Momochi Zabuza finally dragged his badly wounded body back to Kirigakure. The crude bandages around him were already seeping blood, and his pale face was etched with exhaustion.
But he had no time to worry about whether his injuries were life-threatening. He didn't even head straight for the village hospital to find med-nin. He was too stunned by the scene of devastation before him inside the village.
Under the hazy wash of moonlight, a wooden sphere hundreds of meters across—its surface etched with spiral grain—stood silently in the middle of Kirigakure. Beneath it, a broad pool of blood had yet to dry.
Even from a fair distance, the thick, metallic stench reached Zabuza clearly.
He couldn't begin to fathom how many had died to make the air reek this strongly. Hundreds? Thousands?
Anywhere else would have been one thing—but this was the Hidden Mist.
He didn't know how many seconds he stood there, stunned, before he bit down, forced himself to move, and limped deeper into the village.
Before long he started coming across scattered corpses of Mist shinobi lying all over the ground.
Most had been beheaded—clean kills, a single strike, no chance to resist.
The closer he got to that colossal, eerie wooden sphere, the more bodies there were. Then, all at once, he stepped into an area that was barren—no corpses at all.
The ground, though, was a wreck. It looked as if iron plows had torn it up again and again, the soil heaved inside out, deep bottomless fissures opening everywhere, thin streams of blood still trickling down into the cracks.
At that moment, Zabuza finally saw someone alive.
"Jūzō… Biwa…"
His hoarse call drew the man's attention. Jūzō, the Kubikiribōchō slung over his shoulder, turned to see Zabuza, barely upright and almost on his knees.
"You're actually still alive," Jūzō said, unable to hide the shock on his face. But it wasn't Zabuza's survival that shocked him—it was Uchiha Chizumi's Wood Release, which had instant-killed a huge number of Mist shinobi in a single strike.
Grinding his teeth, blood still at the corner of his mouth, Zabuza asked, "What happened? What in the village… what's going on?"
Jūzō's expression turned complicated. "Everything you're seeing—that's what happened. In short: Uchiha Chizumi decided to purge Kirigakure's sins, and some stubborn fools chose to stand against Absolute Justice. As for what became of them…"
He glanced at the giant wooden sphere. "You saw a small portion on your way here. As for the rest—hopefully some still have bodies left. More likely, they've already become fertilizer for the trees."
Zabuza just stared, at a loss. In a wooden voice he managed, "How many shinobi died?"
Jūzō shook his head. "No idea. Maybe two or three thousand."
"…"
Among the Five Great Hidden Villages, Sunagakure and Kirigakure were the weakest. Kirigakure had once held a slight edge over the Sand, but as the Blood Mist policy dragged on and the village fell further into ruin, their overall strength had become nearly equal.
By now, Kirigakure probably had only around three thousand shinobi in total. And Jūzō was telling him two or three thousand had been killed?
Did that mean fewer than a thousand were left? Maybe only several hundred?
That… that put them on par with a mid-tier minor village at best. Kirigakure had fallen to the bottom of the Five Great Villages.
Even "Demon" Zabuza felt a chill to his core. He couldn't imagine how blood-soaked and ruthless a single person had to be to slaughter two or three thousand Mist shinobi without batting an eye.
And this wasn't even wartime.
All because of… so-called Absolute Justice?!
At some point his fists had clenched tight. His overtaxed muscles trembled, and his locked jaw said everything about his roiling mood.
Then Jūzō spoke again. "Every Mist shinobi killed by Uchiha Chizumi was someone who chose to support the Blood Mist policy—someone who backed the Fourth Mizukage."
Zabuza blinked, and his fists eased a fraction.
"Chizumi actually gave them several chances," Jūzō went on. "More than once they had the opportunity to choose correctly. They could have openly refused to support the policy any further. They could have cooperated with Chizumi to dismantle it."
"But they didn't. They were tough, sure—but tough in all the wrong ways. In their minds, Kirigakure was strong because of the Blood Mist. They believed only blood and fog could keep us standing among the Five."
"Chizumi decided to kill them all only after he realized they were beyond saving. Otherwise? Only the true scum would have needed to die."
As he spoke, the shock faded from Jūzō's face and his tone cooled. "They made their choice—to stand opposite absolute justice."
"They ignored Chizumi's warnings, and the chances he gave them—"
"So paying with their lives is the price they earned. If that kind of stubborn fool keeps living, they'll only get in the way and make the advance of justice harder."
"They'd just keep Kirigakure mired in the Blood Mist."
The anger had drained completely from Zabuza's face. He fell silent—because in that moment he realized he agreed with the "lava monster" after all. The stubborn ones did deserve to be cut down—every last one of them.
"So…," Zabuza asked, "the Fourth and all his supporters—they're all dead?"
"Maybe a few slipped the net," Jūzō said. "Plenty of shinobi were out on missions. But there aren't many left."
Zabuza drew a long, slow breath. Suddenly, that nauseatingly strong smell of blood didn't seem so foul anymore.