When Saiki asked his question, if the Root operatives had answered straightforwardly—saying something like, "Submit to Root, or die"—Saiki wouldn't have cared much.
But the Root leader spoke in a voice devoid of emotion, a chill in his tone: "It seems the rumors of your illicit, dirty relationship with that woman were true. Otherwise, you never would have shown up."
Hearing this, Saiki's initially indifferent gaze narrowed into dangerous slits. "Who are you talking about?"
"Who do you think?" The tone remained icy, but a hint of mocking amusement bled through, as if he found Saiki's sudden anger pathetic.
They didn't need to answer; Saiki already knew. They couldn't be talking about Tsunade. Even if someone had discovered their relationship, Tsunade was the Princess of the Leaf and its most vital figurehead; absolutely no one would dare use her reputation as blackmail material.
But Tsume Inuzuka? She was just a member of a minor clan, and her status as a married woman made the scandal the perfect leverage.
"Have you transmitted this intelligence back to the village?" Saiki asked, his voice dropping to a freezing register.
The Root leader paused for a second, then sneered. "What do you think?"
"Good." Saiki let out a visible breath of relief. Even if the intel had been sent, he still needed to silence every single person standing in front of him.
"Hm?" Saiki's reaction caused the Root leader to pause again. What did "Good" mean?
Upon receiving the frontline reports detailing Saiki's slaughter of over a hundred Cloud ninja and his survival against the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki, Danzo was terrified. For a boy not yet ten to wield such apocalyptic power... and worse, for that boy to be Tsunade's adopted brother, placing him firmly in Hiruzen's faction. Danzo decided he could not allow Saiki to mature. His initial order had been a direct kill command.
But later, Danzo had reconsidered, altering the order: Attempt to recruit Saiki first. If he refuses to serve, eliminate him. After all, Danzo had built the massive Root organization on the premise that no one was beyond his ability to break, tame, and control.
Therefore, this Root squad's primary objective was to recruit Saiki; execution was only the fallback plan.
However, Root's method of extortion was fundamentally flawed. Saiki might look like a child, but Tsunade, Nono'u, and Tsume—the women he had been intimate with—were the most precious things to him in this bleak, boring world.
If they had poured dirty water on Saiki or insulted him directly, Saiki wouldn't have given a damn. He was somewhat misanthropic and genuinely didn't care about the opinions of others. But threatening the reputations and lives of Tsunade or Tsume was crossing an absolute, unforgivable line. They still had to live in this world!
The moment Root attempted to use his relationship with Tsume to blackmail him, their fate was sealed. The only people who can keep a secret are the dead—specifically, the dead whose very souls have been annihilated.
Before the Root leader could decipher Saiki's meaning, Saiki's grip on his sword tightened. His freezing gaze swept over the assembled operatives. He asked, his voice entirely devoid of emotion, "Is this all of you?"
"What are you implying, brat?"
Faced with another baffling question, the Root operatives sensed something was horribly wrong. While they didn't fully grasp his intent, as assassins who lived on the razor's edge of death, their instincts for danger were hyper-tuned. If they weren't, they would have died a hundred times over during their training.
Saiki didn't answer. Instead, his right hand formed the Tiger seal, holding it vertically in front of his chest. He pushed his sensory perception to its absolute maximum. Like a divine radar, his Spiritual Sense exploded outward, scanning the entire hill in a fraction of a second. Not a single blade of grass or grain of dirt escaped his scan.
Operating on a fundamentally different cultivation system meant Saiki's energy was on a higher dimensional tier than standard ninja chakra. If this world's spiritual energy weren't so thin—forcing him to cultivate by slowly absorbing the essence of the sun, moon, and natural energy—Saiki would have been a living god by now.
Even with his slow progress, his perception could easily cover a ten-mile radius. Focusing that immense power onto a single small hill meant he scanned its internal structure with X-ray precision.
Root's subterranean base entrance was incredibly well-hidden. Relying purely on standard ninja tracking skills, Saiki could have walked right past it without noticing. The base was also shielded by multiple high-level barrier jutsu designed to block sensors and even the Byakugan.
But under the sweep of Saiki's concentrated Divine Sense, the entire layout of the hill was laid bare. Root didn't have many operatives stationed near the front lines. There were eleven in total. The leader possessed Elite Jonin-level chakra, while the other ten were Chunin—though surviving Root's training meant they were the absolute elite of their rank.
There were nine standing in front of him, and two more remaining inside the base. Saiki quickly formulated his plan. He needed to execute these nine instantly, then breach the base and eradicate the other two before the main camp—specifically Minato and Jiraiya—detected the disturbance.
Before three sentences had even been exchanged, the situation had escalated bizarrely. But seeing Saiki form a hand sign, the Root leader raised his hand. Instantly, every Root operative shifted into a combat-ready stance.
A battle was now unavoidable, but the Root leader issued one final, heavy warning. "Saiki Shiroya, are you planning to attack us? We are a Root squad, a specialized division of the Anbu. To attack us is a direct challenge to the authority of Lord Hokage and Lord Danzo. Think carefully, boy."
