Kusagakure thought they were innocent—though in truth, they weren't innocent at all.
Kusagakure thought they were still salvageable—though in reality, they were already terminal, beyond saving.
When every door slammed shut in their faces—every channel, even Akatsuki included—Kusagakure could only wait for doomsday in despair.
…Well, not quite.
They still had one last straw to cling to: the Box of Ultimate Bliss.
Unlike the original timeline—where Mui went off the deep end and treated the box like a Holy Grail, trying to "wish" his son back—this time Kusagakure wanted to wish for something else:
They wanted the entire Five Kage Coalition to die.
The problem was: the box wasn't easy to open.
In the original story, Mui only managed it by scamming a bunch of Nine-Tails chakra off Naruto, and sacrificing plenty of people. And then the monster inside popped out and immediately crushed him anyway—dark comedy at its finest.
But now?
Kusagakure didn't have the ability to capture a tailed beast and extract its chakra.
Which meant…
Sacrifice.
A massive sacrifice—bigger than the original timeline. That was the only way they could brute-force the box open.
To survive, Kusagakure went feral. In their final desperation, they begged anyone they could reach—even Konoha.
They even promised Konoha that if Konoha accepted their surrender, they'd immediately throw themselves into Konoha's Anbu and become disposable cannon fodder without complaint.
Uchiha Yorin's evaluation:
"Are you out of your damn minds?"
These days, even having no Konoha citizenship—just a Konoha green card—was worth more than they could imagine.
And they wanted to commit crimes, face no consequences, and then collect rewards?
Did they think Konoha was running a charity kitchen?
As for Anbu being "high attrition," that was yesterday's era.
Right now the Five Great Nations and Five Great Villages were in peace; there was no sign of an imminent war. The era where Anbu were treated as disposable fodder was already turning the page.
So when Kusagakure's envoy showed up—tragic, furious, pitching that "deal"—Yorin nearly laughed out loud.
What kind of joke was this?
And when the envoy, choked with grief, tried to sell it anyway, Yorin offered a completely sincere suggestion:
"If you feel that wronged, then don't do it."
"Y-you mean…?"
The Grass envoy—clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed—immediately started projecting the happiest possible outcome, staring at Yorin like he was about to hear salvation.
Instead, Yorin pointed at the bright white ceiling light.
"Tell me what that is."
…So he answered automatically: "An electric light."
Yorin nodded.
"And what do you connect it to?"
"…A terminal."
Yorin smiled.
"Right. That's my answer."
The envoy froze. "Huh?"
(Translator's note: a terminal is an electrical connection point—but "terminal" also means final / fatal, like "terminal illness." Yorin is basically saying: You're terminal.)
Because they weren't speaking in the jargon of Konoha's engineers, the envoy's blank stare instantly irritated Yorin.
Trying to banter with someone who couldn't catch a simple pun felt like throwing life away.
So he waved a hand, signaling his people to remove the idiot from his airspace.
The envoy, realizing he'd failed, almost shrieked:
"Yorin-sama! Everything's negotiable! If our offer wasn't good enough, we can talk about something else—!"
"Get this moron out of here," Yorin snapped, his mood plunging even further. "Breathing the same air as him makes me feel my IQ dropping!"
…
And just like that, every road, every door, slammed shut.
So Kusagakure had only one path left:
Open the Box of Ultimate Bliss.
If they opened it, they could make a wish.
If they made a wish, they could wipe out the "evil" Five-Village Coalition.
As for the lives it took to open the box—painful, sure, but at a time like this they didn't have the luxury to care.
Come on. For the future of Kusagakure… offer up your lives.
And if you weren't even a Kusagakure person—just some innocent passerby?
"Innocent" my ass.
If they could sacrifice their own people without blinking, they certainly wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice outsiders.
In fact, plenty of Kusagakure ninja were boiling with resentment.
They thought: If we're going to die, why the hell should you get to live?
Everyone dies. Nobody gets to walk away.
And then—ironically—Uchiha Yorin arrived, a little late.
Not because he was dragging his feet in the literal sense.
More like he wasn't sprinting at full speed on purpose.
If this were like Takigakure—just dismantling and absorbing a village—fine.
But Kusagakure was gearing up for mass slaughter. And if possible, Yorin didn't want his own people, or his allies, to soak their hands in unnecessary blood.
So he let Kusagakure do the killing first—let them butcher themselves—then the coalition would move in and finish the job.
That was the plan.
And events followed his plan perfectly.
Which was both the good news—
and the bad news, because it followed his plan too perfectly.
When the five-village coalition army surged forward, they didn't find a village dug in for battle.
They found a slaughterhouse.
Before they even got close, the stench of blood made people frown.
Closer still, the first thing they saw wasn't traps or fortifications—
it was crows and wild dogs, red-eyed and gorging themselves.
And then:
Corpses. Corpses. Corpses.
Some were ordinary Kusagakure residents. Others were innocent travelers dragged in from outside.
"They've lost their minds," Mei Terumī said, her expression ugly.
The others didn't speak, but their faces matched hers.
They kept pushing in.
More corpses.
Almost no civilians now—mostly bodies in shinobi gear.
And here and there… familiar faces.
Kusagakure was a "small" village, sure—but "small" depends on what you compare it to.
Compared to the great villages, it was nothing.
Compared to other minor villages, Kusagakure was strong.
They had named jōnin. Signature figures. Recognizable "big shots."
Maybe their jōnin weren't as valuable as a great village's jōnin, but they still had tricks—otherwise they couldn't show their faces in the world.
And now those people were just corpses.
Dead. Worthless.
Yorin understood immediately.
No tailed-beast chakra meant they had to increase the scale of sacrifice.
First they sacrificed innocent outsiders.
Then they sacrificed their own civilians.
Some shinobi tried to object—so the Kusagakure leadership sacrificed them too.
But even after draining every civilian they could find, it still wasn't enough to open the box.
So the next step was obvious:
If you want the village to live, the shinobi must die for it.
First the newly inducted trainees.
Then the genin.
When genin ran out, they moved to chūnin.
In the end, even the jōnin were "volunteering"—or being volunteered.
By then, a few Kusagakure shinobi started feeling something was wrong.
Wait—aren't we supposed to be protecting Kusagakure? Kusagakure is already dead.
Wasn't that… backwards?
But by this point, the sunk cost was too high. Nobody could stop. Nobody could turn around.
The only "way out" was opening the Box of Ultimate Bliss.
Just like gamblers on tilt, they doubled down again and again, convinced the next spin would save them.
…
So by the time the coalition reached Kusagakure's core, there was only one living person left:
Mui.
Beside him lay the body of his son, still warm.
The irony was vicious: in the original timeline, Mui did everything to resurrect his son—here, he had killed his son with his own hands.
"You really killed everyone in Kusagakure," Yorin said, and his tone held a quiet, almost disbelieving weight.
Mui's smile twisted into something outright mad.
"Isn't this the ending you wanted?"
Yorin glanced around.
"And the box still isn't open."
Mui laughed, hollow and delighted.
"Seems like it."
Yorin stepped forward, voice calm.
"So what now?
Don't tell me to 'surrender.' What you've done earns you death ten thousand times over."
Mui nodded slowly, like he'd already accepted the shape of the grave.
"I thought so."
And then he slit his own throat.
As the final sacrifice—Kusagakure's last living leader, an elite jōnin—Mui's death pushed the "progress" forward in one brutal surge.
The Box of Ultimate Bliss finally opened.
Even though, for Kusagakure…
it no longer meant anything at all.