River Capital, Tanzaku Town, inside a casino.
After once again losing every last coin, Tsunade left the casino with a vacant expression and staggered toward an izakaya, deciding to spend the rest of her time—and the money the casino had refunded her—on alcohol.
Tsunade suddenly encouraged herself aloud, "I'll drink until I'm full, sleep until I'm satisfied, then borrow more money tomorrow and win it all back!"
"Tomorrow, I'll definitely win!"
Suddenly, the ground began swaying from side to side.
It was the transverse seismic wave caused by the volcanic eruption, and also the most violently destructive impact.
For a time, buildings throughout Tanzaku Town collapsed, dust billowed everywhere, and screams rang out without end.
Naturally, Tsunade wasn't knocked down.
She immediately began rescue operations.
Fortunately, houses built in the island nation's architectural tradition placed absolute emphasis on being lightweight and earthquake-resistant. Their construction materials consisted of thin wooden boards, paper, and even roofs made from grass.
Although such structures collapsed very easily, they were also unlikely to crush people to death. Most of those buried beneath the wreckage could even crawl out on their own.
While everyone braved the later-arriving longitudinal waves and desperately worked to save themselves and others, an alarm bell rang from the tallest building in the River Capital.
Soon, shouts carried down from above and reached everyone's ears.
"Rain of fire!"
"Tsunami!"
Tsunade immediately put down the injured person in her hands.
With several leaps, she reached the building from which the bell continued ringing.
Standing atop a roof whose tiles had been scattered away, leaving only beams and rafters, she looked toward the distance.
Sure enough, an orange pillar of fire rose into the sky far away.
Lava spheres dragging black trails of smoke through the air rained down upon the sea, and the area they covered was rapidly advancing toward the River Capital.
In addition, a distinct bulge could be seen upon the sea, sweeping forward like a low hill.
Ships of every size were frantically accelerating toward the harbor and shoreline.
Even running aground on the beach was far safer than being caught in a tsunami while still in deep water.
At the very least, they might preserve an intact corpse.
Seeing this scene, Tsunade couldn't help sucking in a sharp breath.
This was a rain of lava and a tsunami caused by a volcanic eruption.
For the River Capital, a city standing directly beside the sea, it was undoubtedly a disaster capable of wiping everything out.
Even as a Kage-level ninja, Tsunade couldn't think of any solution.
She couldn't even act like the ordinary civilians running through the streets and shouting, "Run! The tsunami is coming!"
Because she knew it would be meaningless.
Ordinary people couldn't outrun a tsunami, much less the overwhelming rain of lava covering the sky.
But Tsunade also didn't want to behave like those ninja who were fleeing wildly through the ruins while carrying bulging packs filled with scrolls and money.
That would be far too disgraceful.
At that moment, Tsunade noticed a speck of golden light upon the increasingly dark sea.
She narrowed her eyes and looked more carefully, wondering what it was.
Or rather...
Was it a person?
...
Uchiha Yoru had only run across the frozen plain for a few minutes before reaching its edge and stepping onto the rolling surface of the sea.
He estimated the distance he had traveled and couldn't help mocking himself.
"It still falls far short."
"Ying's technique looked so impressive at the time. Everything within sight had transformed into a frozen plain."
"But only after walking across it did I discover that it covered merely twenty-eight kilometers."
"That really isn't much."
After traveling a little farther, he entered the area covered by volcanic ash.
Dense lava rain and volcanic bombs descended from the sky, while the distant tsunami advanced with overwhelming momentum.
Even from far away, he could hear the thunderous roar produced as it compressed the air.
Uchiha Yoru looked at the outline of the coastal city in the distance, then compared his own location with that of the tsunami.
He nodded in satisfaction and muttered to himself, "This place will do."
"The position is fairly suitable."
After speaking, he raised his head toward the sky and smiled.
"I also need to intercept the rain of fire and volcanic bombs above."
"Does this count as completing the Heavenly Tribulation and Earth Tribulation at the same time?"
His intuition clearly told him that he was thinking too much.
Uchiha Yoru curled his lips and stopped speaking.
His expression became extremely solemn.
He gently pushed his right hand forward.
The golden ring of light circling around him abruptly expanded, covering an area several thousand meters wide.
Then one golden sword of flame after another shot directly into the heavens, smashing the high-speed lava rain and volcanic bombs into even smaller fragments while slightly deflecting their trajectories upward.
Their further fragmentation and upward-curving paths caused their drag coefficients to increase dramatically.
