In a remote corner of the Leaf camp, inside a lonely tent, Uchiha Feiyu pushed the flap aside and stepped in.
His gaze swept over the rolls of storage scrolls piled like a small hill, and the corner of his mouth curled upward.
"Judging from the volume, we're easily past a thousand…
This time the blood pool is really going to have a grand reopening."
He clicked his tongue lightly.
"Gotta say, Orochimaru-sensei is pretty generous this round.
Normally he'd be the one who needs tons of 'cadavers for research'…
Maybe he's just in an exceptionally good mood?"
As for the reason behind that good mood – after this crushing victory over the Cloud, on paper, Orochimaru's claim to the Hokage seat should be locked in.
"He probably feels that, barring any accidents, the Hokage position is in the bag, huh?
Too bad…"
Feiyu narrowed his eyes.
"If there's one thing the Leaf never lacks…
it's accidents."
He had never killed any Leaf ninja himself, but he'd picked up plenty of Leaf souls on the battlefield.
Through their memories and knowledge, he actually had quite a deep understanding of the current Konohagakure.
On the surface, the Leaf still held the title of Number One Great Ninja Village.
But the hidden rot had long since set in. The upper echelon wasn't exactly "completely decayed," but it was definitely rigid and conservative—hardly the type to accept a strong-willed, sharp-edged leader like Orochimaru.
Of course, all that only flashed through Feiyu's mind.
Whether Orochimaru became Hokage or not didn't really have much to do with this "cheap disciple."
"From certain Root souls, I can already tell:
they never investigated my parents' deaths at all.
With the position I occupy in Root, if Danzo didn't know the exact cause of their deaths, there's no way he wouldn't have ordered an investigation."
The lack of investigation itself was a glaring flaw.
In the months he'd spent at Root, Feiyu hadn't just been running missions.
Using captured Root ninja souls, he had quietly dug around. He'd found no direct smoking gun, but the more he saw, the more he was convinced:
his parents' deaths were at least eight or nine tenths likely tied to Root.
And the person he felt most likely to have moved against him in the future, given the opportunity, was his theoretical "boss," the head of Root: Shimura Danzo.
He smiled coldly.
"Still, in the eyes of the Leaf's higher-ups, I probably count as 'Orochimaru's man' now.
And on top of that, I'm an Uchiha.
If something goes wrong, it's hard to say who might use it as an excuse to move against me…"
Right now he had fully spread his wings.
Even if he parted ways with the Leaf, the one taking the loss would be Konoha, not him.
Given the grudges he had piled up in his heart, he actually felt a faint stir of anticipation.
"Konoha's dear high-ranking idiots…
You'd better live up to my expectations and make things nice and messy."
Cleaning up the battlefield, pushing the line forward to the Land of Frost and setting up defenses against any further Cloud attacks…
Those remaining chores were nothing worth mentioning.
Once the Cloud retreated back into the Land of Lightning, the Leaf would not give chase; major battles were unlikely to break out again.
So Feiyu went to Orochimaru, asked for leave, and headed for the blood pool to undergo another baptism.
This time, he hadn't just sent Cloud corpses to Ryūchi Cave.
He'd also taken a good number of Leaf ninja bodies as well—
after all, how many corpses were left on the battlefield in the end was something only Orochimaru, who did the final tally, could know.
If Feiyu pocketed half, no one else would be able to tell.
And those were not just any corpses either.
Especially the Hyūga dead—
as carriers of Ōtsutsuki blood, their value was dozens of times that of ordinary ninja.
There was no way Feiyu was going to pass those up.
With ninja-level speed, and Feiyu being a top-tier speed specialist, it only took him half a day to reach the blood pool again.
He summoned the snakes of Ryūchi Cave and had the corpses ferried over one by one.
To stop them from being eaten on the way, he had thoughtfully sprinkled snake-repelling powder over the bodies. Judging from the final count, it had worked; the number of corpses hadn't really changed.
After tallying, there were about two thousand bodies in total.
All of them were fed into the blood pool.
The crimson liquid surged and swelled, quickly filling nearly half the basin.
"Seven or eight times more than last time…
Probably because the previous batch was lower quality, and some of the energy was used up just creating the blood pool itself."
With a rough estimate done, Feiyu jumped into the pool and shut his eyes, activating Soul-Devouring Blood Refinement.
The blood began to churn violently, spinning into a small whirlpool.
At its center, a heart-like cocoon of flesh once again started to pulse and beat.
Hours slipped by.
That once-vibrant cocoon shriveled, dried, and finally cracked open with a ripping sound.
Feiyu stepped out again from within.
"Didn't evolve into a Mangekyō…
but it feels a bit different from a normal three-tomoe."
He could feel his eyes brimming with power, the pupil force almost at its limit.
As the three tomoe spun, a faint, dark chakra skeleton manifested over his body.
"Susanoo…
Only at the half-skeleton stage, basically the earliest of early forms…"
He considered it for a moment.
"But using it doesn't drain my pupil power at all.
That's because these eyes aren't Mangekyō, huh?"
He remembered an old story.
"If I recall correctly, the Uchiha progenitor Indra had only a three-tomoe Sharingan, yet could still use abilities on the Mangekyō level.
Is my current state some kind of 'regression' in that direction?"
He probed his own condition more carefully:
The Sharingan's analysis and observation ability,
Its copying and genjutsu potential,
Its dynamic vision and reaction speed—
each of these had been boosted again.
The degree of improvement was about on par with the leap from two tomoe to three tomoe—
a full tier higher.
"On top of that, my chakra quality and physical toughness have both increased by two or three times.
Now, if I use Lightning Chakra Mode, I can at least push it to the level of the Fourth Raikage."
He clenched his fist, feeling lightning crackle faintly under his skin.
"Fourth Raikage-level Lightning Armor, plus the White Fang Sword Style…
At this point, I can be considered a top-tier fighter even among the Kage-level."
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