"Three hundred sixty miles northwest from Fire Country, cross seven mountains and eight rivers, through thirty miles of yellow mud. Past Badger's Ravine, over Fly's Head Ridge—when you see white camphor trees, turn left. Count to seventy-two, and you're home."
Kakuzu's fingers traced the bark of the camphor tree. The nursery rhyme tasted like ash in his mouth—words he'd sung as a child, before the village elders sent him to kill the First Hokage. Before that mission turned him into a missing-nin with a bounty on his head.
Forty-seven years of running. All because of one failed assassination.
"Seventy-first tree, sir."
Kamizuru Kuroshi's voice pulled him back.
"Good." Kakuzu's hand dropped. "Engineer corps takes point. Sweep for traps. And Kuroshi—" His eyes hardened. "No one enters civilian homes. Understood?"
"Of course, sir. Lord Kazekage's orders—don't disturb the populace." Kuroshi grinned. "You really do care about your hometown folks."
"Hometown folks?" Kakuzu's laugh was bitter. "There's no one left to care about. The village is empty."
Kuroshi's grin died. "Empty? But—"
"Our movements have been compromised for over ten days. You think eighty thousand civilians are just waiting for us to slaughter them?" Kakuzu shook his head. "Even that incompetent Third Takikage would've ordered evacuation by now."
"Then why avoid the houses?"
"Because I know these people." Kakuzu's voice went flat. "They'll have rigged every building with traps. Pressure plates. Explosive tags hidden in rice jars. Poison needles in door frames." His eyes narrowed. "I'm not letting you walk into their homes because I'm sentimental. I'm doing it because I'm not an idiot."
Kuroshi swallowed. "So... we came all this way for nothing?"
"Nothing?" Kakuzu's smile was cold. "Eighty thousand refugees hiding in the mountains. How much food do you think they carried? How long before they're starving?" He gestured at the forest. "There's game up there, sure. Wild boar. Deer. Maybe enough to feed a few hundred for a week. Not eighty thousand."
Understanding dawned on Kuroshi's face.
"We guard the village..."
"And wait for them to come crawling back." Kakuzu nodded. "Can't run from a temple if you're starving outside it. Oh—and Kuroshi? When we get inside, check everything. Food supplies, water stores, weapons caches. Assume it's all poisoned until proven otherwise."
Two kilometers later, they found the seventy-second camphor tree.
The roar of the waterfall was deafening now—a constant thunder that made Kakuzu's chest vibrate. He'd grown up with that sound. Fallen asleep to it every night for the first fifteen years of his life.
Now it just reminded him of everything he'd lost.
"Engineer corps, advance!"
Four hundred men in heavy armor moved forward—veterans who'd spent years learning to disarm traps without dying. The formation was textbook: shadow clones in front, real bodies fifty meters back. Let the disposable copies trigger the killing floor.
And oh, there was definitely a killing floor.
The first clone stepped on a pressure plate. Bamboo spikes erupted from the ground—each one smeared with human waste. Infection would kill as surely as the puncture wound.
POOF. Clone dispersed.
Another stepped forward. Trip wire. Swinging log studded with nails.
Pitfall. Poisoned caltrops. Explosive tags hidden under leaves.
POOF. POOF. POOF.
Two kilometers of road. Hundreds of traps. Every shadow clone in the engineer corps exhausted before they even saw the village.
Kuroshi whistled low. "If we'd just charged in..."
"Half the army would be dead." Kakuzu's voice was dismissive. "This is what happens when old men cling to old tactics. Traps worked great in the Warring States period. Back when shadow clones didn't exist." He shook his head. "Now? Traps are finite. Clones are infinite. Simple math."
The forest opened up.
Kuroshi's jaw dropped.
The village sprawled across the valley like something out of a painting—hundreds of buildings clustered around a central tower, all of it hidden behind a curtain of falling water. The waterfall itself was massive, easily a hundred meters tall, the spray creating permanent rainbows in the afternoon light.
"Holy shit." Kuroshi shaded his eyes. "I had no idea this was here. Who builds a village behind a waterfall?"
"People who want to hide." Kakuzu's gaze swept the empty streets. No movement. No smoke from cooking fires. Not even a dog barking. "Release your hornets. Full sweep."
