Crushed beneath Chiba's terrifying strength, the masked man finally reached the edge of true despair. Pride, calculation, even that cold patience he always relied on - everything fractured under the pressure of a power he could no longer outmaneuver. With nowhere left to retreat, he tore open the final card he had kept buried, unleashing an ultimate secret art that had only become possible after fusing Hashirama's cells - the dreaded might of Wood Release.
"Mokuton: Jigoku no Ran ("Hell's Turmoil")!!!"
The ground answered him with a deep, violent roar.
RUMBLE - !
RUMBLE - !
BOOM - !
Countless wooden vines, impossibly tough and disturbingly alive, burst from the earth like a tidal wave of roots, surging upward and outward until they swallowed the battlefield in an instant. They didn't simply spread - they invaded, crawling over shattered stone and torn earth with hungry purpose, twisting into a sprawling net meant to leave no space to breathe, no path to escape.
And along every coil of those vines… thorns.
Not a few, not scattered - an overwhelming forest of razor-sharp spikes and barbed brambles, layered so densely they seemed endless. The technique wasn't content to restrain. It was designed to punish: to wrap the enemy tight, to lock them in place, and then to carve into them from every angle until the struggle itself became a sentence. Being caught inside it wasn't merely being bound - it was being dragged into a living torture chamber, flayed by a thousand cuts without mercy or pause.
This was the same nightmare Uchiha Obito had once unleashed after witnessing Nohara Rin's death - an eruption of grief and rage that had turned into slaughter. Back then, Wood Release had surged out of him like a curse, and in a single moment, he had wiped out an entire group of Kirigakure's elite ANBU.
Thorns. Spikes. Vines. Branches.
Bodies had fallen in heaps, blood had poured like rain, and the earth had been stained so thoroughly it looked painted in red - an inferno of flesh and silence, a scene so brutal it could only be described as hell made real.
The name Hell's Turmoil wasn't chosen for spectacle - it was earned.
Jiraiya and Team Seven - Naruto, Sai, Sakura, and the others - stared at the eruption of Wood Release with undisguised shock. The man who dared to call himself Uchiha Madara truly wasn't ordinary. Not only was his power frighteningly real, he had even displayed the same Wood Release secret arts once believed to belong exclusively to the First Hokage.
And yet… none of them felt the kind of fear that should have followed.
Because Chiba was still standing there.
As long as he remained, defeat felt like an impossible concept. When he was your enemy, he was the most terrifying nightmare imaginable; when he was your ally, he became a certainty you could lean on without hesitation. Even Jiraiya, watching from the side, couldn't help the heavy wave of emotion that rose in him - standing on Chiba's side really did feel safe in a way shinobi rarely experienced. No wonder the people of Kirigakure looked at him with worship and trust. When a man kept doing the impossible, eventually the impossible began to look like his normal.
Chiba, as always, responded to the storm with quiet composure. He raised a hand as if brushing away dust, and the Ice Fruit's power surged again.
BOOM - !
RUMBLE - RUMBLE - !
Hyōketsu Kūkan ("Frozen Space")!
It lasted less than a second - but that was more than enough.
The vines, the brambles, the spikes, the twisting branches - all of it was seized by the frozen space and locked into absolute stillness. Then, as if the world rejected their very existence, the entire forest of Wood Release shattered violently, bursting into powder and splinters - dust, ash, and shredded wood drifting through the air like the remains of a burned-out dream.
The masked man's face paled beneath the cracks of his mask.
His hidden trump cards - Katon: Bakufū Ranbu ("Blasting Gale Dance"), and now Mokuton: Jigoku no Ran ("Hell's Turmoil") - had done nothing. Absolutely nothing. And the "ultimate divine technique" Kamui, once his greatest confidence, had turned into a dead weight around his neck. Against Chiba's ability to freeze space itself, it wasn't just that Kamui might fail… he didn't even dare to try again.
Not after what had happened.
Not when a single mistake meant being torn apart mid-warp.
The realization sank in like cold water down the spine: if this continued, he was already standing in a dead end.
A bead of sweat slid down through the grime and blood on his face - cold, involuntary.
On the other side of the battlefield, the fight between Uchiha Itachi and Hatake Kakashi intensified as well, sparks and flame cutting through the ruined air.