If any other ninja were standing there—even someone as powerful as Minato Namikaze—the names of the Hokage and Danzo would have forced them to hesitate. But who the hell was Saiki?
He had literally failed his "Will of Fire" exams!
The moment the warning left the leader's mouth, Saiki—his plan finalized—launched his attack.
"ENGAGE!" the Root leader barked, realizing his mistake a second too late. Fortunately, the other highly trained operatives had already prepped their jutsu.
Ninja are not the Otsutsuki clan. The vast majority of shinobi must weave hand signs to cast Ninjutsu. Even Madara Uchiha rarely skipped them, and only Hashirama Senju had the luxury of simply clapping his hands to summon forests.
Weaving signs, even at maximum speed, takes a breath or two. Mifune, the leader of the samurai, was famous for a sword-draw so fast that ninja couldn't finish their signs before losing their heads. Saiki, who had casually defeated Mifune, was significantly faster.
Saiki's hand dropped to the hilt of 'Thunderstorm'. In the next instant, he vanished from his spot, leaving only an afterimage.
"AGHHH!" A scream tore through the night. Even though they were separated by twenty meters, Saiki crossed the distance instantaneously. With a single, brutal slash, he cleaved a Chunin—who had just finished his signs and was about to release a jutsu—perfectly in half.
To their credit, they were Root. The moment Saiki executed the first Chunin, he realized their formation was a trap. Every single operative was positioned to act as bait. The moment Saiki engaged one, he became the focal point for a massive, coordinated crossfire designed to obliterate the target in a single combo.
"Water Style: Water Fang Bullet!"
"Lightning Style: Thunderbolt!"
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"
"Fire Style: Great Flame Technique!"
He had killed one Chunin in a blink, but Saiki was instantly swallowed by a concentrated barrage of high-level Ninjutsu from every direction, sealing off all avenues of escape.
Gripping 'Thunderstorm', the gracefully curved blade surged with chakra, manifesting a razor-sharp aura that flowed like pressurized water. Surrounded by certain death, Saiki didn't panic for a second.
"Severing the Waterfall!"
A crescent of blinding, liquid light erupted from the blade. By pushing the Nature and Shape Transformation of Water Style to its absolute peak, Saiki launched a high-pressure water blade that effortlessly cleaved the incoming Water Bullet in half. Saiki blurred through the opening. As he crossed paths with the Root operative who had cast the water jutsu, the man's body split open, and he collapsed to the dirt.
BOOM!
True men never look back at explosions. A fraction of a second after Saiki sliced through the water and executed the second operative, the combined Fire and Lightning jutsu slammed into his previous position, triggering a massive, deafening detonation that shook the forest.
"Damn it!" In the span of two breaths, two elite Root operatives had been butchered. The Root leader cursed, a mix of shock and fury in his voice, before roaring, "Watch his speed! Area-of-effect attacks only!"
As he shouted, the leader threw off his black cloak. From the gourd strapped to his back, a massive, buzzing black cloud of parasitic insects—the Kikaichu—erupted, swarming toward Saiki like a plague of locusts.
If Saiki were a hardcore Naruto lore expert, he would have instantly recognized the leader. The facial tattoos, the sunglasses, the trench coat, and the gourd were the undeniable hallmarks of Tatsuma Aburame—a highly ranked Root commander who frequently accompanied Danzo, and who would later help extort Nono'u's orphanage in the original timeline.
But Saiki had only skimmed the manga, mostly fast-forwarding through the endless flashback arcs. While he had brushed up on the general history of the ninja world to understand the timeline, he hadn't paid any attention to minor, irrelevant side characters—especially if they weren't beautiful women.
However, the signature sunglasses, coat, and insect gourd were dead giveaways. Saiki instantly knew the man belonged to the Aburame clan. After all, not everyone walks around with a literal bug hive on their back.
The reason Saiki had targeted the Chunin first, rather than the leader, was because he still wasn't 100% sure if the intel regarding him and Tsume had actually been transmitted back to Danzo. He wanted to capture the leader alive for a quick interrogation.
These Root operatives were incredibly unlucky. By crossing Saiki tonight, not only were they all going to die, but to ensure their secrets remained buried, Saiki intended to annihilate their very souls.
Every single slash Saiki executed tonight was infused with a sliver of his precious Senjutsu chakra. This elevated his Kenjutsu to a level where it bypassed physical durability to directly sever the soul.
He had confirmed this ability thanks to the dozens of Cloud ninja he had slaughtered, and, more importantly, his clash with the Eight-Tails.
Tailed Beasts are purely chakra-based lifeforms, created by splitting the chakra of the Ten-Tails. In a world where chakra and the soul are intrinsically linked, the fact that Saiki's Senjutsu chakra could inflict lasting, unhealable damage on Gyuki proved that his strikes were effectively erasing spiritual matter. Every swing of his blade carried the lethal, reality-warping properties of Yin-Yang Release.