“Move that lumber over there.”
“Take all the grain and vegetables to the storehouse. Preserve them carefully.”
“Drain the dead beasts as quickly as possible. Keep the hides intact when you skin them.”
A middle-aged man nearing forty, steady and composed in bearing, directed the clan members in the camp with practiced order.
Although he did not need to do the manual labor himself, commanding such a large group while they built up the camp was no easy task.
Before long, sweat had gathered across his face. He lifted the canteen at his side and drank deeply to quench his thirst.
He was the current head of the Kusanagi clan, Kusanagi Seiryū.
The ninja and civilians living here numbered more than three hundred, all of them members of the Kusanagi clan.
Under Seiryū’s command, the ninja and ordinary clan members were divided into separate groups, each handling their own work.
Even the elderly and the children, as long as their hands and feet were still nimble, were not allowed to remain idle. Even if they could only do a little, they had to join the work.
The Kusanagi clan had built their camp around a river, expanding outward, clearing land, raising houses, and setting up wooden fences. It was beginning to look like the early shape of a small village.
Nearly a month had passed. This forest region had clearly become the Kusanagi clan’s new homeland.
And to secure this new clan territory, the Kusanagi ninja had set a large number of traps around the camp’s perimeter.
The first purpose was to defend against the wild beasts in the forest. The second was to ambush enemies, raise warnings, and create a strategic buffer zone so that battle would not reach the camp directly.
“Next, we need to scout the terrain farther out. The Land of Night won’t let this go. They’ll probably send ninja and samurai soon…”
After inspecting the clan’s camp, Kusanagi Seiryū nodded slightly.
With this, the clan could finally settle down here.
Then, as if remembering something, his expression grew more serious.
However, while his face was grave, there was no fear in his eyes. Clearly, he had full confidence in his own strength, or rather, in the divine weapon passed down through the Kusanagi clan for generations, the Kusanagi Sword.
In the past, the Kusanagi clan had made their name in the Land of Grass precisely because of that divine weapon.
Even after being forced into exile, he had relied on that divine weapon to withdraw safely from the Land of Grass after losing only a small number of clan members. The other ninja clans in the Land of Grass had not dared to pursue them lightly.
He believed that with his own ability and the power of the divine weapon, he could carve out a future even in the Land of Night.
Many people said the Land of Night was one of the few military powers below the great nations.
But whether it was truly strong or not, in the ninja world, people were used to settling that by fighting first.
At least so far, the Land of Night did not feel as strong as he had imagined.
Their border troops had been crushed quickly by him and a small group of his people, with no room to resist.
“If I could take the position of shogun…”
A thick ambition flickered in Seiryū’s dark eyes.
He wanted the throne of a country too.
If that happened, the Kusanagi clan would become great again in his hands.
Just as he was imagining that bright future, boom!
A sudden explosion shattered the calm of the camp.
Then came several more blasts.
Houses erupted in fire, and the shockwaves spreading outward caused screams to rise from every direction.
Some ordinary people who were not even ninja lost their lives outright in the fire and blast.
That was the sound of exploding tags.
A ninja attack!
The thought flashed through Seiryū’s mind.
“Impossible. The traps outside clearly haven’t been triggered. How could…”
Seiryū’s eyes widened in shock.
Someone had actually passed through the camp’s tight defensive net without causing any disturbance.
Even if he himself wanted to break through the traps on the perimeter, he would have to lose a few layers of skin doing it.
However, Seiryū’s reaction was not slow. No matter what, the enemy had already reached the heart of the camp. They had to be driven out as quickly as possible to reduce their losses.
“Enemy attack! Enemy attack!”
The other Kusanagi ninja shouted loudly as well, searching everywhere for the enemy.
“Earth Style: Dark Swamp!”
A low voice rang out from somewhere unknown, and a stretch of earth immediately turned into a swamp. Several ninja and more than a dozen ordinary members of the Kusanagi clan sank into it, unable to break free. They could only watch helplessly as the bottomless mire swallowed them.
