had lost everything.
He had lost. He had gambled away Konoha's future.
"Enough, Danzo."
Mitokado Homura barked in a low voice beside him.
"This isn't the time to assign blame! What matters most is finding a way to make up for this immediately!"
"Make up for this? How?!"
Danzo laughed in fury, struggling to his feet and pointing at the bottomless crater.
"The entire Uchiha Clan vanished into thin air! They didn't leave us so much as a hair!"
"We don't even know where they went! Did they defect to Kumogakure? Or Kirigakure?"
"The entire Shinobi World is laughing at Konoha now!"
Just then, a Yamanaka Clan ninja responsible for the sensory barrier appeared before Hiruzen Sarutobi with the Body Flicker Technique, his expression grave.
"Reporting, Lord Hokage!"
"Just now, a highest-level sensory barrier set up along the Land of Fire's eastern border, near the Land of Earth, detected an enormous spatial fluctuation that vanished in an instant!"
"The total amount of chakra in that fluctuation essentially matched our estimate for the entire Uchiha Clan!"
"What?!"
At those words, the expressions of every senior official present changed drastically!
The Land of Earth's border?
A spatial fluctuation?!
"They teleported straight there?!"
Utatane Koharu shrieked, disbelief written all over her face.
"How is that possible?! What kind of Space-Time Ninjutsu could teleport over a thousand people over such an enormous distance?!"
"Even Lord Second Hokage's Flying Thunder God Technique could never do that!"
"It was that Uchiha Gen'yō!"
A crazed light mingled with jealousy and greed erupted in Danzo's eye!
"It was those eyes of his! His Kamui has already surpassed everything we know!"
"He went to the Land of Earth to defect to Iwagakure! He's going to trade Konoha's most closely guarded secrets with that undying old bastard Ōnoki!"
Danzo instantly pieced everything together!
It felt as though an invisible hand had seized his heart in a crushing grip!
No!
Absolutely not!
The Sharingan he had schemed for all his life, the ultimate power he had pursued his entire life, absolutely could not fall into that old bastard Ōnoki's hands!
"Sarutobi! What are you waiting for?!"
Danzo rushed up to Hiruzen Sarutobi and roared, all but jabbing a finger in his face.
"Give the order now! Mobilize every ninja in the village ranked A or above! Block every road leading to the Land of Earth! Stop them at any cost!"
A flicker of indecision crossed Hiruzen Sarutobi's eyes.
Konoha had just suffered such a devastating blow and been severely weakened. If they mobilized everyone now, the village's defenses would be left terribly thin.
But he also knew Danzo was right.
Once the Uchiha joined forces with Iwagakure, it would spell utter disaster for Konoha!
Yet before he could make up his mind, Danzo's patience had already run out.
An icy resolve flashed through his cold, solitary eye!
"Coward!"
"If you can't be relied on, then I, the Root, will purge all darkness for Konoha!"
Danzo abruptly turned and issued the coldest of orders to the dozens of Root ninja kneeling on one knee in the shadows behind him!
"Relay my orders!"
"Every member of Root's Owl, Crow, and Itachi squads is to mobilize!"
His voice was hoarse and crazed!
"Abandon all missions! Abandon all disguises!"
"I don't care what methods you use! Tracking! Infiltration! Assassination!"
"Destination: the Land of Earth's border!"
"Your mission is to wipe the Uchiha Clan completely from this world!"
"Leave not a single person alive! Don't let a single pair of eyes escape!"
"Especially Uchiha Gen'yō!"
Danzo spoke through gritted teeth, as though he wanted to chew that name to pieces and swallow it.
"I want his head! And his eyes must be brought back too!"
"Yes!"
Dozens of Root ninja in white masks answered in unison like phantoms, then silently melted into the shadows and disappeared.
Watching the direction they had left in, Hiruzen Sarutobi opened his mouth, but in the end, all he could manage was a helpless sigh.
He knew Danzo had truly gone mad this time.
Owl, Crow, and Itachi were Root's most elite squads, the very core of its strength!
Every member was a killing machine who had crawled out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, wielding all manner of bizarre secret and forbidden techniques. They were Danzo's ultimate trump cards!
Just then, a Root ninja wearing a tanuki mask appeared silently behind Danzo.
He knelt on one knee, holding a crystal vial in both hands.
Inside the vial floated a faint wisp of chakra that gave off a purple glow.
"Lord Danzo."
The voice beneath the tanuki mask held no emotion.
"This is the residual chakra we collected from the center of the ruins, where Uchiha Gen'yō last stood."
"I've already locked onto it with the Soul-Devouring Cursed Seal."
"No matter how far he flees, as long as he's still in this world, we can pinpoint his location!"
"Excellent!"
A savage smile finally appeared on Danzo's face.
He gazed at that wisp of purple chakra, his eye as greedy as a starving wolf's.
"Uchiha Gen'yō, do you think you can escape?"
"Your eyes are destined to be mine!"
"After him!"
With that command, a thousand-mile hunt spanning the entire Land of Fire officially began!
But could they truly catch the man who had already stepped off the chessboard?
And would that man have anticipated that the traces he left behind would become a death warrant the enemy could use to track him?