The spring breeze fills one’s sails, and the horse’s hooves fly beneath them; one can hardly believe that partings exist in this world.
The sunlight was pleasant, and the scenery was beautiful as well.
The village before them had modern high-rises, ancient-looking temple buildings, and strange houses built along the slopes of the mountains.
From a distance, it looked less like a village and more like a vast green forest. The main entrance was spacious and bright, the streets neat and clean, and the twenty-meter-tall gate made the entire entrance look particularly imposing.
This was clearly not a landscape that could be found in the Land of Wind. It was obviously not autumn or winter, either.
A man dressed in a white Hokage-style robe sat cross-legged on the ground without a care in the world, holding a glass of fruit juice in his hand. Behind him was a force of roughly five hundred Uchiha, stationed in formation.
This man was naturally Uchiha Gen’nosuke, the leader of the Land of Rivers, who had come to visit the Sand shinobi.
After confirming that the bloodline of the Red Eyes could still be passed on through transplantation, the Red Eyes of the Land of Rivers had effectively become extinct.
These five hundred Red Eyes were the last of their kind in the Land of Rivers. Their eyes had been transplanted into the followers of Gen’nosuke and Koshiro.
They were a fanatical group of Uchiha supporters.
And the stern-looking man standing behind the man in the white robe looked as though he wanted nothing more than to stab the carefree Gen’nosuke, who was leisurely drinking his juice, to death.
"Gen’nosuke! Why is it that every time I go somewhere with you, a whole pile of trouble follows?"
Koshiro had already begun sharpening his blade.
Gen’nosuke, now the leader of the Land of Rivers, merely laughed without a care.
"Trouble? What trouble? Isn’t this a perfect opportunity for us to distinguish ourselves through great achievements?"
As he spoke, he casually pointed toward the Hokage Rock in the distance.
Following the direction of his finger, the two of them saw four enormous faces carved into the mountain. Among them were Minato Namikaze, whom they knew well, and the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi—the infamous example of what a Hokage should not be.
"Although we don’t know exactly what’s going on yet, this clearly isn’t our Konoha."
Gen’nosuke took another long drink of fruit juice, looking completely carefree.
"Can you think of anything more glorious than setting things right in Konoha?"
As he spoke, his Sharingan spun.
His eyes displayed eight mysterious patterns.
Clearly, this was a newly awakened Mangekyō Sharingan.
[Great Darkness]
After marrying Oboro and finally achieving what he had long desired, Gen’nosuke had awakened his Mangekyō Sharingan.
Yet the reason for his awakening had nothing to do with faith.
It was a matter of masculine pride—the unwillingness to be inferior to his wife.
Judging from the name alone, this was clearly no ordinary pair of eyes.
But before Gen’nosuke could act smug for very long, a heavy smack landed on the back of his head.
Clearly, even after becoming a powerful Mangekyō Sharingan wielder, Uchiha Gen’nosuke had not gained much additional respect.
Koshiro shook his hand indifferently.
So what if Gen’nosuke had awakened his Mangekyō Sharingan?
Didn’t that just mean he had gained another dōjutsu and the ability to summon a giant Susanoo-like construct?
In a Uchiha internal battle, what mattered was ocular power.
Under normal circumstances, the Mangekyō Sharingan was superior to the Three-Tomoe Sharingan, which was superior to the Two-Tomoe Sharingan, and so on.
But how could the Twenty Shinobi of Nanga possibly be judged by ordinary standards?
Gen’nosuke’s Mangekyō Sharingan was nowhere near enough to give him absolute authority.
At the very least, it was not enough to make him look like a respectable leader in front of people like Koshiro, Oboro, and Zhujun.
Koshiro possessed absolute faith.
Although he did not have the Mangekyō Sharingan, he had received the favor of the Wind God, Shinatatsuhiko, and his ocular power was only slightly inferior to Gen’nosuke’s.
However, his Zanpakutō was capable of achieving its Bankai.
Compared with Gen’nosuke, who was so distracted by beautiful women that he could only achieve Shikai, Koshiro’s combat ability made up for his disadvantage in ocular power.
With the blessing of the Wind God, Shinatatsuhiko, and the most bizarre-looking Zanpakutō of them all—Kazeshini (Wind Death, Strangling Rope)—Koshiro had become a god of death carried upon the wind.
Even the gentlest breeze could become deadly in Koshiro’s hands.
For that reason, Gen’nosuke simply did not have what it took to act like Koshiro’s big brother.
"Gen’nosuke, stop daydreaming! Think carefully about what’s actually happening here!"
Koshiro’s murderous gaze toward the carefree Gen’nosuke was impossible to hide.
Why was it that every time he went out with this man, something unexpected happened?
It had been the same in the Land of Rivers.
And now it was the same in the Land of Wind.
Every time Koshiro thought about it, his teeth clenched in frustration.
"Gen’nosuke, don’t forget that we’re here to attend a conference with the Sand shinobi. This concerns improving our standing in Lord Kei’s eyes. We absolutely cannot afford to make a mistake."
