Kapitel 321: 320-Make it stop.

The twisted world of Renjiro's genjutsu hung heavy in the air. The blood-red sky loomed above, a stark, malevolent void that seemed to press down on everything beneath it. The grey-scale landscape stretched out into an eternity of nothingness, its muted tones robbing the world of all life and vibrance.

Suspended in midair, the five Kumo shinobi were crucified against wooden pillars that groaned under the weight of their unseen torment. The air around them was still, unnervingly so, broken only by the faint creak of the wooden restraints and the distant hum of something—something unnatural—lurking just beyond their senses.

Renjiro stood at a distance, his arms crossed as he regarded his prisoners. The faint glow of his Sharingan cut through the muted darkness, its tomoe spinning lazily. A smirk curled beneath his mask.

'Damn, I wish this was the real deal,' he thought bitterly, the frustration gnawing at him.

The genjutsu was a work in progress—a mimicry of Itachi's Mangekyō Sharingan ability, Tsukuyomi.

Renjiro had poured months into refining it, using his fourth tomoe and an infusion of Yin chakra to create a powerful illusion. But it lacked the fluidity and raw omnipotence of the original.

The world it created was static, unchanging, and Renjiro had little to no control over the events that unfolded within it. Unlike Itachi's technique, this imitation could not compress time to deliver days of torment in mere seconds.

'While it's miles weaker than the original, this should do it,' he thought, his gaze settling on the panic-stricken faces of his captives.

Kanai, the leader of the Kumo team, struggled against the invisible force that bound him to the wooden cross. His body strained, muscles twitching as he tried to release the genjutsu.

'Release. Release. RELEASE!' he screamed internally, his chakra flaring as he cycled through every method he knew.

But the bindings held firm. His breath came in shallow, uneven gasps, the oppressive silence of the world around him only amplifying his mounting dread.

'Is this really a genjutsu?' he wondered, his mind racing.

The crimson sky and drained colours felt too vivid, too visceral. A part of him doubted his reality. Was this an illusion, or had he been dragged into some hellish otherworld? The uncertainty clawed at his sanity.

Then, a sound—soft at first, like the faint crackle of distant embers. Kanai's eyes darted downward, and his heart sank.

A sea of green flames roared to life, spreading out from beneath him. The ethereal fire surged and twisted, licking at the wooden beams that held him and his comrades. The heat was absent, but the sight alone was enough to set his nerves on edge.

"What is this?!" one of the Kumo shinobi screamed, his voice breaking the oppressive silence. His wide eyes darted around frantically, his body trembling as the flames climbed higher.

The green fire seeped into the wood, its glow intensifying as it climbed. Kanai could feel it now—a crawling, insidious sensation that crept along his skin. When the flames touched his body, there was a brief moment of stillness.

Then, the pain came.

"Aaargh!!!"

A bone-deep agony erupted within him, unlike anything he had ever felt. It wasn't the searing pain of flesh burning; it was something far worse. It felt as though his very soul was aflame, each ember tearing through his core with relentless ferocity.

"Agh! Stop it! STOP IT!" Mihara's voice rang out, shrill and desperate. He writhed against his bindings, his face twisted in a mask of pure torment.

Kanai's mind spiralled as the pain wracked his body.

'This can't be real. This can't be real!' he thought, the mantra repeating uselessly as the flames consumed him from the inside out.

But the pain—the pain was undeniable. It was too vivid, too sharp to be an illusion. He tried again to break free, his chakra flaring with every ounce of strength he could muster, but the genjutsu held firm. The futility of his efforts gnawed at him, and cracks began to form in his resolve.

Renjiro stepped forward, his voice cutting through the chaos like a blade. "How did you know about me?" he demanded, his tone sharp and unwavering. His Sharingan glowed ominously, reflecting the green flames.

Of course, Renjiro adjusted his appearance to only show his normal sharingan. He was using bits of his green flame in the genjutsu. It was a spur-of-the-moment idea that Renjiro was delightfully surprised to see working so well. Even if he couldn't exactly tell how that was even possible in the first place.

Kanai barely registered the words. The pain consumed him, drowning out everything else. Renjiro's voice sounded distant, like it was coming from the other side of a vast chasm.

He could see the ANBU operative standing before him, but the sight blurred and wavered, distorted by the haze of his agony.

Renjiro frowned beneath his mask. 'They're not responding.'

He channelled more chakra into the genjutsu, amplifying the flames. The emerald fire roared to life, its intensity doubling. The Kumo shinobi screamed, their voices raw and guttural.

"Answer me!" Renjiro barked. "How did you know about me and my mission?"

Kanai's mind teetered on the edge of collapse. The flames tore through his psyche, unravelling his sense of self.

