[Bang—]
[Bang—]
[Bang—]
Ear-piercing booms rang out one after another. Even the most basic taijutsu exchanges between Kitagawa Gen and Nagato created shockwaves beyond imagination.
From inside Takigakure they fought all the way outside. Everywhere they passed was nothing but devastation.
Whether tall towers or houses, whether mountains or forests — as long as touched by their strength, they collapsed and shattered in an instant.
"Are those two… monsters?"
The Takigakure leader and the elders watched in disbelief at the destruction caused by the two of them.
The moment the battle erupted, they had already begun to withdraw.
Watching them smash straight through the mountain body to the outside, hearing those continuous deafening booms, and not being able to see even the slightest of their movements—
It made them realize there seemed to be no room for easing off. They were truly going all-out to kill!
And not only them — fierce battles still raged throughout Takigakure, leaving them in real anguish.
The tailed beasts — they were unwilling to hand them over.
For so many years of shinobi world wars, what had allowed them to hold on to their own corner safely was precisely the deterrence of tailed beasts.
Yet now, the tailed beasts in their hands seemed to have become death warrants…
[Boom, boom, boom—]
No matter what they thought, this battle could never be stopped. And Kitagawa Gen and Nagato fought fiercer and fiercer!
"Now you can't deal with me the way you did before, Kitagawa Gen!"
Though Nagato felt awful inside — after being hit with a round of Kitagawa Gen's 'verbal onslaught,' a fire of true anger had already been ignited.
"Is that so?"
Kitagawa Gen tilted his head, and in an instant he leapt up.
After dodging a massive boulder hurled from who knew where by Nagato and landing atop it, he merely shook his head and said.
"You really haven't noticed that I haven't used a single technique yet?"
"To avoid damaging Takigakure, right?"
Nagato's expression was indifferent as he suddenly accelerated forward.
"Don't act so hypocritical. Do you really care about them? It's only for the sake of your so-called image! The pain you people have caused is beyond words!"
"Then why don't you revive Yahiko?"
Kitagawa Gen raised his brow, asking curiously once again, but this only made Nagato even angrier.
"Die!"
With a roar, he charged straight at him—yet in that instant his gaze flickered.
Because Kitagawa Gen had already vanished, and not far away, a surge of powerful chakra was stirring!
"You call me hypocritical? Then what about you? When I ask why you won't revive Yahiko, you refuse to answer?"
Kitagawa Gen's voice came from the distance, and when one looked over, a white column of light was quietly gathering in his hand.
"That only shows you don't dare face it yourself. So the truly hypocritical one is you, Nagato!"
"Shut up!"
Nagato shouted angrily, instantly raising both hands.
"This kind of move is useless against me—Shinra Tensei!"
The column of light slammed into a visible energy wave, and in the next moment came a chain of ear-piercing explosions!
The violent shockwaves spread rapidly in all directions. Towering flames and rolling black smoke lit up everything around them in flickering hellish light that chilled the heart.
Amid the thunderous noise, he remained focused on every movement around him.
Though he hadn't fought Kitagawa Gen many times, he knew well this guy would use any means necessary.
He would never let a single opportunity slip by, and one careless move would mean falling into a place of no return!
"Is it coming?"
All of a sudden he felt the ground tremble, and he instantly understood what was happening.
[Boom—]
In the very moment before the aftershocks of the explosions had faded, another rumble erupted.
Nagato pressed one hand to the ground, and in the next instant the earth itself rose up!
The sudden upheaval of the land formed a small mountain, and beneath it countless vines twisted and coiled, sweeping toward him wildly.
"Hmph, I knew it."
Nagato snorted coldly. Staring at the spreading vines, he leapt into the air as the power of the Rinnegan erupted once more.
With the burst of his power, several summoned beasts appeared all at once.
Yet the moment they emerged, vines instantly entangled them!
"Absorbing chakra?"
The instant they were bound, Nagato realized the summoned beasts let out wails as their chakra flooded out like a breached dam.
The vines tangled tighter and tighter, and before long they had merged into a vast forest!
"Roar—"
Just then, a roar came from the sky. Kitagawa Gen stood atop the head of a massive wooden dragon, charging toward him at full speed.
"So this is what they call Wood Release?"
Feeling the oppressive aura emanating from the wooden dragon, Nagato began to faintly understand why the world held Senju Hashirama in such high regard.
With impact like this, combined with the Wood Release below that kept winding around, working in tandem, even a shinobi village wouldn't be able to withstand it!
