"I expect you four elders to keep your mouths shut about tonight's events. Do not reveal this to anyone, and do not attempt to track down within the village.
To ensure your cooperation, I'd like to offer you a small gift."
Shisui reached into his robes and produced four translucent insect eggs. "These are Longevity Insects I've cultivated.
They can revitalize your aging bodies and extend your lifespans. They might even push your strength to a new level."
"You..."
Two of the elders recoiled, their faces contorted with indignation. For a mont, it looked as though they would rather swallow their Hero's Water and die in a blaze of glory than accept a parasitic gift from a rogue.
Shisui didn't move. He simply turned his gaze back toward the silent, mist-shrouded village.
"It's so quiet, isn't it? Tell ... wouldn't it be wonderful if it stayed this quiet forever?"
A threat. A blatant, cold-blooded threat.
He was using the lives of the helpless civilians and the sleeping shinobi to blackmail these old n who already had one foot in the grave.
But what could they do? They had no strength to resist. With gray, defeated faces, they reached out and took the eggs, swallowing them in silence.
As Shisui ford a single hand seal, they imdiately felt a change. A warmth spread through their limbs, their muscles pulsed with new vigor, and the withered skin on their hands seed to tighten.
Seeing their submission, Shisui's body dissolved into a swarm of gray insects and scattered into the night.
Within minutes, every trace of the night's carnage—the bones, the blood-stained clothes, the discarded weapons—had been consud. It was as if the invaders had never existed.
The four elders stood alone in the moonlight, finally collapsing to their knees, gasping for air.
In the second level of his basent, Shisui sat cross-legged. The soft, bioluminescent glow of the insect tanks illuminated his face, which was now deathly pale. He had drained every drop of his chakra.
Furthermore, many of the insects he had force-bred earlier, deprived of nutrition and pushed too hard, had died in their vats. He had reclaid them, converting their remains back into raw energy.
This single night of slaughter and "scavenging" had netted him a staggering 1,300 years of Primordial Energy.
For a fleeting second, the thought of killing everyone in the village to maximize his gains had crossed his mind. But he crushed it instantly.
The temptation of slaughter was a bottomless abyss; if he lost his moral compass now, he would eventually be consud by his own greed, becoming a monster in human skin.
He had fled the Leaf to escape being assimilated by the cold logic of the shinobi world. Maintaining that humanity was exhausting, especially for soone who, in another life, had been just an ordinary man.
"I guess I'm just not cut out to be a Dark Lord," he muttered, closing his eyes. "Too sentintal. I can't bring myself to do things that make feel miserable, no matter the profit."
He was about to drift into a much-needed sleep when his eyes snapped open. He had forgotten the big prizes.
The sealed vessel at the shrine. The Sacred Tree that produced the Hero's Water.
"Toko Shrine... everything in there belongs to now."
The thought of the loot acted like a shot of adrenaline. To move them, however, required physical labor his exhausted body couldn't provide.
He looked at his stores and picked out two specialized insect eggs. He didn't use them for symbiosis; instead, he neutralized their life force and swallowed them as supplents.
The effect was hundreds of tis more potent than a military ration pill. A wave of nutrition flooded his system, restoring his stamina without straining his cells.
That sa night, a shadow reappeared at Toko Shrine.
As he reached for the bronze vessel containing the Seven-Tails, he felt a strange agitation from his scout bugs.
Following their guidance, he began to dig into the earth near the altar. As the soil cleared, he uncovered two pale, white humanoid figures in a shallow trance.
Startled by the light, the two creatures tried to Phase into the ground, but Shisui was faster. His insects surged forward, pinning them down.
White Zetsu.
Why were they here? To watch him?
Shisui shook his head. Based on his current "threat level," he was at most a minor side character. Madara or Obito wouldn't waste Zetsu's ti on a high-stakes surveillance mission for a re Abura rogue.
They were likely here to monitor the Seven-Tails and had simply been caught in his village-wide Genjutsu.
An unexpected harvest. A magnificent one.
While White Zetsu would eventually be everywhere, right now, they were top-tier biological research material, far superior to any ordinary Jonin.
He knocked them unconscious and had his insects drag them away.
To be safe, he dispelled that specific clone and sent a fresh one to retrieve the Seven-Tails' vessel, ensuring no Zetsu "spores" were carried back to his main body.
Back in the basent, Shisui ran his hand over the bronze tripod. He realized the seal was far beyond his current understanding.
Takigakure might be a minor village now, but they had once been powerful enough to be granted a Tailed Beast. Their foundational sealing arts were still formidable.
He realized he had overlooked another treasure: knowledge. To keep his experintal subjects contained, he needed better seals.
One more clone was dispatched, this ti to the Leader's residence.
When he arrived, the four elders were already there, preparing to divide the village's secret scrolls and wealth. When they saw him, they froze, clutching the scrolls to their chests.
"Elders," Shisui said with a pleasant smile. "Since I am now a part of this village, I believe I should have a share of its heritage."
The elders looked at each other, sighed, and stepped aside. They didn't just give him the basic jutsu; they handed over every scroll regarding the shrine's sealing arrays without missing a word.
Strangely, the four of them didn't look as terrified as before. Perhaps they had finally realized that as long as they played by his rules, Shisui truly did just want to let the village return to its "peaceful" state—under his quiet protection.
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