Blood sprayed like fountains. Everyone standing was dead. The fallen dared not rise. The sealed chamber reeked of iron and smoke.
Alarms wailed outside in serried waves, like an end-of-world siren.
Explosions followed in chain reaction. The whole East Secret Island shook.
Jonin rushed forward and shielded the dais. These were not the rabble below. Anyone who survived Shigeo's Thousand Blades was no pushover.
"Who are you? If this is a misunderstanding, say so. Killing us without parley… even if you slay us, we won't understand. We can talk!" Lute peered from beneath the stone table, then shrank back, trembling with the butler. Both men quivered like sacks.
"I have nothing to discuss with you." Shigeo's mouth curved. He stepped up.
"Raiton! Fūton! Dotton!" several jonin launched a mixed volley of ninjutsu.
A Jiton (Magnet Release) barrier rose before Shigeo and blocked the attacks. He formed handseals with one hand and murmured, "Mokuton, Mokusa Fukujū no Jutsu (Wood Release: Silent Killing Binding Technique)."
Branches burst from the floor and lunged at the jonin. One escaped. The rest were ensnared and bound by wood.
The fleeing jonin had not a chance. A Ranton (Storm Release) strike from Shigeo cleaved him to a blackened corpse. He had been the one who used Raiton against Shigeo earlier.
Below, terrified men scrambled. Some tried to break the magnetic wall with kunai and jutsu. The magnetic sand that had looked like solid wall turned into a storm of magnetic needles the moment anyone touched it.
More screams. Those feigning death cursed themselves. If even the jonin couldn't beat this man, they were finished.
Silence fell. Explosions and roaring attacked from outside. Island guards began to assault the magnetic wall.
"I'm inside! You useless lot, charge in and save me—oh no, he's coming!" Lute shrieked.
The youth strode over corpses and took the high seat. Ten影分身 (shadow clones) erupted at his side.
The magnetic seals on the outer walls vanished. Reinforcements rushed in.
Slaughter resumed. The underground became a battlefield and a charnel pit. Shouts, curses, clash of jutsu and steel. Bodies stacked like refuse.
Shigeo sat on the high seat with his legs on the stone table. Beneath it two men cowered: Lute and his butler. Both quaked and shoved at each other to avoid being pushed forward.
When a head thudded between them, the butler lunged out, kunai in hand, and screamed, "I'll kill you!"
Brave but futile. Shigeo bent his knee, caught the kunai with an elbow, and snapped it away.
Fat Lute tried to flee. A long branch shot up, bound him, and hoisted him aloft.
"Please! Spare me! Don't kill me!" Lute sobbed, snot and tears streaming. His fat body twitched.
The butler froze. He stared into a pair of deep blue eyes he knew too well. Though not blind, he had studied that face for a year. The recognition strangled him.
"You… you…" he muttered and collapsed. Around them people fought and died; they could not even beat the clones. The sight unhinged him.
He never dreamed this face would appear here.
"You are Shigeo!" someone cried.
The declaration hit like cold water. Combat ceased. Everyone turned to the high seat. Even the bound Lute stared, glassy-eyed.
"No way. Wasn't he judged the most unlike Shigeo on the ship?" whispers spread.
The boy looked eleven or twelve. Long black hair. Half-slitted eyes. A refined nose. Thin lips pulling into a faint, icy smile.
Remove the long hair, imagine he was blind, dress him in the old clothes and add a bit of baby fat…
Weapons clattered as everyone dropped to their knees. The butler, Old Tang, fell prostrate. "Have mercy, ancestor, mercy!"
"It's impossible. I've hunted his traces across the East Sea for a year. I planted eyes in the Five Great Villages. No trace. How could he be here?" someone sputtered.
Before Lute could finish, a branch skewered his thigh. Others climbed his face and stuffed his mouth.
Shigeo looked down at Tang and asked, "Speak. Who is behind you?"
Old Tang was a sly fox. Kneeling and begging, he still calculated whether the island's forces could resist the boy.
Shigeo watched Tang's darting eyes. He said, flatly: "The island's coastline has eighteen guard teams, five per team. Each has one jonin and four incompetents. The east town has a hundred or so guard shinobi supervising workers. They are brittle. The manor has five mastiffs and countless lackeys with no combat skill. As for your ninja? I think when you tripped the alarm under this table, they all gathered outside. They are here now."
(End of Chapter)
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