Inside the largest dance hall in Tanzaku Town.
[Bang!!!]
A twisted body slammed hard into an iron door.
The door burst open under the impact, and the man, his face contorted in agony, coughed up a mouthful of blood before collapsing unconscious.
Uchiha Keizumi stepped—sometimes over, sometimes directly on—the corpses littering the floor.
He flicked a shuriken, finishing off the unconscious criminal on the ground.
The moment he stepped through the iron door, an indescribable stench rushed into his nose. But… for Keizumi and for Tachibana Jirō, it was tolerable—better than the smell of rotting corpses.
Tachibana Jirō hopped upward, placing his paw against the wall.
With a sharp click, the lights came on.
The pitch-black underground room was suddenly flooded with brightness.
And perhaps because of the abrupt light, the sound of iron chains clinking and dragging echoed ceaselessly, accompanied by the constant faint clang of cages knocking against each other.
As far as the eye could see—
The dance hall's basement was stacked with one rust-covered iron cage after another. Each cage wasn't large; for an adult, it would be uncomfortably cramped, but for a child, it fit just right.
There was even extra room for a "food bowl" and a "chamber pot."
Some of the slightly larger cages could easily fit two undernourished children.
And this…
…was no metaphor, but the very scene Uchiha Keizumi's eyes were witnessing.
When Shizune carefully entered, still carrying Tsunade on her back—
She froze in place.
In her line of sight—
She saw children, all between roughly five and fourteen years old, wearing little more than rags, their expressions lifeless and despairing, all locked in those rusted cages.
They were boys and girls alike, the only things they shared being their young age and the fact that their features were a little too refined compared to average children of their age.
Every one of them kept pressing into the corners of their cages, as if terrified of being dragged out.
Perhaps for these children, being pulled from the cage was even more terrifying than staying locked inside.
The overpowering stench in the air came from some of the uncovered chamber pots within the cages—when the smell intensified, it became almost unbearably acrid.
It wasn't just Shizune who stood there stunned—Tsunade was no different.
With no blood present in the basement, Tsunade dared to open her eyes.
But she quickly realized… the sight before her was even more shocking than the blood-soaked streets outside.
It made it even harder for her to accept.
At that moment, Uchiha Keizumi's voice echoed softly, as if patiently answering the question that had simultaneously formed in the minds of Tsunade and Shizune: "Most of them are war orphans from all over the Land of Fire—snatched away by human traffickers and then sold to the owner of this dance hall."
"The moment you saw that their faces were a little more refined than those of ordinary children their age, you should have been able to guess what those bastards in a place like this would see them as, right?"
"As medical-nin, you should understand even better that once children whose bodies have yet to develop fall into the hands of those beasts in human skin, their only fate… is a painful death."
Hearing this, Shizune's pupils trembled slightly where she stood frozen in place.
She could also clearly feel Tsunade-sama on her back gripping her shoulders so tightly in her emotional turmoil that she couldn't help but wince.
It hurt…
But the pain in her shoulders, as if Tsunade-sama might crush her bones, was nothing compared to the confusion, despair, and suffering that awaited the children in those cages.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg of the shinobi world's 'evil.'"
Uchiha Keizumi slowly crouched down, placing his palm on the tightly locked iron clasp of one cage. In less than two seconds, the lock melted into droplets of molten metal that dripped to the floor.
He opened the cage door, his eyes now a scarlet Three Tomoe Sharingan, staring straight at a little girl inside.
Those special eyes caught the girl's attention.
"Sleep for a while. When you wake up, everything will be fine."
The terror on the rag-clad girl's face slowly faded. Her wide eyes, unable to resist, gently closed, and she leaned against the bars, falling soundly asleep.
The soft sound of her breathing and the faint smile at the corner of her lips showed that she had instantly slipped into a beautiful dream—
a genjutsu dream woven by the Three Tomoe Sharingan.
Keizumi lifted her into his arms and wrapped her bare body tightly in the thin blanket from inside the cage.
After placing her gently on the floor, he said again, "Perhaps now you understand why I can be certain that not one of those I kill is innocent."
Tsunade, unusually for her, remained silent.
She was a Konoha shinobi who had lived through the Second Shinobi World War.
She had believed she had already seen enough evil in her life.
Yet what lay before her eyes now struck directly at her worldview.
And all of this evil was taking place here, in Tanzaku Town.
She, Tsunade-hime—one of the Sannin—had lived here for so many years, yet had never realized that right under her nose, such depravity had twisted so far out of control.
Or perhaps…
Lost in the pleasures of gambling, endlessly avoiding reality, and indulging herself recklessly, she had simply never cared about such things.
Otherwise, with only a little effort to dig deeper, she could have unearthed plenty of the evil festering within Tanzaku Town.
