The moonlit night reflected upon the calm water, where nearly ten thousand Kumogakure shinobi stood frozen like statues. Their faces were pale, drained of all color.
At the center of this silent battlefield, Ye Zi stood completely isolated, surrounded by a suffocating aura of pure danger.
In his hand, a long blade was enveloped in an ominous black lightning, blocking out the moon's gentle glow. His ice-cold gaze locked onto the only person still capable of movement, Killer Bee.
Hearing Ye Zi's words, Killer Bee couldn't hide the shock on his face. His pupils trembled violently, his mind racing.
If not for the Eight-Tails inside him, he too would have fallen into the same mysterious illusion that had ensnared his comrades, the Third Raikage, and A.
"This… this isn't just any genjutsu…"
How could a genjutsu trap nearly ten thousand shinobi at once?
As his thoughts spun wildly, a realization dawned upon Killer Bee.
"Even if I want to save them, I'd have to break the genjutsu one by one… but that dangerous bastard is still here."
"No… his real target is me. If I run, he'll chase me. If I can draw him away, A and the others will be safe."
Inside his mind, the Eight-Tails fell silent.
Killer Bee was willingly putting himself in danger to save his comrades, but the truth was undeniable, Ye Zi's power was overwhelming.
Even the Third Raikage, the strongest warrior of Kumogakure, had lost ground against him.
Fighting Ye Zi alone… would end badly.
Yet, Killer Bee had misunderstood Ye Zi's words.
Ye Zi had not meant to say that his genjutsu was powerful simply because it could trap ten thousand people at once.
No, what he meant was something far more terrifying.
Ye Zi took a single step forward.
Killer Bee's body tensed instinctively, preparing for an attack.
At that moment, one of the Kumogakure shinobi suddenly moved.
Both Ye Zi and Killer Bee immediately noticed him.
Ye Zi's expression remained still as ice, while Killer Bee's heart briefly surged with hope.
However, what happened next left Killer Bee utterly speechless.
The young Kumogakure shinobi, barely fifteen or sixteen years old, stumbled forward—his body limp and unresponsive, as if the strength had suddenly drained from him.
He fell forward...
Splash!
His body struck the water, sending a small wave rippling outward.
And then, he sank.
He did not float back up.
This alone was shocking, but what happened next was even more terrifying.
One after another, the other Kumogakure shinobi began collapsingl like a row of falling dominoes.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
In a matter of seconds, the entire army started falling into the water in perfect unison, as if bowing before an unseen emperor.
With each step Ye Zi took, another wave of shinobi fell, their bodies crumpling lifelessly into the water.
Each step left behind ripples of silver in the moonlight, each step erased more lives.
The endless splashes filled the air, a chorus of bodies falling.
The sheer unnaturalness of it all left Killer Bee shaken to the core.
Falling unconscious due to genjutsu was expected.
But thousands falling in mere seconds?
And worse, nearly half of them were sinking, not floating.
For a ninja, walking on water is second nature.
Even if they lost consciousness, their chakra would instinctively keep them afloat.
But…
If they were sinking, that meant only one thing.
They were already dead.
Unbelievable. Impossible. Unacceptable.
The domino effect of death had reached the shinobi near Killer Bee.
Splash!
A shinobi close to him collapsed into the water and began sinking.
Reacting immediately, Killer Bee extended an octopus tentacle, grabbing hold of the falling shinobi and pulling him back up.
But, the moment he touched the body, a cold dread washed over him.
He was already dead.
"What…?" How is this possible?!"
This was just a genjutsu.
And yet, it had killed thousands of people in mere moments?
If that was true, then the thousands of Kumogakure shinobi who had already sunk beneath the water were…
All dead.
"This… has to be a joke." Killer Bee, his mind overwhelmed, let go of the shinobi's body.
Splash.
The corpse fell back into the water, vanishing into the depths.
The reality before him was something he could not accept.
Amidst the devastation, there was one glimmer of hope, nearly a thousand Kumogakure shinobi still stood upon the water.
The Third Raikage and A were among them.
Out of the nearly ten thousand warriors, only about four thousand remained afloat.
But the other five thousand?
Gone.
Sunk into the abyss.
Their lives erased without a single wound.
Without a single drop of blood spilled.
This was not an ordinary genjutsu, it was technique that could kill without lifting a finger.
If the act of sinking beneath the water was an undeniable sign of death, then Ye Zi's genjutsu alone had just claimed the lives of around five thousand shinobi.
Even after witnessing it with his own eyes, Killer Bee still couldn't fully process the reality before him.
Seeing the look of disbelief on Killer Bee's face, Ye Zi's lips curled into a cold smile.
The genjutsu released through "Go Tenjin" far surpassed any illusion technique in the ninja world, even those among the Mangekyō Sharingan's specialized illusion abilities paled in comparison.
At this point, it could hardly even be classified as genjutsu anymore.
First, it was a wide-area genjutsu, not affecting just a few or a dozen, but an entire battlefield of nearly ten thousand shinobi.
Second, the scale of its energy output was nearly impossible to measure—it was powerful enough to directly kill the targets trapped within it.
In other words, a portion of the "illusionary damage" had been converted into reality.
The sheer destructive power of this ability was not only due to Ye Zi's right-eye Mangekyō ability, Go Tenjin, but also its connection to the Mangekyō ability he had taken from Fugaku Uchiha... Omikami.
The Go Tenjin ability in Ye Zi's right eye was often described as making him immune to genjutsu.
However, in truth, it did not merely nullify illusions, it absorbed them.
It redefined the energy used to construct genjutsu as an "energy body" that could be absorbed and stored.
There was a critical threshold to how much it could absorb at once.
If an incoming genjutsu's power exceeded this limit, some overflowing energy could still affect Ye Zi, briefly trapping him in an illusion.
However, because Go Tenjin continuously absorbed genjutsu energy over time, even if he were to be affected, the effect would be significantly weakened.
Given enough time, Go Tenjin could completely absorb and dissolve any genjutsu, effectively breaking it down into energy rather than resisting it outright.
And that absorbed genjutsu energy didn't disappear.
Instead, it accumulated within his Mangekyō Sharingan, gradually reaching saturation over time.
By the time Ye Zi had released the stored energy in his right eye, the sheer volume of accumulated genjutsu energy had transformed into a wide-area effect illusion.
This was what had dragged every Kumogakure shinobi present into a genjutsu world based on "Tsukuyomi."
But the true lethal factor was the Mangekyō Sharingan ability he had taken from Fugaku, Omikami.
This ability magnified genjutsu energy tenfold.
The higher the base energy, the more terrifying the amplification effect became.
And Ye Zi's right eye had already reached saturation with stored genjutsu energy.
If measured in raw numerical values, it was already a terrifying amount.
With Omikami multiplying it tenfold, the resulting effect became something beyond the realm of logic.
The illusion became a reality.
Killer Bee, his thoughts racing, could only come to one conclusion: "This… might just be the strongest genjutsu in existence."
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Currently on Chapter 564 - The Weight of the Rinnegan