The four shinobi wore the most ordinary shinobi clothes and did not wear forehead protectors, proving they were not rogue ninja.
They had no protective flak jackets, nor any dedicated ninja tool pouches. Their limited shuriken, senbon, and kunai were all directly tucked into their belts.
Although bandages were wrapped around their elbows, wrists, ankles, and knees, the areas that could not be covered—their shoulders, hems, and backsides—still showed visible signs of damage.
No matter how one looked at them, these four shinobi could not hide their poverty. The word "poor" was practically written across their faces.
But their movements were simple, experienced, and efficient. Their tactical movements during the ambush and their distance control while surrounding him were all highly proficient. They were definitely veterans among wandering shinobi.
The leading shinobi spoke.
"Friend, if you don't want to be surrounded and attacked by us, then show yourself. We're not villains who kill the innocent indiscriminately."
Uchiha Yoru did not believe a single word of this shinobi's statement.
Although all four shinobi were covered in the smell of poverty, every one of them reeked of killing intent. Their eyes never left Uchiha Yoru's vital points.
Their gazes were completely cold and cruel. At the same time, they were filled with thirst for blood.
In the past half year, Uchiha Yoru had seen such eyes in many Kirigakure shinobi. Especially when both sides had slaughtered each other to the final moment, when corpses covered the battlefield and the stench of blood was so piercing it made one dizzy, almost every Kirigakure shinobi had eyes like this.
The first moment Uchiha Yoru saw them, he knew that all these fellows were murderous bastards. Not one of them was innocent.
Since they were scum of the shinobi world, he did not treat them as people. Without caring in the slightest, he decided to kill them.
Moreover, the ones Uchiha Yoru wanted to bait were not these four shinobi.
Neither startled nor pleased, he spoke one word indifferently according to the persona of his disguise.
"Scram."
Without any more nonsense, the four shinobi pulled out shuriken and senbon, preparing to attack Uchiha Yoru. But their speed was obviously far too slow.
Just as their hands touched their waists, Uchiha Yoru had already extended his right hand, palm facing upward. A golden lightning sphere emerged.
Senjutsu: Lightning Spirit: Palm Thunder.
Accompanied by a thunderclap from a clear sky, before the four shinobi could raise the throwing weapons in their hands, they were struck by four bolts of lightning.
The powerful current precisely attacked their hearts. Not a trace of lightning power was wasted, accurately blasting their hearts to pieces.
Death caused by a shattered heart came extremely quickly. Usually, a person would die completely in a dozen seconds.
But what brought death even faster was the residual current after the heart shattered. These currents spread from the heart as the center, following blood vessels and nerves.
At 0.01 seconds, a weak current first reached the brain along the nerves, directly paralyzing the brain. But as the nerve lines broke, it could not cause stronger damage to the brain.
At 0.15 seconds, the main current reached the brain along the blood vessels. The intense current rampaged through the brain, tearing apart every dendrite of every brain nerve.
At 0.21 seconds, brain death occurred.
The four shinobi died without the slightest pain. Their movements were even frozen at the instant of death. Their expressions still retained the ferocity they had when launching their attack. They had not realized they had been attacked at all.
After killing four poor wandering shinobi who did not even count as genin, Uchiha Yoru turned his gaze toward a nearby tree and said coldly, "Come out, or I'll kill you."
When Uchiha Yoru left the bounty station, he unexpectedly discovered an extremely strange aura following him.
This aura was filled with the smell of nature, but it was not vibrant nature. Instead, it was a mutated nature that had decayed and died, yet remained dead but not stiff, like a zombie cicada parasitized by fungus.
This smell was not unfamiliar. He had once sensed it up close through All-Knowing Mind's Eye. It was the unique smell belonging to White Zetsu, but it was also slightly different.
A strange black-and-white plant grew out from the base of the tree, and within the strange plant was a bizarre person split clearly between black and white.
The feeling was right. It really is White Zetsu. But I didn't expect Black Zetsu to be here too.
What a pity. With this, it won't be easy to hunt White Zetsu.
Black Zetsu spoke first.
"As far as I know, the shinobi world has never had a shinobi like you. Your power also doesn't seem to belong to the category of chakra. Who are you?"
