Kakuzu looked at the forehead protector in Shisui's hand. Though his heart was already wavering, his voice remained cold and mocking.
"A tiny speck like the Land of Waterfalls—how much of an 'economy' could it possibly have?"
It wasn't a dismissal; it was a prompt. He wanted to hear the numbers. He wanted to be convinced.
Shisui continued calmly, "The new Daimyo was placed there by us. Over seventy percent of the nobility is under our absolute control. Those who were purged recently—the ones whose heads rolled and whose estates were seized—were the ones who opposed our vision."
He t Kakuzu's green eyes. "Tell , Kakuzu... how much wealth do you think those ancient clans have hoarded over the centuries?"
Kakuzu remained silent. He knew the greed of the high nobility well. A single prominent family could easily sit on hundreds of millions of ryo.
"It is a mountain of gold and silver," Shisui said, without exaggeration. Then, his tone shifted to one of regret. "But they were fools. They didn't know how to use it. Wealth is only true wealth when it flows. Gold and jewels piled in a vault are nothing more than shiny decorations."
He raised his hand. A dense stone brick rose from the earth and floated toward Kakuzu. "Test its strength."
Kakuzu caught it and squeezed. To his surprise, the brick didn't crumble. He increased his grip strength, exerting enough force to crush steel, yet the stone remained intact.
"That is a masonry brick processed by my 'Construction Swarm,'" Shisui explained. "It can be used to build bridges, pave roads, and fortify cities.
The infrastructure of the Land of Waterfalls is archaic; it needs a total overhaul. Furthermore, while the Great Nations are beginning to use electricity, we are in the dark.
We will build power plants, docks, and modernize mariti trade. I intend to make money circulate through every vein of this country.
The commoners will no longer be tied solely to the soil; their lives will be transford."
Kakuzu went quiet. He looked at the brick, then at Shisui, and finally at the gleaming forehead protector.
To be honest, he was moved. Who wouldn't want to see their holand prosper? Even if he had betrayed the village once, it was only because the village had betrayed him first.
"Your plan sounds decent," Kakuzu said, tossing the brick back. "But why should I follow you? Let's see what you're made of first."
Before the last word left his lips, Kakuzu vanished.
Shisui didn't dodge. He knew words were cheap to a man like this; n like Kakuzu only respected the language of power.
"Very well."
Shisui stepped back, his hands weaving into a seal. "This is my first ti facing a conventional Kage-level ninja head-on. Let experience the thods of the legends."
The swarm erupted.
Kakuzu's attack was ruthless and seasoned. His five hearts beat in unison, circulating five distinct elental chakras through his body.
Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, and Lightning—he cycled through them flawlessly, without a breath of delay.
His style was efficient: use the minimum amount of chakra to deal the maximum amount of damage. Decades of survival had honed his efficiency to a razor edge.
But he quickly realized sothing was wrong. There were too many bugs. It was a literal ocean of them, seemingly infinite.
Whenever he incinerated a wave with Fire Style, ten more waves surged from the periphery. They didn't clash with him directly; they harassed, parried, and drained him.
His black tendrils lashed out in every direction, but they couldn't stop the microscopic insects from slipping through the gaps in his defense.
More bizarrely, the insects were shifting formations with military precision—so acted as feints, others as assassins, and so specifically targeted his blind spots. They weren't just attacking; they were executing a complex, synchronized tactical doctrine.
Can insect manipulation reach this level? Kakuzu thought, his alarm growing. He had fought Abura before, but never like this. These weren't just pets; they were an army under a single, grand intelligence.
Shisui remained at the center of the storm, his hands held in a steady seal, motionless.
"Found you!"
Kakuzu suddenly lunged, two of his hearts surging simultaneously. He fused Wind and Fire in his hands, unleashing his signature composite jutsu at point-blank range. The blast turned the ground to scorched glass as it tore toward Shisui.
The swarm rushed in, forming a massive, thick wall of beetles. Among them, a specific group of amber-colored insects began spinning in a rhythmic pattern across the wall's surface.
When the Fire-Wind blast hit, its kinetic and thermal energy was instantly dispersed across the rotating swarm. Behind the wall, a massive river of pulverized earth and insect husks surged forward.
Swarm Style: Earth-Silt River!
This was one of the Earth Style techniques Shisui had programd into his Construction Swarm.
By using a single "signal seal," he could trigger pre-set maneuvers: Earth Spears, Bedrock Plates, Mud Burials, or the Great Silt River.
He didn't need complex hand signs because the "programming" was already inside the bugs; his hand sign was rely the execution command.
Seconds later, the fire broke through the river, but Shisui was gone.
In the next instant, Kakuzu felt a chill on the back of his neck. An invisible, camouflaged scorpion-insect had climbed onto his nape.
Its stinger lashed out. Kakuzu's black threads reacted instinctively, swatting the creature away, but it was a diversion.
Thousands of microscopic bugs surged from the earth beneath his feet, crawling up his Earth Grudge Fear tendrils and entering his body.
"Damn it!"
Kakuzu detonated his chakra to blow the insects away, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. Shisui appeared directly in front of him, his palm pressed against Kakuzu's chest.
"Burst."
A concentrated pulse of force tore through Kakuzu's torso. Before his threads could counter-attack, Shisui's swarm flooded into the wound.
Kakuzu's face twisted in horror—he felt purple, nano-sized venomous bugs racing through his veins toward his remaining hearts.
"Stop!" Kakuzu roared.
Shisui froze. The swarm hovered in mid-air, inches from total destruction. He wove a counter-seal, recalling the nano-venom into his own body.
Kakuzu looked down. There were two gaping holes in his chest. One was from the nano-bugs, but the other... he realized with a start that Shisui's physical strike had been much more than it seed.
Behind him, two of his masks shattered into pieces and fell into the dirt.
"Two of my hearts... destroyed! You truly knew my weakness from the start."
Shisui lowered his hand. "Killing you would be a waste of talent. But making you understand the gap between us? That was necessary."
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