"So you're that Uzumaki woman? What's your name?"
Hearing Uchiha Feiyu's question, the Uzumaki woman—who had been curled up in the corner—lifted her head. Her voice was timid.
"M-my lord… my name is Uzumaki Kana…"
"Uzumaki Kana, huh? I came here for you. No need to talk about anything else. Come with me now."
"Uh… y-yes… yes, my lord!"
Kana froze for a moment, but after glancing at the "human skewers" filling the prison, she immediately understood: he wasn't asking for her opinion.
Feiyu tugged lightly with one hand, and the cell door in front of Kana was yanked open. The red-haired woman followed behind him in a fearful, hesitant shuffle as they headed out of the prison.
Outside the prison, Kusagakure had long since been thrown into chaos.
After all, Feiyu had been killing openly in the village without the slightest attempt at concealment.
So when Feiyu stepped out of the prison gate with Uzumaki Kana, what greeted him was a dense black mass of Grass ninja—an entire crowd—staring at him with tense, wary faces.
"Who are you? Why are you invading Kusagakure? What is your relationship with that Uzumaki woman?!"
The Grass ninja at the front questioned him coldly. Feiyu had no interest in wasting words.
"Quite a crowd. Alright—let's say hello. Let's get acquainted."
The moment his words fell, Feiyu's hands came together briefly—only when using A-rank and above did he still need that motion.
Then he opened his mouth and exhaled gently.
Yet that tiny stream of air instantly became an unbelievable gale, twisting and condensing into a sky-piercing tornado that connected heaven and earth!
The Grass ninja standing before him saw that colossal tornado and turned deathly pale. They screamed and tried to flee—only to be swallowed into it.
"Tch… The power still can't match a full-strength Tailed Beast Bomb… but in terms of destructive range, it's far beyond those Tailed Beast Bombs."
"One move like this, and half the village is gone."
A perfectly ordinary A-rank Wind Release jutsu, infused with senjutsu chakra—cast by Feiyu, whose mastery over chakra nature transformation was nearly monstrous—became something that surpassed S-rank entirely.
A calamity.
A disaster.
With a casual pushing motion, Feiyu sent the violent tornado forward. It started slow, then accelerated faster and faster, until its speed became terrifying. Amid thunderous roaring, it tore half of Kusagakure into the air, hurling everything away for over ten kilometers before finally dissipating at the horizon.
Of course, being flung by a tornado didn't guarantee death for a ninja. Genin and chunin were basically doomed, but jōnin still had a decent chance of surviving.
As for the Grass ninja who had been standing right in front of him, they were already up in the sky. Against a tornado of that scale, so-called Earth Release or Water Release defenses were meaningless—when even the ground itself was being ripped up, what good were earthen walls?
Feiyu clicked his tongue and extended a hand. A strange suction burst from his palm.
With a pfft, one of the killed Grass ninja's body rapidly shriveled, collapsing into a blood-red pellet. All that remained on the ground were scraps of bodily impurities and clothing.
"Thirteenth one… I really have to improve my method of refining origin. Extracting it one by one is too much trouble!"
Most of the refined "origins" were tiny and filled with impurities—already close to useless for Feiyu—but for ordinary ninja, they were still quite valuable.
Even if it harmed long-term potential… the chakra system didn't have much "potential" to begin with. To grow stronger, you relied on external power anyway.
With that, Feiyu formed another seal.
"Wood Clone Jutsu!"
With a puff of smoke, more than a hundred wood clones appeared, then spread out in all directions and began slaughtering through Kusagakure.
With Feiyu's level of power, even splitting into hundreds of wood clones was enough to rival top-tier elite jōnin. Kusagakure barely had anyone who could withstand the clones' rampage.
After Feiyu unleashed that wind jutsu, Kusagakure went silent. No more ninja came rushing out to stop him.
But the Grass ninja choosing not to block him didn't mean Feiyu was willing to spare them. In his eyes, they were already premium sacrifices.
Half an hour later, all of Feiyu's clones returned—dragging along a group of Grass ninja who had completely lost the will to fight and surrendered outright. Even so, the number of survivors was less than a thousand.
His opening wind technique alone had wiped out half the village's ninja. Add the clones' slaughter, and the remaining count was predictable.
Of course, some Grass ninja hadn't been in the village, and there were also forces stationed at Hōzuki Castle—so it wasn't as though Kusagakure truly only had this many left.
If fewer than a thousand were all that remained, Kusagakure might as well be erased from the map. Feiyu wouldn't even bother "subjugating" them.
The captured Grass ninja were forced to their knees, heads bowed so low they didn't dare look up.
"Tch, so that's all that's left? Whatever."
"Trash—lift your heads."
The Grass ninja raised their heads trembling, staring at Feiyu's smiling face.
"Right now you have two choices. One: become my dog. Two: I send you to meet your companions."
"Lord! I'll be your dog—your tool!"
"Spare me, my lord!"
The ninja begged instantly, abandoning any shred of pride. Kusagakure was a fence-sitting village to begin with, and the survivors—those who'd lasted to the end—had been scared witless by Feiyu's strength. Of course they didn't dare resist.
