After accepting Hii Kōri's almost forced sale of a "deal," Yagura no longer maintained his defensive posture.
Somewhat shamefully, when he let down that pointless guard, he even felt a sense of relief.
Returning the coral club to his back, his relaxed baby face now showed anxiety befitting the current situation.
He licked his dry lips, his purple eyes fixed on Hii Kōri, his voice kept very low. "What exactly is your plan? When will you start 'dealing with' the curse? What do I need to do—and most importantly, what should I do now?"
The rapid questions almost ran together into a long string, clearly showing his concern for Kirigakure's situation.
Although due to the Bloody Mist policy, there was hardly any trust or friendship among Kirigakure ninjas nowadays purely a colleague relationship Yagura's wife and son were still in the village.
As the sharpest blade in the Third Mizukage's arsenal, his family was naturally placed in a relatively core area of Kirigakure. But precisely because it was the core area, it was currently closer to the battle zones where Rashōmon and the two autonomous mechanisms were rampaging.
"Don't rush, Lord Fourth."
Hii Kōri reached into his sleeve and pulled out an orange, peeling it slowly. "I'm also the one who will be hiring Kirigakure to work afterward. If Kirigakure's losses are too great, that wouldn't be very worthwhile for me either."
After eating two slices of orange, Hii Kōri offered the remaining fruit to Yagura. "The attack Kirigakure is currently suffering is also a necessary condition for curse removal."
Yagura whose surname was closely related to citrus stiffened. Before he could say any rebuttal, Hii Kōri slung an arm around his shoulder and stuffed the orange fully into his mouth.
It was a bit sour.
"Of course I know your Kirigakure ninjas are dying in droves right now. But Karatachi, what do you think 'death' really means in the Village of the Bloody Mist?"
The baby face, wrinkled from the sourness of the orange, took on a somewhat ferocious quality, but he couldn't answer the question.
Because Yagura himself was an executor of death.
He had killed many people.
Some deserved to be killed, but there were also quite a few who "didn't deserve" death.
When he first began helping reformist ninjas leave the village and go into hiding, he had also been forced to kill some of them to comply with the Third Mizukage's orders.
And the village's young people, batch by batch, fell meaninglessly in pools of blood during the graduation death matches, or were made into containers for curses.
The younger and more innocent the child, the more valuable as a container, because that untainted spirit could hold more curses.
Stepping back even further, as a ninja village, death was also extremely cheap in some senses.
And when on the other side of the scale was placed the condition of "curse removal," the weights Yagura could put on this side weren't actually that few.
"You don't need to feel conflicted about this. In the end, whether you accepted my deal or not, this attack would continue. How many die has nothing to do with you."
Hii Kōri bent slightly, arm in arm with Yagura, and continued, "Of course, I'm not saying this is 'necessary sacrifice' or anything like that. After all, no one has the right to force others to sacrifice. This is just the result of our inability to handle troublesome matters in a more perfect way."
"So, relax~"
A clear vein bulged on Yagura's forehead. His fingers abruptly tightened, his nails nearly embedding into his palms.
Even knowing he had no chance of winning, for a moment, he wanted to draw his coral club and fight this Sunagakure bastard to the death.
Not just because of the provocative words, but also because of Hii Kōri's actions and tone—like he was placating a child.
But his fingers clenched and loosened, and in the end, he did nothing.
Yagura just took a deep breath, letting the humid air, laced with the stench of blood and scorched remains, fill his lungs, then slowly exhaled.
"...Tell me your plan."
He almost ground his teeth as he reminded Hii Kōri to bring the conversation back to the main topic.
"Mm-hmm~ First, as a high-ranking member of Kirigakure, you probably already understand curses to some extent, right?"
Hii Kōri casually stuffed the orange peel back into his sleeve and waved it in front of Yagura's eyes. "This stuff—I call it 'cursed energy'—is a type of energy different from spiritual power, refined from negative emotions."