"But don't underestimate me either!"
Taking a deep breath, Nagato twisted and shifted repeatedly in midair.
[Boom—]
[Boom—]
[Boom—]
The wooden dragon and the vines kept crashing into the ground; dust and smoke flew up together across the land, and the roaring was piercingly loud.
However, Nagato had also finished brewing the chakra he needed. He suddenly lifted his head, and as he watched the onrush he abruptly raised his hand.
"Then let me show you what kind of power I have now!"
As Nagato's cold, killing-laced voice rang out, a formless, vast repulsive force burst fiercely from the center of his palm.
"Super Shinra Tensei!"
[Hum—]
In an instant, boundless, majestic repulsion came sweeping in like a sky-covering flood!
"Oh? Going at it like this?"
Standing atop the wooden dragon, Kitagawa Gen watched Nagato's move. Feeling that violent, mountain-sweeping force, he tilted his head.
'Over these years, it hasn't been only Ōtsutsuki power I've benefited from—the planet's power, I can really use it.'
He raised his hand slightly. In an instant, the chakra within him surged together madly, and at the same time the wooden dragon linked up with the vines below.
A surging power raced along the vines and the wooden dragon, and that very power even drove both the vines and the wooden dragon to the brink of collapse!
Only when they converged into Kitagawa Gen's hand did everything seem to calm.
Before long, a Rasengan had already gathered in his palm.
And as that Rasengan formed, something like a faint anomaly seemed to flicker within it.
"Rasengan? But it doesn't quite look like it?"
Nagato was a little winded, and he couldn't tell what Kitagawa Gen was doing, but he could vaguely sense the terror in that Rasengan.
"In 3 years, you do seem to have changed a lot, only—"
Watching that oncoming, clearly formless yet at this moment halo-glimmering repulsion, Kitagawa Gen let a smile show.
"In 3 years, I'm not the only one who's grown. Even if you have the Rinnegan, however—"
"My style has always been above yours!"
"?"
Nagato didn't know what that meant, but in the next instant he saw the Rasengan in Kitagawa Gen's hand—etched with strange ripples—suddenly meet it head-on.
[Hum—]
Two special forces slammed together, and in an instant it was as if everything in the world changed!
Repulsion and the Rasengan, rotating with a peculiar law, braided into each other, and at once the space around them warped visibly.
That ultimate force pulled against itself, and space kept cracking with explosive reports.
At that moment the earth could no longer bear it and began to heave in violent tremors!
Under the interweaving of those two uncanny forces, rivers were mutually dammed, cliffs were cut in half, and the land was torn apart alive.
[Rumble—]
At last, when the entanglement of the two forces reached its peak, a vast thunderclap burst across the earth!
In that moment the ground collapsed with a bang, sky-filling dust billowed up, and boulders that had just been blasted aloft were crushed to grit in the blink of an eye and flung in all directions.
A vast, winding canyon suddenly formed beneath their feet!
A towering mushroom cloud also rose in silence, as if to swallow everything around it…
From not too far away, Takigakure was the first to be affected by such violent tremors!
"They're actually fighting that fiercely over there?"
Jiraiya was in a frenzied battle with Orochimaru, but this tremor made both of them turn their heads to glance over.
"Wind Release: Wind Cutter!"
Yet Orochimaru, clearly lower on the moral scale, saw this completely as an opportunity!
"Tch, Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall!"
Jiraiya obviously knew his friend well. Even if shaken for a moment, he immediately came back to his senses.
A wall of earth sprang up before him, blocking all of Orochimaru's Wind Release, and at the same time he shouted loudly.
"Orochimaru, don't you understand yet? This road you're on has no end—you'll only end up dead!"
"My road, how I choose it has nothing to do with you teaching me."
Orochimaru snorted coldly. Forming seals again, countless venomous snakes surged wildly at Jiraiya.
"Just shut up already, bastard!"
"Damn it, Ninja Art: Needle Jizō!"
Seeing the ground full of venomous snakes, Jiraiya quickly brought his palms together, his hair turning incomparably sharp.
The snakes sweeping toward him were directly pierced through, leaving only a stench and a ground littered with snake corpses.
Jiraiya truly couldn't understand what Orochimaru was thinking. In his view, Orochimaru had absolutely no chance of victory.
Yet Orochimaru still walked this road of no return, as if completely ignoring Konohagakure's development, ignoring everything about it now.
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