After the first wave of shock passed, a long-suppressed cheer burst through Konoha's streets and alleyways.
"Good riddance! Those arrogant bastards finally got what was coming to them!"
"Now I don't have to worry about offending one of them by accident and getting hauled off by the Guard Force!"
"Serves them right! They're always acting like they're above everyone else!"
All the resentment that had built up over the years toward the Uchiha Police Force's overbearing conduct was dragged into the open and released in one breath.
Yet not everyone joined the celebration blindly.
A few merchants who dealt often with outsiders and had seen more of the world than most started out shocked, then quickly sank into uneasy silence. In a corner of a tavern, a middle-aged trader tossed back a cup of strong liquor and leaned close to his companion.
"The Guard Force is gone," he said in a low voice. "So what happens now?"
He set the cup down harder than intended, his brows knotting together. "No matter how arrogant the Uchiha were, at least they followed rules. At least they could keep the other ninja clans from doing whatever they pleased."
"If something really happens in the future, will whoever takes over still protect civilians and small merchants like us the way they did?" he asked. "Will they dare uphold the law without looking at some clan elder's face first?"
His companion had no answer.
He only stared at the table, uncertainty written plainly across his face.
While Konoha-and soon the entire shinobi world-was still reeling from the overnight extermination of the Uchiha clan, something even stranger happened.
In the sky above, it was as though an enormous blue curtain had been pierced by a foreign screen and pinned there by some invisible hand.
It was vast beyond measure. An indescribable shimmer flowed around its edges, and it hung there in dead silence, suspended high above the world where anyone could see it.
No matter whether one stood in Konoha, Kumogakure, Sunagakure, or some remote corner of the land, the thing remained visible overhead, as though it had been embedded directly into the heavens.
"Look! What's that in the sky?!"
A civilian on one of Konoha's streets was the first to spot it. He pointed upward and shouted so sharply that everyone around him froze.
In an instant, every eye turned skyward.
"Is that... a screen? Like the ones in movie theaters?"
"How can there be a screen in the sky?!"
"Is this some new ninjutsu? A genjutsu?"
The earlier talk of the Uchiha massacre was swept away at once, replaced by startled cries, speculation, and fear. An unprecedented spectacle-one that defied all common sense-threw the entire shinobi world into brief chaos.
***
Inside the Hokage's office, Hiruzen Sarutobi suddenly shoved open the window so hard he nearly dropped the pipe in his hand.
He stared at the enormous thing hanging in the heavens, his pupils shrinking sharply.
"Someone!" he barked, and there was a note of urgency in his voice that even he could not fully hide.
An ANBU appeared in an instant.
"Assemble an investigation team immediately," Hiruzen ordered. "I want the source of that thing, its purpose, and what it's made of. Move!"
"Yes!" The ANBU accepted the command and vanished.
But the moment the order left his mouth, Hiruzen felt his heart sink.
Investigate?
That was far easier said than done.
The Uchiha clan had only just been wiped out. Nearly all of the trustworthy ANBU under his command had already been assigned elsewhere-monitoring the movements of the great clans, preventing unrest inside the village, and helping deal with the aftermath of the massacre.
Manpower was stretched to the limit.
To divert forces now toward investigating this unheard-of phenomenon in the sky would only tear those fragile arrangements even thinner.
Hiruzen rubbed his temples wearily, then looked up at the impossible screen again, worry plain on his face.
"The Uchiha matter hasn't even settled," he murmured bitterly, "and now this. All I wanted was for Konoha to get through this period in peace. Why is everything turning out the exact opposite of what I hoped?"
He let out a long, exhausted breath.
"These truly are troubled times."
***
At the same moment, the other great hidden villages also descended into turmoil.
In Kumogakure, the Fourth Raikage's first reaction was not confusion, but fury.
"What the hell is that thing?!" he roared. "Blast it down!"
In the end, he even had Killer Bee draw on the power of a jinchuriki and transform into the Eight-Tails. Gyuki condensed a gigantic Tailed Beast Bomb and fired it toward the heavens with enough force to flatten a mountain.
But as that black sphere of destruction soared upward, it was as if it struck an invisible void. Its power rapidly weakened, dispersed, and then vanished entirely without leaving so much as a ripple behind.
The sky-screen remained where it was, distant and unreachable, as though it existed infinitely far away-no target that any physical attack could ever touch.
"How is that possible...?"
For the first time in a long while, the Fourth Raikage felt something slipping beyond his control.