Uchiha Yoru clenched his right fist and crushed the golden lightning sphere in one grip. He said coldly, "My name has already been forgotten, but you may call me Thunder God."
The shattered lightning sphere turned into countless golden sparks that spread through the air in every direction, releasing crackling sounds. Together with Uchiha Yoru's cold words, they created tremendous pressure.
He raised his head. His eyes, dyed golden by lightning-aspected natural energy, stared firmly at Black Zetsu through the shadow of the bamboo hat.
"Then, who are you?"
Black Zetsu's expression became incomparably solemn and gloomy. From this mysterious man calling himself Thunder God, he could not sense the slightest chakra fluctuation. This made it impossible for him to judge what the other party's power truly was.
Most importantly, he sensed divinity.
It was the same characteristic belonging to those gods active behind the cults of the Land of Hot Water.
Could he really be a god?
It was not impossible.
Black Zetsu secretly thought it over. Those gods whom Otsutsuki Hagoromo had hunted to extinction indeed did not use chakra at all. They used natural energy and the power of faith. This mysterious person before him did indeed resemble a so-called god.
Black Zetsu thought about many things, but his thoughts moved extremely quickly. In the blink of an eye, he finished thinking and answered without any awkwardness.
"I am the will of Uchiha Madara, the Asura of the shinobi world."
"Uchiha Madara, the strongest shinobi of the Uchiha clan. He's still alive?"
This son of a bitch really can act. Even when he's not in front of Uchiha Madara, he still acts perfectly. No wonder he could stir up so many storms over a thousand years.
At the very least, this actor's professionalism can be called perfect.
"Lord Madara is naturally alive. How could his power be something shinobi can speculate about?"
Uchiha Yoru showed no interest in this and asked again, "Why are you following me?"
Black Zetsu immediately said, "Lord Madara hopes to invite you to join his great plan."
"Not interested."
Uchiha Yoru lowered his head, and the bamboo hat once again covered his eyes.
"Don't follow me again. Otherwise, I'll kill you."
After saying this, he continued walking forward step by step.
Black Zetsu closed his mouth and no longer tried to persuade him. He also made no move to follow. He simply watched quietly as Uchiha Yoru left.
When it came to recruiting someone, one had to pay attention to conditions. Either the person being persuaded was extremely interested and took the initiative to join, or the persuader's fist was large enough and could convince the other party with reason and evidence—physical reason and evidence.
Black Zetsu was the third son directly created by Otsutsuki Kaguya. The level of his power was extremely high, but the total amount of his power was extremely low. He did not have the ability to persuade someone who seemed like a revived god.
Only after Uchiha Yoru completely disappeared from view did Black Zetsu leave White Zetsu's body and quietly merge into the darkness.
The released White Zetsu, however, chased in the direction Uchiha Yoru had left.
…
Beneath the clear sky, lightning split the heavens.
A bolt of lightning was born from the void, winding downward and miraculously entering an enormous hollow.
After a thunderous boom, smoke, dust, broken stones, flames, sparks, and thick steam erupted upward from the hollow like a volcanic eruption.
This was Uchiha Yoru attacking the third cult, which was also the largest of the three.
The cults had all chosen underground caves without prior agreement, using them as nests and sacrificial halls. They had grasped the essence of cult characteristics very tightly.
Uchiha Yoru had successively destroyed two cults, but the gods behind them had both acted like turtles withdrawing into their shells. They severed the connection immediately, drained their cult leaders' essence, energy, and spirit, then slipped away.
This could not really be blamed on those Evil Gods. Faced with an enemy who could summon thunder with a wave and lightning with a stomp, Evil Gods were already afraid of lightning to begin with. How much courage would they need to dare oppose an enemy capable of controlling lightning?
Moreover, Uchiha Yoru was wearing the Thunder God disguise. He had deeply understood the essence of a thunder god, and from beginning to end, he emitted a divine aura.
In the eyes of the weakened Evil Gods, no matter how they looked at Uchiha Yoru's posture, he seemed like one of their own kind—but the kind that came knocking on the door to hunt them as a natural enemy.
Fight?
Fight his leg!
When a mouse encountered a tabby cat digging into its hole, its first reaction was naturally to sneak away through the back.