Koshiro spoke through gritted teeth.
"You don’t want Lord Kei to resent you for the rest of your life because you ran off with his maid, do you? Huh?"
Gen’nosuke happened to be drinking his juice when Koshiro smacked him.
He nearly choked to death.
"Cough, cough, cough! Damn you, Koshiro! Are you trying to kill me?"
Gen’nosuke angrily raised his head, intending to argue.
But after seeing Koshiro’s expression, he immediately shut his mouth.
This guy really does want to kill me!
He felt so wronged.
It wasn’t as though he had wanted these unexpected incidents to happen!
What could he do?
Life was meant to be faced with a smile.
Keeping a gloomy expression on one’s face wouldn’t solve anything. Since something had happened, they simply had to deal with it.
What good would yelling at him do?
"No good! Koshiro-san, getting angry won’t solve anything!"
Gen’nosuke hurriedly waved his hands, completely ignoring the pain in the back of his head.
"Look, we came to the Land of Wind to distinguish ourselves through great achievements, thereby improving our standing in Lord Kei’s eyes. Although something has gone wrong, the situation before us is still a great opportunity to distinguish ourselves!"
Gen’nosuke put on an ingratiating smile as he faced Koshiro.
After all, whenever Koshiro went out to handle matters on his own, nothing ever went wrong.
It was only when he handled things together with Gen’nosuke that disasters seemed to occur one after another.
It was almost supernatural.
"Koshiro-san, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Maybe we’ll encounter Lord Kei when he’s down on his luck!"
"If we’re the first people to pledge ourselves to Lord Kei, wouldn’t almost anything we did be forgiven?"
As he spoke, Gen’nosuke’s expression became both sincere and fervent.
He thought of his wife’s grandmother, Granny Gen.
That old hag was always making things difficult for him.
Yet she could act so brazenly precisely because she had been the first person to pledge herself to Lord Kei.
Perhaps he could do the same.
Gen’nosuke sounded completely sincere, and Koshiro naturally understood his reasoning.
He simply couldn’t stand the man’s carefree attitude—the look of a man who had married a wife and now believed that everything in life was perfect.
Koshiro was just about to give Gen’nosuke a few more hits when Uchiha Chifū returned.
He had been sent out to investigate the situation.
After returning, Chifū immediately knelt on the ground without saying a word.
Seeing their clansman return with his head lowered, tears streaming down his face, unable even to speak through his sobs, an ominous feeling filled Koshiro’s heart.
"You... what...?"
Koshiro seemed to sense what had happened, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
With the scout’s return, the camp that had been lively only moments earlier suddenly became oppressive.
The Uchiha thumbed the guards of their blades aside, ready to draw at a moment’s notice, as though they were prepared to erupt into violence at any second.
The Uchiha and Red Eyes who had somehow arrived in this place had already formed their own guesses about what was happening.
But until those suspicions were confirmed, they still held onto a sliver of hope.
The scout’s return seemed destined to shatter that hope.
An irritable old Uchiha rushed forward and kicked the young scout to the ground.
"Baka! Speak! What happened? Did you find any information about Lord Kei?"
The Uchiha scout, knocked to the ground, burst into tears.
It took him a long time to catch his breath.
"Waaah... My lord... this isn’t... this isn’t our home..."
"This is Konoha’s fifty-eighth year! Waaah!"
The scout’s answer did not satisfy the elderly Uchiha.
The Uchiha had already mentally prepared themselves for the possibility that they had somehow wandered into another timeline or another world.
After all, they themselves were, in a sense, travelers from another world.
They had been summoned by the Uchiha from another shinobi world into Lord Kei’s world, so they were unusually accepting of matters involving crossing time and space.
They didn’t care where they were.
As long as Lord Kei existed here too, that was enough.
"Who asked you about that?! I asked whether you found any information about Lord Kei!"
The scout’s answer only made the old man more anxious.
And the old man’s words made the scout cry even harder.
A terrible thought surfaced in the minds of every Uchiha present.
"Speak! What happened to Lord Kei?!"
The old man grabbed the scout by the collar, furious beyond measure.
"Waaah...!"
Scout Chifū could only continue sobbing, unable to get the words out.
Panicking, Koshiro hurriedly intervened.
"Enough, Jakuan! Let him speak!"
Only after Koshiro stopped him did the old man wearing a straw hat, Jakuan, sigh and release his grip.
Yet Gen’nosuke’s sense of timing was as terrible as ever.
At this moment, he actually clapped his fist into his palm excitedly.
"Suugoi! So this means we’re in a world ten years later?"
"Then wouldn’t Lord Kei be in his twenties already? Has he married Tsubame yet? Perhaps we even have a young lord by now!"
But Koshiro did not share Gen’nosuke’s optimism.
He raised his head and looked at the Hokage Rock in the distance, which still stood there.
Even if Konoha had returned to the practice of carving the Hokage’s faces into the mountain to establish their authority as leaders, that fourth face should not have been Minato Namikaze’s.
It should have been Uchiha Fugaku’s.
