Chapter 196 : Using Riku Soul To Sacrifice
Neither Kurenai nor Anko noticed anything.
But Riku could—his gaze stretched for kilometers, and he locked eyes with something... watching him.
"Hehehe~"
Even Riku could hear the low, manic laughter coming from that gaze.
He frowned.
Then, he gently placed a hand on Kurenai and Anko’s shoulders.
In an instant, the world around them changed.
The scenery shifted violently. Kurenai and Anko stared in shock at the new surroundings.
The man and the two children from before had turned into three skeletal remains.
Molten lava churned beneath them, and they now stood precariously atop a stone platform above the magma.
The searing heat radiating from the lava made both Kurenai and Anko break out in cold sweat.
"Wh-What... What is this place?" Anko asked, her voice trembling slightly.
Kurenai stood close to Riku, activating her sensory abilities. As a genjutsu expert herself, she knew better than most that even masters of illusion weren’t immune to it. If someone like Uchiha Itachi could trap her in a genjutsu with his Sharingan, then this level of illusion was deeply unsettling.
Only a Sharingan could break through the illusions cast by the Oni Clan. For most people, their genjutsu was completely inescapable.
Riku had realized something was wrong earlier—but he had played along. He wanted to find the Oni Clan’s lair, and now, he had. The three skeletal figures weren’t corpses but the failed remnants of a previous ritual involving the Ghoul Barrier. They were still alive, in a way, having lost their physical forms.
And they weren’t alone.
The entire stone platform was surrounded by more skeletal figures—some dormant, others very much active. The magma below illuminated hundreds of them.
The sight was horrifying.
Riku’s gaze landed on a man seated far away—hundreds of meters across the molten river—also atop a rock.
This man was different.
He was the only remaining member of the Oni Clan who still had a physical body. And this time, he was preparing to perform the Ghoul Barrier ritual again. Unlike the last attempt, he was far more prepared.
Kurenai and Anko could feel the ominous energy radiating from the place. The atmosphere was heavy, oppressive. On various stone slabs rising from the lava, bones stood like sentinels. Hundreds of skeletal figures stood eerily upright. With the additional scattered bones strewn across the terrain, there were easily thousands.
This had to be the Oni Clan’s main stronghold.
The animated bones were still capable of performing the Spirit Transformation Technique and were highly skilled in genjutsu. Unless one possessed the Sharingan, there was no way to see through their illusions.
The genjutsu of the Uchiha Clan had originally been created to counter the illusions of the Oni Clan.
And even then, when the Uchiha had wiped out the Oni Clan, they had lost dozens of elite shinobi in the process. It had taken them years to fully exterminate them.
That was how fearsome the Oni Clan was.
But clearly, even after all that, remnants had survived.
Some bloodlines of the Oni Clan still existed—even within Konoha.
Kurenai and Anko stood beside Riku, visibly unnerved.
"Riku... What do we do now?" Kurenai asked, frowning. "It feels like we’ve walked straight into their lair."
Both women were tense. The atmosphere was eerie, and the magma below them posed a very real threat. One misstep, and they’d be incinerated.
On the surrounding platforms, the skeletal figures stood motionless, but menacing. The whole scene was nightmarish.
But Riku remained composed.
"To be precise," he said, "we didn’t stumble into their lair. They brought us here on purpose."
Kurenai and Anko both shivered at his words.
Especially Kurenai—she couldn’t believe she had fallen into a genjutsu. With her level of expertise, it should’ve been impossible.
Could these people really cast illusions on par with the Sharingan?
Sharingan-enhanced genjutsu was on another level. While Kurenai’s genjutsu was formidable—even comparable in skill to Itachi’s—the Sharingan’s enhancements gave him the upper hand in any illusion-based confrontation.
That was the terrifying power of the Sharingan—it amplified genjutsu to such an extent that even a tailed beast could be controlled.
And now, there was another clan whose illusions she couldn’t even sense, let alone resist.
That thought terrified her.
Anko, on the other hand, still hadn’t fully grasped what was happening.
Just then, the man seated across the lava rose to his feet.
He was tall—easily two meters or more—a giant by shinobi standards.
His eyes gleamed crimson, casting an unnatural glow across the magma.
The sight was chilling.
Kurenai and Anko immediately readied themselves, assuming battle stances.
But Riku stood calmly, eyes locked on the man.
"You brought us here to use our souls as catalysts, didn’t you?" he said. "To improve your odds of success with the Ghoul Barrier."
The Ghoul Barrier required a strong soul to serve as the ritual’s medium. The more powerful the soul, the higher the chance of success.
And the Oni Clan survivor clearly knew of Riku’s growing reputation in the shinobi world.
A powerful ninja meant a powerful soul.
Riku’s soul would make an ideal core for the ritual.
Kurenai and Anko—one a Tokubetsu Jōnin, the other a full Jōnin—were also excellent offerings.
Using the souls of three elite shinobi would all but guarantee the ritual’s success.
The Oni Clan man stepped to the edge of his platform and addressed Riku.
"Riku... You may be strong, but this is our territory. Here, the very land suppresses your chakra. Try channeling it."
Both Kurenai and Anko immediately attempted to draw chakra—and their expressions shifted.
Their chakra felt stifled, almost completely blocked. Only a faint trace could be accessed.
They exchanged uneasy glances.
Riku, however, remained unfazed.
"So you’re one of the Oni Clan... Impressive. I didn’t expect so many of your people to have survived. Seems like the Uchiha didn’t finish the job after all."
The moment Riku mentioned the Uchiha Clan, the air changed.
A low rumbling crackled through the bones around them. Even those reduced to skeletal forms hadn’t forgotten the Uchiha—hadn’t forgotten the near-genocide.
Their hatred lingered like a curse etched into their very bones.
What many didn’t know was that the Uchiha Clan had been hired to eliminate the Oni Clan long before the formation of the ninja villages.
Back then, the Uchiha and the Senju were the two dominant clans in the world. The Uchiha accepted a mission from the Land of Fire to destroy the Oni Clan—and carried it out with brutal efficiency.
There had never been a personal grudge between them—just a contract.
But that didn’t matter to the Oni Clan.
To them, it was a massacre.
And now, centuries later, remnants of their hatred still burned.
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