“Damn it! Stop!”
Seiryū wanted to rush over, find the attacker, and stop the enemy’s Earth Style jutsu.
Those were the future of the Kusanagi clan. They could not die here.
“Eight Trigrams: Air Palm!”
With a cold female voice, Kichō, dressed in a light purple ninja outfit, rushed out from the shadows of the nearby forest.
Her right palm thrust forward fiercely, her five fingers curling into the shape of a tiger’s paw.
A powerful surge of chakra gathered directly at the center of that curled palm, then was released in an instant.
The air trembled with a sound like an explosion, striking straight toward Seiryū’s body.
Boom!
Seiryū’s expression changed sharply as he leapt aside.
The Gentle Fist force launched from a distance blasted a shocking hole into a stone wall. Rocks collapsed, and countless fragments scattered in all directions.
“That’s… the Byakugan!?”
Seiryū cried out when he saw Kichō attacking him with clear killing intent. Especially when he saw those strange eyes glowing with pure, high-density white light.
The thing he had not understood suddenly made sense. If the Byakugan was involved, then the traps he had arranged around the camp truly were no different from decorations.
“I heard that the Land of Night’s shogun had formed a marriage alliance with the Hyūga clan. I thought it was just a false rumor. I didn’t expect…”
Cold sweat flowed down Seiryū’s face. At last, his expression was no longer calm and composed.
He had not expected that the prestigious Hyūga clan would truly marry into the Land of Night.
No wonder he had thought the rumor was false. Thinking about it carefully, it really was an unbelievable thing.
The Hyūga clan was an ancient noble house, while the shogun of the Land of Night had come from humble origins. He was a wandering orphan who could not even be called a commoner. In the past, he had crawled through the underground black market like a rat, doing filthy work for money.
Even after becoming shogun, many people still secretly looked down on his background, seeing him as nothing more than a lowborn upstart blessed by luck.
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Yet the Hyūga clan had truly allied with him through marriage.
Shouldn’t these so-called noble and orthodox ninja care more than anyone about family rank and status?
Seiryū could not understand it. But he knew that the matter had now completely escalated.
He had not expected the Land of Night’s retaliation to be so fast, or so fierce.
Kichō ignored Seiryū’s words. She kicked hard off the ground, launching herself forward.
The sleeves of her ninja outfit were wider and looser than those of an ordinary ninja outfit. While they were beautiful, they did not hinder her movement.
So when Kichō burst forward, she looked like a dancing butterfly. Her speed was astonishing, and the fluttering sleeves also had the effect of confusing the enemy.
So beautiful…
Seiryū had barely formed that thought as her figure danced like a butterfly, as sacred and untouchable as a goddess descending to earth.
Then he jolted awake.
No. This is genjutsu!
“Eight Trigrams: Palm Rotation!”
The moment Kichō saw that Seiryū had stepped into her Gentle Fist range, her arms moved, and chakra burst from her palms. Her body spun with it.
The swirling chakra current instantly formed a huge chakra sphere centered on Kichō, spinning at high speed.
The powerful airflow driven by the high-speed rotation created a fierce pull, dragging Seiryū violently toward the spinning chakra sphere.
If he were caught in it, his body would be torn open all over, leaving him heavily wounded and unable to rise.
Not to mention that Gentle Fist itself carried the dangerous ability to seal the chakra pathway system, making it extremely lethal to any ninja.
Kichō’s elegant, deadly dance came to a stop, and her black hair slowly settled with her movements.
Her white eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Seiryū, who had not only avoided being drawn into her Rotation and torn apart, but had even managed to retreat with room to spare.
At some point, Seiryū’s palm had closed around a straight-bladed sword with a pale red hilt.
The blade was slimmer than an ordinary katana, and its length was also shorter than the standard.
Judging by its style, it seemed to be a weapon suited for a woman.
Now that it was being held by a tall man like Kusanagi Seiryū, it looked somewhat mismatched.
The chakra that kept my Rotation running seemed to vanish all at once…
Kichō’s thoughts moved quickly, and she soon grasped Seiryū’s situation.
