At the very instant when the white fog around them grew so thick it could almost bead into droplets, a Mist shinobi trained in silent killing slid up behind Uchiha Chizumi like a wraith.
His steps were light as feathers, his breathing merged with the wind, and even the faintest ripple of chakra was deliberately suppressed.
A heartbeat later, the blade in his hand flashed with a cold gleam and swept diagonally toward the base of Uchiha Chizumi's undefended neck—precise and vicious.
But just as the edge was about to brush his hair, the Mist ninja's pupils shrank to pinpoints. He clearly saw the back of that Konoha ninja's head—black short hair and all—turning toward him, inch by inch!
Out of the corner of his eye he caught half a profile already turned his way, and a single Sharingan—crimson and uncanny—open and staring.
—He noticed me long ago!
—My Silent Killing… is useless on him!
The thought cracked like thunder through his skull, but his body couldn't keep up with the sudden reversal.
He didn't even have time to fully wear the look of horror forming on his face before a fleeting chill kissed his neck.
The next second, the world flipped.
His vision tumbled; the last thing he saw was a headless body below—his own—still frozen in mid-swing as it sagged to its knees and toppled forward.
His doubts and unwillingness sank, along with his final glimmer of consciousness, into an endless black abyss.
His head had been taken in a single stroke and rolled across the ground.
Chizumi gave his wrist a light snap, flicking warm beads of blood from the nicked blade with fluid ease, not even sparing the corpse a glance.
In the fog, more wind-shearing whistles rushed in from every direction. Countless blurred figures, heavy with killing intent, swarmed like sharks to blood.
Not far away, Mei Terumi reached out in vain, forced to watch as silhouette after silhouette from her own village flashed past and lunged at Uchiha Chizumi.
Anxious helplessness squeezed the breath from her lungs.
Soon, a faint, eerie red seeped into the once-white fog without warning.
At first it was like a drop of cinnabar in water; then it spread with startling speed.
A nauseating sweetness mixed with iron began to taint the air.
The thick fog bled red before their eyes, deepening to a heart-hammering crimson.
In barely a dozen seconds, the entire area felt steeped in a sea of blood; visibility plunged.
The visual shock and psychic pressure of that red multiplied with every breath.
The true "Village of the Bloody Mist"…
descended.
"Urgh—!"
"Gah—!"
From within the clotted crimson haze came grunts, the dull rip of blades parting flesh, and the thuds of bodies hitting stone—woven into a dense, brutal symphony of death.
Each sound was short and abrupt,
cut off as if an invisible hand had clamped down on a throat.
Mei held her breath, her heart flinching with every muffled strike and fall.
She found herself counting, instinctively:
One, two… ten… twenty…
Fifty… seventy…
When she neared eighty, a chill shot up her spine.
How long had it been?
A minute?
Two?
Mist shinobi had already fallen by the hundred beneath that man's blade, most of the newcomers never even knowing what they'd run into—because every one of the dead had been erased before a proper scream could form.
"Ahhhh—!!!"
At last, a single, flaying shriek tore the suffocating quiet apart.
A black shape then hurled out of the blood-fog like a ripped sack and crashed hard in Mei Terumi's direction.
She twisted aside on reflex.
Thud!
The figure slammed the wall behind her, stone chips spraying.
A Mist ninja curled on the ground like a boiled shrimp, coughing up blood laced with bits of viscera. His chest was caved in, ribs surely shattered—utterly unable to fight.
"…He held back. He left him alive," Mei murmured, staring at the dying man.
Something taut inside her eased by a hair.
It proved Uchiha Chizumi wasn't a pure killing machine.
He abided by that obsessive, terrifying "Absolute Justice" of his.
Those who truly bore no guilt would not be casually robbed of life by him—but anyone who blocked his path would pay dearly.
Even this "lucky" one, who kept his life by a sliver, would need months of care to recover—if he ever did—and might carry hidden injuries forever.
And yet…
The heavy reek of blood in her nose reminded her that such "luck" was rare amid this one-sided slaughter.
Breathing that sickening air, watching the fog thicken into red all around, she knew that the man who had dared kill a Mizukage…
would show Mist shinobi no mercy.
"Ao… how much longer…" Mei clenched her fists until her nails bit into her palms.
Every second they stalled, more ignorant comrades might charge in to die—or to be maimed for life like the one before her.
As for those whom Uchiha Chizumi branded "villains," Mei had stopped counting them.
What she cared about were the ones who shouldn't have died, who shouldn't even have been hurt, yet still rushed forward like fools.
At that desperate moment—
"Shinobi of the Hidden Mist! All of you, stand down!!!"
An old voice, hoarse yet laden with unquestionable authority and urgency, cracked like thunder and forced its way through the clotted fog into every Mist shinobi's ears.
"Hah… hah…"
Whoever shouted had spent the last of his strength; a ragged, bellows-like wheeze followed.
Within the blood-red haze, the sickening rhythm of blades biting flesh thinned at once.
Then, with the final dull collapse of a body hitting stone,
silence.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
Several quick-witted Mist jōnin formed seals together. Howling gusts rose and drove at the crimson curtain, fighting to scour it from the air.
