Under the gaze of everyone present, the black hole that devoured everything collided with the sun that burned all in its path.
Chiyo, regardless of the cost, pushed the puppet mechanisms of the Chikamatsu Ten Puppets to their limit.The immense suction dragged Mitsuki's Blazing Wind Annihilation straight into the wind zone.
Seeing Chiyo block such a terrifying attack with her puppetry, the Suna shinobi erupted in excited shouts:
"Wonderful!"
"Long live Lady Chiyo!"
"We've won!"
But Chiyo's instincts told her otherwise—it was all too easy.
As much as she hated to admit it, Konoha truly lived up to its title as the cradle of geniuses.
This Shimizu Mitsuki… he was the most gifted shinobi she had ever seen.
Even more than the White Fang himself.
"Would a genius like him really make such a reckless move? Could his most confident strike truly be this simple?"
Her doubts only grew, but her fingers never slowed, moving with a dexterity that belied her age.
The moment the Three Treasure Suction Crush caught Mitsuki's strike, Chiyo immediately activated the sealing array within her puppets.
Through his Six Eyes, Mitsuki saw her every move. But it was meaningless.
The Blazing Wind Annihilation wasn't just another jutsu.Unlike the Rasenshuriken, which could stabilize into a shuriken form after compression,the Blazing Wind Annihilation was an extremely unstable mass of high-intensity chakra.
Its internal chakra was in a constant superposition of transformations, never still.Even when Mitsuki hurled it outward, every single strand of chakra within remained under his control.
In this state, its trajectory was almost unstoppable. Like the chakra sphere it had devoured earlier, almost nothing could trigger it prematurely.
There were only two ways for it to detonate:The first—Mitsuki himself released his control.The second—exactly what was happening before their eyes.
Under Chiyo's command, the sealing formation of Three Treasure Suction Crush manifested, coiling upward from the center of the Wind Zone like a great serpent.Just as it had severed the Rasenshuriken's chakra link to Mitsuki before, it now cut the connection between Mitsuki and his Blazing Wind Annihilation.
Crack.
Not the thunderous roar of the Rasenshuriken. Instead, it was the faint sound of a bolt snapping.
Wrapped in the sealing formula, the Blazing Wind Annihilation released a violent light, painting everything within a kilometer in dark violet. And from within that radiance, a purple sun slowly rose.
Chiyo's entire body screamed alarms — every cell telling her the same thing:
"I'll die."
Those three words pounded inside her skull in crimson flashes.
Without hesitation, she whipped her hands, commanding the Chikamatsu Ten to abandon the sealing and retreat.
"Scatter! Get away from that jutsu—now!" she shouted.
Fate is often cruelly theatrical.
The Suna shinobi had been cheering Chiyo's arrival one moment, only to scramble in terror the next, tripping over each other in their rush to flee. Every one of them cursed their parents for not giving them an extra pair of legs.
The lucky ones had distance. Those close to the purple sun had no such luxury — they were already swearing, faces twisted in despair.
The sphere's gravity surged, stronger than the combined pull of Three Treasure Suction Crush.Trees ripped from their roots. The ground fractured, breaking into chunks pulled into the purple sun.
Under that inescapable force, fleeing shinobi felt as though invisible hands seized them, dragging them step by step toward death.
"Damn it! If that's how it is — Wind Release: Wind Cutter!"
One shinobi, suspended midair by the pull, swallowed his fear and unleashed his jutsu at the glowing sphere.
His courage sparked others—more shinobi hurled jutsu of every kind.
"Take this—Wind Release: Vacuum Wave!"
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
Others, lacking ranged ninjutsu, slapped explosive tags onto kunai and hurled them desperately.
But if the Blazing Wind Annihilation could be undone so easily, Mitsuki would never have kept it as one of his trump cards.
Their counterattacks achieved nothing.
Thrown weapons never even touched the purple sun—they melted midair into molten iron, vanishing without a ripple.
That was the "fortunate" outcome.
As for their ninjutsu, not only did they fail, their chakra was devoured—feeding the purple sun and making it swell even larger.
There was no way out.
Within the glow of the violet sphere, everything was dragged inward, reduced to ash in the unbearable heat.
This was one of Mitsuki's hidden aces.
"Blazing Wind Annihilation"
It had no roaring explosion. Only a silent, inevitable burn.Once its gravity seized you, it was as though the Shinigami's scythe had already brushed your throat.
Chiyo had no choice. She commanded the Chikamatsu puppets to seize nearby allies—and herself—and hurl them as far as possible.
When she finally landed outside the technique's range, she didn't waste a second.She unfurled a scroll across the ground.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
With a puff of smoke, six half-formed puppets appeared.
It was the recall scroll for the Chikamatsu Ten — part storage, part emergency retrieval.Only six responded. The rest… were gone.
The shinobi she had managed to save looked pale, terror etched into their faces.In their eyes, the comrades who had failed to escape were swallowed by the purple sun, their screams ending as their bodies melted away.
"Lady Chiyo, they…" one of them stammered.
Chiyo ignored them. She hadn't saved them for their sakes—only because it was convenient.This was still the first exchange, and Suna had already been dealt a crushing blow.
But at least they had contingencies. Her priority now was to stabilize morale.
Returning to the main Suna force, Chiyo barked orders swiftly:
"Change course! Bypass that jutsu's area."
"Accelerate! Get closer to the enemy—their technique doesn't distinguish friend from foe."
"And one more thing…"