In this era, the largest-scale explosion the shinobi and civilians of the Five Great Nations had ever witnessed—one that truly terrified them—was the Tailed Beast Bomb.
That was a strategic-level power capable of instantly destroying several small mountains and influencing the flow of a battlefield.
But now, whether it was the chunin and elite jōnin in flak jackets, or the Akatsuki members who could threaten the Five Kage, they all felt that a Tailed Beast Bomb's might was…well, apparently not such a big deal after all.
Even the perfect jinchūriki, Yugito Nii and Killer Bee, for the first time ever, felt their own insignificance.
All around them, in the distance—visible to the three factions—rose an orange-red mushroom cloud that had not yet fully formed, ascending with a vivid glow.
Before the reverberating roar could sweep in from afar, a terrifying shockwave had already formed, turning into a howling gale that rushed across the terrain.
Many Kumogakure nin, feeling they'd been at a "safe" distance, were now flipped onto their backs by the onrushing wind.
Even those who reacted in time, using chakra to anchor their feet to the ground, were forced to shield their eyes against the intense blast, raising hands in front of their faces.
They could do nothing but hunker down as the storm-whipped dust and the quaking earth came rolling over them.
In the blink of an eye, the entire unit was thrown into chaos.
Meanwhile, on Akatsuki's side, both Deidara and Sasori—riding on the white bird—were blown away and had to abandon their main aerial fighting platform, landing on a rocky peak to keep watch from there.
Though they themselves could handle the wind, the dust, and the tremors, the mental shock they suffered was greater than that of the Kumogakure nin.
In a time without any super-spec combatants, these S-rank missing-nin of Akatsuki were considered the top handful of the shinobi world. Even facing a Kage one-on-one, they might not lose. And if they wished to flee, it was child's play.
Not long ago, Itachi and Kisame had roamed freely in Konohagakure—one of the Five Great Nations—coming and going as they pleased.
Yet at this moment, these typically insolent figures all felt how minuscule they were.
Compared to those two on the battlefield, they were no different from the Fourth Raikage and the Eight-Tails jinchūriki—mere playthings in their hands—who wouldn't even need to unleash these vast-scale techniques against them.
Just the thought of being targeted by such beings made their scalps tingle.
Fortunately for them, one of those monsters happened to be their leader. With such a person behind them, Akatsuki's circumstances were ironically more favorable than those of the Great Nations.
They didn't know how long that meteor barrage continued before finally coming to an end. In the process, the wind and swirling dust had long since engulfed all three factions.
Only those twenty-plus kilometers away—like Hinata—remained unaffected, while everyone else saw only an endless wall of gray. The shockwaves and quakes caused by the crashing meteors made even elite shinobi, typically well-trained, struggle to keep their footing.
The tremors were even felt in Amegakure.
Fortunately, most of Amegakure's structures were steel, built on firm foundations, and further protected by a barrier. Konan had returned already; none of the villagers fled out of the underground shelters in a panic.
Once the continuous roar, coupled with the howling gale, finally died away…
A gust cleared the dust for those three factions. Looking to the place where Izayoi and Nagato were fighting, they saw nothing but a massive zone of thick, dense dust—like drifting into a desert, with a sandstorm about to crash down on them.
Boom!
Just as the sensor-nin were preparing to form hand seals and push their sensing to full, trying to gauge those monsters' chakra levels, that dull gray dust cloud ahead abruptly ripped open.
More precisely, the dust cloud's upper layer was violently dispersed by some terrifying blast of air.
Yet that surge of air was not a standard repulsive shockwave.
"W-what is that thing…?"
"You've got to be kidding—another meteor?!"
"…"
All three sides trembled again, eyes wide and tongues tied.
What they saw was indeed a meteor. But unlike those from the earlier meteoric downpour, this one did not ignite from the atmosphere and turn into a blazing giant fireball. It simply descended like a massive mountain.
A dreadful current of air not only blew away the dust at the top of the cloud, but also burst open a huge hole in the blackened sky, revealing the blue skies and bright midday sun.
"Shinra Tensei"
Before that colossal meteor could scatter the remaining dust or crash into the ground—raising even more dust—an invisible blast of force spread outward, distorting the air currents and becoming something like a hidden "divine hand" that caught the immense meteor in midair.
