For the entire Grass Country, this was destined to be a day they would never forget.
They watched seven suns rise into the sky, blazing over the land without restraint. And while those seven suns scorched everything below, terrified screams kept ringing out from above.
Those screams naturally came from Satori.
"Why? Why won't you stop chasing me?!"
For the first time, Satori was genuinely afraid. It had already realized that the man behind it truly possessed the power to kill it. Unless it willingly crawled back into the Box of Ultimate Bliss right now and gambled that Uchiha Chizumi couldn't break it open, death was only a matter of time.
But in the face of Satori's terrified howls, Uchiha Chizumi gave no reply at all.
He looked down at the frantically fleeing monster, and in his Sharingan there was only indifference.
Six Radiance Release suns revolved slowly around him, each one radiating heat intense enough to melt mountains. And farther away, the two Radiance Release suns that had already gone out of control had crashed into the wilderness, reducing everything for miles around to scorched wasteland.
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!"
Looking at the burning earth below, Satori only flapped its wings faster in mounting panic.
Boom!
Another Radiance Release sun shot out from Uchiha Chizumi's side.
This one was even faster.
As it streaked across the sky, dragging a golden-red tail of fire behind it, it seemed to ignite the entire sky along the way.
Satori was fast, but faced with that blazing sphere, it didn't even have time to dodge. The Radiance Release sun slammed straight into its back.
"Aaaaaahhh!!!"
A shrill scream tore through the heavens.
A massive wound exploded open across Satori's back. Charred flesh curled back, exposing the bones inside its body as they burned.
The defense it had always been so proud of looked pitifully fragile in front of Radiance Release.
"It's over."
Uchiha Chizumi's voice sounded right beside Satori's ear.
Its body already felt half-cooked, yet when it heard his voice, what rose in its heart wasn't heat, but a wave of ice-cold dread.
In the next instant, Satori's pupils contracted violently.
It didn't even understand what had happened before yet another Radiance Release sun struck its body and blasted it out of the sky.
Satori could see it clearly—Uchiha Chizumi hadn't thrown any of the Radiance Release suns orbiting around him, so why had one suddenly appeared on top of it out of nowhere?
"So Flying Thunder God combined with Radiance Release suns works even better than I expected…"
Uchiha Chizumi noted that to himself.
In this fight against Satori, he hadn't used any of the Uchiha clan's power at all. He had relied solely on Radiance Release, combined with the Flying Thunder God Technique he had only just begun to grasp.
And the synergy between those two was much stronger than he had anticipated.
Satori was still howling, but Chizumi had already lost interest in continuing the experiment. The remaining Radiance Release suns around him gathered together, and under his gaze, they slowly began to merge.
In just a few seconds, a gigantic sun appeared over the Grass Country.
And this second sun looked several times larger than the real sun hanging above the shinobi world.
The instant it formed, terrifying heat waves exploded outward. The ground below began to melt, and as the earth softened and liquefied, it almost looked like the effect of Chizumi's old Lava Release.
"No…"
Satori still struggled to flee, but after being struck by two Radiance Release suns in a row, its body was already riddled with holes. All it could do now was watch as that vast sun descended from the sky and crushed down toward it.
Rumble—!!!
Heaven and earth changed color.
The gigantic sun smashed into the ground, and the resulting shockwave spread in all directions. The land for dozens of miles shook violently, while a colossal mushroom cloud rose into the sky, staining it gold and red.
Flames raged. The earth melted.
When the smoke and dust finally began to clear, a gigantic crater several miles wide had appeared on the ground. Its edges still ran with molten lava, and at the very center, Satori's enormous body had already burned completely to ash.
This ancient being, once sealed within the Box of Ultimate Bliss by the Sage of Six Paths himself, died without ever understanding why it had to die.
And the instant Satori was truly destroyed, Uchiha Chizumi felt a new power begin to stir inside his body.
Satori had slaughtered every ninja inside Hōzuki Castle. The Grass ninja may have deserved death, but before that, Satori had already been fed countless bloody sacrifices. The sin on it was among the heaviest Chizumi had ever seen.
Now that Satori was dead, justice gave Chizumi its reward.
All emotions directed toward you become a source of chakra for you.
That was the ability Chizumi gained from killing Satori.
No matter what emotion it was, as long as it was directed at him, it would be refined into chakra and automatically flow into his body.
But the moment he gained that power, Chizumi frowned.
All at once, his ears seemed to fill with countless noisy voices. Some came from far away. Some came from the ground beneath his feet. Others came from beyond the sea.
As he struggled to steady himself against that flood of sound, he began to make out what the voices were saying.
In the Land of Water—
"Lord Chizumi didn't go straight to the Land of Earth. He appeared in the Grass Country first?"
Hearing her subordinate's report, Mei Terumi couldn't help asking in surprise. And that small spark of surprise, the instant Chizumi sensed it, became a thread of chakra so faint it was almost impossible to notice.
In the Land of Rain—
"Uchiha… Chizumi!"
Nagato sat quietly in his cave repairing the remaining Paths of Pain, but as he worked, he found himself grinding out Uchiha Chizumi's name through clenched teeth once again.
What Nagato did not know was that every time he did so, that emotion was silently converted into chakra and flowed toward Chizumi.
In the Land of Fire, Hiruzen Sarutobi stood in Konoha's cemetery, saying something before the graves of Koharu Utatane and Danzō Shimura.
Emotion churned above him too, and that emotion likewise became a thread of chakra feeding Uchiha Chizumi.
But to Chizumi, these were all minor things.
What truly troubled him was that he could clearly hear countless civilians in the Lands of Water, Fire, and Grass all talking about him.
Some worshiped him. Some feared him. Some were in awe of him.
And all of those emotions were becoming chakra, pouring into Uchiha Chizumi's body.