'What mission?' he thought, his consciousness fraying. 'Who am I?' The pain was so all-encompassing that it obliterated everything else. Memories blurred, thoughts fragmented. He couldn't even comprehend the words Renjiro was saying anymore. All he knew was the fire—the unrelenting, soul-searing fire.

Renjiro's frustration mounted as the shinobi remained uncooperative. "Still nothing?" he muttered. His fingers twitched as he considered his options. "Fine." He poured even more chakra into the genjutsu, pushing the Kumo shinobi to their breaking points.

"MAKE IT STOP!" one of them screamed, his voice hoarse and desperate. "PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP!"

"Then tell me what I want to know," Renjiro demanded coldly.

But the shinobi could no longer form coherent sentences. Their minds were broken, their voices reduced to incoherent wails. Kanai's vision darkened, the edges of his consciousness fraying.

'Is this how it ends?' he thought, despair gripping him. 'Weeks? Months? How long have I been here?'

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the pain ceased.

The green flames vanished, the crimson sky faded, and the grey-scale world dissolved into darkness. Kanai gasped as he felt the cold night air against his skin. He was back in the forest, the familiar scent of smoke and scorched earth filling his lungs. But something was wrong.

He looked around, his body trembling from exhaustion. His comrades lay in crumpled heaps, their bodies unmoving. Kanai's heart sank as he realized they weren't breathing.

He tried to call out to them, but his voice failed him. His eyelids grew heavy, and he fought to stay conscious, knowing that if he closed his eyes, he might never open them again.

Renjiro stood nearby, his gaze fixed on the fallen shinobi. "It looks like the pain was too much for them to handle. I should have been more careful," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

He turned to Kanai, who met his gaze weakly before his head slumped forward, his life extinguished.

The whole point of Genjutsu was to trick the enemy's mind and while Renjiro did use his flames on the kumo shinobi, his genjutsu managed to trick their minds that everything was real, further magnifying their pain. This ultimately resulted in their deaths.

But Renjiro was not happy. He clenched his fists, frustration bubbling within him.

'Damn it,' he thought bitterly. 'I didn't get any useful information out of them.'

His mind raced as he considered his next move.

'Now it seems like the only option I have is to read their memories,' he thought grimly. The idea unsettled him. Memory-reading was a delicate process, fraught with risks.

The last few times he had attempted it, strange and unsettling things had happened.

And there was always the chance that the Kumo shinobi had countermeasures in place, traps woven into their minds to protect their secrets. Even, Kurogane Ohashi, who wasn't from a minor shinobi village employed such techniques; Kumo was bound to have something more sophisticated.

Renjiro sighed and knelt beside Kanai's body. "Let's hope this doesn't backfire," he muttered.

Placing a hand on the man's forehead, he closed his eyes and channelled his chakra. The world around him faded as he delved into the labyrinth of Kanai's memories.

Fragments of information flickered before him—conversations, orders, the faces of those who had sent the team after him. Renjiro's eyes snapped open as a chilling realization hit him.

"Someone from Konoha sold my information to the other villages?" he yelled, his voice echoing through the empty forest. His fists clenched as anger surged through him.

=====

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Kapitel 322: 321-Sold Out

A flood of emotions coursed through Renjiro, each vying for dominance over his mind. Shock gnawed at the edges of his thoughts, disbelief churning his gut.

But it was anger—deep, unrelenting rage—that consumed him most. It was not the hot flash of temper that came and went but a seething, volcanic fury that bubbled and brewed deep within his core, threatening to erupt.

His chest heaved with every laboured breath, his body trembling from the sheer intensity of it. The idea that someone from his own village had betrayed him—sold him out to the likes of Kumogakure, no less—was a bitter pill to swallow.

The Sharingan in Renjiro's eyes flared to life, its four tomoe spinning faster than ever before. They blurred, morphing into the intricate, six-pointed star pattern of his Mangekyō Sharingan.

A wave of chakra pulsed outward, rippling through the air like a sudden shift in the atmosphere before green flames began to flicker around him. The ethereal fire grew quickly, spiralling upward and bathing the forest in an eerie emerald glow. The leaves rustled against the sudden heat, the crackle of the flames mingling with the soft hiss of burning wood as the fire licked at the trees nearest to him, or whatever was left of them.

Renjiro hardly noticed the transformation, his mind consumed by his fury. The heat of the flames grew searing, the fiery aura intensifying to a point that made his skin sting and his vision blur.

"Aaargh!"

Only when sharp, stabbing pain lanced through his eyes—a cruel reminder of the toll the Mangekyō Sharingan exacted—did he snap back to reality.

'What the hell happened?' Renjiro wondered as he realized that his Mangekyo was active.

He was reading Kanai's memory then-, his mind was blank. This was the second time, where Renjiro's emotions got the better of him, the first time being when he met the Chinoike shinobi. Once time was a coincidence, but twice?

