With a hearty laugh, Ronglin pointed at Mangetsu Hōzuki.
"Get your injuries treated as soon as possible. After the war ends, I'll come looking for you! So, do your best to stay alive."
Laughing, Ronglin turned and walked away. Not a single person at the scene dared to stand in his way, even though they knew the Mizukage would likely arrive soon.
"Will someone tell me what happened here?!"
Ronglin had only just vanished from sight when the Third Mizukage arrived in a hurry, leading a contingent of men.
Looking at the mountain of corpses piled on the ground most of them reduced to severed limbs or small, mangled chunks the thick scent of iron hung heavy in the air. Blood saturated the earth, flowing so freely it could be described as a river.
Faced with this scene of human hell, the Third Mizukage froze for a moment before his expression darkened completely.
The men following the Mizukage looked equally grim. They turned to those who had arrived earlier, desperate to know exactly what had occurred. Meanwhile, the Hidden Mist ninjas who had watched Ronglin leave stood with their heads bowed, too terrified to speak.
"Uchiha Ronglin did this, Lord Third."
While others feared the Third Mizukage, Mangetsu Hōzuki did not. He calmly pulled the Executioner's Blade from the ground, propped it against his shoulder, and continued, "By the way, he left this as a gift for you. He said that using this blade to slaughter our Hidden Mist ninjas was quite... satisfying."
"..."
The crowd watched Mangetsu in collective silence, unsure if he was being exceptionally honest or simply trying to spite the Mizukage.
The Third Mizukage's face shifted from black to an ashen green, his expression changing as rapidly as a face-changer in a Peking Opera.
"Why didn't you stop him?!" the Mizukage finally exploded. He was so enraged he felt as if he might vomit three liters of blood. Mangetsu's "help" in delivering the message certainly hadn't made the situation any easier to swallow.
The crowd remained silent, heads low. Only Mangetsu looked at the Third Mizukage with a calm gaze and said indifferently, "We couldn't stop him. He hasn't even used his full strength yet. Unless everyone here wants to be turned into piles of rotten meat like that."
Mangetsu pointed at the chunks of flesh on the ground and suddenly coughed twice, sighing inwardly. He glanced in the direction Ronglin had disappeared. If I die, I'll definitely come looking for you!
The coughing made Mangetsu's already pale face look even more ghastly, filled with a sickly, morbid white. Taking two deep breaths, Mangetsu took his ninja sword and left immediately. He had no desire to watch the Third Mizukage fly into a towering rage; it was a truly unsightly display.
"Tell me! What on earth happened?! Hundreds of you, and you couldn't even keep hold of one child? You are supposed to be the elites of the Hidden Mist! I don't want to hear any excuses!!"
With the only person brave enough to talk back to him gone, the Third Mizukage finally snapped, exactly as Mangetsu had predicted.
"You! Tell me! Every detail!"
Pointing at one of the ninjas, the Third Mizukage gritted his teeth so hard he nearly shattered them.
"Lord Mizukage, we..." The ninja jumped in fright and began to explain, but the Mizukage had no patience for excuses.
"I want the sequence of events!!!" he roared.
The ninja, thoroughly shaken, quickly retracted his stuttering and recounted the events of the battle. Naturally, being frightened out of his wits, he added a few exaggerations to the tale.
"Uchiha Ronglin!!!"
A long while later, a roar filled with fury echoed through the forest. Unfortunately, Ronglin was long gone. Had he been there, he surely would have told the Third Mizukage to calm down and keep his blood pressure low, lest he actually die of anger.
Hundreds of men deployed, more than half slaughtered, and yet Ronglin remained free!
The Mizukage felt an impulsive urge to kill someone right then and there, yet he was stuck with the humiliating task of cleaning up the corpses. Ronglin had been right; if the bodies were left to rot, a plague would inevitably break out. If that happened, they would only be hurting themselves.
Konoha could easily mobilize medicinal supplies and have Tsunade formulate antidotes, but the Hidden Mist Village lacked those resources. Who would travel thousands of miles to attack another country while lugging around a massive stockpile of medicinal herbs?
He hadn't even seen a single hair of the person he wanted to kill. Half of the men sent to surround the target were dead, and now he had to endure the frustration of cleaning up the mess. Could there be anything more demoralizing?
Growing up and climbing to his current position, the Third Mizukage had never experienced anything so infuriating.
Lord Mizukage was furious. No one dared provoke him, and everyone knew it was best not to make even the slightest mistake. When the team returned to camp, everyone was on high alert, silently warning themselves not to step out of line, or they wouldn't even know how they died.
An eerie, suffocating atmosphere began to permeate the camp.
But no matter how careful they were, someone eventually had to take the fall. The unluckiest was the Head of the Intelligence Division. He was the first one the Third Mizukage made an example of, dying a truly miserable death.
This left thousands of Hidden Mist ninjas in a state of panic, terrified that they would be the next one in the crosshairs with no one to seek justice for them. Dying in battle was an honorable end with the village looking after one's family, but dying like this meant carrying a bad reputation and potentially bringing ruin to one's kin.
---
"Who's there?!"
Back on the other side, Ronglin didn't care about the state of the Hidden Mist. After leaving the battlefield, his only goal was to get back to camp, wash off the blood, and take a bath.
Swinging a massive blade and cutting people down felt great in the moment, but once it was over, the trouble began. Setting aside the nauseating scent of iron, the dried blood made his clothes stick to his skin, which was incredibly uncomfortable.
Suddenly, Ronglin snapped back to high alert. Feeling physically irritable, he had unconsciously relaxed and walked right into someone else's perimeter without noticing.
"Is that Lord Ronglin?" one of the ninjas surrounding him asked, recognizing the voice.
Damn, you scared me!
It was his own people. He had thought it was an enemy. If it had been, he would have had to expend a considerable amount of effort to break through another encirclement.
"It is Lord Ronglin!!!"
Despite the heavy mist and the fact that Ronglin was covered head to toe in blood, a few people who had been running with him for the past few days recognized him immediately.
"It's Lord Ronglin. Stand down."
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