Suspended in place, the meteor's lower edge suddenly cracked and, at visible speed, the damage spread up toward its top.
In the span of a few blinks, the mountain-like meteor crumbled into countless shards, which then shot upward into the sky—as if determined to turn the clouds above into swiss cheese.
After the force wave faded, that hole in the clouds had not yet closed when—boom—another giant meteor began plummeting down.
By now, the three factions had become numb.
Another quake rumbled across the land. A towering Buddha statue—easily over a hundred meters high, endowed with hundreds of massive arms—rose from the ground.
No sooner had the statue emerged than those numerous arms unfurled behind it, each producing a slicing gale. With a power akin to "one punch can shatter a mountain," they struck the incoming meteor.
Once again, that colossal falling boulder was smashed into pieces, at the expense of numerous wooden arms being crushed as well.
When the meteor burst apart into a rain of rubble falling from the sky—
Yet again, from the hole in the clouds dropped a third giant meteor.
The massive wooden statue, still mid-strike, was no longer able to destroy it the way it did before.
But standing atop the statue's head, Nagato remained utterly unflinching.
He made the statue tilt its head back, its mouth yawning wide, unleashing five different chakras which merged into a blazing five fold column of flame, rocketing up.
The flames collided with the giant meteor in midair, bursting into a spectacular fireball as bright as a Tailed Beast Bomb.
One more time, the shockwaves ravaged the field with hurricane-like winds.
"They're…on another level entirely!"
"How many times have they unleashed attacks on par with—or even stronger than—Tailed Beast Bombs?! Don't they have any limits?!"
"Could this be how the Valley of the End was formed…?"
"…"
Engulfed by the gale, the three factions stared with blank faces. Even perfect jinchūriki eventually tire out—no one can fire Tailed Beast Bombs indefinitely. Yet these two monsters kept flinging around moves beyond Tailed Beast Bomb scale.
That kind of chakra, that level of ninjutsu mastery, made everyone question themselves: Are we really the "elite" of the Five Great Nations?
We're all shinobi—so why is the gap so massive?
As the third meteor turned into an enormous aerial firework, the hole in the cloud canopy revealed no new falling meteor.
But from that hole, a tiny black dot drifted down—that was Izayoi (in the guise of 19-year-old "Ōtsutsuki Toneri").
He still looked as aloof as a lofty god. His Tenseigan eyes shone down on all living beings like a deity gazing upon mortals. But if one looked carefully, one could see his breathing was slightly labored, and a bit of sweat had formed on his pale forehead.
Indeed, even his vast stores of chakra were heavily drained after that chain of large-scale attacks.
Nagato, similarly, showed signs of fatigue down below. If not for absorbing the Eight-Tails' chakra, he'd doubtless be in worse shape.
After all, whether it was a Shinra Tensei: Full Throttle, Wood-Style: Wooden Golem, or the earlier Five-Element Flame Pillars, each demanded a tremendous amount of chakra.
And Izayoi had likewise consumed enormous chakra unleashing so many gravitational attacks. If not for the Tenseigan's far-sight allowing him to lock on to meteors in outer space, he could never have summoned so many meteor showers or three "Tengai Shinsei." Even if he did try, he'd have no means to precisely direct them without that telescopic vision.
Seeing his Tengai Shinsei attempts fail to decide the fight—and facing Nagato's Preta Path—Izayoi realized that purely defeating him would require physical force. Wood-Style was out of the question (it couldn't be exposed yet and, even if it were, it wouldn't surpass Nagato in the Tobi battle suit). Unless Izayoi knew the Eight Gates and could open the Seventh Gate now, summoning a meteor barrage was his only recourse.
He just hadn't expected that Tobi plus Nagato could also use Wood-Style: Nativity of a World of Trees or the Wood Golem. Clearly, Nagato's Gold-tier Wood-Style was a real combat asset.
Wearing the Tobi armor, Nagato felt as formidable as the Valley of the End's Uchiha Madara cloaked in Tailed Beast Chakra…perhaps even stronger.
After all, that Madara lacked the Preta Path, whereas Nagato possessed not just the Six Paths but also the Gedo Statue as a trump card.