"Calm down, Renjiro," he muttered aloud, his voice shaky but firm, as if trying to ground himself. "There are far more important matters."

He planted his hands on his knees, forcing himself to take deep, measured breaths. Each inhale was slow, and deliberate, and every exhale carried a sliver of his anger away.

The green flames began to wane, flickering weakly before vanishing altogether. Renjiro straightened, the pounding in his head receding. His Sharingan returned to its normal four-tomoe state, the Mangekyō fading from his eyes. He then deactivated his sharingan.

The memories he had extracted from Kanai still lingered in his mind, replaying like fragments of a broken reel. They were valuable, but maddeningly incomplete.

Kanai and his comrades weren't privy to the intricate details of the plan. All they knew was that Kumogakure's high command had somehow secured confidential information about Renjiro's departure from Konoha. They were only aware of the specific day he was set to leave, but even that level of intelligence was alarming. Since Kumo was in no way closer to Konoha, so for them to make it to him in time for when he would leave the village, meant that they knew days prior.

"How the hell could someone give this information to Kumogakure?" Renjiro thought bitterly, his fists clenching again.

The idea gnawed at him, refusing to let go. The mission had been classified, an ANBU operation known only to a handful of individuals. Konoha was no stranger to spies—every shinobi village harboured them, as much a part of the shinobi world as kunai and jutsu. But this… this was something else entirely.

"I didn't even know exactly when I'd get my mission," Renjiro muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "Jiraiya only gave me a rough timeline. Whoever leaked this information had to be someone important—someone with high-level access."

He paced back and forth, his mind racing as he tried to piece the puzzle together. Yet no matter how hard he thought, the conclusion evaded him.

It was irksome, infuriating even, to think that someone within Konoha would stoop so low as to betray the village to Kumogakure, of all places. The two villages had been locked in bitter enmity for the last couple of years. It was unthinkable… and yet, here he was, grappling with the evidence.

"But it's also unexpected," he murmured to himself, his brows furrowing. "No one would ever suspect betrayal for Kumo. Maybe that's exactly why it worked."

Deciding to leave no stone unturned, Renjiro moved toward the bodies of the other four Kumo shinobi. He crouched beside them, one by one, placing his hands on their foreheads as he delved into their minds.

Each attempt brought fragmented glimpses of their orders and the faint threads connecting them to Kumogakure's higher-ups. Still, the information was incomplete, frustratingly so.

When he was done, he sealed their bodies into a storage scroll with a flick of his wrist, ensuring no evidence would be left behind.

"But putting my info out there like that… it makes this whole mission even more dangerous," Renjiro muttered under his breath. His jaw tightened as the gravity of the situation settled on his shoulders.

He couldn't shake the nagging thought that Kumo might already be expecting him. They'd known when he was leaving Konoha, which meant they could easily anticipate his arrival. If they were lying in wait, his mission was already walking a knife's edge.

"There's even a chance the village itself could be behind this," Renjiro considered grimly.

It wasn't a far-fetched idea.

Hiruzen Sarutobi—the Third Hokage—had made his share of questionable decisions in the past and future. Renjiro's mind flashed to the time, in the future, when Konoha would hand over Hizashi Hyūga to Kumogakure after their failed attempt to kidnap Hinata.

That situation had never sat right with Renjiro; it reeked of desperation and political manoeuvring. The thought that Konoha might sacrifice him for the sake of diplomacy or leverage left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"But if the village is behind this…" His voice trailed off, the words too heavy to finish.

The idea of turning against Konoha, even if forced to, was anathema to him, at least for now.

This was the village that had taken him in after the fall of Uzushiogakure, a place he had called home for nearly a decade. There was a sentimental attachment he couldn't ignore. And even if he could, Konoha was a juggernaut—a military machine with the Sannin, among others, still active. Going against such a force was tantamount to suicide.

Renjiro let out a long sigh. "Dwelling on this won't help right now," he told himself. "I'll investigate after I complete my mission."

He turned his focus back to the task at hand, sweeping the clearing to ensure no traces of his presence remained. He erased every footprint, kunai mark, and disturbance in the underbrush. Satisfied that he had covered his tracks, he hoisted his pack over his shoulder and resumed his journey.

The road ahead was long and treacherous. Every step was a reminder of the stakes he faced. The wilderness gave way to rocky terrain as he drew closer to the border of the Land of Lightning. The air grew colder, the wind sharper, carrying with it the faint tang of salt from distant seas. Renjiro pushed forward, his mind a whirlwind of plans, contingencies, and questions without answers.

By the time he reached the border, a full day had passed. The towering mountains of the Land of Lightning loomed before him, their jagged peaks shrouded in mist.