The Daimyō's son ran toward his father, sobbing and screaming.
When he saw that the Daimyō was already dead—his body stiff and cold—his initial terror slowly gave way to rage. He snatched up the Daimyō's dagger.
"I'll kill you! I'll avenge my father!"
Clutching the blade in both hands, he lunged at the unconscious Hidan.
The wooden spike lodged in Hidan's throat suddenly exploded outward into a mass of vicious thorns.
More than a dozen spikes pierced through the Daimyō's son from every angle.
Yako stepped out from the darkness.
"If you were pretending to be dead, then you're far too calculating to be left alive.
If you recognized your father's true ugliness and felt sympathy for Hidan, then you'd be an unfilial son, and you still couldn't be left alive.
But if you wanted to kill Hidan…"
His voice turned colder.
"Then you definitely can't be left alive."
The Daimyō's son was lifted into the air by the thorns, his body skewered through with spikes. Just before he died, he turned his head and saw a ninja in a fox mask.
Th-That was…
Wasn't that the Vice Commander of Konoha's ANBU his father had once spoken of?
So it was true.
Before ninja, nobles were nothing more than pitiful creatures who could be slaughtered at any moment.
Nobles crushed peasants like ants.
But ninja crushed nobles just as easily.
Yako walked over to Hidan and looked down at the horrifying wound in his throat.
The spike had gone straight through his Adam's apple and into the cervical spine.
And yet, Hidan's healing was absurdly slow—so slow that it was almost invisible to the naked eye.
The Daimyō, on the other hand, had shown extremely strong regenerative ability.
Hidan might not die, but at this rate, a wound like this would take at least several days to heal.
In the original story, Hidan could stab through his own heart and still jump right back up.
Could it be because, as an evil god, his divine power was still too weak?
Yako closed his eyes and returned to his divine realm.
At the foot of the Evil God statue, within the gray-white pool, there was only a single drop of blood.
That was the blood offered by the Daimyō, the sacrifice.
He lightly connected his consciousness to the Evil God statue and immediately understood the nature of this deity.
[Host Status: Evil God Yako]
[Ability One: Blood Arbiter Faith]
As an Evil God, you may hear the prayers of your believers and respond to them.
[Ability Two: Immortal Body]
As long as the Blood Arbiter Divine Realm remains intact, the soul shall never perish.
Yako had already cultivated the Threefold Wrathful King Dharma Form, allowing him to decide the appearance of his own death. This ability did not conflict with his cheat.
[Ability Three: Near-Death Recovery]
The more blood drops offered by sacrifices in the Evil God Blood Pool, the faster physical injuries recover.
If the amount of blood in the Blood Pool exceeds the amount lost from the wound, the wound will heal rapidly at a visible rate.
At present, there was only one drop of blood in Yako's Evil God Blood Pool.
And that single drop had come from the sacrificed Daimyō.
In other words, his divine power was currently only enough to restore an injury equivalent to the loss of a single drop of blood.
If it was an internal injury that didn't involve bleeding—malnutrition, for example—then the Immortal Body's healing ability would be useless.
Yako crouched down, and a tiny wooden spike, no thicker than a toothpick, extended from his fingertip.
He pricked Hidan's arm.
A single drop of blood seeped out.
After wiping it away, Yako watched the wound close at a visible speed.
His eyes narrowed in understanding.
So that was how it worked.
The speed of recovery depended on how many blood drops had been offered in sacrifice.
The human body contained around ninety thousand drops of blood.
If Hidan offered ninety thousand sacrifices to himself…
Would that mean even an injury that sprayed out all his blood could still recover visibly fast?
Ninety thousand sacrifices wasn't even that difficult in the shinobi world.
Pick any hidden village.
Pick any castle town.
There would be an entire village, an entire city, full of evil people.
There were too many evil people.
Hidan alone wouldn't be enough to process them all.
…Wait.
Hidan had already suffered enough.
Was it really right to keep using him as a test subject?
Now that Yako also possessed an Immortal Body, he could probably run the same experiments on himself and get the same results.
Leaning down, he used his Water Transformation healing technique to stabilize Hidan's condition.
Then he slowly walked beneath the statue.
The flickering light of two candles danced across the Evil God statue—and across Yako's fox mask.
