As dawn gradually broke, the civilians of the Land of Water's capital—who had spent the night hiding in their homes—finally dared to step outside.
One look was enough to make them throw up uncontrollably.
The capital of the Land of Water was already foggy in the morning to begin with, but after the deaths of two to three thousand people the night before, even the mist had been stained red with blood. From a distance, the entire capital looked as if it were shrouded in a sea of blood mist.
And that wasn't even counting the nauseating reek of blood, or the twisted corpses hanging high above like some kind of public display—an image so disturbing it made people sick to their cores.
Mei Terumi felt sick too.
She had killed many people herself, but even so, seeing thousands of corpses displayed like that still made her scalp go numb.
The one who had called Mei over was naturally Uchiha Chizumi.
Killing could solve problems—but what came after the killing mattered just as much.
If the capital of the Land of Water were simply left alone in this state, Uchiha Chizumi could easily imagine what would happen next: before long, countless new acts of evil would erupt here. That would be a desecration of justice, something he had no intention of allowing.
"My lord, what should we do next?"
Standing beside Uchiha Chizumi, Mei only had to turn her eyes slightly to see the Daimyo of the Land of Water.
The man who had once stood at the very top of power in the country was no more special in death than anyone else. In fact, because of the sheer terror he had felt, he looked even uglier than the others.
"In your name, summon the remaining nobles in the capital of the Land of Water."
"Have them arrange for people to stabilize the capital, and at the same time tell them about the principles of Absolute Justice."
Uchiha Chizumi had actually considered simply making Mei Terumi the new daimyo of the Land of Water. But Mei's justice had not yet truly been tested, so he didn't know whether that would be the right choice or a disastrous one.
"There are still nobles alive?"
Hearing that, Mei almost blurted it out without thinking.
It wasn't really strange for her to react that way. In her eyes, the nobles of the Land of Water were more or less all the same breed. And with two to three thousand people having clearly died last night, it stood to reason that the nobles of the Land of Water should have all been wiped out already.
"I'm not someone who kills indiscriminately. The people I killed all deserved it."
Uchiha Chizumi shook his head. Mei's misunderstanding of him ran deep. And not just Mei's—by now, probably the entire Land of Water misunderstood him just as badly.
"But those nobles…"
"Will they really listen to me? Will they really be willing to understand your Absolute Justice?"
Mei quickly realized she had said the wrong thing, and asked hesitantly as she looked at him.
Her concern wasn't unreasonable.
Truth be told, even Mei herself couldn't claim she felt no resentment toward Uchiha Chizumi at all. After all, he had directly crushed Kirigakure.
And if she put herself in their shoes, she couldn't believe those nobles wouldn't try to pull something behind the scenes.
"If they're unwilling, then they can leave the Land of Water."
"And as for the nobles who choose to stay—if they commit evil, it won't be long before they go meet the daimyo."
Uchiha Chizumi knew human hearts were impossible to predict, but he didn't care.
As long as he was alive, those nobles had only two choices: either obey in fear, or end up hanging from a tree just like the Daimyo of the Land of Water.
If you killed enough, and killed hard enough, Uchiha Chizumi simply didn't believe there was any evil he couldn't suppress.
"N-no, I'll definitely do my best to persuade them. I'll make them understand Absolute Justice!"
Mei felt her scalp tingle at his words. Just one massacre in the capital had already brought most of it to a standstill. If Uchiha Chizumi kept killing like this, she was afraid she herself would go down in history as the sinner of the Land of Water.
"We'll see."
Uchiha Chizumi glanced at Mei, then shook his head and said nothing more.
After handing the capital over to Mei, he still had other things to do. The Land of Water had far more than just its capital—there were many other cities as well. Since he had decided to let Absolute Justice cover the Land of Water, he had absolutely no intention of stopping halfway.
"Chizumi, that old man from Kirigakure was talking bad about you."
Not long after Uchiha Chizumi returned to Kirigakure, Kitsujiro jumped onto his shoulder and immediately started tattling.
"It's fine. As long as he hasn't committed evil, that's enough."
Uchiha Chizumi paid no mind to Kitsujiro's complaint. Even back in Konoha, plenty of people had failed to understand his Absolute Justice. Kirigakure was hardly any different.
"This old man was not speaking ill of Chizumi-sama. I merely told him that Chizumi-sama might become the spark that ignites the Fourth Great Ninja War."
Genji had noticed Uchiha Chizumi's return as well, and the look in his eyes as he watched the man and cat together was extremely complicated.
Originally, Genji had thought he probably wouldn't live long enough to see a Fourth Great Ninja War. After all, he had already lived a very long life—long enough to witness the first three.
"The news from the capital has most likely already spread. The Five Great Nations all have spies in one another's countries."
"The incident in the capital of the Land of Fire had already caused quite a stir among the nobles of the Land of Water before this. But at that time, everyone thought it was simply an internal affair of the Land of Fire."
"But this time is different. Chizumi-sama, you are an Uchiha, and the Uchiha clan is almost synonymous with Konoha itself."
"A Konoha Uchiha interfering in the politics of another nation—and even directly killing the daimyo of the Land of Water—will terrify the daimyo of the Lightning, Earth, and Wind Countries. They'll pressure their own hidden villages through funding."
"The Fourth Great Ninja War really is coming."
"And unlike the first three, if the Fourth Great Ninja War breaks out, the major nations will likely only want one thing—your death."
"Only if you die will the daimyo be able to sleep peacefully. Only if you die will those nobles no longer have to live in fear."
Genji looked at Uchiha Chizumi with a deeply conflicted expression. In his eyes, no matter how strong Chizumi was, he couldn't possibly be strong enough to withstand the combined forces of the Lightning, Earth, and Wind Countries.
Not even Senju Hashirama or Uchiha Madara had ever done such a thing. In Genji's eyes, no matter how strong Uchiha Chizumi was, he was ultimately just another Madara, another Hashirama.
But neither Hashirama nor Madara had dared face the combined armies of the other great nations head-on—so how could Uchiha Chizumi possibly win?
In the end, Genji's vision was simply too limited.
Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara had both possessed the power to unify the shinobi world—they just hadn't done it. Hashirama, unfortunately, had the kind of thinking that came from being uneducated, no better in that regard than Uchiha Itachi.
And the difference was this:
Uchiha Chizumi now possessed power on the same level as Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara—
but he had actually read books.