Chapter 125: The Chaos of Konoha
The air inside the dilapidated inn smelled heavily of mildew and stale sweat. Takei and his subordinates sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped, unlit room. No one slept. They remained cross-legged on the frayed tatami mats, their breathing deliberately shallow, waiting in the suffocating darkness.
A moment later, a raspy, grating voice echoed from the rafters, dripping down like cold sludge.
"This is a detailed topographical map of Konoha. It will be instrumental for your plan. As per the Daimyo's instructions, I will assist you from the shadows when the time comes."
The group jerked their heads up toward the pitch-black ceiling. They couldn't make out a physical body, only a blurred, ink-like shadow slithering against the wood grain.
'Is it a special Bloodline Limit?'Takei thought, his eyes narrowing.'No wonder he could stay hidden in Konoha for so long without triggering the barrier.'
As the raspy voice faded, a sealed scroll drifted down from the darkness, landing softly on the tatami.
Takei snatched it up and broke the seal. He unrolled the parchment, tracing his fingers over the carefully drawn lines. It was indeed a flawless topographical map of the hidden village. Every blind alley, every patrol route, and even the specific locations of commercial shops and civilian residences were marked with terrifying precision.
Naturally, the ultimate target they were looking for was circled in heavy red ink.
"Is the Nine-Tails really sealed here?" Takei asked, his voice low and tight. "Is this intelligence absolutely accurate? You should know that the Nine-Tails' chakra is indispensable to our master plan."
"Of course," the shadow hissed, the sound resembling dry leaves scraping across stone. "Entrusted by the Daimyo, I have remained undercover in Konoha for years to harvest this exact intelligence. I have already analyzed the structural weaknesses of the Nine-Tails' seal. When you launch your operation, I will coordinate with you to ensure its collapse."
Black Zetsu, flawlessly posing as the Daimyo's elite spy, fed them every fabricated detail they needed to hear.
Armed with the scroll, Takei and his men felt a surge of renewed confidence. They knew they were essentially walking dead men the moment they stepped through Konoha's gates, but they were more than willing to lay down their lives for the Daimyo's glorious future.
Takei cleared his throat, his face suddenly flushing hot in the dark. He looked up at the shifting shadow. "By the way... do you happen to have any spare ryo? Can you front us a little cash?"
The shadow stopped moving.
Takei swallowed hard, his pride crumbling. "That female Konoha ninja at the front gate completely robbed us blind with her 'processing fees.' There's no other way around it. We have to lay low here for several more days, but our pockets have been picked clean. We can't even afford a bowl of plain rice."
The air in the cramped room fell into a dead, heavy silence.
Up in the rafters, Black Zetsu stared down at them, utterly speechless. He had manipulated reincarnations of demigods, orchestrated world-spanning wars, and deceived the greatest minds in history. Now, he was acting as a sugar daddy for a bunch of broke, starving thugs.
Were these pathetic beggars truly the elite Guardian Shinobi raised by the Daimyo? Why were they so spectacularly stupid?
The next day, sitting comfortably in her office, Stelle issued a direct order to Kagami's patrol team. They were to immediately conduct a mandatory "fire drill" across the entire civilian district. The objective was simple: evacuate the populace as quickly as possible and confine them to the underground refuge shelters.
To ensure absolute compliance, Stelle attached a material reward to the drill. If the evacuation speed surpassed their previous record, every participating household would receive a free distribution of premium daily necessities.
After tapping her pen against her desk for a moment, she added the Konoha Orphanage to the evacuation list.
That hostile woman from the gate—Saito—had made a beeline straight for the Orphanage the moment she entered the village. She seemed oddly familiar with the layout, even managing to accurately locate a hidden fruit tree with ripe, unpicked produce during her very first visit.
Just to be safe, Stelle dispatched Kinoe to the Orphanage to keep a close eye on the perimeter.
Three days later, a starless, moonless night swallowed the village. A low, heavy cloud cover pressed down on the rooftops, creating a suffocating darkness where one couldn't even see their own hands.
The streetlights lining the main avenues cast a sickly, dim yellow glow. Step by step, a tall, cloaked figure walked into the center of the street.
Vicious blue electrical arcs flickered across his body. The lightning moved like living vipers, snapping and hissing in the quiet night air.
As he approached the streetlights, the bulbs began to flicker violently, swaying back and forth under the magnetic interference like a scene ripped straight from a ghost story.
The moment his gloved hand brushed against a metal light pole, a massive electrical surge pulsed outward. Konoha's entire power grid short-circuited with a deafening pop. The streetlights, the neon signs, and the sparse glimmers of light in the residential windows all died in an instant.
A squad of Konoha Military Police Force members on patrol skidded to a halt, their hands dropping to their weapon pouches.
"What's going on? Did the main power grid blow a fuse?"
"Could it be another one of those insane experiments over at the research division?" a second ninja grumbled, adjusting his flak jacket. "It's the middle of the night. Don't those maniacs ever sleep?"
Before they could complain further, a sickeningly dense wave of chakra erupted from the distance, washing over the village like a physical weight.
"What the hell is that? Hyuga!"
The Uchiha squad leader leaped onto the nearest tiled roof, shouting down to his teammate.
The rest of the patrol squad followed suit, landing silently on the shingles. Among them, the Hyuga clan member immediately formed a hand seal. Veins bulged around his temples as his Byakugan flared to life. He peered through the darkness, his vision piercing through blocks of buildings.
