The fire continued to spread through the village.
The crackling of flames, the rush of water, and the distant clamor of chaos and shouting had all faded into insignificant background noise in the night.
Time seemed to freeze. The Tsugawa shinobi, for a moment, forgot to resist, as if the war itself had lost its weight.
They had just witnessed a tragedy—a scene so shocking it overloaded their minds, leaving them unable to process what it meant.
Tsugawa Taishi's mouth still let out faint, incoherent "cough, cough" sounds, like a fish on the cutting board, its mouth flapping uselessly in a futile struggle to survive. But no amount of effort could change the outcome.
Blood gushed from the elliptical wound in his torso, staining the water below a grim, dark red.
In just ten or twenty seconds, he had lost most of his blood.
What little remained trickled out from his body, forming a thin line of crimson from his lower abdomen, dripping relentlessly.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Thud.
Hane Genma knew the man was dead. He released his grip, letting Taishi's upper body splash into the water.
The sudden sound snapped the stunned Tsugawa shinobi out of their daze. As they realized what had just happened, their gazes instinctively shifted to the half-submerged corpse of Tsugawa Taishi.
Their clan leader was dead—a simple yet devastating fact they struggled to accept.
Something that had been holding them together crumbled in an instant.
The fear that had been building through days of strange, harrowing experiences erupted fully with their leader's death.
Staring into Genma's calm, unyielding eyes, the Tsugawa shinobi instinctively stepped back. Then…
They turned and fled.
Their will to fight had vanished.
Seizing the moment, Fuma Goro, hidden in the shadows nearby, acted decisively. He launched a signal flare into the sky.
With a piercing whistle, the dark red flare exploded in the night.
The Tsugawa shinobi glanced up instinctively, their resolve shaken further by the blast.
As planned, the Ashes shinobi, waiting at the village's outskirts, saw the signal. With a thunderous roar, they charged into the village.
They moved in tight formation, not aiming for maximum carnage. Genma had designed the formation for self-preservation, wary of a desperate counterattack from the enemy that could cause unexpected losses.
He needn't have worried.
The sight of the enemy's "fresh forces" accelerated the Tsugawa clan's collapse. Those who had only been wavering were now swept up in the panicked retreat.
As the Ashes forces stormed the village, they drove the shinobi and civilians in separate directions, as planned.
The task was straightforward. Though the enemy knew they should regroup and break out, they were like startled birds, too frantic to act rationally.
No one dared approach Genma, who stood silently amidst the chaos.
The clamor grew louder, wave after wave. Genma surveyed the scene, knowing his goal was finally achieved. The Tsugawa clan would never pose a threat again.
The success of his revenge brought satisfaction, but what Genma felt more deeply was a quiet, piercing sense of clarity.
In his past life, he had lived a mundane existence, somewhere between giving up and wasting away, in a world of peace, not this war-torn chaos.
In this turbulent world, living day to day with no guarantee of survival, the weight of the past year had built up in Genma's heart.
Now, with the Tsugawa clan's destruction, he could finally exhale.
But the final step to victory was still one move away, and Genma allowed no room for complacency.
"Herding ducks" was a skill in itself.
The task of scattering the Tsugawa clan continued from that night until the morning of the third day, when the clan was finally reduced to "scattered stars."
Based on the Fuma clan's experience—where any weakness invited every opportunist to take a swing—Genma knew it wouldn't be long before the ninja world quietly erased the Tsugawa name entirely.
In a way, this was simply the natural order of things.
On the morning of the third day, the Ashes shinobi had no time to rest. After "herding the ducks," they immediately began collecting spoils from the village.
Genma sat on a broken, jagged stone pillar and turned to Chihori, who approached him. "Do we have the casualty report yet?"
He was most concerned about losses on their side. While it seemed unlikely the situation was dire, he needed hard numbers to ease his mind.
Chihori, knowing what he wanted to hear, teased him with a roundabout answer. "We stuck together during the operation, and it wasn't exactly a real combat mission. Plus, most of the enemy had already lost their will to fight…"
Her long-winded response made Genma's eye twitch, but her playful tone suggested the news was good.
She stopped teasing, a smile breaking across her face. "No fatalities so far. One serious injury, but they're out of danger. Six others have minor to moderate injuries, nothing disabling. Oh, and one guy nearly earned himself a spot on the death toll…"
"Nearly? What happened?" Genma asked, intrigued.
Chihori glanced around, then leaned closer and lowered her voice. "Since we were up against the Tsugawa clan, one kid got a bit too fired up. Nearly ran in with an explosive tag to take out a bunch of enemies with him."
Genma: "…"
A hotheaded kid playing kamikaze, huh? Considering what the Hanemiya clan—now his Ashes—had been through over the past half-year, Genma could understand the impulse.
He understood but didn't condone it.
"No deaths is good enough," Genma said.
In theory, pulling off a mission like this—where the weaker side prevailed—with no fatalities was almost too ideal. But the bulk of the heavy lifting had been done by Genma, Chihori, and one other.
Fuma Goro aside, Genma owed thanks to Uchiha Nanami for her help.
For now, Nanami was assisting with the search, so gratitude would have to wait.
Originally, Genma's group hadn't known basic sealing scroll techniques—a simple yet practical form of space-time ninjutsu.
But with the addition of the Fuma clan and Uchiha Nanami, the Ashes had acquired the skill, allowing them to "pack" the collected supplies.
Time was limited, so they couldn't search too thoroughly. Still, this was a ninja clan's long-accumulated wealth, and the Ashes would walk away with a valuable haul.
True, Genma had blown up a few of their storehouses earlier…
But the kind Tsugawa clan had salvaged and reorganized some of their supplies afterward.
For Genma's subordinates, it was often just a matter of moving those resources to a new home.
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