In the dense forest bordering the Valley of the End, the heavy, distant roar of the waterfall echoed through the trees. After Shisui's dark silhouette vanished into the canopy, the clearing fell entirely silent. To an ordinary observer, the woods were completely empty.
Kei remained seated on the boulder, leaning casually on his white cane. The warm, supportive smile he had offered Shisui melted away, replaced by an expression of cold, absolute calm.
"You can come out now," Kei said, his voice carrying effortlessly over the sound of the rushing water.
There was no movement. Not a single rustle of leaves or snap of a twig. Had Kei truly been blind, or relying on standard sensory techniques, the hunter's flawless concealment might have fooled him.
Kei let out a soft, disappointed sigh. "Why bother with the theatrics? Do you honestly believe I am bluffing?"
When the hidden spy stubbornly refused to break cover, Kei didn't waste another word. He raised his free hand, condensing a dense sphere of chakra in his palm, and thrust it toward a completely unremarkable oak tree forty yards away.
Eight Trigrams: Vacuum Palm!
A massive, invisible shockwave of compressed air ripped through the clearing. Realizing his absolute concealment had been flawlessly pierced, the spy abandoned his hiding spot. He leaped from the high branches just as the Vacuum Palm pulverized the trunk of the tree into splinters.
While suspended in mid-air, the masked operative drew a scroll and a brush with blinding speed. In three frantic strokes, he painted a massive, monochrome tiger.
"Ninja Art: Super Beast Imitation Drawing!"
The ink tiger peeled itself off the parchment, roaring silently as it materialized into a three-dimensional beast. It lunged down toward Kei, acting as a living shield while the spy twisted in the air, desperate to create distance and escape.
But before the operative's boots even touched the ground, Kei's Vacuum Palm tore straight through the beast. The tiger shattered instantly, exploding into a rain of useless black ink.
In the fraction of a second it took the ink to fall, Kei utilized the Body Flicker. He vanished from the boulder and reappeared directly in front of the landing spy.
"Ah. A blank, patterned mask," Kei observed coldly, stepping inside the operative's guard. "A Root assassin. No wonder you prefer to cower in the branches."
Kei tilted his head, his white, unseeing eyes locking onto the mask. "Tell me... did Danzo Shimura wake up trembling in the dark when he heard a ghost calling itself the Body Flicker was hunting for blood?"
The Root operative stared back at him, perfectly silent. He held his brush tightly, his posture rigid, betraying absolutely no emotion.
Seeing the total, fanatical silence, Kei decided to skip the interrogation. As a psychiatrist, he knew that breaking the horrific, mind-wiping conditioning Danzo subjected his assets to required months of painstaking therapy. It was entirely impossible to extract data from a Root drone in the field.
Therefore, keeping the spy alive was pointless.
Kei's hands blurred into motion, his fingertips flaring with lethal, blue Gentle Fist chakra.
Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms!
Kei unleashed a devastating, high-speed barrage of strikes aimed directly at the operative's chest and face, showing absolutely no mercy.
The Root assassin, a man named Kari, possessed terrifying reflexes. Realizing he was outmatched in close-quarters combat, Kari dragged his brush across a new scroll.
"Ninja Art: Super Beast Imitation Drawing!"
A giant, shrieking ink bird erupted between them. The bird spread its massive wings, sacrificing its body to absorb the brunt of Kei's relentless palm strikes. The sheer force of the Gentle Fist shredded the bird, but the momentary physical barrier bought Kari the split second he desperately needed.
Kari triggered the Body Flicker, teleporting violently backward into the dense treeline.
He didn't stop. He chained the teleportation jutsu together, leaping frantically through the dark forest. His mind was racing. He had seen too much. The 'blind doctor' was a monster hiding in plain sight. He had to survive. He had to deliver this important intelligence to Lord Danzo.
Reaching the outer perimeter of the valley, Kari finally felt the doctor's oppressive chakra signature fade. He landed heavily on a thick branch, letting out a sharp, ragged breath of relief. At this distance, a few more seconds of sprinting would put him in the clear. Once he reached the nearest relay station, Kei Hyuga would be a dead man.
However, before the sigh of relief even finished leaving Kari's lungs, a sudden, freezing aura of death washed over him.
He looked up, and his eyes widened in pure terror.