Only the strongest mouse, when cornered with no path to escape, would launch a counterattack against the cat.
Therefore, Uchiha Yoru's two consecutive operations both came up empty. He did not even manage to obtain a hair from the Evil Gods.
After consecutive failures, he also figured out a bit of the flavor. He stopped deliberately disguising his divine aura and instead used more chakra power, hiding his natural energy in reverse.
During his third surprise attack on a cult, which was also the largest and strongest cult, Uchiha Yoru deliberately suppressed his strength even more. He fought in a muddy and sluggish manner, progressing slowly.
In this way, in the Evil God's eyes, Uchiha Yoru no longer posed much of a threat. No matter how he looked, he seemed very fragrant.
First, as a shinobi, the strength he displayed was truly unimpressive. Facing a group of ordinary humans desperately counterattacking, he actually fought with some difficulty. Clearly, he was not even qualified as a genin.
Then, as a human, the spirit he displayed was abundant and scattered, like a plate of golden-grained egg fried rice, fragrant, delicious, and not hard on the teeth.
Logically speaking, an Evil God should not have been deceived by such a simple trap.
But it was too hungry.
Too weak.
And in order to avoid enemies, it had stayed too far away. There were serious problems with its information gathering.
From such a distance, what these gods saw of the trap was not whether it was simple or not. They could only vaguely see that there was delicious and soft food.
It could only be said that in the shinobi world, intelligence was indeed the first element of battle. In order to avoid enemies, these gods hid their feelers extremely tightly. In the end, this instead harmed them.
Thus, the cult leader received the Evil God's power infusion and mutated into a four-meter-tall kappa, intending to take Uchiha Yoru down in one grab.
For Uchiha Yoru, power infusion to this degree was enough. Since the god had handed over its tail, he would follow the tail and seize its main body.
The god also finally saw clearly. The food that had looked especially tempting through the blur was actually a damned natural enemy. Naturally, it immediately wanted to sever its tail to survive.
But how could it still be in time?
Uchiha Yoru's spiritual power appeared scattered, but in reality, it was gathering lightning-aspected natural energy from nature. Seeing the god expose a flaw, he attacked without hesitation.
Senjutsu: Lightning Spirit: Five Thunderbolts.
Thunder exploded beneath the clear sky. Chain lightning erupted together. The enormous kappa was instantly struck into charcoal, and the god's power was scattered by the lightning, making it difficult to reclaim for a time.
Uchiha Yoru sighed with emotion. "Finally caught your tail."
What followed was the initial chain lightning, which slaughtered every cultist in the entire cult.
These evildoers turned into flying ash under the dazzling thunder, until only the monster mutated into a kappa remained.
Uchiha Yoru cut off the kappa monster's limbs and planted it into the large pit. Only then did he touch the kappa's bald head and enter its mental world.
Similar to the previous monster, this was still a broken mental world.
But the difference was that the god occupying this world had not killed the host. The head it had extended into the world had also been shattered by thunder and was currently struggling to reassemble.
Most of the god's body was still outside the world. It was also not merely one head.
After seeing the human-shaped Uchiha Yoru, the god turned pale with fright and stammered, "Y-you-you, who are you?"
Uchiha Yoru's thoughts spun rapidly, and he immediately asked in return, "You aren't the Shinigami either. Who are you?"
The god was clearly stunned. Its three heads that still remained free revealed strange expressions and answered one after another:
"The Shinigami is already dead."
"The Shinigami is not completely dead."
"Its soul was taken away."
"The Shinigami's divine authority shattered."
"There are many Shinigami now."
"It has completely merged with death."
The three heads crossed over one another, speaking descriptive words that lacked logic. Listening to them gave Uchiha Yoru a headache.
After painstakingly sorting out the logic between those words, Uchiha Yoru asked again, "Who are you?"
"I am Lord Eastflow, god of all streams and rivers." x3
"A river god… You actually dare claim to be the god of all flowing waters. You really don't know whether to live or die."
"I am not the god of one river. I am the aggregation of a hundred river gods. Naturally, I am the god of all flowing waters."
Uchiha Yoru's eyes widened.
This was actually a stitched-together god, a god formed by the aggregation of many river gods of the shinobi world, using divine authority to merge into one body in order to resist the crisis of disappearance.
