In the courtyard, there were no ordinary flowers or plants. Instead, they were replaced by lifelike works of art carved from ice.
At this moment, the clan head of the Yuki clan, Yuki Yukinijo, stood alone in the center of this huge ice chamber.
He was dressed in a spotless white hunting robe, his light blue hair cascading down to his waist like a waterfall. His beautiful face bore no expression.
Before him was a newly completed ice sculpture, slightly taller than a person.
The sculpture depicted a ninja.
The ninja was kneeling on one knee, his body twisted in a painful posture, his face frozen in an expression of despair and unwillingness.
Dozens of sharp ice needles were stuck in his body. The position of each needle precisely avoided vital points, yet was just right to cause maximum pain.
Yukinijo extended his slender fingers and gently brushed away a bit of ice shavings from the sculpture. Looking at his masterpiece, a satisfied expression finally appeared in his cold eyes.
"A perfect work of art."
He murmured softly. To him, killing was not the barbaric destruction of the Kaguya clan.
Killing should be an art.
It was a process of instantly freezing the opponent's flame of life at their most brilliant moment, turning it into eternal beauty.
Yukinijo looked down on Kaguya Soranosuke, that barbarian who only knew how to solve problems with brute force.
In his opinion, although the Kaguya clan's Shikotsumyaku was powerful, it was too crude, full of blood and filth, with no aesthetic sense at all.
True power should be like the Ice Release of their Yuki clan.
Elegant, magnificent, yet fatal.
However, what frustrated him was that the era of peace left this elegant art with no place to be used.
The Yuki clan was being marginalized.
In recent years, the village's missions were mostly trivial matters like escorting and reconnaissance.
These missions could not reflect the value of the Ice Release Kekkei Genkai at all.
The young people in the clan were gradually losing their reverence and pursuit of Ice Release, and began to turn to learning those more "practical" Water Release and taijutsu.
This feeling was like watching a peerless work of art being covered with thick dust over time, gradually being forgotten.
This was unbearable to him.
He longed for a war.
Longed for a grand stage where the beauty of Ice Release could bloom magnificently before the world again.
"Ding-a-ling."
A crisp bell sound came from outside the ice chamber.
Yukinijo's brow raised instantly. Someone had disturbed his thoughts.
He turned slowly and saw a Yuki clansman, also dressed in white, kneeling respectfully at the door of the ice chamber, daring not to take a step inside.
"Clan Head, Lord Mizukage's messenger has arrived."
"Let him in."
Yukinijo's voice was waveless.
A moment later, the Anbu ninja responsible for delivering the message walked into the ice chamber.
When he saw the lifelike ice sculpture in the center of the chamber, emitting an aura of death, his pupils contracted, and he subconsciously examined it.
Too real.
He could even read the pain and despair of the ninja before his death from the sculpture's face.
"Is there something?" Yukinijo's cold voice sounded.
"...Yes, Clan Head Yukinijo."
The Anbu messenger came back to his senses and hurriedly presented the meeting notice scroll.
Yukinijo walked forward gracefully, extended two fair fingers, and gently picked up the scroll.
He didn't open it immediately, but turned and walked back to the ice sculpture.
"Do you know?"
He suddenly spoke, as if speaking to the messenger, and also as if talking to himself. "I named this work 'Wither'."
"I used eight different Ice Release ninjutsu and created seventy-two wounds on his body. The depth and angle of each wound were precisely calculated. All so that he could bloom into the most perfect—flower of death—in the greatest pain."
The Anbu messenger's scalp tingled, and cold sweat poured down.
He now felt that compared to that lunatic Kaguya Soranosuke, this elegant and beautiful man before him was the real devil.
Yukinijo slowly unfolded the scroll in his hand, his emerald eyes quickly scanning the contents.
"High-level meeting... Tailed Beast riot..."
The corners of his mouth slowly curled up. That smile was elegant, yet full of calculation.
The long-awaited opportunity had finally arrived.
That idiot Kaguya Soranosuke would definitely jump out, shouting for battle, for war.
And that guy Gen would stubbornly stick to their rhetoric of peace.
This was a perfect chessboard.
And he, Yukinijo, would be the chess player deciding the direction of the game.
He would use this opportunity to drag the entire Kirigakure onto the war chariot he desired.
He would find the most magnificent stage for the Yuki clan's Ice Release.
Yukinijo blew gently on the ice sculpture named "Wither."
Whoosh—
A visible stream of cold air exhaled from his mouth, covering the surface of the sculpture, condensing into a layer of even more crystal-clear frost, making that despair seem even more eternal.
"It is time..."
He turned around, revealing a smile that was elegant yet chilling to the almost frozen Anbu ninja.
"Let the world witness once again..."
"What the true beauty of ice and snow is."
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