The dangerous projectiles that had originally been capable of traveling twenty kilometers and falling upon the River Capital instead plunged into the sea after only several kilometers.
Although Uchiha Yoru tried his best to direct the volcanic rocks toward areas with the lowest concentration of ships, a few unlucky vessels still happened to be inside the impact zone, where the falling debris was now a hundred times denser.
Those ships no longer had any chance of escaping.
In an instant, they were smashed apart by volcanic bombs and transformed into burning wreckage floating upon the sea.
Uchiha Yoru merely glanced at those unlucky people and silently said in his heart:
Sorry.
He wasn't a perfectionist and had never entertained the delusion of saving everyone.
He was stopping the disaster only because he didn't want the calamity he had caused to destroy an entire city and create a horrifying catastrophe.
As for those who died for various reasons during the process of suppressing the disaster, Uchiha Yoru didn't carry such a heavy psychological burden.
Even if the casualties were caused directly by his own actions, he didn't care.
The so-called trolley problem didn't apply to Uchiha Yoru.
He would save his own people without hesitation.
If both sides consisted of his own people, he would equally unhesitatingly choose the side with more people.
Uchiha Yoru's moral standards changed depending on the target, with an extremely clear distinction between those close to him and those distant from him.
Toward the people closest to him, he showed care and affection and could be called a moral role model.
Toward the people of Konoha and the Land of Fire, he was willing to lend a helping hand whenever it lay within his abilities, and he wouldn't hesitate even if doing so required his full strength.
Toward strangers, he could only guarantee that he wouldn't kill them proactively and would firmly avoid crossing his moral bottom line.
His previous life had already taught Uchiha Yoru one thing very clearly.
As long as he didn't attempt to stand at the absolute summit of morality, he would never suffer from unnecessary psychological burdens.
Nor would certain people be able to exploit him and turn him into the one at fault merely because the help he had worked hard to provide wasn't perfect enough.
What in this world was ever perfect?
After only a brief glance, Uchiha Yoru threw the casualties in the impact zone out of his mind and turned his head toward the roaring tsunami directly ahead.
It was a mountain range of seawater stretching across the ocean.
The wave front exceeded one hundred kilometers in width, and the entire wall of water stood thirty meters high.
The artificial tsunami frozen by Ying had only been sixteen meters tall.
After extending several kilometers, its height had already fallen to five meters.
"Hahaha, now this is the true might of nature."
"Compared to this, the tsunami created by the Kirigakure ninja looks like an adorable little ripple."
As Uchiha Yoru looked at the genuine mountain range of seawater, he couldn't help feeling fortunate that he had sent Ying away.
His Edo Tensei body had no chance of freezing a wave this enormous.
Even if he did freeze it into a gigantic ice plain, the even more violent tsunami would shatter it apart.
The massive broken chunks of ice would then float within the water and become weapons that killed people and destroyed the city's buildings.
Uchiha Yoru rubbed his nose and muttered hesitantly, "Should I keep maintaining the identity of Zhurong, the current Natural Sage?"
The most suitable method for dealing with such an enormous tsunami was naturally to use earth-spirit natural energy.
He could soften the crust, lower the seabed, and create a sufficiently deep "pit" beneath the ocean to swallow the tsunami directly.
Uchiha Yoru had personally done this before in the Eastern Sea, so he could be considered quite experienced.
The next best method was to use water-spirit natural energy.
He could gather the seawater near the coast and form a reverse tsunami to collide directly with the incoming one.
The key to this method was gathering enough seawater.
He would also need to completely drain the water between the two tsunamis so that they collided directly instead of merely transmitting their waves through the sea.
However, the identity Uchiha Yoru currently wore was Zhurong, the Natural Sage.
He was supposed to be a powerful sage who controlled fire-spirit natural energy.
So how was fire-spirit natural energy supposed to deal with this natural tsunami?
One had to understand that the tsunami stretched more than a hundred kilometers across.
If he destroyed too narrow a section, seawater from both sides would wrap around and completely flood the River Capital.
After calculating and confirming the precise figures, Uchiha Yoru couldn't help complaining.
"I actually need to destroy at least twenty-four kilometers of the wave front."
"For me, this is a genuinely challenging task."
"Ah, the Ring of Zhurong is already deployed."
"Then let me begin my most magnificent eruption."
Fire-spirit natural energy erupted.
Fire Release chakra erupted at the same time.
The senjutsu chakra formed through the fusion of the two received an amplification of a hundredfold.