Truthfully, if one judged by the original world's trajectory, Itachi at this time should have already surpassed Kakashi by a wide margin - enough to crush him with Tsukuyomi and leave him bedridden for days, just as history had once proven.
But that Itachi belonged to a different world.
This world's Itachi had lost his eyes. He no longer possessed the Mangekyō Sharingan - no Tsukuyomi, no Amaterasu, no Susanoo, no Totsuka Blade, no Yata Mirror. What remained was an elite jōnin with exceptional shuriken skill, strong Fire Style, and only a standard three-tomoe Sharingan.
Against Kakashi… he was at a disadvantage.
Because Kakashi's eye was a Mangekyō.
Even if he couldn't fully draw out its true potential, the ocular power itself still stood above what Itachi now had.
With that, both Itachi and the masked man were steadily pressed down, the battle tilting into a brutal one-sided flow.
The shockwaves didn't stay contained for long.
The violent clashes quickly alarmed all of Takigakure.
Shibuki had already moved the Choumei jinchūriki, Fū, into a secret base, then arrived with Takigakure's elite shinobi to surround the area. But the moment they saw what was unfolding, it became painfully obvious - this was a level of battle Takigakure couldn't interfere with at all.
Phasing. Self-absorption. Space freezing. Absolute immobilization.
The fight between Chiba and the masked man left the Takigakure ninja stunned into silence, their eyes wide with disbelief. Forget space-time techniques - just Katon: Bakufū Ranbu ("Blasting Gale Dance") or Mokuton: Jigoku no Ran ("Hell's Turmoil") alone were already godlike arts to them, so far beyond their reach that it bordered on fantasy.
And in truth, that was how it was for most shinobi in the world.
But Chiba moved through it all like an unchanging axis. One method, countless answers. No matter how the masked man forced his power to erupt, he couldn't harm Chiba in the slightest - only driving himself deeper into panic and despair.
The Takigakure shinobi - Shibuki included - began to look at Chiba like a savior, like something closer to a deity than a man.
Roaring in desperation, the masked man suddenly launched a barrage from the Kamui dimension - massive shuriken ripping out of the distorted space, screaming forward in a brutal storm.
RUMBLE - !
BOOM - !
They tore through the air toward Chiba.
Chiba merely smiled - calm, almost indulgent - and released his own ocular power.
Unlike the masked man or Itachi, Chiba hadn't awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan in the traditional sense. His eyes weren't Mangekyō.
Instead, he had fused Mangekyō abilities into his body itself.
Meaning he could freely wield various Mangekyō ocular powers… without possessing Mangekyō eyes.
In the next heartbeat, Chiba unleashed two forces together.
Amaterasu - and Kagutsuchi.
Black flames bloomed - then twisted under Kagutsuchi's control, reshaping into countless magatama-like chakra projectiles, each one a compressed piece of annihilation. They streaked forward in a relentless volley toward the masked man.
BOOM - BOOM - BOOM - !
The massive shuriken were blown apart instantly, shredded into fragments - then swallowed by the inextinguishable black fire, burned down to drifting ash.
And the barrage didn't stop.
More Kagutsuchi magatama tore onward, hunting the masked man.
The masked man's expression changed sharply. He activated Kamui's phasing ability again - an almost reflexive power, so fast it felt instantaneous, not even requiring conscious thought. The parts of his body that should have been hit slipped into the Kamui dimension, narrowly avoiding disaster.
But in that same instant -
Chiba moved.
The Ice Fruit erupted again.
Kūkan Tōketsu ("Space Freeze")!
CRACK - !
The space around the masked man locked solid - his body and the surrounding air frozen into a rigid, suffocating stillness. Under normal circumstances, the Kagutsuchi magatama would have passed through him harmlessly while he phased.
But now, space itself had been solidified.
Kamui's phasing couldn't function.
And the result was immediate.
The magatama projectiles tore through him in a single, merciless burst - piercing flesh, shredding through the body that could no longer escape. Some lodged inside him, and the Amaterasu flames burned inward, searing organs from within with a pain beyond reason.
"AAAAAAAHHH - !!!"
