"Miroku! You still dare to stand in my way?!"
"Don't forget! You and I are one and the same!"
The roar from the eight snake heads carried a tangible mental shockwave, crashing violently toward the shrine's main hall!
Behind the cracks in the hall doors, Miroku bit her lip hard, blood seeping from the corners of her mouth and staining her robes. Behind her, little Shion let out a terrified scream, her tiny body trembling like a leaf in the wind.
The fragile barrier flickered wildly, on the verge of complete collapse!
Standing in front of the barrier, Menma's crimson robes fluttered violently in the wake of the sonic assault.
Yet, the mental impact, which is enough to shatter a Jonin's psyche, collided with him as if striking an invisible wall. Not even the white three-eyed fox mask on his face trembled in the slightest!
The hollow eyeholes calmly stared into the eight pairs of vertical pupils, brimming with destruction and disdain.
Moryo's roar abruptly ceased.
The eight snake heads recoiled slightly, molten golden eyes reflecting genuine confusion for the first time.
How could this insignificant human remain unaffected by its mental pressure?!
Just as Moryo hesitated for that brief moment-
"Now!"
Hikari's cold voice cut through the air like a drawn blade!
Her Mangekyo Sharingan, swirling with intricate patterns, locked onto the figure below, Yomi, who was momentarily stunned by Menma's sudden appearance!
"Ice Release: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals!" Haku's youthful yet resolute voice rang out.
His hands formed hand seals at blinding speed, and a frigid blast of air erupted!
Countless tiny ice crystals in the air rapidly condensed and multiplied, constructing a shimmering labyrinth of smooth ice mirrors around him and Kimimaro in the blink of an eye!
The five Evil Medical-Nin, who had been about to lunge at Hikari, were caught off guard and instantly split apart, each trapped in separate corners of the icy maze!
The mirrors reflected the eerie purple glow and the shrine's bloody hue, creating a bizarre, kaleidoscopic effect.
"Damn it! Ice Release?! Break through it!" A burly Evil Medical-Nin with a vicious scar snarled, his hands flying through hand seals.
"Earth Escape: Earth Flow River!" The ground trembled violently as a thick surge of mud and stone, like a massive snake, slammed into the ice walls!
"Wind Release: Pressure Damage!" Another lanky Ninja spat out a highly compressed sphere of violent wind, tearing through the air as it blasted toward another ice mirror!
"Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Technique!"
"Lightning Release: False Darkness!"
"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
Five Evil Medical-Nin, all at Jonin level, unleashed five different elemental Ninjutsu simultaneously!
A scorching fire dragon, a raging wind sphere, a crackling lightning spear, a roaring water dragon, and a surging mud river-
Five devastating Ninjutsu smashed into Haku's ice mirror labyrinth!
Boom, boom, boom-!
The deafening explosion nearly drowned out Moryo's howls!
Shards of ice and shattered Chakra light scattered everywhere, the air thick with the stench of burning, steaming water vapor, and the earthy reek of mud!
Haku's face paled instantly, his body swaying. The ice mirrors trembled violently, cracks spiderwebbing across their surfaces… on the verge of total collapse!
Maintaining such a large-scale technique while enduring the combined assault of five Jonin was pushing the limits of his young body.
"Haku!" Kimimaro's cold voice pierced through the chaos.
Just as the ice labyrinth teetered on the edge of destruction, his figure flickered like a ghost behind the burly Earth Release user-
His speed was so overwhelming that the Evil Medical-Nin had no time to react.
With veins bulging around his eyes, Kimimaro's right hand splayed open. From beneath his palm, dozens of razor-sharp bone spikes, glinting with a metallic sheen, burst forth like a blooming flower of death, piercing the air with a shrill whistle as they stabbed toward the man's back!
Squelch! Squelch! Squelch!
The sickening sound of bone puncturing flesh echoed in rapid succession!
The burly Ninja's vicious grin froze. He looked down in disbelief at the bloodied bone tips protruding from his chest.
He hadn't even seen the attack coming!
"The first one." Kimimaro's voice was devoid of emotion as he yanked his arm back, pulling free in a spray of warm blood.
The corpse collapsed with a heavy thud.
"Bastard!" The lanky Wind Release user roared in fury, his hands forming another set of hand seals as violent wind blades gathered in his palms!
"Ice Release Secret Technique: Thousand Flying Water Needles of Death!" Haku, fighting through the dizziness of Chakra Backlash, shifted his hand seals again!
Countless sharp ice senbon rained down like a storm, flying from the remnants of shattered ice mirrors, from the moisture in the air itself, barraging the lanky Ninja from all angles!
The attack was precise, leaving no room for evasion!
Forced to abandon his Wind Release, the lanky Ninja dodged frantically within the narrow gaps of the remaining ice shards, his cloak tearing as the icy needles left bloody gashes across his body.
"Kill the Ice Release user first!" Yomi bellowed.
The Fire Release user spewed another dragon of flames, aiming to burn through the obstacles and strike Haku directly!
At that moment, Hikari moved.
She didn't even glance at the Fire Release user, merely raising her left hand and pointing a slender finger in the direction of the incoming fire dragon.
"Amaterasu."
Black flames ignited silently in midair!
The roaring fire dragon plunged into the black flames, vanishing without a trace, swallowed whole in an instant!
