Orochimaru's smile spread as he guided the reanimated Hashirama forward.
Under Orochimaru's control, Hashirama's hands began to fly through seals, then slapped to the ground.
Boom!!
A thunderous thud shook the forest. A dirt mass hundreds of meters across rose into view.
Though it was only soil, it gleamed with a metallic sheen under the sun.
There was no chakra residue at all, yet its hardness exceeded even Orochimaru's expectations.
He stepped forward, brushed its surface, and narrowed his eyes.
"Doton (Earth Style) and Katon (Fire Style) alone? Astonishing."
"Ao!"
Excitement flickered in Mei's eyes; her tone could barely hide her thrill.
Ao nodded hard, Byakugan flaring as he peered into the mound. After a moment, his body jolted.
"Found it! There's some kind of sealing technique inside. I can't make out the person's face, but I can confirm the coffin is made with Mokuton (Wood Style)."
"Seems this will be much simpler than expected," Orochimaru murmured, tongue flicking with a strange emotion.
"Suiton (Water Style): Suishōha (Water Shockwave)!"
Ao's hands flashed; with a crisp shout, a roaring flood crashed forward like a waterfall, slamming into the mound.
To everyone's surprise, the attack didn't leave so much as a crack.
Amusement tugged at Orochimaru's lips. "Harder than expected, is it?"
But how will you handle it? His eyes drifted to Mei.
"Stand back."
Mei took two steps back and barked to everyone around her.
"Yōton (Lava Style): Yōkai no Jutsu (Melting Apparition)!"
A torrent of highly adhesive, corrosive acid spewed from her lips, draping the colossal mound.
The corrosion was so fierce it felt like even the air sizzled.
Sss! Sss! Sss!
Holes of various sizes pitted the once-unyielding surface in moments.
Behind Orochimaru, the Sound Four's pupils shrank. This woman was dangerous.
Mei, however, didn't look pleased; she frowned.
The mound was three to four hundred meters across. Dissolving the whole thing would take who knew how long.
They didn't have that kind of time.
"Mei-dono, I can pinpoint where Yuto-dono is inside. We can just bore a tunnel straight in."
Ao's reminder snapped her to it—far more efficient.
"Orochimaru, you're helping too."
She turned to him without ceremony.
Orochimaru shrugged and came over obediently, thinking privately how much she felt like Tsunade.
With Ao's Byakugan guiding them, Mei quickly chose a spot closest to the coffin.
Ao tracked the angle so they wouldn't drift off. Mei melted the stone to open a shaft nearly three meters tall. Orochimaru assisted at her side.
With even Orochimaru working, the Sound Four couldn't idle; they took the worst job—hauling away every chunk of dissolved slag.
Even then, the mound Uchiha Madara had casually forged with ninjutsu took them a full hour to tunnel through.
Crack.
With the last wall eaten away, a more than two-meter-tall wooden coffin covered in complex seals appeared.
"Found you at last, Yuto-dono."
Mei's voice trembled with excitement.
Ao at her side was just as moved.
Under the eyes of the heavy hitters, Kidomaru and Jirobo grimly hefted the coffin out and set it down.
"So this is the seal Hashirama used back then to bind Yuto-dono?"
Gravely, Ao studied the black formulae etched all over the lid.
"Who would've thought—Hashirama sealed Yuto-dono with his own hands, and now he's undoing it with those same hands."
Mei glanced at the Edo-controlled Hashirama and let out a cold, mocking breath.
Under Orochimaru's command, Hashirama strode to the Mokuton coffin, hands flashing. With the final seal—
The dense black markings faded at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Crack.
Without the seals' reinforcement and no chakra to sustain it, the Mokuton coffin crumbled into scattered pieces.
Boom!!
A killing intent exploded skyward, a terrifying aura flooding the forest.
Mountains of corpses and seas of blood seemed to rise before their eyes.
Kill—
A faint chant rang at everyone's ears.
They all froze where they stood. The Sound Four fared worst—sweat poured off them as they collapsed.
The first to recover were veterans of real battle: Mei, Ao, and Orochimaru.
All three wore looks of shock. Just killing intent had dragged them into something like genjutsu.
Shaking it off, they looked solemnly toward the figure sealed for so many years.
A very young man stood there. His Warring States garb was so tattered it barely covered anything.
His body was a lattice of wounds with not a single intact patch—half his torso was simply gone.
Even so, he stood straight. With his remaining hand he raised a lone middle finger.
It looked almost absurd, but even Orochimaru—once of Konoha—couldn't muster a smile.
From this scene alone, one could imagine how brutal that battle had been.
"Yuto-dono…"
Reverence colored Mei's whisper.
Greed and fear flashed through Orochimaru's eyes. It was just a corpse, yet for some reason he felt the man could awaken at any moment.
None of them noticed the rush of black particles surging across Yuto's body as the seal broke.
Thump—
A tiny sound.
Faint as it was, Mei and Orochimaru both lifted their heads at once, staring at Yuto's chest.
A heartbeat.
Before their disbelieving eyes, Yuto's ruined body began knitting together at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Even the injuries vanished in moments, as if they had never existed.
The mild scent of damp earth slid into Yuto's nostrils.
As if waking from a long sleep, he cracked his eyes open. Bright sunlight flooded his vision.
He lifted his head to the blazing orb overhead and spoke, voice slow and lazy.
"I'm back."
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