Standing atop Ibuse with blazing eyes, he commanded the condensed beast forward. The poison serpent opened its fanged maw as if roaring without sound. Then it became a streak of purple death and slammed into the oncoming gray tornado.
Where it passed, grass and trees were eaten away. Even the ground was stripped, withered, and crushed into dust, leaving bare land behind. The collision erupted like a tidal wave smashing against a reef.
The tornado and the poison serpent crashed together with a deafening roar. It was an uneven clash, as the combined desperate strike of all Sunagakure Ninja could not be easily broken by one Hanzo. The serpent's body collapsed and scattered as poison mist streamed off to both sides of the tornado.
"Good, we blocked it."
Chiyo let out a breath and shouted, "Hold it together..." Her words cut off as a scream unlike any human sound burst from a Sunagakure Ninja nearby. She turned to see him clutching his throat, eyes bulging and bloodshot.
His face, neck, and exposed skin swelled, blistered, and rotted at visible speed, as if splashed with invisible acid. Pus and blood seeped out, releasing a foul stench. He staggered forward and reached out weakly, purple-black liquid pouring from his mouth.
In less than three seconds, the once-elite Jonin stopped moving. His skin dissolved, exposing blackened muscle and white bone. He melted into a pool of smoking black blood and rotting flesh, even the soil beneath hissing as it turned charred.
"How is this possible, there was no inhalation..." Chiyo's face went pale as her words froze. She suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with purple fluid. Her body collapsed to the ground as if her bones were being eaten from within.
She finally noticed that rain touching the poison mist was rapidly corroded and evaporated, hissing as it turned into more toxic vapor. Even a trace inhaled would use the body's Chakra pathways to destroy flesh and cells. Even without inhalation, the poison was violently corrosive.
A Sunagakure Jonin watched his strong arm blacken from the point of contact. Skin burned away like paper, muscle melted like wax, and then turned into foul blood. He screamed and tried to cut it off with a Kunai, but the blade hissed on contact.
He could only watch in despair as his arm dissolved from fingers to shoulder. All that remained was a length of white bone dripping pus and purple smoke. Pain and poison shattered his will, and he soon melted into the same black sludge as the others.
Screams, wails, and vomiting echoed across the camp. Some tried Water Release, but the water boiled away and spread the poison instead. Others tried to bury wounds with earth, only for the soil to corrode as well.
The camp turned into a living hell of stench, melting bodies, and flowing pus. Animal-like cries filled the air, mixed with pain and despair. Death spread faster than orders could be given.
"Cough... Hanzo..."
Feeling her life slipping away, Chiyo watched the endless deaths of the Sunagakure Ninja. Her eyes shifted from anger and unwillingness to calm acceptance. She thought that after living so long, dying like this was truly ugly.
Her eyelids grew heavy as darkness took her. She did not know how much time passed. It could have been an instant, or several minutes.
Her consciousness drifted as if entering another world. When she opened her eyes, there was only darkness. In that darkness, she saw a person and a massive shadow.
The shadow was devouring something. As it reached out toward her, the person in the distance spoke. "Enough," he said. "Leave this one to me."
The shadow stopped. After a pause, it spoke with a hoarse and unfamiliar voice. "Yes. As you wish."
At that sound, a surge of recognition flooded Chiyo. A hatred carved deep into her soul awakened. She realized who the voice belonged to.
It was the man who killed her son and daughter-in-law. Sakumo Hatake.
In the past, the inside of the Box of Ultimate Bliss had no sky or ground, only distortion without any sense of time. Now the inner space of the Box of Ultimate Bliss had completely changed. The ground was paved with huge slabs as smooth as mirrors and black as ink, and above them rose a vast arched dome made of the same dark stone.
On the four walls reaching up to the dome were carved four faces of Joy Anger Sorrow Pleasure. Ten enormous Root pillars stood like great trees throughout the palace, holding up the highest part of the dome. The interior of the Box of Ultimate Bliss was clearly a massive palace with clear structure, firm boundaries, and solid form.
A single stone throne sat at the top of the deepest stepped platform. At this moment, Shadow was seated there, quietly watching everything before him. The dim blue flames burning on the walls could not light the darkness beyond the hall, but they were enough for Shadow to clearly see the feast of devouring below.
Hundreds of distorted humanoid spirits labeled as Xu were colliding, tearing, and swallowing one another by instinct alone. Each time a Xu spirit dissolved another into itself, its own form became slightly more solid. This scene played out in every corner of the palace.
Muffled groans and hissing sounds echoed without meaning. Countless vague Xu spirits wandered like headless insects, driven by instinct to roam and consume. Their movements were filled with a raw and uncontrollable hunger.
"The modified Box of Ultimate Bliss should probably count as a Fully Automated Incubation Field for Xu," Shadow thought as he watched. Once placed in a specific location, the altered Box of Ultimate Bliss functioned like an invisible black hole, or more precisely, a massive soul siphon. It automatically drew in and devoured all recently deceased souls within a certain range that had not yet dispersed or entered the Pure Land.
Most importantly, the Box of Ultimate Bliss was not limited to storing souls. Joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure intertwined to cover most emotions and formed what was called obsession. Joy leaned closer to happiness, while pleasure was closer to desire and love.
The original function of the Box of Ultimate Bliss was to amplify these human emotions, allowing one to see through and manipulate human desire, or Wang, to guide behavior. After modification through points, the Box of Ultimate Bliss could use its twisted power to amplify the emotions within souls and erode them. In the end, only the strongest obsession and desire were magnified to the extreme, such as thirst for power, fixation on revenge, or the instinct to survive.
The stronger a soul's obsession and desire in life, the more desperate it became to exist. Its instinct to devour other souls to sustain itself also grew stronger. In this sealed space of souls alone, they were like beasts that could never be full, following a single rule: eat, or be eaten.
This was the cruel ecology of the Box of Ultimate Bliss. There was only endless devouring and evolution here, and the defeated existed solely as nourishment for the strong. From this process, Xu was born.
Shadow turned his gaze to another area. A soul that had devoured dozens of its kind began to gather under an unseen force, as many souls screamed and struggled while a mutation took place. Their twisted bodies fused together, swelling rapidly like an inflated balloon as scattered spirits were forced into a single form.