At the same time, a cursed energy visibly rose from Hii Kōri's palm—difficult to see directly, but clearly perceptible.
"Like I said, this is a spark born from negative emotions, something almost everyone produces. But under normal circumstances, people aren't aware of it, and the cursed energy they produce simply leaks away. Curses are the various phenomena caused by this cursed energy accumulating and precipitation."
"In the early stages of formation, curses are actually quite easy to deal with. Any shrine maiden or monk with relatively 'sensitive spiritual perception' could probably disperse them by chanting sutras or performing dances."
"And because this energy is based on negative emotions, it's generally not very effective against people who possess chakra. After all, chakra is an energy mixed of life force and spiritual power. Compared to the self-circulation of a human body, the magnitude of unformed, diffused curses is simply too great except for those who primarily use Yin Release, that's a different story."
As he spoke, Hii Kōri pinched his fingers, and the cursed energy in his hand abruptly burst apart.
"But the situation here in the Land of Water is different from what I just described. You can feel it too, can't you?"
His gaze swept over the distant flames still erupting, not expecting Yagura to answer. "Your customs here are naturally suited to cultivating curses. Hundreds of years of isolation, xenophobia, infighting... the accumulated negative emotions have been fermenting back and forth across this archipelago, forming a cycle of malice."
"...So what?"
Yagura's brow furrowed deeply.
As a high-ranking member of Kirigakure, he was certainly aware of past research into curses, but the information from those reports was far less detailed than Hii Kōri's explanations.
Like the part about how the Land of Water's environment affected curses.
People who had lived their entire lives in the Land of Water simply couldn't realize how sharp their homeland's customs were, let alone suspicion develops about them.
"So to exorcise a curse of this scale, conventional methods can no longer be used."
Hii Kōri released Yagura's shoulder and stepped back, raising one finger to him. "The only way is to let the curse form into a concrete 'cursed spirit,' and then exorcise it."
"But the composition of the curse here in the Land of Water is too complex. The various negative emotions accumulated over the years are all mixed together. To transform them into a tangible cursed spirit, they need a unified direction—"
He paused, the corner of his mouth curving into a meaningful smile. "What do you think is the strongest emotion in Kirigakure right now?"
Yagura paused, then understood.
Fear of the unknown attackers, of the deaths of his colleagues, of the village's possible destruction.
Anger at the invaders, at himself for being unable to protect his family.
And... the purest killing intent toward the enemies causing the chaos.
"You're using this attack... to let the curse condense into form?"
Yagura understood completely.
Though he couldn't fully trust everything Hii Kōri said, and didn't fully understand specialized terms like "cursed spirit," if what he said was true, this course of action made sense.
His unprovoked attack on Kirigakure was meant to become the cohesion core for the negative emotions the Land of Water had accumulated for centuries.
To make all the fear, anger, Hatred, and despair point to one place.
"Once the emotions have fermented enough, I can guide the curse to transform into a cursed spirit. Then I'll deal with the cursed spirit, the Third Mizukage, and all those hotheaded troublemakers. At that point, you can naturally take over Kirigakure's mess."
Hii Kōri clapped his hands cheerfully. "See? A very simple plan, isn't it?"
"...Simple?"
Yagura almost laughed out loud.
He thought the man before him was either insane or arrogant beyond imagination.
But on the other hand, he had to admit that if Hii Kōri could truly do everything he claimed, this was indeed an extremely efficient method.
Using the smallest cost—though this "smallest" was from Hii Kōri's perspective—to simultaneously resolve the curse, replace the Mizukage, purge the extremists, and pave the way for subsequent control of the Land of Water.
"So, you planned all of this from the very beginning?"
"Ha... I already told you, I only changed the plan because I sensed your presence. Having a reliable, trustworthy collaborator is far more convenient than raising a bunch of 'Hachi-Kiri' from scratch."
"Ha... then how did you know about the different factions of ninjas in our village?"