The Ring of Zhurong, representing the culmination of Uchiha Yoru's fire-spirit senjutsu, abruptly expanded to a diameter of twelve hundred meters.
As it rotated with a motion that appeared slow but was actually incredibly fast, ancient war chariots began condensing into existence one after another.
They were weapons of war derived from the Fire God Kagutsuchi—flaming chariots capable of racing forward without divine horses to pull them.
Sage Art: Fire Spirit: Chariots of Kagutsuchi.
As the Sage Art was completed, one chariot after another charged out of the Ring of Zhurong.
While rapidly advancing, they arranged themselves into perfectly ordered assault formations.
The wide formation possessed an astonishing frontal width of twenty-four kilometers.
The golden chariots launched a courageous and fearless charge toward the towering tsunami.
And there wasn't only one line of chariots.
As an endless stream of war chariots formed within the Ring of Zhurong and rapidly launched their charges, the grand Sage Art produced a total of five assault formations before it ended.
There were no neighing warhorses.
There were no fearless battle cries from warriors.
Yet the thunderous rumbling of the advancing chariots still resounded between heaven and earth.
Everyone who witnessed the scene felt their blood surge with excitement, wishing they could follow those miracle-like chariots and join the attack.
Most people could only stand on rooftops or aboard ships, waving their fists and shouting encouragement despite being powerless to help.
However, the River Capital was one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the shinobi world.
An enormous ninja army was also stationed nearby.
Naturally, there were sufficiently powerful ninja capable of approaching closer and witnessing the attack more directly.
As for walking all the way to the front and attacking the tsunami alongside that mysterious stranger...
That was impossible.
No human being could do such a thing!
...
Chiyo was the commander leading the Sunagakure ninja.
After receiving reports that a battle had occurred near the coast, she immediately organized a group of ninja and came to investigate.
By the time she arrived with her people, both sides of the battle had already departed.
They left behind a shocking frozen battlefield and more than a hundred corpses belonging to Kirigakure ninja.
While Chiyo and her subordinates stared at each other in confusion, unable to understand what had happened, she received another report.
An underwater volcano had erupted, triggering an enormous rain of lava and a tsunami.
Furthermore, the River Capital lay directly inside the area that would suffer the worst of the volcanic disaster.
Because of the agreement they had signed, the Sunagakure ninja had an obligation to provide aid to the River Capital.
Therefore, she could only hurry over with the Sunagakure forces.
The moment she arrived, Chiyo saw the Ring of Zhurong.
She witnessed a scene even more shocking than the battlefield they had just discovered.
Someone was resisting a massive volcanic disaster entirely by himself.
Was that even human?
Chiyo hesitated over whether she should approach.
But while she remained undecided, a Sunagakure ninja noticed that Konoha ninja were advancing toward the golden ring of light.
She immediately stopped hesitating.
Bringing her younger brother, Pakura, and several elite jōnin, she approached the golden ring from the western side and formed a standoff with the Konoha ninja.
From atop the tallest building, Tsunade witnessed the scene.
Even from such a great distance, she recognized who had come from both Konoha and Sunagakure.
Originally, the sight of Konoha ninja made her want to slip away.
But after recognizing the people on both sides, Tsunade instead stopped.
She frowned, thought deeply, and hesitated.
Yamanaka Hiroguchi suddenly raised one palm and shouted inside his teammates' minds through a secret technique.
"Stop! Sunagakure ninja ahead!"
"It's Chiyo, Ebizō, and Pakura!"
Nara Shikao clicked his tongue.
"Three Kage-level ninja."
"We don't have equivalent combat strength on our side."
"And our numerical advantage... doesn't exist either."
"This is troublesome."
Akimichi Chōgen asked, "Could the three of us defeat Chiyo together?"
Nara Shikao shook his head.
"Very difficult."
"That old woman's poison is far too troublesome."
"At most, we could handle Ebizō alone."
As the captain and commander of the current operation, Yamanaka Hiroguchi asked, "Shikao, what do you recommend?"
Nara Shikao answered without hesitation.
"Stop advancing."
"Retreat slowly and maintain distance from the Sunagakure ninja."
Yamanaka Hiroguchi nodded and issued the order.
"We'll follow your suggestion."
"If the enemy continues approaching, we retreat."
"Yes!"
Chiyo had also discovered that the Konoha ninja not only lacked a numerical advantage but didn't even have a single Kage-level ninja among them.