A massive, roaring lion's head forged from blinding blue chakra was diving directly at him from the canopy above.
"How is that possible?!" Kari gasped, the horrifying realization clicking into place a fraction of a second too late. "You... you let me run on purpose?!"
There was no time to weave a sign. The Twin Lion Fists slammed into him with the force of a falling meteor.
The impact shattered the branch and drove Kari violently into the forest floor, crushing his ribs and instantly rupturing his internal organs. He lay in a massive crater of splintered wood and upturned earth, drowning in his own blood.
Kei drifted down from the trees, his white coat pristine, and stood over the dying assassin. He was entirely unsurprised by the outcome. With the Zero-Tails pushing his physical baseline into the Kage-level, executing a spy who specialized purely in stealth and evasion required almost zero effort.
"I did not let you run to toy with you," Kei said softly, shaking his head. "I simply needed you to lead me away from the drop point so the blood wouldn't stain the rendezvous. I didn't want to waste any more time on you."
"Cough... hack..."
Kari spat a thick wad of blood, staring up at the blind doctor through his shattered mask. He knew his heart was failing. He could not escape.
"Lord Danzo... will not let you live," Kari choked out, his voice dripping with absolute, fanatical venom. "He will discover the monster you truly are... and you will suffer a fate far worse than death."
"I am afraid Danzo will never see me coming," Kei replied, a dark, mocking smile curving his lips. "Because Danzo Shimura is a terminal disease. And your entire Root organization is the rot spreading through the village."
"But do not worry," Kei whispered, tapping his cane against the dirt. "As a dedicated physician, I have already reserved a permanent bed for him in the morgue. I will cure his illness very soon."
Kari gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with fury. "You arrogant worm. Do you honestly believe a single doctor can defeat Lord Danzo?"
"A worm?" Kei chuckled softly, his smile fading into an expression of absolute, terrifying judgment. "Compared to the atrocities I plan to commit against his atrocities, I am a god of mercy. Root is the true plague of Konoha."
"Hashirama cell experiments on innocent villagers. The brutal, systematic slaughter of orphans to forge emotionless slaves. The engineered suicide of the White Fang. The dark whispers that drove the Uchiha to the brink of civil war."
Kei's voice dropped, ringing with cold, clinical disgust. "He even orchestrated the death of Yahiko in the Rain Village, birthing the Akatsuki's hatred. Danzo Shimura is not a protector. He is the architect of every major tragedy this village has ever faced."
"How could a traitor like you ever understand Lord Danzo's greatness?!" Kari screamed, his dying lungs straining. "Everything he does... the blood he spills... is for the absolute survival of the Leaf! He burns the unstable elements so the tree can grow!"
Kei looked down at the broken operative. Even with his chest crushed and his life bleeding out into the dirt, the man's horrific brainwashing remained absolutely unbreakable.
"You are incurable," Kei said simply.
He gathered a dense spike of chakra into his palm and drove it flawlessly into Kari's failing heart.
In his final, fleeting moment, Kari stared up at Kei with a gaze of pure, fanatical hatred. But it was entirely meaningless. The light vanished from his eyes, and he went limp.
Kei didn't linger. He systematically pulverized the corpse with targeted Gentle Fist strikes, ensuring no Yamanaka operative could ever extract residual memories from the brain tissue, and incinerated the remains.
As he began the quiet journey back toward the village, Kei analyzed the implications of the ambush.
If Danzo had dispatched an elite tracker to hunt Shisui, it proved the old hawk was officially terrified. Danzo had stolen Shisui's right eye, but he had absolutely no idea that Shisui had given his left eye to Itachi before throwing himself into the river.
Therefore, in Danzo's paranoid mind, a vengeful Shisui Uchiha—still possessing at least one legendary Mangekyo Sharingan—had survived the assassination attempt and was currently amassing power and capital in the criminal underworld to exact his revenge.
It was a beautiful psychological trap. From a clinical perspective, human beings are always most terrified by the invisible threat. A drawn sword is dangerous, but a sword dangling by a thread in the dark is paralyzing.
That was the true, primary objective of the Avengers. Kei didn't just want to kill the corrupt leaders of Konoha. He wanted them to spend their final months suffocating in a state of absolute, perpetual dread.