Having already conceded that he had no room to question Hii Kōri's plan, Yagura automatically ignored that inexplicable term "Hachi-Kiri" and instead asked another question that had been bothering him for a while.
"Whether it's my identity, my whereabouts, my actions in secretly placing the reformists, or those 'troublemakers' you mentioned earlier... where exactly did you get all this information?"
By now, Yagura had realized what Hii Kōri meant by "my guild." If the Red Hot Sand belonged to this man, it was only natural that he would have a pretty powerful intelligence network.
But before this, the Red Hot Sand had never set foot on the Land of Water's main island, at most using the nearby outer islands for transshipment.
Even if they had gathered intelligence in preparation for entering the Land of Water, the information about Kirigakure was far too detailed.
"Mm-hmm... what if I said this country told me itself? Would you believe me?"
In response to this question, Hii Kōri simply shrugged and answered in a lighthearted tone. To be honest, this was actually the truth.
He had obtained almost all his intelligence about the Land of Water which he had never set foot in before by reading it from this land using Nature Touch.
Yagura's various actions and chakra characteristics were naturally the same.
"Ha. Still trying to fool me at this point."
Yagura scoffed, instinctively complaining. But somehow, for a moment, he seemed to actually feel something.
The earth beneath his feet whispered. The humid air wept. The distant sound of waves crashing against the rocks was like the wail of countless lost souls.
As if, as Hii Kōri had said, this land had recorded everything.
"Well, believe it or not, that's your business. Anyway, that's my plan."
Seeing Yagura's reaction, Hii Kōri shrugged indifferently. This kind of thing happened in the world—when too many people deceive others, no one believes the truth anymore.
"Just go do what you want to do."
His gaze fell on the gradually dissipating mist. Then, his entire figure began to blur, like mist being scattered by the wind, slowly disappearing before Yagura's eyes. Only these words remained—hard to say whether they were consolation or mockery.
"Ha?!"
Yagura stood there, completely stunned for three full seconds. Then he spat fiercely on the ground.
"Damned bastard—"
He thought to himself, "What I want to do most right now is beat the hell out of you." He cursed under his breath, unsure whether he was cursing Hii Kōri or himself for compromising so easily.
But time waited for no one.
He spun the coral club in his hand and poured chakra into his legs. With a whoosh, Yagura shot like an arrow from a bowstring toward the direction of the fiercest fighting.
On his way to the battlefield, Yagura's mind repeatedly echoed Hii Kōri's final words.
"Just go do what you want to do"?
I want to end the Bloody Mist.
I want my wife and son to live in the sunlight.
I want Kirigakure to return to the place it was in my memory—never exactly warm, but at least not forcing its graduating students to kill each other.
If dealing with the devil can make these things happen... then I'll make the deal.
"STOP THIS!"
"Ah, full of energy, aren't you, Orange Bro."
Hii Kōri, who had used a small Rainbow Release trick to disappear before Yagura, watched his "coerced" target rush into battle, sighed with an extremely punchable sense of admiration, and then began his own preparations.
In truth, the method of "dealing with the curse" he had described to Yagura wasn't entirely honest.
Simply inducing the formation of a cursed spirit could be done without the step of guiding emotions. But if he did that, given the complexity of the Land of Water's curse, he would likely end up with a grand procession of a hundred demons.
And that would exhaust him to death working alone.
"Let a few Kirigakure people die, and it becomes much easier. This deal is far too profitable—ah, no, that sounds too heartless. I'll have to be careful in front of the children. Can't let Ren grow up to be a dirty adult like me..."
Thinking of his child back in the Land of Fire, Hii Kōri's expression softened a bit.
But that said, he would still do what needed to be done.
"Born of Darkness, Return to Darkness—"
Adjusting his mindset again, Hii Kōri formed hand seals and chanted the incantation of a barrier technique he hadn't used in over a decade.
"—All foul impurities, be exorcised."
The black canopy descended—the "Curtain" that would block inside from outside.
Its range: the entire Kirigakure Village!