Those words hit like a thunderclap out of a clear sky. Chiyo froze in place. She had suspected it for years, but hearing Sasori admit it with his own mouth still struck like a hammer blow.
"So it really was you... it really was you! Why would you do something like this? Have you completely lost your mind?!"
Her hands trembled violently.
She knew she had no other choice. As one of Sunagakure's senior advisors, she had to clean up her own house.
Akira watched the scene unfold and gave a cold laugh. "So it really was you who killed the Third Kazekage. I'll give you this much, taking down the strongest Kazekage without anyone realizing it took real skill."
Beside him, Sakura was completely lost.
"Akira, what do you mean, the Third Kazekage? What exactly is going on?"
Akira glanced at her and explained with unexpected patience, "This is an old unresolved case in Sunagakure."
"All you need to remember is this: the Third Kazekage was the strongest leader in the village's history. He was the one everyone pinned their hopes on, and Sasori assassinated him. Sasori used to belong to Sunagakure too, and he's Chiyo-hime's own grandson."
Sakura turned that over in her head, and her face changed at once.
"I... no wonder Chiyo-hime was so desperate to ask about it."
Only now did she truly understand how unforgivable Sasori's crime was.
Sasori paid no attention to Sakura's shock. His gaze settled on Chiyo instead.
"So, old woman, it looks like you really did come here today ready to clean up your own bloodline."
"I'm curious too. I want to see whether my puppet jutsu has finally surpassed yours."
With that, he slowly drew a sealing scroll from beneath his cloak.
Because of Akira's presence, Sasori did not dare take this lightly. From the very start, he intended to go all out.
The moment those scrolls appeared, Chiyo's pupils constricted sharply.
"So... it really was you!"
On the cover of one of the scrolls, she saw it clearly, a large numeral three.
That alone was enough. Nothing else needed to be said.
And when she saw the others, Chiyo finally understood just how far her grandson had fallen over the years.
"These... almost all of them are human puppets. Just how many people have you killed?!"
Sasori yanked open the scroll, his voice flat and cold. "Old woman, when it comes to killing, as someone who survived that age of endless war, you're not exactly in a position to preach to me."
Poof!
A cloud of white smoke rose, and behind Sasori, the air filled with puppet bodies until the sky itself seemed crowded with them.
Every last one was a human puppet, a horrifying weapon that retained the chakra and jutsus of the person it had once been.
Even in Sunagakure, people capable of creating human puppets were extraordinarily rare.
And Sasori stood at the very top of that field.
Chiyo's eyes locked onto one puppet floating among the rest, and the familiar face made her whole body tremble.
"It really is the Third Kazekage... you monster! You truly turned him into a puppet!"
Chiyo had poured too much of herself, too much hope, into the Third Kazekage.
To see the man once regarded as the future of the village reduced to a marionette in her grandson's hands was a blow that nearly broke her.
Sasori threw his head back and laughed. "This is my art. The Performance of a Hundred Puppets! Hah! Old woman, I've already surpassed you completely!"
To be fair, if Sasori had never gone down the wrong path and had stayed in Sunagakure, his future would have been limitless.
He might even have become something like a legendary god of puppet jutsu.
But instead, he had chosen this road of no return.
Chiyo fell silent.
Among puppet masters, strength was often judged by the number of puppets one could control at once.
And she had to admit it: Sasori truly was a genius. The pressure of facing the Performance of a Hundred Puppets was enough to make even her feel suffocated.
But in the end, she drew a slow breath, and her gaze hardened.
"It was my failure that let you walk down this path in the first place. So now this old woman will repay that debt herself. Even if it means dying with you, I'll drag you down with me."
At that grim declaration, Sasori let out a dismissive scoff.
"Old woman, you're half buried already. At your age, do you still have the strength to dance?"
Ignoring her grandson's taunt, Chiyo expressionlessly drew an ancient scroll from her pouch.
The moment Sasori saw it, even the amusement in his eyes faded, replaced by something more serious.
"Oh? You even brought that out?"
"So you really did come here planning to kill me."
Chiyo calmly spread the scroll open and flashed through a series of hand seals so fast they blurred.
When the last seal clicked into place, she called out:
"White Secret Jutsu: Chikamatsu's 10 Puppets!"
Poof!
The smoke cleared, and ten white-robed, strangely shaped puppets appeared around Chiyo.
The moment Akira saw them, the detached spectator's look in his eyes gave way to genuine interest.
"So that's the legendary Chikamatsu Ten."
"Now that is something."
"Every one of them is built from extremely rare materials. There are even traces of specialized chakra-conducting substances worked into the structure. No wonder they became legendary. Top-tier puppets in the hands of a top-tier puppet master can produce combat power far beyond an ordinary jonin. Even Kage-class fighters would have to treat them seriously."
He paused, then added, almost to himself:
"Though by any normal standard... these probably count as forbidden jutsus."
The Chikamatsu Ten absolutely belonged in that category.
Their killing efficiency was simply too high.
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