The masked man's scream ripped through the battlefield, raw enough to make even hardened shinobi's scalps prickle. It wasn't just agony - it was the feeling of being dragged into something truly infernal.
After the earlier near-death damage, and now this horrific wave of strikes, even a body reinforced by White Zetsu and Hashirama cells couldn't endure. Dozens of massive holes opened across him, and then the black flames surged - devouring him completely until there was nothing left but burning ash.
At a glance… he looked dead beyond any doubt.
But Chiba shook his head, a calm disappointment in his eyes - as if watching a predictable trick play out again.
"So it's that technique again."
Izanagi.
A forbidden Uchiha dōjutsu - paid for with the light of a Sharingan. It turned the user's injuries, even death itself, into illusion - into a dream - while converting what they inflicted upon the enemy into reality. In other words, it rewrote the boundary between truth and falsehood for a brief span, as long as the eye could sustain it.
The masked man had already activated Izanagi earlier. Meaning what had just happened - Chiba's killing blow, the complete incineration - was being relegated to "dream."
Of course, his Izanagi had been triggered after the room collapsed and the fight moved outside, so the catastrophic damage from Chiba's earlier Hyōketsu Kūkan ("Frozen Space") - the blood-soaked, mangled condition that had nearly torn him apart - couldn't simply be undone. That injury remained, a debt his body still had to pay.
And the duration of his Izanagi far exceeded Danzo's.
First, he was a true Uchiha - and one of the rare ones who had awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan. His understanding and control over Sharingan ocular power was on a completely different level from Danzo's crude imitation.
Second, Hashirama's cells strengthened him dramatically - vitality, recovery, chakra reserves, raw power - enough to let him push Mangekyō ocular abilities close to the edge of what looked like "limitless."
Kakashi could use Kamui once and collapse into days of exhaustion.
But the masked man could spam it with near impunity.
That advantage came from the shinobi world's most infamous "artifact": Hashirama's cells.
Yes, Danzo had also implanted Hashirama's cells - but his fusion was nowhere near comparable to Obito's. In fact, for Danzo, those cells could become a burden. If his chakra ran too low or he suffered heavy damage, the Hashirama cells would begin to consume him instead.
Obito never had that problem.
That's why Danzo, despite having an entire arm of Sharingan, could only sustain Izanagi for roughly a minute per eye.
While Obito could maintain Izanagi for roughly ten minutes with a single Sharingan.
This could be inferred from his battle with Konan: her six hundred billion explosive tags detonated for over ten minutes, and only after Obito pierced Konan with a metal rod did that Sharingan's light finally begin to fade into blindness.
Which meant -
From the moment the room collapsed and the battle moved outside, the masked man had already activated Izanagi. Throughout this time, he had been in a state that was effectively "undying."
Many people misunderstood Izanagi, treating each eye like a single "revive."
That was wrong.
One Sharingan doesn't buy one life.
It buys a span of time.
And within that span, no matter how many times the user "dies"… it all becomes meaningless illusion.
Compared to a simple "revive," Izanagi was far more terrifying - because it didn't just grant you a second chance. It granted you a period of time in which death itself could be dismissed as fiction. That kind of advantage was absurdly powerful.
Of course, it wasn't without flaws.
Its duration was unstable, and that instability created a lethal uncertainty: the user couldn't always tell whether Izanagi was still active. And in the shinobi world, hesitation and miscalculation were often more fatal than any blade.
That was exactly how Shimura Danzō had ultimately died. Trapped by Uchiha Sasuke's genjutsu, he mistakenly believed Izanagi was still ongoing - only to have reality slam back into place and end him the moment his guard dropped.
Chiba had noticed it early - noticed that the masked man had already used Izanagi.
But this kind of self-cast illusion was almost impossible to dispel from the outside. It was less like a trick placed on the mind and more like the world itself being edited while you watched.
And by now, the masked man had already used that brief window - "dying," returning, and slipping away in the chaos without anyone realizing. He vanished like a shadow retreating into the cracks of the battlefield.
Chiba only smiled.
He hadn't intended to kill him outright in the first place.
Keeping the masked man alive served a purpose - one far more important than mere victory.
But that was a story for later.
For now -
Chiba turned his attention to the other fight.
