Chapter 191: Some People Are Alive, But They Are Already Dead (Bonus Chapter)
The funeral proceedings drew to a close, leaving behind a heavy, suffocating silence. Hiruzen Sarutobi stood before the sea of black-clad mourners, his weary eyes scanning the dispersing crowd. The familiar, striking figure of Uchiha Kagami was nowhere to be found. A knot of worry tightened in the older man's chest. Knowing there were still critical wartime matters to address, he briefly considered dispatching Danzo to check on the Uchiha.
He quickly discarded the thought. Danzo's abrasive, sharp-tongued nature was the last thing anyone needed on a day like today. Instead, Hiruzen turned his head slightly, murmuring a few quiet directives to a masked Anbu operative lingering in his shadow.
Before he could step away from the memorial site, a shinobi from the Sealing Squad approached. The man's shoulders slumped, and his voice cracked with raw emotion. "Lord Hiruzen... the scroll. The one with a hundred layered seals left behind by the Fourth Hokage. The seals have completely dissipated. It can be opened now."
Hiruzen closed his eyes. The finality of those words struck like a physical blow. "I am aware," he replied, keeping his voice steady despite the ache in his throat. "Bring the scroll to my office shortly."
The cemetery slowly emptied, yet a small cluster of figures remained rooted before the freshly carved tombstone, entirely unwilling to walk away.
Without warning, a guttural, beast-like roar tore through the quiet graveyard. Hiruko fell to his knees, his hands clawing at the damp earth as he wailed in pure, unadulterated agony.
Orochimaru stepped forward. For a man usually so detached, he displayed a rare, quiet patience toward his fellow researcher. "Hiruko, calm yourself," Orochimaru said, his smooth voice cutting through the frantic sobs. "Take this grief, this indignation, and forge it into a weapon for the front lines. That fortress the Fourth captured still requires your modifications. If you accelerate your work, you will soon be dropping those fortress cannons directly onto the skulls of our enemies."
Hiruko shook his head violently, his eyes bloodshot and wild. "No! I refuse to accept this. I absolutely do not believe it. The Fourth Hokage is not dead. I am going to her office right now to find her!"
Hissing through his teeth, Hiruko scrambled to his feet and sprinted madly in the direction of the Hokage Building.
This time, Orochimaru made no move to stop him. He knew Teacher Hiruzen would be returning to the office soon enough; the old man could handle comforting the frantic researcher. Orochimaru turned his pale gaze back to the cold stone marker, his golden eyes reflecting a complex array of emotions.
"I still owe the Fourth exactly two hundred and fifty-three million, two hundred thousand ryo," Orochimaru murmured to the wind. "She was always such a scatterbrain. She dumped every last coin of her living expenses into the laboratory, and then felt too embarrassed to ask for a single ryo back. She must have been struggling terribly during those days."
He remembered the apprenticeship banquet vividly. He had taken every single bill earned from selling his mechanical arm and stuffed it into a red envelope for her, leaving absolutely nothing for his own expenses. He had even gone out of his way to loudly complain in front of Hiruko about how the Fourth's funds had been drained by him and Tsunade. Hiruko had panicked so badly that he instantly emptied his own secret life savings, sealing it all into another red envelope for her.
Yet, the boundary dividing the living from the dead remained cruel and absolute.
The Fourth Hokage, the woman who had single-handedly propped up the entirety of Konoha on her shoulders, ultimately could not outrun the end of her own life.
'If humans could only achieve immortality...' The words of his foolish, brilliant apprentice echoed relentlessly in Orochimaru's mind.
She had once argued that living forever might strip away a person's drive, their sense of pursuit. But looking at this grave, Orochimaru found that logic entirely flawed. Human life was simply too fragile, too brief. To perish before uncovering the world's hidden truths, before finishing the endless experiments waiting in the dark—what an unbearable tragedy that was.
Beside him, Tsunade sniffled loudly, her face buried in her hands. Her eyes were puffy and red from hours of unbroken weeping.
"I never even got around to writing her a proper IOU," Tsunade choked out, her voice thick with congestion. "I honestly thought about dodging the debt for a while. I figured if she ever truly ran out of money, Senior Kagami would swoop in and secretly fund her anyway. She would never demand the money herself, and I..."
Her voice broke completely. She lowered her head, her shoulders shaking as she drew in ragged, wet breaths.
Jiraiya stood a few paces away, his usual boisterous energy entirely extinguished. He offered no words of comfort, simply staring at the damp grass.
It turned out that when a person endured enough brutal partings, the tears eventually stopped falling. Teacher Hiruzen had spoken the truth about that.
Jiraiya shifted his attention to a young, blond-haired shinobi standing completely frozen before the tombstone. Slowly, the Toad Sage closed the distance between them.
The Fourth Hokage had sacrificed herself to shield them all. Jia had also perished for the village, trading his life to secure vital intelligence. Jiraiya had already inherited their heavy will. Now, he needed to force himself to stand tall and guide the next generation.
He stopped beside the blond youth and rested a large, calloused hand on the boy's trembling shoulder.
"Minato, isn't it?" Jiraiya asked softly. "Before she marched off to the battlefield, the Fourth Hokage spoke to me about you. She hoped you might travel to Mount Myoboku to master Sage Mode. In the days ahead, please allow me to look after you."
Far across the village, within the sprawling Uchiha Clan Lands, the returning mourners walked in absolute silence. Every face bore a mask of deep grief. The vast compound was so quiet that the only sound echoing off the traditional wooden walls was the synchronized crunch of their footsteps.
To these proud shinobi, Ida Mutzuki was far more than just the Fourth Hokage.
She had been raised right here, running through these very streets since childhood. Many of the clan members present were her exact peers. They had bled together on the battlefield, endured grueling training sessions in the dirt, and completed countless life-or-death missions side by side.
