As he gazed at Hokage Rock in the distance, Kenya's smile grew even brighter.
Behind him, the two stunned Root ninja finally came to their senses.
They glanced at their captain, embedded so deeply in the distant rock face that he could not even be pried out, and their scalps tingled.
"M-monster!"
The two screamed in terror and scrambled out of the dilapidated old residence.
Kenya could not be bothered to chase those two lackeys.
Letting them report back would save him the trouble of looking for that old schemer himself.
He turned and went back inside, tucking the remaining bag of rice crackers into his robe.
Then he sat boldly on the tatami and waited in silence.
Since he had decided to flip the table, he might as well turn everything upside down.
He did not have to wait long.
About an incense stick's worth of time later, a flurry of sounds sliced through the air outside the old residence.
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!"
Dozens of dark figures descended like crows, instantly surrounding the rundown courtyard so tightly that nothing could get through.
Their icy killing intent froze the surrounding air.
Then someone kicked open the courtyard gate.
A sinister old man leaning on a cane, his right eye wrapped in bandages, walked in surrounded by Root elites.
It was none other than the Darkness of Konoha, Root's leader, Shimura Danzō.
Danzo's expression was so dark it looked as though water might drip from it.
He glanced at the enormous hole in the wall, then at the distant rock face.
A trace of unconcealable shock and greed flashed through his lone eye.
But he quickly composed himself and fixed his gaze on Kenya inside the house.
"Senju Kenya, how dare you!"
Danzo slammed his cane against the ground with a dull thud.
He spoke with righteous severity, his voice as cold as a venomous snake's hiss.
"You attacked a colleague without cause, leaving one of the village's Jonin gravely injured and at death's door!"
"Your flagrant disregard for the village's laws constitutes serious grounds for suspicion of treason!"
"Surrender immediately and return to Root with me for investigation, or be executed on the spot!"
Danzo opened by leveling an enormous accusation against him.
He tried to crush Kenya outright under the weight of righteousness.
Faced with Danzo's harsh rebuke, Kenya merely picked his ear.
He strolled out of the house and stood on the courtyard steps, looking down at the old man.
"Old dog, have you gotten so old your brain's stopped working too?"
Kenya tossed a rice cracker into his mouth and crunched away.
"You sent people to break into my home and drag me off for human experimentation."
"I was only defending myself. How does that make me a traitor?"
"If you want to arrest me, just say so. Spare me the self-important act."
Kenya's merciless mockery instantly turned Danzo's face a liver-purple shade.
How many years had it been since anyone in Konoha had dared point at his nose and call him an old dog?
"You incorrigible wretch!"
Danzo laughed in fury, killing intent surging in his eye.
He decided to act personally and test this brat who had suddenly unleashed such terrifying power.
And cripple him and take him away while he was at it.
Danzo drew a deep breath, his hands completing the hand seals in an instant.
His speed was nothing like that of an old man with one foot in the grave.
"Wind Release: Vacuum Wave!"
Danzo opened his mouth wide and spat out several incomparably sharp, invisible wind blades.
The blades tore through the air with piercing whistles.
Like the Grim Reaper's scythes, they wove into a dense net of death and shot straight toward Kenya's limbs and torso.
This attack was powerful enough to slice rock into fragments.
The surrounding Root ninja sneered at the sight.
In their eyes, Kenya was already a cripple.
Yet faced with this lethal Wind Release Ninjutsu, Kenya showed no intention of dodging.
He did not even stop chewing his rice cracker.
"Thud, thud, thud!"
The sharp Vacuum Waves slashed viciously into Kenya's body.
The next second, everyone's eyes flew wide open.
The blood spraying and severed limbs they had expected never appeared.
Just as the wind blades were about to touch his skin, a pitch-black metallic sheen suddenly spread across Kenya's body.
Black as ink and solid as rock.
"Clang, clang, clang!"
A series of crisp metallic collisions rang out in the courtyard.
The Wind Release: Vacuum Wave, powerful enough to cleave gold and jade, struck Kenya's blackened skin and merely sent up a shower of dazzling sparks!
It failed to leave so much as a pale mark.
The wind blades shattered, dispersing in gusts that whipped Kenya's clothes.
Danzo's lone eye went wide, his face filled with disbelief.
"That's impossible!"
"What defensive Ninjutsu is this? It doesn't even require hand seals?"
He had lived most of his life and witnessed countless secret techniques, but he had never seen such bizarre and overwhelming bodily hardness!
This was not the power of chakra at all!
"That's it?"
Kenya brushed the dust the wind blades had blown onto his chest, his expression disdainful.
"That doesn't even qualify as scraping my skin."
Before his words had faded, Kenya's gaze turned sharp.
He drove hard with both legs, instantly shattering the ground into a deep, spiderweb-cracked crater.
"Whoosh!"
Kenya vanished from the spot like a phantom.
He moved so quickly that even the Root elites present could not make out his movements.
Danzo was horrified, an intense sense of mortal danger enveloping him.
He instinctively tried to retreat while raising his cane to defend himself.
But this force was too fast and too fierce!
Kenya had already closed in right in front of Danzo.
He did not use his fist.
Instead, he slowly raised his right hand.
Faint wisps of black Haki coiled around his palm like tiny bolts of lightning.
Then he swung his arm in a full arc.
A solid, resounding slap tore through the air with a savage roar, hurtling toward Danzo's old face.
"SMACK!!!"
A slap ten times louder than the earlier collision with the Wind Release echoed above the entire old Senju residence.
The slap was crisp, loud, and tremendously heavy.
Danzo did not even have time to scream.
The instant the palm struck his wrinkled old face, it underwent a grotesque deformation.
Then Danzo's entire body became like a top knocked spinning through the air.
His feet left the ground, and he spun more than a dozen times in midair.
"CRASH!"
Danzo's body slammed heavily into the thick brick wall on the right side of the courtyard.
The immense impact smashed the entire wall to pieces.
Dust billowed, and bricks collapsed.
Danzo was buried deep beneath the rubble.
A deathly silence fell over the scene.
The normally well-trained, cold-blooded Root elites had all turned into stone statues.
Their minds went blank. They could scarcely believe their eyes.
Lord Danzo, who stood so far above them and controlled Konoha's darkness.
Had actually been sent flying with a single slap?
This was more shocking to them than being killed!
A fit of violent coughing came from the rubble.
"Cough... cough, cough!"
Danzo crawled out of the broken bricks in utter disarray.
His hair hung loose, and his right cheek had swollen like a purple steamed bun.
He spat several bloody molars onto the ground with a mouthful of blood.
That slap had completely stripped Danzo of his lofty dignity and reason.
He felt his head still buzzing.
Endless humiliation and fury erupted in his chest like a volcano.
"Kill... kill him!"
Danzo pointed at Kenya and roared at the top of his lungs.
His lone eye brimmed with frenzied killing intent, all his earlier composure gone.
Faced with the crazed Danzo and the surrounding Root ninja drawing their Ninja Blades.
Kenya stood in the center of the courtyard and gave a cold laugh.
He slowly raised his hand toward the Forehead Protector bearing Konoha's emblem on his forehead.
The next second.
He ripped off the Forehead Protector that represented his bond with the village.