If there was no accident, the sword in Seiryū’s hand was the Kusanagi Sword passed down through the Kusanagi clan.
“What a dangerous ability. Not only did you weave genjutsu-like misdirection into your movement, you followed it with a killing move… without this Kusanagi Sword, I probably would have been taken down instantly. So this is the power of a kekkei genkai? It really makes one’s skin crawl.”
Seiryū laughed without warmth. His tone was filled with envy and jealousy.
A kekkei genkai.
What a beautiful, and terrifying, power.
It was precisely because powers like that existed that small clans like theirs could never step onto the main stage, doomed to become background pieces in the struggles between great clans.
He did not think his own strength was weaker than Kichō’s, yet the fact was that he had nearly been killed in their first exchange.
That made him feel deeply unbalanced.
“Compared with that, the Kusanagi Sword in your hand is the stranger thing. Just now, it ‘ate’ my chakra, didn’t it?”
Although Kichō phrased it as a question, her tone was utterly certain.
Though she was only seventeen, she was still a genius of the Hyūga clan, an elite who had crawled out of piles of corpses more than once.
With the power of the Byakugan as well, as long as an ability was not too bizarre, she could almost always judge it accurately after seeing it once and touching it once.
“You saw it with the Byakugan? That’s right. This Kusanagi Sword has the special ability to devour chakra. As long as I hold this blade, no ninja can defeat me. In other words, your Gentle Fist is useless against me.”
Although Seiryū was wary of the Byakugan, he was not afraid.
In his eyes, Kichō was just like the enemies he had met in the past. Strong, yes, but soon she would be killed by his Kusanagi Sword.
This ancestral divine weapon could close the gap between him and kekkei genkai ninja, even allow him to surpass those who only knew how to flaunt the power of their bloodlines.
Kichō said nothing.
If that was the case, the effectiveness of Gentle Fist would indeed be greatly reduced.
After all, a ninja’s taijutsu also needed chakra to increase its power.
Or rather, the more proficient a ninja was in taijutsu, the higher their requirements for chakra became.
“You’re right. But…”
A faint smile appeared on Kichō’s face.
Seiryū had just opened his mouth to ask what she meant when his body suddenly froze, unable to move.
A cool sensation suddenly touched his spine from behind, passing through the surface of his skin and directly connecting to the chakra pathway system inside his body.
“It’s over, clan leader.”
“Wait, I…”
Before Seiryū could finish, Kichō’s graceful, butterfly-like figure had already landed in front of him.
A soft breeze passed. Kichō’s slender palm touched his chest.
Thump.
A light palm strike sounded in the air.
“Cough!”
Seiryū’s face turned deathly pale. He could not stop himself from coughing, and blood streamed from his mouth.
It felt as though a blade had stabbed into his heart, then savagely twisted and torn it apart.
The muscles on his face spasmed from the terrible pain.
Most importantly, he could no longer move any chakra in his body. His chakra pathway system had been completely sealed by Kichō’s Gentle Fist.
The heart was the core of the chakra pathway system. As long as the pathways around the heart were cut off, a ninja could no longer mobilize or refine chakra.
Kichō’s Gentle Fist had directly robbed him of the chance to use the Kusanagi Sword for a final counterattack.
Damn it. I hadn’t even used the Kusanagi Sword’s hidden ability. If I had… my consciousness is…
No matter how much hatred and unwillingness filled him, Seiryū’s eyes dimmed. Powerlessly, they closed, and his head drooped as the breath of life left him.
However, although Seiryū’s body had lost all life, it did not collapse. Another force held it standing.
At some point, five chakra threads had attached themselves to Seiryū’s back.
Like a puppet, Seiryū slowly swayed, holding the Kusanagi Sword, as if he had come alive again and could continue fighting.
Not far away, on the branch of a thick tree, Yayoi stood silently. His right hand was open, and five chakra threads connected to Seiryū’s spine, taking control of his body.
“What perfect teamwork, my lord.”