Tsunade didn't know how long her silence lasted. She simply watched as Uchiha Keizumi carried one child after another out of the cages.
She hadn't expected… that this Uchiha brat, who had killed so many without hesitation, could move with such gentleness at a moment like this.
Even the talkative shinobi cat, who normally couldn't stop running his mouth, was silent now—helping the boy free the caged children.
So this is your justice… Uchiha Keizumi.
Tsunade suddenly realized how ugly her own face must look right now. A guilt she couldn't explain welled up inside her, leaving her deeply ashamed.
"Shizune…"
"Y-Yes, Tsunade-sama?"
"Put me down."
"Oh!"
Once Tsunade hopped off Shizune's back, she silently walked to one of the cages and gripped its lock. With a light squeeze—
[Crack!]
The metal lock was crushed in her small hand.
Tsunade lifted out a girl who looked no more than five years old.
Feeling the child's trembling body, she opened her mouth but found no words. All she could do was gently stroke the girl's hair, take a deep breath, and murmur softly, "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"
Then Tsunade suddenly looked up—Uchiha Keizumi was standing right in front of her without her noticing.
This boy had shown no sign of fatigue even after killing two hundred seventy-seven criminals.
Yet now, she could clearly see the exhaustion on his face—the mark of overusing the ocular power of the Sharingan.
"Give her to me."
Uchiha Keizumi said, "I've woven her a beautiful dream. When she wakes, she'll forget all of this."
He paused, then added, "It's the same for all of them. They won't remember what they went through."
If there was anyone in the shinobi world who could be called the purest kind of good person—
Tsunade felt it could only be Uchiha Keizumi.
She met the calm, unwavering gaze of his Three Tomoe Sharingan and asked the question that had been weighing most heavily on her mind: "Have you seen many cases like this?"
Uchiha Keizumi answered briefly, "Not many, but not few either."
Tsunade felt a wave of confusion wash over her.
This shinobi world…
What had it become?
…
As the first light of dawn tore through the night, the flames that had been raging across Tanzaku Town finally began to die out.
The acrid stench of sulfur in the air had lessened under the gentle morning breeze.
But—
That metallic, rust-like smell of blood lingered stubbornly.
Because no one dared to come out and gather the corpses lying in the streets.
And no one dared to scrub away the blood that had seeped deep into the cracks between the paving stones.
"So many… so many dead…"
A resident of Tanzaku Town couldn't help but swallow hard. Summoning his courage, he opened his door and stepped outside—only to see three headless corpses lying just beyond his doorstep, and right in front of the threshold… a severed head, its eyes staring straight at him.
He jolted in fright, but in the next second, shock overtook him as he realized the face on that head looked familiar.
"This guy…"
He drew in a sharp breath, murmuring in disbelief, "Isn't this one of the most vicious gang leaders in all of Tanzaku Town?"
A sudden surge of curiosity made him hold his breath and, with hesitant courage, seek out a second head.
"Hss! This looks like the owner of the casino next door! I heard he was worth at least three hundred million ryō!"
When he found the third head, his expression twisted in horror.
"This looks like one of the most notorious enforcers in Tanzaku Town! I heard he's beaten at least a dozen people to death…"
At that moment—
Even as an ordinary civilian, he could see the pattern.
"Why does it feel like all the ones killed were bad people?!"
"Is it just my imagination…?"
…
Elsewhere—
"Shizune… how many criminals died last night?" Tsunade, who had not slept a wink, was back in her adult form. Resting her troublesome bust on the table, her expression was faintly dark and displeased.
Shizune, equally sleepless, quickly answered, "Last night, Uchiha Keizumi killed five hundred nineteen people! And that shinobi cat, Tachibana Jirō, killed one hundred twenty-one."
"Together, the man and the cat killed six hundred forty people."
At this point, Shizune hesitated, glanced cautiously at Tsunade, and continued, "Adding in the nineteen you killed, Tsunade-sama, that makes a total of six hundred fifty-nine criminals…"
Even as she said it, Shizune still found it hard to believe.
Last night, after Tsunade-sama helped Uchiha Keizumi rescue the children from the underground chamber…
She had personally killed someone!!!
Shizune could still remember how Tsunade-sama, her face dark, had grabbed one of the dance hall's shareholders with one hand and hurled him dozens of meters into the air. By the time he hit the ground, there was no need to check—he was beyond saving.
It was the first time Tsunade-sama had killed since developing her hemophobia.
Knowing her own condition, whenever Tsunade-sama could no longer suppress the urge to kill, she simply hurled her victims through the air, turning Tanzaku Town into the stage for nineteen rounds of "human flight."
That way…
She didn't have to see the blood.
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