Konoha.
The Senju Clan compound.
“What kind of eyes are those?”
“That isn’t the three-tomoe pattern.
His eyes have changed!”
“How can their chakra pressure be so powerful?”
“…”
Several ninja who did not understand the situation exclaimed in shock at the sight of Uchiha Fugaku’s eyes.
Sarutobi Hiruzen’s pipe fell to the ground with a clatter.
He paid it no attention, his gaze fixed intently on Fugaku’s eyes.
Someone else in the Uchiha Clan had awakened the Mangekyō!
Danzo’s breath caught as well.
He had never expected the seemingly weak and incompetent Uchiha Fugaku to conceal such a trump card.
But he quickly forced himself to calm down.
So what if Fugaku possessed the Mangekyō?
Without the Senju Clan’s cells to provide vitality, forcibly using those eyes would only accelerate his descent into blindness.
“Enough of your tricks!”
Danzo roared angrily.
He stopped wasting words and decided to strike first.
The five fingers of his remaining left hand flew through a dazzling sequence of one-handed seals.
“Wind Release: Vacuum Serial Waves!”
Danzo inhaled deeply, then exhaled with tremendous force.
More than a dozen invisible, crescent-shaped wind blades whistled through the air.
They were so sharp that they carved deep trenches even through the bluestone paving beneath them.
Uchiha Fugaku stood completely still.
Bloody tears streamed from his eyes.
“Susanoo!”
Materialized dark-gold chakra erupted around him.
An enormous skeletal frame immediately rose from the ground and firmly protected Fugaku at its center.
Meridians and muscles rapidly formed around the skeleton.
Within seconds, a half-bodied tengu warrior dozens of meters tall stood in the middle of the battlefield.
The warrior was clad in sturdy chakra armor and held a long chakra sword, resembling a war god descended from myth.
The violent wind blades struck Susanoo’s armor.
Clang!
Clang!
A series of harsh metallic impacts rang out.
Sparks flew in every direction.
Yet against Susanoo’s defense, ninjutsu of this level was nothing more than a joke.
Every ninja present held their breath.
Was this the Uchiha’s true power?
Before this godlike form, even a hundred ordinary ninja would merely be throwing away their lives.
“Shimura Danzo.”
“Is that all you’ve got?”
Uchiha Fugaku stood within Susanoo.
Chakra amplified his voice until everyone’s eardrums ached.
Danzo’s face turned livid.
He understood that conventional ninjutsu could not affect this monster.
To break through Susanoo’s defense, he needed greater power.
The next moment, Danzo abruptly raised his left hand.
He seized the bandages covering his right eye and pulled hard.
Rip!
The bloodstained bandages fluttered away in the wind.
Everyone’s eyes widened once again.
Danzo’s right eye, which he had always kept tightly closed, was now fully open.
It was unmistakably not a normal eye.
It was a Sharingan bearing an intricate pattern!
Dark-red chakra seeped from the eye socket, carrying a dense and ominous aura.
“That old bastard!”
“Mangekyō!
Another Mangekyō!”
The crowd erupted into another uproar.
This time, even the Hyuga ninja could not help cursing aloud.
Ordinary clan members might not understand, but the leaders of the major clans knew exactly what they were seeing.
Only members of the Uchiha Clan could awaken the Sharingan.
Danzo had not merely stolen someone else’s eye.
He had stolen a Mangekyō Sharingan!
Such an act violated an absolute taboo shared by every ninja clan.
“Fugaku.”
“Do you think you’re the only one who possesses these eyes?”
“I’ve been preparing for this day for a long time!”
Danzo ignored the curses around him and merely grinned at Uchiha Fugaku.
Then he pointed to his right eye.
“Look carefully!”
“This eye belonged to the genius of your Uchiha Clan, Uchiha Kagami!”
“Today, I’ll use your ancestor’s power to personally send you to your death!”
In the section occupied by the Uchiha, Uchiha Shisui felt as though lightning had struck him.
He froze, his mind completely blank.
Grandfather?
That was Grandfather’s eye?
Shisui had been taught the Will of Fire since childhood.
He had always believed his grandfather died heroically on the battlefield while protecting the village.
That belief had been his pride.
It had driven his desperate desire to protect Konoha.
But now, the elder who constantly claimed that everything he did was for the village was displaying an eye gouged from his grandfather’s skull before everyone!
The world spun around Uchiha Shisui.
What Will of Fire?
What bond between the village and the clan?
It was all bullshit!
All of it was a lie used by Konoha’s leaders to brainwash and exploit them!