In Sunagakure, the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa, stood high above the village and watched the sky in grim silence.
He tried to use Magnet Release to sense the thing, only to discover there was nothing there to sense. It had no weight, no texture, no trace of physical presence. It was like a pure image painted across the heavens.
In the end, he issued the safest order he could.
"Put the intelligence division on the highest alert. Monitor the sky at all hours, and strengthen village defenses. Don't let anyone exploit this confusion to stir up trouble."
In Iwagakure, Onoki flew into the air using Earth Release, trying to get closer to the mysterious curtain.
Yet the higher he rose, the farther away it seemed to become. No matter how near he thought he should be, it remained forever out of reach.
He even tried to shatter it with Dust Release, but the invisible boundary surrounding it rendered his kekkei tota completely useless.
"This thing... is no simple matter," Onoki muttered after descending, his old face heavy with caution.
"Pass the order down. The whole village goes to Level Two alert. Keep close watch on the movements of the sky-curtain and the other villages."
Kirigakure, meanwhile, was still trapped in the era of the Bloody Mist and drowning in its own internal brutality.
Faced with the sudden appearance in the heavens, the Fourth Mizukage, Yagura Karatachi-though in truth he was merely a puppet under Obito Uchiha's control-issued no clear response at all. He seemed almost indifferent to it.
That indifference only deepened the villagers' fear, yet no one dared speak openly.
And so, under the shadow of that sudden curtain in the sky, the entire shinobi world was swallowed by an atmosphere of tension, suspicion, and helpless vigilance.
No one knew why it had appeared.
No one knew what it would bring.
***
In the Land of Rain, cold rain pounded mercilessly against the tower walls.
Konan stood beside the window, the purple paper flower in her hair trembling faintly in the damp wind. She looked up at the huge and eerie screen overhead, and worry filled her clear violet eyes.
"Nagato, what exactly is this?" she asked quietly. "Some kind of genjutsu we've never seen before? Or a conspiracy from the Five Great Nations?"
There was tension in her voice, faint but undeniable. Something so completely beyond understanding stirred unease on instinct alone.
Behind her, deep in the shadows, Nagato's emaciated real body remained linked to the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path. From Pain's Deva Path came a cold, emotionless reply.
"There's no need to worry, Konan."
Pain slowly lifted his head. The purple ripples of the Rinnegan seemed as though they might pierce through the void itself and stare directly into the heart of the sky.
***
Far from all of them, in a mysterious space that overlapped reality and yet remained wholly isolated from it, a lone figure lounged as if seated on an invisible sofa.
His name was Yin An-a soul that did not belong to this world.
From that hidden place, he watched everything.
He watched Itachi kill his parents. He watched Sasuke collapse under the nightmare of Tsukuyomi. He watched that single tear slide silently down Itachi's face.
A playful smile lifted the corner of Yin An's mouth as he muttered to himself, his voice echoing through the empty space.
"What a pack of lunatics. Suspicious, obsessive, insane-and all of them so self-righteous in their suffering."
His smile deepened.
"But that's exactly what makes this interesting."
Yin An stretched lazily, but a calculating light flickered in his eyes.
"The script is ready. The emotional groundwork is perfect. So as the director, it's about time I started revising everyone's understanding of this world and nudging the whole scene toward something more in line with my profit goals."
There was a simple law for transmigrators.
If you crossed into another world, you needed a cheat.
Yin An's cheat was a system built entirely around deception and emotional manipulation.
The "Absolutely Hidden Space" included in his beginner gift pack allowed him to evade all detection completely. Without his permission, no one could enter this place or even sense it existed.
And now it was time to put the system's core ability to use.
As long as Yin An carried out acts of deception, or altered the shinobi world's understanding of reality-and as long as someone truly believed the falsehood-he could harvest benefits from the system.
That was the foundation of everything.
That was his path to profit.
***
By the next morning, dawn had already broken over Konoha.
The official news spread through the village like wildfire.
The Uchiha clan had been exterminated in a single night, and the culprit was the missing-nin Uchiha Itachi.
The entire Hidden Leaf was instantly thrown into upheaval.
Among the major clans, the reaction was subtle, complicated, and yet strangely unified.
The rabbit mourns the fox's death?
Perhaps.
And yet every clan chose silence. None openly voiced objections to the village leadership.
The civilians, however, were another matter entirely.
Their fear, their resentment, their relief, and their uncertainty had not even settled-and now that impossible curtain still hung over the world, waiting.
Whatever came next, it was clear the storm had only just begun.