Kichō smiled brightly. Looking back on the earlier battle, the entire flow had been almost flawless.
The moment Yayoi had used his chakra threads to control Seiryū, she had immediately seized that crucial opening. She had not wasted words, nor had her movements paused. She had simply rushed straight in front of Seiryū at full speed and used Gentle Fist to deliver a fatal blow.
The entire sequence had happened in a flash.
Seiryū probably had not even had time to react. He might not even have noticed Yayoi’s presence before being killed.
“Mm. I didn’t expect Puppet Theater Jutsu to unfold so smoothly either. This man’s attention was completely on you, Kichō.”
Yayoi was not surprised by the result.
His own strength was far above Seiryū’s, and with a surprise attack and Kichō’s cooperation, it was perfectly normal for Seiryū to be killed instantly, even with the Kusanagi Sword in his hand.
As for the “Puppet Theater Jutsu” he mentioned, it was a puppet-type ninjutsu that created special chakra threads to control living people.
This jutsu could also use the chakra threads to interfere with the target’s chakra pathway system, giving it a certain degree of control over the body.
That was why Seiryū’s body had frozen the moment Yayoi’s Puppet Theater Jutsu hit him.
His chakra pathway system had been disrupted by Yayoi’s chakra threads, which in turn affected his physical movement.
“He was too focused on my Byakugan and Gentle Fist. He may have believed until the moment he died that I was the commander of the Land of Night’s operation this time.”
Kichō summarized the reason for Seiryū’s defeat.
“Then we can wrap this up smoothly.”
Yayoi jumped down from the branch. The fingers releasing the chakra threads moved nimbly, as if playing a string game.
Seiryū’s corpse, still faintly warm, moved under Yayoi’s control just as it had when alive. In fact, its flexibility had not decreased at all. It had become even more agile.
Seiryū, still holding the Kusanagi Sword, leapt away with nimble movements and charged into the distant crowd where fighting had broken out, carrying out the final purge of the remaining Kusanagi clan members.
Roughly ten minutes later, the Kusanagi clan’s stronghold had become a sea of fire.
Including Kusanagi Seiryū, the clan head, there had been forty-seven ninja and more than two hundred ordinary clan members. Their corpses now burned in the flames.
“Did anyone slip through?”
Yayoi turned his head and asked.
Age did not matter. If they were enemies, none could be allowed to survive. That was the lesson he had learned in the Warring States era, and the only form of respect he could offer an enemy.
Kakuzu held a woman’s corpse in his hand. Aside from Seiryū, she had been the other Kusanagi clan member with jōnin-level combat strength. She had also been Seiryū’s wife.
Kakuzu threw the woman’s body into the fire as well. The blazing flames shone across the face hidden beneath his mask, and his eerie green eyes looked especially unsettling.
“No one. They’ve all been eliminated.”
Kakuzu’s tone did not fluctuate. Having followed Yayoi for so many years, he clearly understood how coldly Yayoi dealt with enemies.
Yayoi and Kichō had handled Kusanagi Seiryū, the clan head. The other jōnin-level ninja, Seiryū’s wife, had been dealt with by Kakuzu.
Aburame Haruto was responsible for the other Kusanagi ninja. With his ability to control insects, he could quickly clean up the Kusanagi clan’s lesser fighters.
And through this joint operation, Haruto had gained a deeper understanding of Yayoi, the shogun of the Land of Night, as well as his methods.
As long as someone was an enemy, even if they were elderly or children, Yayoi would wipe them out without hesitation, cold and merciless.
Haruto suspected that the reason the Land of Night’s regime was so stable was because Yayoi had executed every rebel and every rebel’s relatives in the past without mercy.
He had even sealed off the information and history of those rebels, erasing their existence at the root, until people no longer had any reason to even discuss them.
The remaining work was simple.
They packed up all the Kusanagi clan’s collected resources and had the border troops handle the final transport.
As for the Kusanagi Sword passed down through the Kusanagi clan for generations, Yayoi personally took custody of it.