Shisui’s knees gave way, and he fell to the ground with a thud, his fingers digging desperately into the soil.
His nails broke.
Blood flowed.
But he felt no pain at all.
The three tomoe in his eyes spun frantically as two trails of bloody tears silently ran down his face.
At the center of the battlefield, Uchiha Fugaku stared at the stolen eye.
Overwhelming rage destroyed the last shred of his reason.
“Danzo!”
“I’ll tear you to pieces!”
Uchiha Fugaku roared.
Susanoo raised its enormous chakra sword, dozens of meters long, and brought it down upon Danzo.
Before the blade even arrived, its terrifying pressure carved a massive crack through the ground.
“Don’t underestimate me!”
Danzo neither dodged nor retreated.
He frantically activated the dōjutsu in his right eye.
A strange chakra fluctuation erupted instantly.
An invisible psychic assault pierced directly into Fugaku’s mind.
Danzo intended to control him with the Mangekyō’s genjutsu and force him to release Susanoo.
The technique might have worked against an ordinary Uchiha.
Unfortunately, Danzo faced the head of the Uchiha Clan, who also possessed a Mangekyō Sharingan.
Even more critically, Chiba had already torn away Danzo’s Wood Release arm.
Without Hashirama’s cells in his body, Danzo could no longer withstand the Mangekyō’s immense backlash.
The instant he activated the dōjutsu, tearing agony erupted from his right eye.
Uchiha Fugaku snorted coldly.
He unleashed his immense ocular power without restraint.
The stalemate lasted only half a second.
Danzo’s genjutsu was forcibly torn to pieces.
“Ugh!”
Danzo suffered a severe backlash and spat out another mouthful of blood.
The trump card in which he had placed such confidence proved fragile before the power of a true Uchiha.
The instant his dōjutsu shattered, Susanoo’s enormous sword crashed down with world-destroying force.
Boom!
A deafening roar erupted.
The earth shook violently, as though a magnitude-eight earthquake had struck.
Countless stones and clumps of soil shot in every direction like cannonballs.
Dust surged into the sky and blotted out the sun.
The ninja around the perimeter used ninjutsu to defend themselves.
Even so, the terrifying shock wave forced them back dozens of meters.
A full ten seconds passed before the strong wind gradually dispersed the dust.
Everyone peered toward the center of the battlefield.
The formerly level ground had become an enormous crater more than ten meters deep.
At its bottom, Danzo lay like a pile of mud.
His bones were shattered, and most of his body had been crushed to pulp.
On the other side, Uchiha Fugaku released Susanoo.
The Mangekyō was powerful, but its chakra cost was equally astonishing.
Fugaku’s vision had already begun to blur.
Still, he forced himself to remain conscious, slid down the crater wall, and approached Danzo.
“Old bastard.”
“Hand over Senior Kagami’s eye.”
Uchiha Fugaku’s eyes were cold and devoid of pity.
He bent down and reached toward Danzo’s right eye.
At that moment, the dying Danzo suddenly opened his eyes.
His pupils had begun to dilate, but his mouth curved into an utterly crazed smile.
“Fugaku…”
“Come with me…
to hell!”
Danzo’s voice was faint, but it carried endless malice.
Dense black markings emerged over his heart.
Like living creatures, they spread across his entire body at terrifying speed and extended into the surrounding area.
Reverse Four Symbols Sealing!
This was the final measure Danzo had prepared for himself.
Once activated, the user’s blood turned into ink and formed a black sphere.
Everything within that sphere would be dragged into a deadly sealing barrier and permanently sealed away.
Uchiha Fugaku tried to retreat.
But he was too close!
The black markings had already reached the soles of his shoes!
Their power further restricted his every movement!
It’s over!
Uchiha Fugaku’s pupils contracted violently.
He had never expected someone as cowardly and afraid of death as Danzo to possess a technique for mutual destruction!
Bang!
At that critical moment, the ground split open without warning.
A tree root as thick as an arm burst from the soil.
Like a green dragon emerging from the sea, it wrapped precisely around Uchiha Fugaku’s waist.
Whoosh!
The root snapped backward with tremendous force.
Uchiha Fugaku was hurled away and landed at Chiba’s feet.
Almost simultaneously, an incredibly dense black light erupted from the bottom of the crater.
An enormous black sphere expanded in an instant.
It completely swallowed Danzo’s body, the surrounding soil and rubble, and even the air itself.
Then the sphere rapidly contracted.
It shrank into a tiny black dot before vanishing completely.
The crater was empty.