He tilted his head back and stared up at it.
There could only be one Evil God in the shinobi world.
And that Evil God…
…was him.
Yako formed hand seals.
"Earth Release: Earth-Core Movement!"
The floor of the underground palace cracked apart, and the liquid in the blood pool immediately began pouring into the widening fissures.
The chasm spread rapidly, opening into a bottomless rift in the middle of the chamber.
The entire castle above began to rumble like an earthquake.
The thunderous shaking sent everyone on the surface fleeing in panic from their homes.
Once the blood pool had fully drained away, the blood coating the statue dried up and clung to it like a filthy stain. It no longer had that vivid, crystalline sheen.
The statue slowly tipped over—
—and plunged headfirst into the abyss.
It fell for what felt like an eternity before, at last, a booming impact echoed up from below.
"Wood Release! Myōjinmon!"
One wooden gate after another grew out from within the crack, descending layer by layer to seal the Evil God statue at the bottom of the chasm.
Still not satisfied, Yako formed hand seals once more.
"Four Symbols Seal!"
A swirling Uzumaki sealing formula appeared atop the final Myōjinmon gate—the Four Symbols Seal.
With Yako's current strength, undoing the seal at the bottom of that fissure was virtually impossible.
Then Yako flicked out a length of iron vine, wrapped up the corpses of the Daimyō and his son, and tossed them into the rift as well.
Another set of hand seals.
The earth sealed shut.
Then he turned, hoisted the unconscious Hidan over his shoulder, and vanished.
Inside the castle, chaos had already erupted.
The temporary Guardian Captain rushed into the great hall in terror—
only to find that the Daimyō was gone.
"Where's the Daimyō?! Where is the Daimyō?!"
"How could we be this useless…? We've betrayed Lord Fox's trust… and Jonin Kyoichi's as well…"
When Hidan woke again, he found himself outside the Capital.
His hand immediately flew to his throat.
The wooden spike had pierced straight through it before, leaving a hole thick enough for a finger.
But now…
That hole was gone.
"The great Evil God… was it you who heard my prayer?"
Hidan hurriedly dropped to his knees and began praying fervently.
Then his eyes snapped open—
Only for him to squeeze them shut again at once.
The Evil God had answered him!
Hidan's soul appeared in a silent void.
And there, he saw two colossal divine statues that towered between heaven and earth.
One was a crimson Wrathful King, with three heads and six arms.
The other was an Evil God, its entire body covered in blood.
A voice echoed through the emptiness.
"The shinobi world is filled with death and filth—a mire soaked in original sin.
Killing is not evil. It is sacred purification.
The spray of blood is the cleansing spring.
The cries of the dying are their final confession before death.
Killing is not destruction.
It is merciful reincarnation.
Like wiping clean a stone tablet covered in errors, and waiting for a new chapter to be written.
All who commit evil must repent before the gods.
My believer—walk the shinobi world.
Use pain to cleanse their sins.
Use blood to delight the gods."
Hidan's hands trembled uncontrollably as he muttered to himself over and over.
"All who commit evil… must repent… cleanse sin through pain… delight the gods with blood…"
His voice grew more feverish, more devout.
"Great Evil God! Exalted gods! I will devote my entire life to serving you! I will offer sacrifices to you! I will delight you!"
When Hidan emerged from the divine temple, he looked down at his own frail hands.
The fact that he had escaped from the Daimyō's underground chamber…
It had all been the result of miracles.
The Evil God had saved him.
But as for that crimson Wrathful King…
He didn't know what kind of god that was. Yet the instant he laid eyes on it, he had somehow understood its name.
"All who commit evil… delight the Evil God…"
His eyes lit up.
"So it has to be evil people… But who's evil?"
His answer came instantly.
The nobles and samurai who had kidnapped him.
Sacrifice them.
Sacrifice every last one of those nobles who fed on others.
After leaving the Capital, Yako used the Transformation technique to return to the border of the Land of Hot Water.
He made it look as if he had only just returned from investigating Totai's whereabouts.
The next day, Nara Kyoichi came hurrying over to the bath where Yako was soaking.
"This is bad, Lord Fox! A massive earthquake struck the Capital! The Daimyō has disappeared!"
Yako immediately asked,
"Was it the Cloud ninja?"