The crowd swept forward in a frenzy, turning the entire affair into a farce.
A gathering of more than ten thousand people already seemed endless. When that crowd swelled to nearly one hundred thousand, the sheer scale became overwhelming.
Only the people surrounding Sarutobi Hiruzen remained relatively orderly. Everyone else had been consumed by their emotions and was running wild.
Shops that did business with the Uchiha Clan were smashed. Civilians who refused to join the celebration were beaten. At this point, even selling fans in Konoha had become a crime.
After all, the Uchiha Clan’s crest was a fan!
Some people, convinced that numbers meant power, even recklessly attempted to launch a purge of the Uchiha living in Konoha.
"We have so many people! We’re acting on the Hokage’s behalf to punish the Uchiha! Do you really think the Uchiha will dare fight back?"
The crowd, having just achieved a preliminary victory over the Uchiha Clan, was convinced that things would proceed exactly as they imagined.
Groups of people poured into the Uchiha compound, shouting that they were acting under the Hokage’s orders and demanding that the Uchiha kneel and surrender.
But there wasn’t a single member of the surrender faction inside the Uchiha compound.
After all, the surrender faction was already standing beside the Hokage.
Within the Uchiha compound, one could not even find a single dove faction member.
Uchiha Kusumi dropped to his knees before Fugaku and pleaded,
"Clan Head, Lord Kei has already risen up outside the village. The time has come to cast aside all restraints and act! Please, give the order!"
Uchiha Itachi, meanwhile, was even more bewildered.
Everything had been perfectly normal just moments ago. He had even wanted to persuade his father to attend Konoha’s grand ceremony with him and use the opportunity to ease the relationship between the two sides.
How had the Uchiha suddenly rebelled?
What were they going to do?
My unborn little brother isn’t going to be born into an era of war, is he?
I wonder if Big Brother Shisui has any way to resolve this.
Shisui is ultimately much more reliable than that reckless Big Brother Kei.
But Uchiha Fugaku had not heard a word of what Kusumi was saying.
He was still pondering another matter.
"Why did the rebellion happen ahead of schedule?! This doesn’t match the time Kei and I agreed upon! And nobody even notified me. Did something unexpected happen? Or did Konoha make the first move?"
He was caught in a terrible dilemma.
Had Konoha used this as an excuse to strike first, or had something unexpected happened on Kei’s side?
Should I get involved?
While the Clan Head was agonizing over his decision inside the compound, he had no idea what the hawk faction among the Uchiha outside the village was doing under the leadership of Uchiha Sanqian Dai, an obsessive admirer of Uchiha Kei.
The hooligans who had previously been punished by the Konoha Military Police Force had stirred up the crowd and led them into the Uchiha compound, hoping to use the opportunity to take revenge on the Uchiha.
What happened next was obvious.
The Uchiha were powerful enough to contend with shinobi from the great clans one against several. Even civilian shinobi needed to gang up on them to have any hope of taking them down.
And yet a mob of people who weren’t even shinobi, armed with nothing but brooms, actually thought they could make the Uchiha kneel and surrender simply by invoking the Third Hokage’s orders?
Even the Third Hokage himself wouldn’t dare entertain such a fantasy.
An indiscriminate slaughter followed.
The people who had come demanding that the Uchiha kneel did not even need to worry about finding graves.
Their ashes were scattered by the wind.
From that day onward, all of Konoha became their grave.
Until the very moment of their deaths, those people could not understand why reality had turned out so differently from what they had imagined.
How dare the Uchiha?
And so the enormous crowd continued toward the outskirts of Konoha, dragging countless farces and incidents along with them.
None of these unexpected events could stop Sarutobi Hiruzen.
He was after Uchiha Kei.
Everything else was a minor matter.
Eventually, the crowd reached Hokage Rock.
And when nothing unexpected should have happened...
something unexpected happened.
BOOM!
An explosive shockwave erupted above the densely packed crowd, sending enormous chunks of rock flying in every direction.
A mushroom cloud rose into the sky above Konoha!
The weather in Konoha today was clear, with a gentle breeze and slightly elevated temperatures.
Approximately six thousand degrees.
There were familiar faces all over the streets.
Gennō, the Kagerō Village trap specialist and spy who had been beaten by the mob for refusing to participate in Konoha’s celebration, stared blankly at the mushroom cloud rising into the sky.
During the Second Shinobi World War, Kagerō Village had fought against Konoha.
At first, it had been able to contend with Konoha, but after Konoha launched a surprise attack, its strength was severely diminished.
Kagerō Village subsequently sent Gennō, a specialist in traps, to Konoha.
His mission was to secretly plant Explosive Tags throughout the village and ultimately annihilate Konoha in one devastating attack.
Unfortunately, after he had finished setting up the trap containing one hundred thousand Explosive Tags, Kagerō Village itself had already been destroyed.
Gennō had no choice but to disguise himself as an ordinary civilian and remain in Konoha, constantly debating whether he should avenge his village.