He deeply sighed at his overflowing luck. After only two failures, he had encountered such perfect prey.
How fortunate.
Uchiha Yoru had searched for gods in such a high-profile manner because after his first intimate contact with a god, and after more than four months of careful research, he had gained a preliminary understanding of gods.
Since the god before him could communicate, Uchiha Yoru was unwilling to immediately begin hunting. Instead, he used conversation to obtain more information.
Unexpectedly, this god was extremely talkative. It chattered endlessly, revealing much unheard-of intelligence. Uchiha Yoru was delighted listening to it.
It turned out that gods were born from human faith. When human groups produced common needs, the spiritual power gathered together became faith.
The power of faith was very weak, but when spiritual power full of desire fused with natural energy, the final product was a thinking natural energy lifeform.
That was a god.
They were the true natives of the shinobi world.
Former natives.
But with the invasion of the Otsutsuki clan, everything underwent earth-shaking changes.
Those weak gods who could only reside in shrines, as well as animal gods such as weasels and wild boars who used their own bodies as divine bodies, had no ability to resist the Otsutsuki.
The once-prosperous divine path known as the eight million gods was destroyed. Countless gods died.
Even powerful conceptual gods were similarly no match for the Otsutsuki clan. They were beaten to pieces and could only lie dormant.
Later, the shinobi world underwent an unprecedented upheaval. Chakra, the special power belonging to the Otsutsuki clan, spread across the shinobi world. It not only replaced natural energy as the dominant extraordinary power, but also thoroughly seeped into every corner of the world.
As pure products of natural energy, gods could not absorb or use chakra. Even natural energy mixed with a trace of chakra was deadly poison to gods.
They were like ancient anaerobic bacteria after the appearance of cyanobacteria, poisoned to death by the oxygen everywhere in the new era.
Chakra severely obstructed the connection between gods and natural energy. In order to survive, gods could only increase their demands for faith. Excessive extraction caused believers to collapse, and in the end, the gods completely declined.
As chakra was spread by the Sage of Six Paths, chakra gradually gained dominance in reverse day by day, further forcing gods into a dead end.
Thus, the gods began a frenzied attempt at self-salvation.
Some gods did not have time to do anything before being poisoned to death by chakra. They completely perished, disappearing cleanly.
Some gods were incomparably proud and launched desperate counterattacks against the Otsutsuki clan. They were all slain, and their corpses were even turned into various divine tools and Tailed Beasts.
"Tailed Beasts! You're saying Tailed Beasts were made from the corpses of gods?"
"Yes. I have seen the Nine-Tails. I can smell Tamamo-no-Mae in its chakra. The other Tailed Beasts should be similar."
"So that's how it is. So it was actually like this… As expected."
Uchiha Yoru let out a long breath of relief.
So the Sage of Six Paths' level was not as high as he had imagined. This was truly worth celebrating.
Among the Sage of Six Paths' deeds, what was most frightening was not using Planetary Devastation to create the moon, but splitting the Ten-Tails apart and creating nine Tailed Beasts.
That was creating life.
That was a great divine ability grasping the authority of creation.
As long as he recalled who possessed this authority in mythology, Uchiha Yoru could not help feeling fear.
Only the great goddess Nuwa, who created mankind, and the great goddess Houtu, who created reincarnation.
What level of great existence was that?
But now, it seemed that was not the case at all.
What the Sage of Six Paths did was not creating life, but grafting the Ten-Tails' power onto the corpses of gods.
Although that was still terrifying, he was no longer an existence that could not be challenged.
Just as Uchiha Yoru was focusing his thoughts, the river god's shattered head quietly pieced itself back together and silently approached him. Meanwhile, the other three heads continued speaking about the secrets of gods while quietly stretching their necks toward the mental world.
Taking advantage of Uchiha Yoru closing his eyes in thought, the river god suddenly launched an attack.
"Hahahaha, die! Become my food!"
The jaw of the head inside the world shot out, attacking Uchiha Yoru like a dragonfly nymph.
The three heads outside the world smashed through the world barrier, rushing toward Uchiha Yoru from the left, center, and right.
Four heads, four different attack methods, struck Uchiha Yoru almost simultaneously.
However, all attacks were blocked by a transparent barrier.
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