At the height of battle, shinobi screamed themselves hoarse like samurai.
Inside Sabaku Port, the Mist ninja and Sand ninja had gone red-eyed with bloodlust.
On the second floor of a ship far from the docks, Yako stood by the window, watching the flames of war engulf the harbor in the distance.
The Mist had set the warehouses ablaze. Pillars of fire shot into the sky, illuminating the fox mask on his face.
A shuriken spun through the air and thudded into the wooden wall beside the window.
"Leaf Monkey, don't be nervous. No one's found us."
Hearing Fox's judgment, Leaf Monkey and the others quietly lowered the kunai they had already taken out.
On the Mist side, the commanders were Fuguki Suikazan and the prodigy Hōzuki Mangetsu.
On the Sand side, it was Scorch Release Pakura.
Leaf Monkey whispered, "Fox-sama, Scorch Release Pakura is a genius who's emerged in Sunagakure these past two years. She's very strong."
"Mm. Scorch Release is far more destructive than Fire Release, and it's more flexible too."
Surrounded by a swarm of Mist ninja, Pakura continuously controlled her scorching orbs, blocking and countering from every angle. Water Release couldn't extinguish Scorch Release at all.
Yako had no interest in the war between the Sand and the Mist. Unless Pakura's life was in danger, he had no intention of stepping in.
After four years of Threefold Reincarnation, his Top Transformed Buddha had reached the same thousand-hand scale as Senju Hashirama's.
His chakra reserves had risen from one-times super-Kage level when he had first entered that realm... to two-times super-Kage level now.
Both his physical energy and spiritual energy had once again reached their limits.
For shinobi, breaking through one's limit was difficult. Everyone encountered bottlenecks several times in life—points where their strength stopped growing entirely, or even began to decline.
Compared to killing people, Yako cared much more about the growth of his soul.
Hidan, lingering at the edge of Sabaku Port, interested him far more.
Amid the chaos, a small boat was swept onto shore.
Hidan crawled out of it.
Twisting his neck, he muttered, "I haven't eaten in ten days. If it were anyone else, they'd have starved to death by now.
Though come to think of it, my stomach's hungry, so why am I twisting my neck?
I keep getting this weird feeling someone's going to cut my head off. Why am I giving myself that kind of psychological suggestion?"
Kunai flew from the main battlefield now and then, scattering like stray arrows.
One of them stabbed into Hidan's shoulder.
"Ow!"
Just as Hidan reached to pull it out, another kunai came flying over and lodged in his other shoulder.
For a moment, he looked like a trident.
He rolled his shoulders. The blades scraped bone and flesh, and the pain sent a delicious thrill through his nerves.
"How moving... this place is overflowing with pain!"
Hidan yanked the kunai from his shoulders and kept walking toward the battlefield.
On the way, he found the wreckage of a ship. There was food in the cabin, and he immediately began wolfing it down.
He had drifted all the way from a port in the Land of Rivers to the Land of Wind. He wouldn't starve to death, but the hunger had been agonizing.
After eating a little and recovering some strength, Hidan pulled out his pendant.
Inside the round pendant was a trident—the emblem of the Three Gods Faith.
He casually picked up a ninja blade from the ground and noticed blood on it. Licking the blood from the edge, he muttered,
"All evildoers must repent... now then, who should I offer up first today?
What if the owner of this blood is already dead?
Whatever. I can't hold back anymore. Dead or not, I'll offer them first and sort it out later."
Using his own blood, he drew a ritual circle on the ground—a triangle inside a circle—then pulled out a spike and viciously drove it into his own heart.
In the distance, an injured Sand ninja was still desperately fighting a Mist ninja when his chest suddenly seized with pain. He couldn't hold on any longer.
It felt as if his heart had been pierced clean through. Before the Mist ninja could even strike, he fell dead.
Inside the ship's upper cabin, Yako raised an eyebrow slightly.
Hidan had just offered a soul to him.
A drop of blood appeared on the Evil God.
And Yako's own soul strengthened a little more.
But how strong did his soul need to become before it could reach Six Paths level? Before it could contend with those Ōtsutsuki?
"Sir! The flames are spreading to the nobles!"
Yako looked in the direction Leaf Monkey pointed and saw it at once. Wielding the Dual Swords: Hiramekarei, Hōzuki Mangetsu unleashed a blade wave that cut down six Sand ninja in a single stroke.
With the nobles' lives under threat, the Sand ninja could no longer retreat.
The frontline had been pushed from the dock district to the residential quarter and the nobles' estates.
"Sir, should we create some chaos? Isn't it too easy for the Mist to take the harbor like this?"
Yako shook his head.
"Sunagakure may be the weakest of the Five Great Villages, but it's not weak enough for this.
Three or four hundred Mist ninja aren't enough to take the Land of Wind's only port.
Let them keep fighting. This should last at least another two or three hours."
Meanwhile, Hidan continued searching the rear lines of the battlefield for sacrifices.
One shinobi after another fell to him. Mist or Sand, he didn't care.
The great Evil God had said it before: morality is determined by position. First comes position, then morality.
To commoners, samurai, nobles, and shinobi were all devils.
