After saying goodbye to Terumi Mei, Kiyosuke found a new inn and checked in for the night.
He rested for the evening.
The next morning, he woke up to find a pile of snakes coiled around his room. Anyone unaware might have thought a war between man and snake had broken out.
In reality, these were the same snakes he had released earlier.
It seemed they'd found a lead.
After washing up and getting dressed, Kiyosuke got up and left.
The real hunt had begun.
...
One of the snakes led him to a remote shrine outside the town. It was unclear which god this place worshiped, but the statue looked strange—grimacing, wielding a scythe, with a hideous expression.
The shrine gave off a heavy, ominous air.
He immediately activated heat sensing.
There was a massive underground space hidden beneath it, filled with people.
"So this is where they were. No wonder it was so hard to find."
Glancing at the statue, Kiyosuke loosened up his shoulders, then threw a punch at its base.
Boom!
The statue shattered under the force, revealing a passageway.
Kiyosuke turned into a mass of flames and dove in.
...
Underground
A group of black-robed figures—clearly just faceless lackeys—stood in a circle around an altar, chanting ominously.
At the center stood a man also clad in black, but his robe bore the emblem of the Jashin cult.
He looked out at his underlings with crazed excitement.
"Today is the perfect day to offer sacrifices to Jashin-sama. All our hard work gathering offerings is about to pay off. Bring them in!"
His followers left, returning shortly with a large group of people—men, women, and children, around fifty or sixty in total. They were injured, their eyes vacant, devoid of resistance.
These were the missing villagers.
To avoid alerting the ninja of Yugakure, the cult had captured them in scattered groups. But with how often they were conducting these rituals, their activities had eventually been exposed.
Not that it mattered to them now.
All they cared about was offering their sacrifices to Jashin-sama.
These were fanatics, utterly devoted to their beliefs.
And that made them incredibly dangerous.
They didn't fear death. Some even viewed it as a form of pleasure—albeit one they could only experience once.
"Today, we will show Jashin-sama just how devout his followers truly are!"
The current high priest of the cult raised his arms, shouting.
The gathered cultists howled back, eyes bloodshot, consumed with killing intent.
They seized their weapons, unable to contain their eagerness to butcher the victims on the altar.
"Come! Let us savor the sweetness of death!"
"That's not happening! You can die—but they can't!"
A flaming spear burst through the cult leader's body.
Kiyosuke appeared, yanking the spear free.
He looked down at the cultists and said coldly:
"Your shinigami has arrived."
"Who the hell are you?" one of them demanded.
Kiyosuke turned slightly and answered:
"Just a passing ninja. Make sure you remember that."
Countless sparks sprayed from his fingers, striking the cultists with explosive force.
Crack-crack-crack!
Their bodies were riddled with bloody holes.
Two cultists charged him with blades flailing. They pierced his body—only to realize it did nothing.
Kiyosuke calmly raised his hands and grabbed their arms.
With a blast of fire, he set them ablaze.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
Poof! Poof! Poof!
Three shadow clones appeared around him.
One rushed to dispel the genjutsu affecting the civilians.
The other two began clearing a path.
Once the illusions were lifted, the captives recoiled in horror, staring wide-eyed at the scene around them.
One of the clones pointed toward the exit.
"Run that way! Move, move, move! Don't dawdle!"
"Run!"
"Go, go, go!"
"Thank you, ninja-sama!"
"Hurry!"
Panic erupted.
The civilians stampeded toward the tunnel.
A few cultists tried to stop them.
"The sacrifices mustn't escape! They belong to Jashin-sama—argh!"
A kunai pierced one cultist through the heart.
"You talk too much."
Kiyosuke kicked the corpse aside.
"Hm?"
Something was wrong.
He noticed some of the cultists suddenly turning on each other—even though he hadn't done anything.
"An internal dispute?"
Their eyes were bloodshot, faces contorted into madness. They had lost all sense of reason, determined to rip everything around them to shreds.
"They've completely snapped."
He muttered to himself but didn't slow down.
If anything, he sped up, a bad feeling gnawing at him.
He had a strong sense that if he didn't end this now, something he would regret might happen.
"I'll kill you! Kill you! Kill you! Kill you! Kill you! Kill you! I'LL KILL YOU!!!"
A deranged cultist charged him with a knife.
His skin had turned darker—something was off.
Kiyosuke raised his blade to parry.
Clang!
His weapon snapped instantly—along with his arm.
Frowning, he watched as flames surged at the severed point, regenerating the limb.
He grabbed the cultist by the throat and twisted.
Crack!
The cultist's neck broke with a sickening snap.
Shhk!
A blade plunged into Kiyosuke's chest.
He looked down at the fire burning from the wound—
The same cultist he'd just killed was grinning at him.
"This is a gift from Jashin-sama... Ugh!!"
Kiyosuke drove his hand into the cultist's heart.
Blood sprayed.
The man finally died.
That was... unsettling.
It looked like this one had a power similar to Hidan's.
But it was incomplete—he still had a fatal weakness. Even so, a snapped neck hadn't been enough to kill him.
"What an annoying ability. The rest of you can die now."
As he spoke, his shadow clones sprang into action.
They didn't use fire.
Instead, they relied on taijutsu and Wind Blade Techniques to shred their enemies into pieces—just in case one of them pulled the same resurrection trick.
Monsters like Hidan, who could survive a pierced heart, were all products of the Jashin cult.
And now, a prototype had just shown up.
If it hadn't been for Kiyosuke's unique body, he might've been killed already.
He left behind a pile of corpses.
To ensure none of them could speak again—even if it was just a severed head—he torched the entire place, shrine and all.
...
Afterward, Kiyosuke returned to Yugakure to report in.
Since the mission had been commissioned by them, it was only proper to deliver the results.
Once the job was done, Kiyosuke spent a few days touring the Land of Hot Water.
He took the opportunity to enjoy himself.
Unfortunately, he didn't run into Terumi Mei or Pakura again.
What a letdown.
To confirm the cult had truly been eradicated, Yugakure dispatched a team of ninja to investigate the shrine ruins.
Only one of them returned.
"The last Jashin cultist has been eliminated. You can rest easy, sir."
"Well done, Hidan."
"It was nothing~"
The young man named Hidan twirled a kunai between his fingers...
It was likely the last time anyone would ever see it.