"Someone is performing a massive ninjutsu in the center of the civilian plaza," the Hyuga reported, his voice tense.
"An enemy attack?"
"I can't tell yet. Let's move!"
The civilian district had been entirely reconstructed under Stelle's strict supervision. At its heart lay a sprawling, open plaza, bordered by dense, neatly organized rows of housing. It was a masterpiece of urban planning, designed for both high-capacity living and leisurely commerce.
Right now, standing dead center in that pristine plaza, a man's hands blurred through a complex sequence of hand seals. He slammed his palms flat against the paved ground.
"Earth Release: Wheel of Fortune!"
The earth groaned. Starting from the man's palms, a spiderweb of deep, jagged fissures tore through the bedrock.
A violent eruption of chakra flipped the heavy bluestone paving bricks into the air, scattering them like dry leaves in a hurricane. But the stones never hit the ground. Instead, geysers of foul, black soil—reeking of rotting flesh and ancient decay—burst from the craters, soaring into the night sky.
The flying bluestone bricks were swallowed whole by the churning mud, dissolving without a trace.
Guided by the crisscrossing flow of the man's chakra, the damp, sticky sludge hardened into jagged, cursed rock. By the time the violent tremors ceased, the beautiful civilian plaza had been completely terraformed into a towering, grotesque hill.
The stench of putrefaction was physically nauseating. It didn't look like a hill at all; it looked like a mass grave dredged up from the underworld.
The patrol squad landed on the edge of the newly formed graveyard. They scanned the area, but the caster had already vanished into the labyrinth of dark alleys.
Just as the Uchiha leader signaled to give chase, the soil beneath their sandals vibrated.
Crack.
Several pairs of livid, bruised hands burst from the dirt, their rotting fingers clamping down on the ninjas' ankles like iron vices.
"Watch out!"
The squad scattered, leaping backward. In the blink of an eye, dozens of decaying corpses clawed their way out of the cursed earth. Their bodies were rigid, their jaws unhinged, and a vile, dark aura radiated from their rotting flesh.
A dense, moaning horde of the walking dead surged forward, baring their fangs and jagged nails.
The patrol squad drew their kunai and engaged. After a brief, brutal clash, they realized the corpses possessed abysmal combat skills, but their numbers were seemingly endless. Worse, several of the undead were already shambling past the defensive line, heading straight for the civilian housing blocks.
"This jutsu is too twisted. Everyone, hold the line! Do not let a single one of them breach the residential zone!" The Uchiha leader reached into his pouch and hurled a signal flare high into the sky.
With a sharp whistle, the flare exploded, illuminating the dark clouds with the massive, glowing red-and-white fan symbol of the Uchiha clan.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the village, Saito stood before the tightly chained iron gates of the Konoha Orphanage.
Seeing the darkened, silent building, she let out a low, sinister laugh. Finally, she could unleash absolute havoc upon this wretched village. She was going to make them pay in blood for robbing her blind at the front gates.
She raised her hands, rapidly weaving signs to unleash a wide-scale ninjutsu.
Thud.
A figure dropped silently from the roof, landing squarely between Saito and the gates. It was a woman draped in a heavy cloak. One of her sleeves hung empty, fluttering in the night breeze.
"You're so slow," Kinoe said, her tone dripping with dry boredom. "I've been waiting here for days."
Saito's breath hitched. 'What's going on? Have we been exposed?'
Panic flared in Saito's chest, but she ruthlessly suppressed it. The operation had already commenced; there was no turning back now. Her hands blurred as she finished the final seal.
"Earth Release: Underworld Swamp!"
The moment the jutsu activated, turning the ground beneath Kinoe into a bubbling pit of thick, adhesive mud, Saito drew two explosive tags and hurled them directly over the gates toward the Orphanage's main building.
Her mission was simple: cause a massive, bloody commotion at the Orphanage to draw Konoha's main forces away from the plaza. She didn't care how many brats had to die to make that happen.
Kinoe casually flickered out of existence, reappearing on a solid branch above the swamp. Watching Saito frantically trying to cause a scene, Kinoe decided it was the perfect time to test out the psychological warfare tactics Stelle had so lovingly taught her.
"Are you throwing a temper tantrum just because you got scammed out of your pocket change and can't afford a hot meal?" Kinoe asked, her voice echoing lazily through the dark.
Saito, who had been trying to maintain the cold, professional demeanor of an elite assassin, felt a vein throb violently in her forehead.
"Speaking of which," Kinoe continued, leaning against the tree trunk, "you were so starving two nights ago that you actually snuck over here just to steal fruit from the children's garden. A person shouldn't be so ungrateful. That fruit nourished your pathetic, empty stomach. How could you turn around and try to blow the place up? That's just unfilial."
Saito's face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. If she let a one-armed cripple insult her pride like this, what kind of Guardian Shinobi was she?
Saito slapped her hands together, her eyes bloodshot as she roared into the night. "You damn cripple, go to hell!"
[Inorin's Note:
Hey guys, hope you're enjoying the novel! A quick Power Stone, comment, or review really helps the story grow and keeps me motivated.
Hate waiting for updates and cliffhangers? You can skip the line, avoid all those annoying ads, and binge 50 chapters ahead by supporting my work here:
🌐 Read on our site: Search for Elysian Reads on Google or Check the link in my Webnovel Profile bio!
✨ Patreon (50 Advanced Chapters & Ad-Free): Search InorinTL on Patreon
Thank you so much for reading and keeping this project alive!]