A few days later, a piece of news even more horrifying and incomprehensible than the Rogue Island Serpent incident spread through the entire shinobi world like a plague—exploding outward at terrifying speed.
The Hidden Grass Village had been destroyed.
Almost completely annihilated.
From ninja to ordinary civilians, nearly everyone had been slaughtered.
There were barely any survivors—and most of those who lived had suffered complete mental collapse.
At first, people assumed it had been a surprise attack by one of the Great Shinobi Villages, or perhaps an assault by some unknown monster similar to what had happened on Rogue Island.
But as more details surfaced, a bone-deep chill crept into everyone's hearts.
According to investigation reports sent by reconnaissance teams from other villages, the massacre had not been confined to Kusagakure itself.
Some villagers who had escaped the village were hunted down and mercilessly killed—even tens of kilometers away.
Such relentless, extermination-level pursuit made it impossible to imagine what kind of hatred could drive it.
"Th-This… just how deep was the grudge?"
Those who heard the reports felt cold air rush from their feet straight to their scalps.
"Even fleeing dozens of kilometers wasn't enough? This is annihilation—total eradication!"
What made it even more chilling was that the extremely small number of survivors who had escaped the massacre had all gone insane.
Their eyes were vacant, their bodies curled into corners. At the slightest stimulus, they would erupt into shrill screams, sobbing and babbling a few fragmented, terrifying words over and over:
"Blood… red… everywhere…"
"A little devil! She's a little devil!"
"A child… a blood-colored child!"
"A demon child! The demon child has descended! Aaaah—!!"
Their minds had clearly endured fear and trauma far beyond what they could bear. Even experts from the Yamanaka Clan, masters of mental interrogation techniques, found that when they attempted to probe these survivors' memories, all they could see was chaos—shattered images drowned in crimson, filled with screams and madness. Nothing coherent could be extracted.
"The Demon Child Descends…"
This title, born from the ravings of mad survivors, spread uncontrollably. Paired with the charred ruins of Kusagakure and the countless unidentifiable corpses scattered across the land, it quickly became a new horror legend of the shinobi world.
An existence of unknown origin, unknown purpose, and cruelty beyond all limits—a Blood-Red Demon Child—now loomed like dark clouds over everyone's hearts.
The shinobi world, already battered by successive shocks, grew even more tense and paranoid.
No one knew where the Demon Child who destroyed the Hidden Grass Village would strike next.
The news that Kusagakure had been nearly erased by a single mysterious "Demon Child" was like the final straw snapping nerves that were already stretched to the breaking point.
If the sky projections, divine techniques, serpent monsters, and the arrival of the so-called Knights of God still felt distant and unreal—
Then the destruction of the Hidden Grass Village was immediate, brutal, and incomprehensible.
"Even the Land of Grass was wiped out… then villages as small as ours—aren't we just waiting to die?"
Panic spread like an epidemic among the many minor shinobi villages outside the Five Great Nations.
For the first time, they truly understood how fragile they were in this era of upheaval—how utterly helpless they were in the face of absolute power and unknowable terror.
The calamity of village annihilation now hung above everyone's heads like a blade.
The entire shinobi world was swallowed by a sense of fear and powerlessness—
This water runs far too deep. We can't grasp it.
Under this unprecedented sense of crisis and shared pressure, the Five Great Shinobi Villages—long mired in suspicion and friction—finally set aside their differences.
After urgent encrypted communications and emissary exchanges, the Five Kage reached a historic consensus:
The formation of a Five Great Villages Joint Investigation Unit.
Konoha, Kumogakure, Iwagakure, Kirigakure, and Sunagakure would each dispatch their most elite ANBU, intelligence analysts, and shinobi with special abilities, forming an unprecedented joint task force.
Its mission was singular:
At all costs, thoroughly investigate every abnormal event that has occurred in the shinobi world.
The scope of investigation included:
The mysterious Sky Projection phenomenon.
The origin of so-called "Divine Techniques."
The biological source of the Rogue Island Serpent, and the whereabouts of the mysterious figure in gold-and-red armor.
The truth behind the Hidden Grass Village "Demon Child" incident—including the perpetrator's identity and motive.
The establishment of this joint unit marked the first time the shinobi world had attempted to respond to unknown threats as a unified whole.
It shattered decades of villages acting independently and underscored just how severe the situation had become—far beyond what any single village could handle.
When the news spread, the shinobi world—though still terrified—finally exhaled slightly, as if grasping a piece of driftwood amid raging waves.
Some even muttered quietly:
Could this count as a different kind of peace?
"This world's waters…"
A veteran ANBU captain participating in the joint investigation sighed before departure, gazing at the overcast sky.
"…are far too deep."
Bottomless. And full of hidden currents.
While the entire shinobi world spiraled into panic and confusion over the destruction of Kusagakure and the legend of the Demon Child—while the Five Great Villages scrambled blindly to investigate—
One organization operating from the shadows, relying on its unique intelligence network and the special abilities of one of its members, managed to touch upon part of the truth first.
Amegakure. Inside the central tower.
"So," a calm voice asked,
"you're saying you encountered the one who destroyed the Hidden Grass Village?"
Pain's Rinnegan remained indifferent, yet a barely perceptible ripple passed through his tone.
"That's right~"
Zetsu's black-and-white face twisted into a strange smile as he spoke hoarsely.
"I found her completely by accident. One of the White Zetsu bodies happened to be passing near the Land of Grass and saw a little girl drenched in blood—like a tireless killing doll—walking and killing as she went. I followed her for a while. From her occasional muttering, and the final words of those she killed, I more or less pieced together what happened."
He paused, then added the most critical detail:
"Oh, and one more thing. She's a little girl—about seven or eight years old. Covered in blood. Couldn't really see her face."
"A seven- or eight-year-old child…"
Pain fell silent for a moment.
"So this is another… 'Chosen One'?"
Itachi Uchiha's cool voice sounded. His brows furrowed slightly, the crimson of his Sharingan flashing with solemn concern.
He thought of what the sky projection had shown—Sakura Haruno's transformation through a so-called Divine Technique.
If such awakenings were not isolated cases…
Silence fell over the Akatsuki.
No one directly answered Itachi's question.
But the heaviness filling the air said everything.
Karin's appearance—and the irrational, catastrophically destructive power she had displayed—was almost certainly inseparable from the chain of "abnormalities" that had recently shaken the shinobi world.
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