The Explosive Tags hidden throughout Konoha became his secret.
But the strange thing was...
if he was the only person who knew about this secret, how had it suddenly been exposed today?
The streets of Konoha were relatively empty at this point, with only a few disorderly opportunists taking advantage of the chaos.
Most of the people had gathered around the Third Hokage.
And the Third Hokage was leading the crowd toward Hokage Rock.
That was precisely where a massive number of Explosive Tags had been hidden.
Everyone knew that the Third Hokage loved giving speeches.
And Hokage Rock was his favorite place to deliver them.
Gennō’s original plan had actually been to detonate the Explosive Tags while the Third Hokage was giving a speech.
He simply had never taken action.
The shouting crowd suddenly fell silent.
One hundred thousand Explosive Tags had been detonated.
On average, every person there could have been given one.
Explosive Tags were troublesome when used against shinobi, but against civilians, they were devastatingly effective.
And these were enormous numbers of civilians packed tightly together—effectively most of Konoha’s able-bodied adult men.
The mushroom cloud rising into the sky represented an unimaginable level of destruction.
If someone had been watching from a sufficiently high altitude, Konoha would have looked like a blood-filled mosquito crushed beneath a giant hand.
Blood and flesh flew everywhere.
The civilians who had joined Sarutobi’s procession had virtually no chance of survival.
Even those fortunate enough to have been standing beside obstacles and avoided the initial blast were doomed.
The explosion had consumed the surrounding air, leaving civilians suffocating to death.
The intense heat was enough to cook them alive.
And it wasn’t only civilians.
Even some of the less capable shinobi suffered serious injuries.
The crowd that had been arrogant and invincible one moment was reduced to ashes the next.
The elite Konoha shinobi reacted quickly, using ninjutsu to shield themselves and those nearby from the Explosive Tags.
But they could only save the weaker shinobi immediately around them.
They had no way to save everyone.
The area that had previously been packed with people suddenly became strangely sparse.
The plan to mobilize all of Konoha’s villagers and drive the Uchiha out had ended before it had even begun.
Because there weren’t many villagers left to carry it out.
Life was truly full of dramatic reversals.
The Third Hokage had planned countless things, calculated countless variables, and rehearsed countless scenarios.
Even he had a moment when he could not react in time.
Looking at the scene before him, Sarutobi Hiruzen’s vision went dark.
Could Konoha still be considered a village after losing such a massive portion of its young and able-bodied population?
Hiruzen did not dare imagine the answer.
He had calculated everything.
He had dragged the shinobi clans into a political struggle.
He had launched an economic war padded with inflated figures.
He had manipulated public opinion into a weapon.
Every step had been carefully calculated.
So why wouldn’t this bastard Uchiha Kei just follow the proper path?!
He had actually chosen to engage in a terrorist attack.
And not just any terrorist attack.
A large-scale attack capable of destroying the future potential of an entire village.
Was this something a leader was supposed to do?
This is completely unfair! Uchiha Kei really has no limits!
The Third Hokage had originally not fully believed that the Uchiha had truly rebelled and had merely been taking advantage of the situation.
Now, however, he completely accepted Sarutobi Yasukuni’s claim.
The Uchiha had really rebelled.
"Bastard! Uchiha Kei! Come out and face me!"
The elderly Sarutobi Hiruzen roared helplessly toward the sky.
Then something even more despairing happened.
The Third Hokage had truly gotten what he asked for.
Several hundred Uchiha suddenly appeared.
These people seemed to have no intention of returning alive.
Their bodies were covered in Explosive Tags as they charged into the panicked Konoha shinobi.
Then, without the slightest hesitation, they swung their blades and killed every living person they could reach.
The shinobi who finally managed to react could not even organize an effective counterattack.
The people of Konoha had essentially been a temporary mob assembled for the celebration.
There was no proper command structure.
When there was no external enemy, they could still advance under the Third Hokage’s leadership.
But once they came under attack, they became a swarm of headless flies.
The more perceptive Konoha shinobi who encountered these Uchiha thought of only one thing:
Run.
Who would be stupid enough to stay and fight?
Following the Third Hokage in an easy victory was one thing.
Risking their lives was another.
Didn’t they see that these Uchiha had Explosive Tags strapped to their bodies?
They had come here to die.
We don’t want to die with them.
Under these circumstances, the Uchiha were like trains crashing into a crowd, charging straight through without restraint.
"Loss is acceptable. Failure is unforgivable!"
"All are guilty. How can anyone claim innocence?"
"Better to sacrifice the body than abandon one’s convictions!"
"Empty words are not sincerity. Prove your loyalty with your life!"
The Uchiha shouted their battle cries.
They offered their lives to Uchiha Kei in absolute loyalty.
And the lives they offered were not necessarily their own.
They were the lives of their enemies.
When Uchiha Jūbei heard Sarutobi Hiruzen shouting for his master, he stepped forward without the slightest fear.
"Sarutobi Hiruzen! If you want to meet my master, entertain me first!"
:::
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