The Soul Dragon technique would be an external combo of Preta Path and Human Path.
Hovering aloft, Izayoi and Nagato probed each other's chakra with their ultimate dojutsu, concluding that their remaining chakra was shockingly close. Nagato, having absorbed Bee, did have a marginal edge—but that meager difference couldn't grant an advantage.
If Izayoi called another meteor storm, Nagato would be forced to burn through more chakra to block it. Conversely, even if Izayoi came out slightly ahead in chakra, defeating Nagato would be nearly impossible. The three factions still lurking about could provide unlimited "batteries" for Nagato to recapture Tailed Beasts. And the same for Izayoi.
Two fighters of equal power and similar abilities, a fair one-on-one, couldn't produce a victor. One needed outside help or a vital weak point to break the standoff.
Hence Izayoi involuntarily cast a glance toward Amegakure.
Seeing that, Nagato felt a sudden jolt. If only his Banshō Ten'in had a wider range, he'd immediately pull Izayoi down from the sky. He was about to channel the Wooden Golem with fivefold nature transformations for another combo, when—
Suddenly Nagato's face changed, eyes going wide.
The same happened to Obito and Black Zetsu, whose Mangekyō and formidable sensing had continued to lock onto Izayoi.
"Tsk…"
High above, Izayoi abruptly inhaled sharply, reflexively raising a hand to his eyes. The next second, his mouth twisted into an excited smile as he muttered:
"Finally? So you refuse to be suppressed after all!"
Within both Nagato and Obito's "chaka-vision," plus Black Zetsu's sensing, a torrent of chakra was erupting in Izayoi's brain, flowing into his eyes.
What had been a severely spent, nearly extinguished ocular power now boiled back to life.
As for Izayoi, he felt as though his eyeballs were squirming, as if something was burrowing around inside—painful, itchy, yet oddly pleasant—making him near useless for fighting.
This was much like Sasuke in the original story, after transplanting Itachi's Mangekyō and entering a recovery period.
So Izayoi lowered his hand, closed his eyes, and pointed down at Nagato, still maintaining that haughty tone:
"I'll leave the Gedo Statue in the hands of you, thief, for the time being. The battle between us—no, between Tenseigan and Rinnegan—has only begun."
He vanished without warning.
"Retreat!"
At last the three factions awakened from their trance, hurriedly giving the order to leave the Land of Rain. The "moon man" had fled, leaving only the super-tier "Akatsuki leader." If he chose to settle accounts now, they'd all perish.
Even the proud Fourth Raikage withdrew. For from now on, the "strongest" was no longer the Five Great Nations, but a return to those days of "God of Shinobi vs. Ashura." Or rather, a new era.
He himself could not die yet; his duty as Raikage was to ensure Kumogakure's survival in this new era.
"Izayoi-kun…"
Some twenty kilometers away, Hinata looked worriedly in his direction. Others might not be sure whether "Ōtsutsuki Toneri" was Izayoi, but she knew perfectly well that the youth in midair was his true body.
She, too, was the "fourth occupant" to notice the chakra inside Izayoi's brain. She'd encountered this scenario last March. She didn't understand Tenseigan's "fetal awakening" period but knew that when Izayoi was in this condition, he'd enter a lengthy phase of weakness.
Hence she was extremely anxious about Izayoi's Mokuton clone possibly being affected, exposing his identity.
"The war has ended. Let's go home."
Izayoi's wooden clone merely smiled softly at her, then led the team to Shunshin back toward the Land of Fire.
Of course he knew what worried her. If it were just a normal Shadow Clone, it might vanish the moment the real body lost focus. But a Wood-Clone was different—unless the original dispelled it, it could remain indefinitely by absorbing outside chakra. And Tenseigan's special powers, including its first "fetal awakening," wouldn't hamper a wood-clone's existence.
Realizing this, Hinata sighed in relief. Gazing at Izayoi's back, her eyes shone—revealing her unabashed admiration and fondness for her boyfriend.
Were Aburame Shino not present, and if that Izayoi were not simply a wood-clone, Hinata might have rushed into his arms at that moment, letting out all her emotions.
Her boyfriend truly looked so incredible just then!
~~~
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