The Fire Release user's pupils shrank in horror as the sinister black flames clung to him like a curse, crawling up the path of his Chakra from the fire dragon and engulfing his body in an instant!
"Argh-!!!" A scream, so inhuman it chilled the blood, tore through the battlefield!
The pitch-black flames silently consumed him. No matter how he rolled, beat at them, or even tried to extinguish them with Water Release, nothing worked!
Flesh and bone rapidly turned to nothingness under the absolute black fire, leaving only a nauseating stench of charred remains.
In mere moments, all that remained was a small pile of blackened ash.
The terrifying power of the Mangekyo Sharingan instantly stunned the remaining three Evil Medical-Nin!
The madness on their faces was replaced by boundless terror, their movements freezing in fatal hesitation!
Kimimaro and Haku seized this fleeting opportunity!
"Shikotsumyaku: Camellia Dance!" Kimimaro moved like lightning. Blades of bone erupted from his arms, shoulders, knees, even his spine, piercing through his clothes as his entire body transformed into a whirling storm of death!
The two Ninja, one using Water Release and the other Lightning Release, barely had time to scream before being shredded into a bloody mist!
"Ice Release: Ice Rock Dome!"
Haku slammed his palms onto the ground, and a massive ice wall erupted beneath Yomi, sending him flying backward!
The moment his body went numb, countless sharp ice spikes shot out from the wall, impaling him midair!
Blood trickled down the frozen spears.
In just a few seconds, Yomi and five elite Evil Medical-Nin were annihilated!
…
At the center of the battlefield-
While the subordinates clashed, the standoff between Menma and Moryo reached its climax!
"Roar-!!!"
Enraged by Menma's defiance, the massive dark-purple Chakra mass writhed violently as all eight snake heads opened their maws wide-
This time, it was no longer a roar. Instead, they spewed out eight extremely condensed evil Chakra Torrents that were like sticky purple-black asphalt!
Where the corrosive Chakra passed, the very stone of the shrine's sturdy floor sizzled and melted into deep trenches!
From eight different angles, the torrents surged forward like a flood of annihilation, swallowing Menma and the fragile shrine behind him in an unstoppable tide!
With an overwhelming force, it seemed intent on utterly devouring and corroding this tiny obstacle along with the last hope contained within!
Yet Menma remained standing in place, his white mask appearing eerily sinister under the glow of the raging Chakra.
Beneath the mask, the three tomoes in his right eye suddenly emerged, then rapidly spun, stretched, and transformed!
A power far deeper, far more domineering, as if originating from the very essence of the world, erupted with terrifying force!
"Tsukuyomi!"
Silence.
The colossal dark-purple Chakra mass froze abruptly!
All eight of its ferocious snake heads stiffened simultaneously, the molten golden vertical pupils instantly overtaken by boundless shock and confusion, replacing their previous savagery and disdain!
The eight devastating Chakra Torrents it had spewed out came to an abrupt halt just meters away from Menma, as though frozen midair like a petrified waterfall.
Deep within its consciousness, an entirely different, far more despairing world descended without warning!
A mountain of corpses!
A true, endless mountain of corpses!
A vast battlefield stretching as far as the eye could see, piled high with twisted, shattered, rotting bodies in varying states of decay!
The crimson, corpse-laden sky melded with the horizon!
Thick, viscous blood flowed like rivers through the gaps between the corpses, gathering into massive, bubbling pools of gore.
The air was saturated with a nauseating, suffocating stench of decay and blood so thick it felt tangible.
At the center of the distant battlefield, atop a mountain of severed limbs and broken bodies, a dark-red Nine-Tailed Fox sat like a throne.
Behind it, a blood-red moon hung in the sky, while a spiky-haired boy lounged lazily upon this ghastly seat, his Sharingan lifting slightly to gaze down with cold arrogance, as if looking down upon all existence!
And Moryo, which had proclaimed itself the incarnation of destruction, now found itself reduced to nothing more than a pitiful insect, pinned helplessly upon this nightmare landscape of blood and death!
A malice so vast it defied comprehension locked onto it from every corner of this world, from the hollow sockets of every rotting corpse, from every drop of filthy blood that flowed, as if the very fabric of this world roared with the desire to crush it into oblivion t!
This was no mere hatred from an individual, but the rejection and killing intent of an entire world.
"No-! Impossible!" Moryo's consciousness let out a soundless, distorted scream within this Genjutsu Space. The dark Chakra it had once prided itself on, capable of corroding everything, was utterly powerless in this domain of pure malice and despair!
A primal, unprecedented fear, like a cold snake, coiled tightly around its very core!
Back in the real world, before the shrine…
The massive dark-purple Chakra mass, now like a soulless husk, convulsed violently, its eight snake heads writhing in agony, releasing silent shrieks.
No longer able to muster even a shred of offensive Chakra, the evil aura Moryo emitted grew chaotic and feeble!
The evil waves it emitted became chaotic and weak.
"Now, Miroku!" Menma's cold voice cut through the chaos like thunder, piercing through the remnants of battle and the creature's dying screeches.
Inside the main hall, Priestess Miroku, who had been waiting for this moment, unleashed a resolute light in her eyes!
She bit down hard on her tongue, spitting a mouthful of blood infused with her Priestess Power onto the already-prepared seal!
"Secret seal!"