"Sir, I really don't think—"
Kuroshi sighed and bit his thumb. Blood welled. "Summoning Jutsu!"
A dozen hornets materialized—each one the size of a fist, wings buzzing like chainsaws. They scattered across the village in a black cloud.
Five minutes later, they returned.
"Nothing," Kuroshi reported. "Not a single chakra signature. Village is completely abandoned."
"Good." Kakuzu pointed at the central tower. "See that building?"
"The tall one? Yeah. Damn, that's got to be... what, seven stories? Taller than the Kazekage's office."
"That's the Takikage building." Kakuzu's voice was flat. "Notice anything else?"
Kuroshi scanned the village. Frowned. "The civilian homes are all... two, maybe three stories max." His eyes widened. "Oh. Oh."
"Eighty thousand tenant farmers." Kakuzu's smile was razor-thin. "All of them working land they don't own, paying rent to the Takikage's family. Every harvest, sixty percent goes to the village coffers. The farmers keep just enough to survive." He spat. "And people wonder why I killed the elders."
Kuroshi looked sick. "That's... I didn't know villages still did that. In Moon Lake, everyone owns their land. We don't even pay agricultural tax anymore—the government just buys our surplus at market rate."
"Because Jinghang isn't a feudal lord." Kakuzu started walking toward the tower. "The Takikage? He's basically a king. And this—" He gestured at the seven-story monument to excess. "—is his castle."
"It's disgusting."
"It's useful." Kakuzu's eyes gleamed. "Building that size? We can house most of the army inside. Kuroshi, take your men and secure it. I have... personal business to attend to."
"What kind of business?"
"The settling-old-scores kind." Kakuzu turned to two other shinobi. "Sanji. Daihi. Grab a squadron and follow me."
The graveyard sat on a hill overlooking the village.
Kakuzu stood before a tombstone, hands clenched so tight his knuckles had gone white. The carved characters were still crisp despite decades of weather:
TOMB OF FIRST TAKIKAGE SŌRYŪ
"Hello, old friend." Kakuzu's voice was soft. Poisonous. "Been a while, hasn't it? Forty-seven years since I cut your throat. One slash—that's all it took. And you know what that one cut cost me?"
He kicked the tombstone. It rocked but didn't fall.
"Everything. My home. My family. My life." Another kick. The stone cracked. "The elders sent me to kill the First Hokage. I failed. Came back empty-handed. And what did you do, Sōryū? What did the great First Takikage do when his loyal soldier returned from an impossible mission?"
The tombstone toppled.
"You tried to execute me. For failing." Kakuzu's laugh was jagged glass. "So I killed you first. Slit your throat in the village square and ran. Forty-seven years of being hunted. Forty-seven years of surviving."
He looked at Sanji and Daihi. Both men had served in the Yuexi Peninsula debt collection team—they knew what came next.
They didn't hesitate. Shovels bit into earth. The grave was shallow—barely six feet deep. Within minutes, they'd exposed the coffin.
Thirteen-ring mulberry wood. Ornate carvings. Gold-inlaid handles.
"Fancy." Kakuzu's smile was terrible. "Even in death, you lived better than your people. Open it."
Crowbars pried the lid free.
Inside: bones. A skeleton in rotted silk robes, hands folded across its chest. The skull grinned up at them, empty eye sockets dark as the void.
Kakuzu stared down at the remains of the man who'd ruined his life.
"Sir?" Daihi hesitated. "The body's already—"
"I said burn it." Kakuzu's voice was ice. "Coffin, bones, silk—everything. I want ash. I want him erased from existence. I want there to be nothing left."
Sanji nodded. "Fire Release: Flame Bullet!"
The coffin erupted in flames. Mulberry wood burned hot and fast, the silk robes igniting like paper. Bones blackened, cracked, crumbled. The skull collapsed inward with a sound like breaking pottery.
Kakuzu watched it all burn.
Forty-seven years. This should have felt like victory. Like closure.
Instead, it just felt... empty.
The flames died down. Nothing remained but ash and scorched earth.
"Let's go," Kakuzu said quietly. "We have a war to win."
He turned his back on the grave and walked away, leaving the past to smolder behind him.
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