"...Tch."
Raizen exhaled sharply, slumping against a half-burnt tree trunk. Two near-death experiences back-to-back — even for a reincarnator — were starting to feel like bad RNG.
If he hadn't left a Flying Thunder God mark midway through the last battle, he'd have been fertilizer by now.
"Note to self," he muttered bitterly. "Never underestimate how clever people in this era are. The Ueshi bastards aren't dumb—they're demons in flak jackets."
The thought of Songshan Mine clawed at his mind. That fire earlier, that eerie silence... it didn't take a genius to know something had gone horribly wrong.
And it wasn't just bad luck anymore.
He'd been ambushed at the Tiannan Mine weeks ago. Barely survived that. Now, this.
"Yeah," he said grimly. "We've been played."
Someone had set the Amamiya Clan up from the start.
The Songshan outpost couldn't be saved now—not with half his chakra reserves gone and his body half-cooked by Tokusho's suicide jutsu.
The bastard's final technique had been pure insanity—his flesh turning to molten earth, burning hot and heavy enough to sear Raizen's skin raw.
"Great," Raizen hissed, peeling away a cracked section of his bandage. "If the explosion didn't kill me, the infection will. Fantastic."
He found a stream, rinsed off the blood and dirt, then wrapped his wounds in soaked cloth.
The air was cold, morning creeping in through the fading smoke.
"I'll wait until sunrise," he decided. "Then I'll see what's left."
Half an hour later, Raizen soared above the valley on his clay bird, the wind clawing at his hair.
Below him lay the Songshan Mine—or what was left of it.
Ash. Charred beams. The once-bustling camp was now a graveyard of twisted steel and blackened corpses.
Not a sound. Not even the hum of chakra.
Raizen landed softly, boots crunching on the scorched ground.
"...All gone."
The silence was heavier than any wound.
Before he could take another step, five shadows darted out from the ruins, forming a circle around him.
"Who are you?!" one barked. "State your name!"
Raizen's eyes narrowed.
They were Ueshi. Their forehead protectors bore the crude, uneven etching of that clan—scavengers dressed as soldiers.
"Figures," he muttered.
The leader grinned, showing broken teeth. "Ha! Didn't think we'd actually catch one! Boys, cut his head off! Let's earn ourselves some glory!"
Raizen tilted his head slightly, unimpressed. "You're really bragging about killing one guy? That's your clan's bar?"
"Listen to this runt talk big," one of them sneered. "He's like an angry little cat—"
He didn't finish.
A kunai whistled through the air, embedding itself in the dirt beside his foot. He looked down, smirking.
"Missed, did ya—"
SHNK.
Raizen was suddenly in front of him. His kunai slid cleanly across the man's throat.
The Ueshi ninja gurgled, eyes wide, collapsing in a heap of red mud.
"Youshin! He killed Youshin!" one of them yelled.
The rest charged in fury.
Raizen sighed. "Yeah, that's right. Come on, respawn fodder."
He flung another marked kunai, body flickering through golden light—
Flying Thunder God — Step Slash.
By the time their blades swung, Raizen was already behind them.
Four necks opened like paper seams.
A few seconds later, silence. The air stank of blood and ozone.
Raizen stood among the corpses, his expression unreadable.
"Pathetic," he muttered. "Five-on-one and you still die screaming."
He wiped the kunai clean, scanning the ruins again.
No survivors. No movement. Not even chakra traces from his clanmates.
Just smoke and bones.
He clenched his fists.
The Tiannan Mine. That's where it had started. The last ambush. The same clan.
And if his mark was still active there...
"Good," Raizen whispered. "Then I can finish this properly."
He closed his eyes, focusing. The faint hum of space-time chakra pulsed in his mind—one of his Flying Thunder God kunai, still alive, still burning.
A cruel smile crept across his face.
"Your move, Ueshi clan."
Flicker.
He vanished in a flash of gold, leaving only the corpses behind to witness the ruin of Songshan.