True, she had always been impossibly fast, leaving them staring at her back as she surged ahead to heights they could barely comprehend. But in their hearts, she was their closest friend. She had shared their meals, laughed at their jokes, and playfully bickered with them under the Konoha sun.
She did not possess the Uchiha name, yet she embodied the Uchiha spirit more fiercely than anyone else.
Whenever the Fourth Hokage issued a decree, the Uchiha Clan passed it unanimously. Not a single voice of dissent ever rose against her. They respected her authority, championed her ideals, and executed her policies with blind, unwavering loyalty.
They did not do this simply because she wore the Hokage hat, nor merely because she was the sole disciple of Patriarch Madara. They did it because of who she was.
Because she was Ida Mutzuki.
She carried a magnetic, overwhelming charisma. Without a drop of Uchiha blood, without the legendary crimson gaze of the Sharingan, she had effortlessly brought the most arrogant, prideful clan in the shinobi world to its knees in pure reverence.
And now, she was gone. She had chosen to stay behind, personally holding the line against impossible odds just to ensure the Uchiha elites could retreat safely. How could they not feel as though their very souls had been hollowed out?
Suddenly, Uchiha Kaito and several other young men stopped dead in their tracks. The dam broke.
These were the elites, the hand-picked prodigies who had received direct tutelage from the Fourth Hokage. They had spent more time with her than anyone else. Amidst the chaos of the battlefield, they had been completely blind to the larger tactical picture, strictly following the Clan Leader's orders to fall back. Only after reaching the rendezvous point and merging with the reinforcement battalions did they learn the horrifying truth of what their Hokage had done to buy their lives.
They had maintained their stoic facades at the cemetery, upholding the clan's pride in public. But here, surrounded by the familiar walls of their home, the facade shattered. These hardened, grown men—warriors who had fearlessly slaughtered enemies days prior—dropped to the dirt and wept like lost children.
Uchiha Kiyokazu stepped forward, his mouth opening to offer words of strength to his juniors. Instead, a pathetic, strangled sob escaped his own throat.
As the cousin of Uchiha Kagami, Kiyokazu knew the Fourth Hokage intimately. He remembered all those times in their youth when Kagami desperately wanted to see her but lacked a proper excuse, shamelessly dragging Kiyokazu along as a convenient buffer.
An Anbu operative materialized at the entrance of the compound, pausing at the heartbreaking sight before respectfully approaching the elder.
"Elder Kiyokazu," the masked shinobi greeted quietly. "Where might Advisor Kagami be? Lord Hiruzen urgently requires his presence to discuss the forbidden technique scroll left behind by the Fourth Hokage."
Kiyokazu turned his head, his gaze drifting toward the distant, secluded grounds of Uchiha Madara's former estate. His voice was barely a whisper.
"He is in the courtyard where the Fourth Hokage lived as a child. But that specific perimeter is locked behind a complex seal. She only ever entrusted the unlocking sequence to Kagami, so none of us can enter. Ever since he finished interrogating the enemy shinobi captured on the Land of Lightning battlefield, he locked himself inside. He has not stepped out in days."
Knowing this matter directly concerned the Fourth Hokage, Kiyokazu hesitated. He worried that Kagami's blinding grief might cause him to miss crucial information. "Allow me to go in his stead for now," Kiyokazu offered. "Whatever Lord Hiruzen needs to discuss, I will personally relay the message to Kagami when he finally emerges."
The Anbu nodded, and the two men departed toward the Hokage Building.
The remaining Uchiha clansmen forced themselves off the ground, wiping their faces and dragging their exhausted bodies back to their respective homes. Their Hokage had died to give them a future; the least they could do was rest, recover their strength, and prepare for the brutal battles that still loomed on the horizon.
Deep within Uchiha Madara's old residence, the sprawling courtyard remained utterly spotless, devoid of a single speck of dust despite years of vacancy. Every wooden floorboard and sliding door had been carefully maintained. Walking through the estate felt like stepping back in time.
In the small, secluded courtyard that had once belonged to Stelle, the seasonal flowers were in full, vibrant bloom, painting a beautiful, tragic contrast to the heavy atmosphere.
Inside the darkened room, Uchiha Kagami sat perfectly still in the very chair Stelle used to occupy when she spent her childhood nights researching complex jutsu.
The heavy wooden shutters were pulled tight, suffocating every stray beam of sunlight. Endless, pitch-black darkness swallowed him whole.
He simply sat there, staring into the void. He did not blink. He did not speak. He was nothing more than a breathing sculpture, entombed in his own memories.
A continuous, suffocating blanket of despair smothered the entirety of Konoha. Even the normally vibrant and chaotic Commercial Street was terrifyingly desolate today, the shopkeepers mourning behind closed doors.
Inside the Hokage Building, Hiruzen Sarutobi sat heavily in his chair. He reached out, his aged fingers brushing against the sealing scroll resting on his desk.
The complex ink patterns had faded into nothingness. The scroll, which had once radiated an intense, almost powerful aura of chakra, was now just a mundane roll of parchment.
It had unlocked too late.
If the seal had broken just a fraction of a time earlier, or if the Konoha reinforcements had managed to break through the enemy lines sooner, the supreme medical ninjutsu contained within this scroll could have saved her. Stelle would not have died.
Hiruzen's hand trembled. No, that wasn't right. He clearly remembered the day Stelle had handed this scroll over to the council. She had explicitly stated that the complex sealing matrix was directly tethered to her own life force.
Unless she actively chose to unseal it herself, the locking mechanism would only fail upon the complete cessation of her chakra. It would only open if she died.
It was a cruel, unsolvable paradox. A dead end designed by a genius who had already accepted her own fate.
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