"Damn it, meow!"
"It's just like you said, Chizumi—this country is completely beyond saving, meow!"
Kitsujiro considered himself pretty well traveled after following Uchiha Chizumi around for so many years, and he'd seen more than his fair share of scum.
But even for him, the nobles of the Grass Country were something else.
Even the nobles of the Land of Fire at least didn't dare abuse civilians in broad daylight.
Uchiha Chizumi didn't respond.
Or rather, his expression had already turned completely solemn.
And the moment his face hardened, the entire capital of the Grass Country began to shake violently from underground. The tremor felt as though something horrifying was about to burst out from beneath the earth.
And in truth, something horrifying really was about to emerge.
A massive tree branch tore its way up through the capital of the Grass Country. In only a few breaths, it had already grown to several hundred meters tall, and the eyes of everyone in the capital were drawn to it.
"What is that?"
"Why is a tree that huge suddenly growing under the capital of the Grass Country?"
One noble kicked aside the civilian in front of him and stared blankly at the Grass ninja he had hired as a bodyguard.
But there was no trace of blood left in that ninja's face now.
His lips were pale.
His hands were shaking.
There was even some kind of stain spreading across his trousers.
"He's here!"
"He really came!"
"He doesn't even care that this is the Grass Country's capital—he doesn't even care that the Grass Country and the Land of Fire are allies…"
The Grass ninja stared at the giant tree in the distance, his voice shaking.
By now, after Uchiha Chizumi had made one huge move after another, basically every ninja in the shinobi world knew at least something about him.
That was just how the shinobi world worked. Once a certain ninja was recognized as abnormally powerful, smaller villages—and even enemy major villages—would sometimes permit retreat or abandonment of the mission altogether.
And Uchiha Chizumi, unfortunately, was at the very top of the list of shinobi that no small village should ever provoke.
Still, this Grass ninja had been clinging to a bit of hope.
He had thought that since the Grass Country and the Land of Fire weren't on bad terms and were even allies, there was no way Uchiha Chizumi would actually come all the way to the Grass Country's capital to kill people.
Thinking that, he had even voluntarily taken a job from one of the capital's nobles.
But the moment he saw that towering tree rise in the distance, all that was left in his heart was despair.
"Hey, just who exactly came?"
The Grass Country noble was annoyed that the ninja he had hired was acting so pathetically. He had already decided that tomorrow he'd make the Grass Village send him a stronger one.
What he didn't expect was for that Grass ninja to suddenly turn around and stab a kunai straight into his throat.
As he felt the searing pain in his neck and his life draining away, the Grass noble died without ever understanding why the ninja he had hired had turned on him.
"I want to live!"
"I want to survive!"
"Right, right—the village said this Uchiha Chizumi only kills evil people, didn't it?"
"If I kill all the evil people I know, can I make up for my sins that way?"
After killing his employer, the Grass ninja looked wildly around him, his eyes full of desperate longing to survive. He wanted to find more criminals he recognized and wash away his own sins that way.
But it was too late.
From the giant tree—now over three hundred meters tall—countless vines began to grow.
At some point, Uchiha Chizumi was already standing at the very top of the tree.
And to his eyes, those red names were glaringly obvious.
Guided by his will, the vines became chains of death from hell itself, rampaging across the capital of the Grass Country and piercing one terrified or bewildered figure after another.
"No—I'm not guilty!"
"They were all killing people! If I didn't kill, I'd be the one who died! I'm not guilty!"
One Grass chūnin barely avoided the first wave of piercing vines. But one of the vines seemed to possess a simple awareness of its own. It turned once in midair and wrapped around him.
The pressure tightened around his body. Blood poured from his mouth and nose as his organs began to rupture under the crushing force of the vine. Yet even then, he kept shouting.
Even at death's door, he still believed he had done nothing wrong.
That was just how the Grass Village was. Everyone was like that. The whole shinobi world was like that.
So why did you, Uchiha Chizumi, have to go around carrying out some so-called Absolute Justice? Why did you have to kill me?
At the last moment of his life, when he looked up toward Uchiha Chizumi at the top of the tree, there was no repentance in his eyes—only hatred and unwillingness.
He seemed to have forgotten that when he killed others, they too had once knelt and begged him for mercy.
What was happening in the capital of the Grass Country naturally reached the daimyo's residence as well.
At that moment, the fear on the Grass Daimyo's face was plain as day.
He too had heard of Uchiha Chizumi.
After all, in all these years, only Uchiha Chizumi had consecutively killed two daimyo.
And those two daimyo hadn't been nobodies, either—they were the daimyo of the Land of Fire and the Land of Water!
"I've done no evil. It was the ninja who committed evil. The nobles…"
At that moment, the Grass Daimyo kept repeating the same sentence over and over, as if by saying it enough times he could hypnotize himself into believing he had never committed any wrongdoing in his life.
But it didn't work.
A gigantic vine plunged down from the sky and pierced straight through the daimyo's residence—a place built with who knew how much money, labor, and manpower.
Even in the instant the vine skewered him, the Grass Daimyo's eyes were still full of terror and disbelief.
So that man called Uchiha Chizumi really did dare kill daimyo.
And in the eyes of the ordinary civilians of the Grass Country's capital, everything had happened so fast.
At first, they only felt the ground trembling violently.
Then a giant tree rose into the sky.
Before they even had time to understand what was happening, thousands of vines and branches had already grown out from that tree. Along with screams of terror and furious howls, they then saw something they would never forget for the rest of their lives.
The vines pierced nobles, ninja, and samurai alike.
Some still struggled.
Some still screamed.
But in the next instant, those people who had once stood above them, who had never treated them as human at all—
were all hanging beneath the tree.