Something was wrong.
"Gen’nosuke, with your ocular power, shouldn’t you be able to determine whether this is a genjutsu?"
Koshiro lowered his voice and whispered to Gen’nosuke.
"It’s not a genjutsu. I already confirmed it with my Sharingan..."
Gen’nosuke nodded.
His eyes had already turned crimson, revealing eight tomoe.
Each tomoe represented a layer of hell.
Gen’nosuke’s answer made Koshiro’s expression even more grim.
"If that’s the case, then we’ve really run into a huge problem."
He turned back toward the scout.
"Chifū, can you give us some useful information...?"
At last, Scout Chifū managed to catch his breath.
Hearing Koshiro’s calm question, he lowered his head even further.
"My lord... Lord Kei may no longer exist in this world."
"What?!"
The moment those words left the scout’s mouth, the entire Uchiha camp erupted.
The enormous surge of intertwined chakra was even more terrifying than the appearance of a Tailed Beast.
Although the Uchiha had been mentally prepared for something like this, they could not accept the information.
When Koshiro heard the news, tears of blood streamed from his eyes.
"No!"
He refused to accept a world without Lord Kei.
His Three-Tomoe Sharingan spun rapidly, while an overwhelming demonic aura rose into the heavens.
Lord Kei had given him a happy life.
He had given Koshiro a stable environment in which he could marry and have children.
He had even granted him a position far above ordinary people.
To Koshiro, Lord Kei was an existence even more worthy of his devotion than the god he worshipped.
No matter where he was, even if he himself could never find happiness, Koshiro hoped that Lord Kei could live happily.
And hearing that this might be a world without Lord Kei—or that Lord Kei might already be dead—was something Koshiro absolutely could not accept.
A hurricane.
An endless hurricane.
A hurricane capable of gathering the clouds in the sky.
A hurricane powerful enough to generate lightning.
The winds shook Konoha’s trees until they nearly toppled over.
At that moment, Koshiro wanted to destroy this entire world.
The Sharingan of a man possessing world-destroying power awakened its Mangekyō.
The Shinatatsuhiko within him was finally no longer a pseudo-Mangekyō.
He could now manifest a divine figure comparable to Susanoo.
"Creation of Heaven and Earth!"
Koshiro roared toward the sky.
"Source of power surging forth from the dimension of chaos! Its origin stands at the pinnacle of all things! For now, nourish the infinite longing of this mortal world!"
"Descent of the Gods!"
[Heavenly King Shinatatsuhiko]
Following Koshiro’s incantation, a divine figure descended from the heavens.
It was an existence comparable to Complete Body Susanoo.
This proclaimed the dissatisfaction of a new Uchiha faction with this world!
Yet even this could not alleviate the sorrow within the Uchiha camp.
Crying spread throughout the entire camp.
Some of the more extreme Red Eyes even drew their blades and prepared to commit seppuku, intending to follow the nonexistent Lord Kei into the afterlife.
And just then, a furious shout rang out!
"Chains—Twin Fang Slash!"
Two Konoha Chūnin launched an attack against the Uchiha.
One had long brown hair, wore a shinobi hat, had his right eye concealed beneath his hair, and wore a black bodysuit with a green flak jacket over it.
The other had long black hair and wore bandages across his face, with one strip running horizontally across the bridge of his nose and both cheeks, and another short strip beneath his pointed chin.
They were Izumo Kamizuki and Kotetsu Hagane.
Without saying a word, the two launched a coordinated assault against the five hundred Uchiha.
Their two pairs of blades moved with incredible speed, forming a coordinated combination technique.
The hatred in their eyes was impossible to conceal.
They wanted to kill this entire group of Uchiha.
Jakuan was already overwhelmed with grief and had nowhere to vent the terror in his heart.
And now two Konoha Chūnin who clearly did not know their place had dared to attack the Uchiha.
"You’re looking for death!"
The old man, Jakuan, was himself one of the outstanding members of the Iga Group.
If not for his advanced age, he would undoubtedly have held a place among the Forty-Nine Iga Halls’ elite.
After undergoing physical modifications, his appearance remained that of an aged man, but his physical abilities far surpassed those of a young shinobi.
With his Three-Tomoe Sharingan, the speed of Izumo Kamizuki and Kotetsu Hagane was no different from standing still in his eyes.
The enraged old man showed no mercy.
Crack.
Crack.
The arms holding the enormous, kunai-like blades were twisted several times like strands of rope.
The rotational force of the twisting even shattered the giant kunai blades in their hands.
The two Konoha gate guardians, Izumo Kamizuki and Kotetsu Hagane, didn’t even have a chance to perform the Substitution Technique before they were captured.
One arm had been torn off in the process.
Yet even in such a state, the two continued shouting defiantly.
"It must be you! It must have been you Uchiha who secretly murdered the Fourth Hokage!"
The grief and fury in their voices were no less intense than that of the Uchiha themselves.
And the response awaiting the enraged Izumo Kamizuki was simply a resounding slap across the face.
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