Kakashi had completely seized control over Itachi. Itachi's breathing had grown ragged, his face steadily paling as he was forced back step by step. Ironically, because Chiba had ripped out his Mangekyō Sharingan, Itachi couldn't use it - and that meant his body wasn't suffering the same crushing strain it had in the original timeline.
It was a bitter kind of irony: losing his greatest power had also reduced the burden that once destroyed him from within.
Still, it didn't change the outcome.
Kakashi read the rhythm, caught the opening, and drove forward without hesitation.
Raikiri ("Lightning Cutter") - !
CRACK - !
The blade of lightning punched straight through Itachi's body.
Itachi's eyes widened. He choked on air, blood surging from his mouth in a violent burst as his strength collapsed. The fight drained out of him all at once, like a flame snuffed between two fingers.
Kakashi stepped in, ready to finish it -
And Chiba stopped him.
Kakashi froze, startled. "Mizukage-sama?"
To him, sparing this kind of man made no sense. From the night of the massacre - when Itachi and the masked man had slaughtered their own clan, even turning their hands against family and innocent civilians - Kakashi had already concluded they were beyond saving.
Chiba's voice remained calm. "He's trash, yes. But if he's going to die, there's someone more appropriate to do it."
Kakashi's thoughts snapped into place.
"You mean…"
"Uchiha Sasuke?" he said, the name leaving his mouth like a sharp exhale.
Chiba nodded.
At the sound of Sasuke's name, Itachi's face drained of color even further, as if the wound in his chest had suddenly shifted to his heart. His lips parted, and for the first time, something raw slipped through the emptiness in his eyes.
"…Sasuke."
Naruto's expression tightened too, understanding blooming with a kind of fierce clarity. "Uchiha Sasuke…?"
"So this guy is Sasuke's brother - the one who betrayed his own people… the monster who even tried to kill his parents?"
Naruto clenched his fists, anger and conviction mixing in his voice. "You're right, Mizukage-sama. That revenge should be Sasuke's to take with his own hands!"
Kakashi's gaze hardened. He lowered his arm.
"Then get out," he said coldly. "Crawl away."
Itachi pressed a hand to the wound, not even bothering to wipe the blood at his lips. With a limp that looked less like injury and more like the habit of a broken man, he turned and left.
Watching his back disappear into the distance, everyone felt it - an unsettling sensation, like they'd just watched a walking corpse shuffle away.
Jiraiya's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Mizukage-sama… when you spared Itachi back then, was it to leave him for Sasuke's revenge? And also to sharpen Sasuke's will - to push him into training harder, deeper, more desperately?"
Chiba nodded, and his smile carried a faint, knowing edge. "That was part of it. There are other reasons too, but we'll leave them for another day."
Naruto's voice rose with sudden fire. "No wonder Sasuke trains so hard… with something like that to chase."
He turned to Jiraiya, eyes blazing. "Perverted Sage - let's start training right away!"
"Don't forget - we still have that bet with Mizukage-sama and Sasuke!"
Jiraiya gave a helpless, resigned chuckle. "Yeah. I remember."
Kakashi exhaled as well, a quiet sigh that held exhaustion and the weight of what he'd just faced.
Chiba looked at him then - directly, deliberately - like he was placing a responsibility into Kakashi's hands.
"Hatake Kakashi," Chiba said, "you're the same."
Kakashi's body went still. "What…?"
Chiba's tone didn't soften, but it wasn't cruel either. It was measured - almost like a verdict delivered with purpose.
"There's someone I'm leaving for you to face."
Kakashi's heart thudded. "Who?"
Chiba's answer landed like thunder.
"That masked man - the one calling himself Uchiha Madara."
Kakashi's expression changed instantly.
Ever since the massacre night, the masked man's attitude toward him had felt wrong - strangely ambiguous, like he was looking at Kakashi through a lens filled with history Kakashi didn't possess. And even today, that same eerie feeling had returned, sharper than before.
But why?
What did it mean?
And what, exactly, was Chiba implying?
Kakashi couldn't hold it back anymore. Curiosity and dread tangled together until it became unbearable.
"Mizukage-sama," he said, voice low but urgent, "you… you know everything, don't you?"
"Please tell me."
"Who is the masked man really?!"
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