As the gale swept through, the red mist ebbed and finally blew clear.
And when sight returned, every survivor was struck dumb by what they saw.
A chill from the depths of the soul froze their blood.
Nothing but corpses.
Everywhere the eye could rest—layer on layer of bodies in every posture imaginable.
Blood streamed in rivulets, finding the cracks between paving stones and running in snaking red lines until it poured into the gutters, staining those dark mouths a glaring, murky red.
Atop a small "hill" of piled corpses stood two figures.
At the peak was Uchiha Chizumi.
The standard-issue ninjatō in his hand was blunted and nicked from the carnage, beads of crimson sliding down the blade.
His face was impassive. Those uncanny Sharingan eyes looked down, calm as winter, on the Mist shinobi below, frozen as if under a binding jutsu. The focused killing intent he radiated made even the air feel viscous.
It was a purer, more terrifying killing aura than any cutthroat the Mist had ever bred.
A little lower stood a Uchiha girl, breathing a touch hard.
Her chakra was badly drained; shallow cuts striped her arm and shoulder, smearing her with blood.
But her back was still ramrod straight.
Few spared her a second look.
Every gaze, full of inarticulate dread, locked onto the man on the corpse-crown.
Ao appeared at Mei's side, his voice trembling despite himself. "I… seem to be late. How many are down now?"
Mei was silent for a beat. Her eyes swept the slaughterfield; her voice came heavy: "I can't count. He kills faster than I can number them. Judging by how dense it is, the bodies alone… are no fewer than three hundred. There are jōnin among them, but most… are chūnin and genin."
She paused, adding with a bitter thread, "A jōnin might trade a move or two, and at least die knowing how. Those chūnin and genin—most likely didn't even know what happened before death took them."
Cold surged from Ao's soles to his crown.
Sweat soaked the bandage beneath his forehead protector in an instant.
He didn't even dare meet Uchiha Chizumi's eyes—let alone demand to know why he had turned the Mist into a charnel house.
Before such absolute power, even anger felt pale and extravagant.
Tap—
Tap—
Tap—
The slow knock of a cane in clotted blood sounded out.
Elder Genshi—the village's most senior, venerated elder—picked his way through the gore, stepping past the bodies of his own people as he made his hard, deliberate approach to Uchiha Chizumi.
Against the mountain of corpses and sea of blood, his aged figure looked painfully small.
Mei and Ao moved at once to flank him, guarding his sides.
The remaining Mist shinobi were still shackled by shock and fear. None moved. None spoke.
At last they had seen what lay under the blood-fog, had stared into a hellscape.
If not for the elder's timely command…
they too would already be part of that heap.
That Uchiha from Konoha…
was a monster beyond any normal measure.
"Cough, cough…"
Elder Genshi's clouded gaze swept the field of dead, sorrow and pain flickering in his eyes before a sigh escaped him.
He soon raised his head and met Uchiha Chizumi's cold Sharingan.
In that instant—even with all his years—his heart clenched.
In the young man's eyes he found no emotion at all, only a bottomless, glacial indifference.
He understood at once: this was not someone who could be swayed or bound by seniority, credentials, or any ordinary rule.
"I… have heard the general outline from Ao," the elder rasped, breaking the suffocating silence, even tilting his words toward respect. "The power you have displayed is enough for me to believe… that the Fourth Mizukage, Yagura Karatachi, truly fell by your hand."
"I also believe you did not come from Konoha to invade the Mist. If you had, you would not have come alone."
He paused, eyes flicking over the bodies around them; a faint note of compromise and helplessness threaded his tone. "It was our shinobi… who offended you. Their deaths are their own doing. I ask our honored guest from the Konoha… to be lenient."
The square erupted.
Every surviving Mist shinobi stared at the elder's back in disbelief—shocked, confused,
humiliated.
That pillar of the village, whom even a Mizukage would greet with respect, was bowing and seeking peace from an outsider who had committed such atrocities on their soil?
How could that be right?!
Uchiha Chizumi's cold voice cut in the next second: "You seem to be mistaken. They didn't die because they offended me. You say you know the gist, but it's clear you understand nothing."
"They died because they were the kind who deserve to die. Steeped in sin. The fact they lived this long is justice failing its duty. The Mist failed to deal with them and even praised them as village elites. That only proves this village's thinking has warped into sickness."
"If you want to tear away the shroud of blood-fog and let justice take root in a village that's nearly beyond saving, then every one of these villains must be removed. Not a single one left. Only then can justice suppress the evil that keeps breeding under the Blood-Mist policy."
Elder Genshi's heart sank.
This youth from the Konoha was far from simple.
What he meant was plain: to force his way into the Mist's internal affairs.
In his eyes, every shinobi spawned by the Blood Mist was an evildoer.
He likely wouldn't stop at "just this many" dead.
If they truly carried out the purge Chizumi spoke of—
how many shinobi would the Mist have left?
Five hundred?
Even that might be too many.
"You're just a Konoha shinobi—what right do you have to meddle in the Mist's household affairs!" a red-eyed Mist ninja snarled through gritted teeth. "We in the Hidden Mist don't need your justice at all!"