Feiyu wasn't surprised at all. He sneered, asked a few questions, then ordered the remaining high-ranking members of Kusagakure to be brought out.
In a minor village like Kusagakure, the "high command" wasn't a bunch of elderly councilors like in major villages. The people at the top here were simply the ones who could fight.
"Hm… three souls with elite-jōnin-grade quality. So Kusagakure has a little bit of foundation after all."
Even in the great villages, elite jōnin usually numbered only around a dozen or so. For Kusagakure to have three with that level of "soul quality"—even if their combat effectiveness might be lower due to poor jutsu inheritance—was already far better than most small villages.
Feiyu didn't bother with conversation. He simply cast a mind-warping illusion derived from the Du Shen Art, turning them into loyal subordinates on the spot.
Then Feiyu took out the origin pellets he'd collected. Aside from the jōnin-level pellets, he handed the rest to these leaders and ordered them distributed among the remaining Grass ninja:
Genin: one pellet each
Chunin: two pellets each
Jōnin: four pellets each
After the distribution, there were still three to four hundred pellets left—Feiyu had the three leaders swallow all of them.
Those pellets were enough to raise a ninja's baseline in every category. With a bit of training, their rank would rise naturally.
Especially the three elite-jōnin leaders who each consumed more than a hundred pellets— even without powerful techniques, sheer raw stats alone could push them into the middle tier of Kage-level strength.
As the blood-red pellets went down, everyone felt power surge through them. Chakra and physical strength skyrocketed. The Grass ninja's faces flushed with excitement, their eyes shining.
But when Feiyu's cold gaze swept over them, the crowd immediately wilted again.
They weren't idiots. If someone could boost their strength so easily, he certainly had the means to crush them even more easily.
"Good. Looks like you didn't do anything stupid just because your strength jumped."
"I was expecting I'd have to kill a few of you to make an example."
The Grass ninja shuddered and secretly breathed a sigh of relief—
Only to hear Feiyu's next words.
"Do you want more pellets?"
The three leaders—already controlled—dropped to their knees at once and shouted loudly:
"Lord, we want more pellets! We want to become stronger! Please give your orders—so long as you give us more pellets, we are willing to serve you!"
"Ha… you don't need to 'serve me'."
"These pellets are made by refining a ninja's origin. The stronger the ninja, the stronger the pellets you can make."
"As long as you bring me living ninja, I'll give you more pellets. The more you bring—and the stronger they are—the better the pellets you'll receive."
Hearing that, the Grass ninja stared at one another. No one spoke, but a fire quietly ignited in their eyes.
In the world of shinobi, power was everything. For strength, these people would do anything.
Orochimaru's curse marks. Wood Release human experiments. Danzō's arm of transplanted Sharingan. The immortal duo. Sasori of the Red Sand…
To become stronger, shinobi routinely turned themselves into monsters—and ordinary ninja still envied them.
Because for ordinary ninja, even if they wanted a shortcut like that, they had no access. Most who tried ended up as nothing more than cold numbers in failed experiment logs.
The cruelest reality of the shinobi world was this:
A normal ninja's ceiling was locked.
Even the Eight Gates—supposedly the ultimate "effort path"—would still cripple you if you lacked the right talent.
Now, the Grass ninja had found a real path to changing their fate.
Capturing ninja from other villages would be dangerous. One mistake could cost their lives. And if they attacked great-village ninja too often, retaliation would follow.
But compared to forbidden techniques and experiments with survival rates of one in ten—or one in a hundred—this was practically safe.
"Lord, don't worry. We'll bring you more ninja—offer them as sacrifices!"
"That's right, Lord! Please rest assured!"
Feiyu was, in fact, very reassured.
He didn't believe the Grass ninja truly accepted him in their hearts—but he did believe they couldn't resist the temptation of the origin pellets.
Not to mention: he had already taken control of Kusagakure's three remaining top leaders—its three strongest Kage-level combatants.
Under those conditions, even if the Grass ninja secretly hated him, they had no way to threaten him.
After subjugating Kusagakure, those three leaders also revealed the "secret" of the Box of Ultimate Bliss. That strange box was currently kept at Hōzuki Castle.
Hōzuki Castle was another major Kusagakure stronghold. Nearly a thousand ninja were stationed there year-round, along with over a hundred prisoners from the Five Great Villages.
The prisoners sent to Hōzuki Castle were almost all high-level political prisoners. Their strength rarely fell below Special Jōnin.
So in terms of average quality, the ninja there were actually more "elite" than Kusagakure's main village.
But to the Grass ninja now, Hōzuki Castle wasn't a high-security prison.
It was a giant gift package.
More than a hundred jōnin and Special Jōnin—restricted from using chakra—weren't they the most perfect pellets imaginable?
Feiyu was mildly interested in the Box of Ultimate Bliss, but he had no need to act personally anymore.
With a single order, the three former leaders led a portion of the Grass ninja to the not-too-distant Hōzuki Castle and brought the box back.
Along with it, they also brought back:
Hōzuki Castle's warden, Mui
Over a hundred imprisoned ninja from the Five Great Villages
And the thousand-plus Grass ninja stationed there as guards
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