Her thoughts naturally became more active, and she began moving closer to the group of Konoha ninja.
She hadn't yet decided whether to attack.
But if an opportunity appeared to take a bite out of them, she naturally wouldn't let it pass.
If she could eliminate one member of the Ino–Shika–Chō formation here and then kill seven or eight elite jōnin, the entire situation in the Land of Rivers would become much more favorable.
It would also greatly benefit the next stage of their plans.
The two groups, each containing only a little more than ten ninja, maintained their standoff while slowly shifting their positions.
The atmosphere grew increasingly tense.
A conflict seemed ready to erupt at any moment.
At that critical moment, a thunderous roar rang out.
The noise created by the charging Chariots of Kagutsuchi drew everyone's attention.
Although there were no warhorses, the flaming chariots possessed an even more overwhelming momentum.
In an instant, the murderous intent between the Konoha and Sunagakure ninja disappeared.
After witnessing the Sage Art, the ninja on both sides finally gained a direct understanding of the mysterious stranger's strength.
When that person possessed the ability to eliminate both groups in one attack, they had better remain obedient and absolutely avoid provoking him.
If a honey badger and a wild dog continued fighting beside an elephant, wouldn't they be showing far too little respect for the strongest creature on land?
After discovering that the danger of conflict had passed, Tsunade, who had already reached the shoreline, stopped moving.
She selected the mast of the tallest nearby sailing ship and leaped atop it, continuing to observe the situation ahead.
The roaring chariots advanced at high speed.
After reaching the trough at the base of the tsunami, they didn't follow the curve of the wave upward.
Instead, they plunged directly into the seawater.
Within the clear ocean, the chariots struggled forward for several dozen meters before transforming into dazzling spheres of plasma.
The golden, almost white fireballs tore enormous cavities through the seawater and vaporized vast quantities of it into steam.
When water transformed into vapor, its volume expanded eight hundredfold.
The seawater within an area more than thirty meters in diameter was vaporized in an instant.
However, the steam couldn't truly enter a gaseous state.
Instead, it could only exist as superheated liquid water, reaching a temperature as high as six hundred degrees.
Had this occurred deep beneath the ocean, compressed by the pressure of several thousand meters of seawater, even eight-hundred-degree liquid water wouldn't have been a problem, much less six hundred degrees.
But inside the towering tsunami, less than thirty meters of water lay above the six-hundred-degree superheated water.
At the point where the chariots entered, the depth was less than twenty meters.
That was fundamentally incapable of containing the pressure of the superheated water.
The water-vapor molecules pushed against one another and jointly forced the surrounding seawater outward.
Then they vaporized, increasing their volume eight hundredfold.
An explosion became unavoidable.
Pure-white steam carried an unknown quantity of seawater into the sky, creating an enormous cavity nearly one hundred meters wide inside the massive tsunami.
Before the surrounding seawater could spread inward and erase that cavity, identical explosions erupted on both sides.
Then the explosions continued extending outward, spreading more than ten kilometers in either direction.
The dense explosions actually carved away a layer of seawater thirty to forty meters thick from the front of the towering tsunami.
The shockwaves produced by the detonations disrupted the tsunami's waveform and created enormous turbulence.
Even the tsunami's speed was reduced by the explosions, forming a clearly visible depression within the circular wall of water.
However, the destructive power of this first bombardment was still insufficient against the current tsunami.
Only several seconds were needed for the chaotic waveform to disappear and for the tsunami to recover its smooth, rounded outline.
At most, the height of this section of the wave would be reduced by one or two meters.
But Uchiha Yoru's Chariots of Kagutsuchi weren't a single-use attack.
Before the enormous wave could restore its shape, the second formation of chariots plunged into it and triggered a second series of explosions.
Then came the third formation.
And the fourth.
By the time the fifth round of explosions sounded, the seawater thrown upward by the first bombardment had already formed a scorching rainstorm that covered the entire region.
Whether they were Konoha ninja or Sunagakure ninja, everyone remaining in the area was drenched by the boiling rain.
Dense blisters rose across their skin from the burns, forcing them to cover their heads and flee.
Only the strongest ninja managed to block the rain through various methods and continue remaining in place.
Among them, Ebizō seemed to have lost his soul.
Step by step, he approached the mysterious figure.
He muttered continuously beneath his breath.
"Is it you?"
"It's you, isn't it?"
"It has to be you!"
"The Natural Sage!"
"You bastard who killed my son!"
"I finally found you!"
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