Meanwhile—
Among the Root operatives who were rushing Danzō away, one happened to be skilled in medical ninjutsu. He kept trying to treat Danzō, yet his techniques accomplished nothing at all.
Danzō's face was still twisted in agony and he shrieked non‑stop. The Root ninja could not even imagine what indescribable torment their lord was going through.
Only Danzō himself knew.
A tide of soul‑deep, negative pain had all but swallowed his mind; it felt as though every inch of his soul were being torn apart.
He thought he was half a step from death.
In his youth Danzō had endured torture‑level training—pain few people could survive.
But he swore:
Every bit of suffering I felt back then isn't even one‑thousandth of this!
He screamed.
He sobbed.
He wanted to fall to his knees and beg that innately wicked Uchiha brat for mercy.
Right now, even if the boy demanded that he become a sex slave to be savagely abused by every male in the Uchiha clan, Shimura Danzō would agree—without the slightest hesitation—if only he could move his own body.
And he would absolutely do it!
Seconds stretched into years. The extreme despair and agony pushed Danzō's mind to the brink of collapse.
"Danzo-sama! Danzo-sama!! DANZO-SAMA!!!"
The frantic shouts of his subordinates tugged back the last thread of his consciousness.
Releasing his burning head, Danzō used that final sliver of sanity to force his ten fingers into hand‑seals, his face hideously contorted:
Rabbit … Boar … Goat …
One implanted Sharingan slowly went dull and dark.
At that instant—
A thunderous boom! Danzō, still clutching his head, suddenly burst into a mass of crimson flames. In the blink of an eye the mysterious fire—arising from nowhere—swallowed him whole, making the nearby Root ninja snatch their hands away in fright.
One of them reacted a heartbeat too late; the flame licked his fingertips.
The bizarre fire raced up the entire length of his arm,
—even searing straight through flesh to burn his soul.
Within moments he too was engulfed, sharing Danzō's fate.
"AAAAAAGH!"
The soul‑and‑flesh‑searing agony wrenched a blood‑curdling scream from the luckless operative.
It was already too late to smother the fire, and this hell‑born flame could never be extinguished.
His body shriveled in an instant, skin charred black.
His soul was dragged to the lowest hell by the Heaven's Fire of Retribution that had spilled from Danzō.
This—was the dōjutsu of Uchiha Chizumi's right eye.
Mere splash damage from the Heaven's Fire of Retribution meant instant death of body and soul—let alone taking the blaze head‑on as Danzō had.
Danzō died even faster than the other ninja. A twisted, carbonized corpse lay motionless on the ground … until Izanagi activated again.
The "charred corpse" puffed back to full, and a gasping, face‑contorted Danzō reappeared on one knee.
The hellfire vanished.
Yet cold sweat dripped from him like rain; his muscles trembled uncontrollably; his pupils shivered. Deep in his soul, the despair of countless innocent deaths still echoed.
One more Sharingan embedded in his right arm had already closed.
"…Danzo-sama?!"
The voice barely registered. His teeth chattered madly.
The soul‑level pain had engraved itself onto the deepest layers of memory: phantom death‑scenes flickered before his eyes without pause.
Despair stabbed his fragile soul every second.
Even Izanagi could not erase the psychological shadow.
But—
"At least … huff … I'm still ali— huh?!!"
Before he finished, his pupils shrank.
Staring at his own feet, he saw crimson, eerie flames bloom out of thin air.
His breath caught; he recognized them at once.
The very flames that had just "killed" him!
"Impossible!!!"
His panicked cry proved he was unhinged. The soul‑piercing pain swept him again. In the blink of an eye the Heaven's Fire of Retribution climbed from his feet to his waist …
And another blink later he was bathed in flames once more.
"AAAAAAAH!"
The agony down to his core soul triggered Izanagi again.
He revived—gasping, terrified.
But within seconds the old man's face contorted yet again.
The Heaven's Fire of Retribution ignited a third time.
"How can this—"
"GAAAH!!"
…
Uchiha Chizumi slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the sinister Mangekyō pattern was gone, replaced by indifferent black pupils.
Only two streaks of fresh blood trailing down his cheeks proved he had just used a Mangekyō technique.
He now understood his right eye's power:
Heaven's Fire of Retribution—a hellfire that incinerates both the body and soul of evildoers.
The deeper one's sins, the stronger the flame.
It brands an eternal mark on the target's soul; wherever that soul goes, the fire follows.
Like Itachi's Amaterasu, no method can extinguish it.
If the target has led a blameless life, the fire becomes a flame of salvation, purging all negative states and guiding the soul to paradise.
The flaw: its chakra cost is colossal—at least ten times that of his left eye's "Eye of Judgement from Hell."
The drain on stamina is plain to see.
Fortunately, stamina has always been Chizumi's forte.
"Chizumi … what in the world did you do to Danzo-sama?"
Fugaku was numb. Despite all his vigilance, he had never imagined Chizumi would unleash Mangekyō power.
By the time he sensed something was wrong, it was far too late to stop.
Hiruzen Sarutobi's face was equally grim. Danzō's earlier screams still echoed faintly. His view of Chizumi's "stubborn nature" had taken on a whole new dimension.
He clenched his teeth.
"Chizumi … Danzō— is he still alive?"
Chizumi replied coolly:
"Who can say? The righteous flame will burn the evil of the shinobi world forever."
~~~
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