To samurai, nobles and shinobi were devils, while commoners were sheep.
To nobles, shinobi were devils, commoners were sheep, and samurai were sheepdogs.
To shinobi, once outside their village, there were only two kinds of people: those they could kill at will, and those they had to kill carefully—preferably by assassination, without leaving a trace.
The great Evil God had declared that, in order to broaden the scope of sacrifice, He must stand on the side of the common people. That way, anyone who picked up a weapon became a devil fit for sacrifice.
When Hidan offered up the hundredth soul, something stirred inside Yako.
For the past four years, Hidan had mainly been training the Eight Gates. Every now and then, when the itch came over him and he wanted to savor pain, he would make a few scattered sacrifices.
Yet Yako's chakra reserves—unchanged for so long—had finally increased.
[Chakra Reserves: 2.1 times super-Kage level.]
His body had already approached Senju Hashirama's Sage Body so closely that it could no longer improve.
If he studied Shikkotsu Forest Sage Mode, Yako felt he could probably gain instant battlefield regeneration and a true Sage Body as well.
If he wanted to keep advancing, then spiritual energy—his soul—was his only path forward.
After Hidan sacrificed a hundred souls, Yako's soul had grown stronger, and his chakra reserves had risen by 0.1.
The growth was slow. But growth at all meant hope.
In the original story, Naruto and Sasuke entered Six Paths level because the Sage of Six Paths passed his power to them.
The Sage of Six Paths would never empower him.
By collecting soul-based forbidden arts and mastering the three divine systems of the Wrathful King, Evil God, and Shinigami, his spiritual energy had finally broken through the limits of humanity.
From super-Kage to Six Paths—without borrowing power from the Sage of Six Paths—Yako now believed he could carve out a path of his own.
And yet, as he felt the power of those sacrificed souls, sorrow rose in his heart.
The God Tree had suspended the whole world, drained it dry, and fed on its blood to create the Six Paths-level Ōtsutsuki Kaguya.
And the road he had discovered... was it not another form of bloodsucking?
Sacrifice meant taking the souls of offerings and feeding them to himself, increasing his spiritual power.
To grow stronger, to become a Six Paths-level being, every path in the end seemed to demand the same thing: draining the whole world and sacrificing others.
The shinobi world was no different. Labor and struggle were lies. Only exploitation could make one rich. Only exploitation could make one strong.
If he sacrificed thousands of souls, his spiritual power might reach a terrifying level—perhaps enough to step into the Six Paths realm.
Hidan alone was far too inefficient.
He needed Hidan to expand the Three Gods Faith and gather more believers.
At that moment, Hidan had already pierced his own heart once, his throat once, and now even had a kunai sticking out of the top of his head.
At the Evil God's current recovery speed, it would take him a long time to heal.
Then Hidan heard a divine revelation.
"Foolish Hidan. You've already reached your limit for today. Find subordinates in this war. Find believers. Spread my faith!"
Dragging that ruined body behind him, Hidan forced himself back to his feet.
"I obey your divine will! I'll go find new believers at once!"
He wandered across the beach, leaving bloody footprints behind him, until he came upon an overturned skiff.
Through a crack in the wooden planks, a single eye glared out—burning with hatred.
Ah... what a beautiful eye.
Only extreme hatred could give birth to extreme pain.
Hidan had never seen hatred that thick in someone's gaze.
He flipped the boat over with one hand and found a savage-looking young man crouched in front of a middle-aged man.
Hidan blinked.
So it really was just one eye full of hatred. The youth's other eye had a kunai buried in it.
It was ruined.
The weapon was heavy enough that it looked as if it might tear the eyeball free at any moment.
Judging by his clothes, he was a young sailor who had been traveling with his father.
"Don't come closer! My father's already been gravely wounded by people like you!"
Hidan said, "Hey, hey! Your left eye's blind, so I guess you can't tell—but your father isn't badly wounded. He's dead.
Turn that cute little head of yours and take a look with the eye that still works. See whether your father's dead or not."
The youth whipped his head around. The kunai tugged at his ruined eye, and a fresh line of blood immediately ran down his face.
But he didn't care about the pain.
His father really was dead. His pupils had already gone dull.
Hidan went on,
"And I'm not a shinobi either. Look at me—I'm covered in shinobi weapons.
Young man, I like your eyes.
If you join the Three Gods Faith, the gods will grant you the power of revenge.
All evildoers must repent.
Those shinobi who've killed countless people—they all deserve to die. Every last one of them should be offered to the great Evil God!"
Hidan spoke with wild gestures, while the spike in his chest, the kunai in his throat, and the blade in his skull all swayed in the wind.
The sight left a deep impression on the young man.
He and his father had suffered terribly.
But the lunatic before him seemed even worse off... and hated shinobi even more.
"Join the Three Gods Faith, and you'll be able to kill those savage shinobi and offer them up! Young man, tell me your name!"
"My name is Sail. If I join the Three Gods Faith, I can kill those shinobi and sacrifice them? As many as I want?"
"If not, the great Evil God will only think you're not devout enough. He'll only think you haven't offered enough. Sacrifice as many as you want!"