[On the Other Side]
Tsunade snorted coldly, the residual effects of the Strength of a Hundred Seal still active across her body, and charged straight at the Third Hokage.
Hiruzen swung his diamond staff and struck toward Tsunade.
Tsunade met it with a monstrous-strength punch, colliding head-on.
BANG!
The diamond staff rebounded and slammed into Hiruzen, sending him skidding backward.
But Tsunade's punch left a clear dent in the staff.
Under the Strength of a Hundred Seal, the wound on her fist healed rapidly.
Hiruzen, however, spat out a mouthful of blood.
WHOOSH!
Tsunade vaulted up and brought her leg down in a chopping strike. As Hiruzen formed seals, he held the diamond staff across his chest.
THUD!
Tsunade's crushing kick struck the staff, and to everyone's shock, the ground beneath Hiruzen turned to earth.
The diamond staff then exploded.
It reformed into a cage that trapped Tsunade inside.
Hiruzen's hands were still forming seals as he burst up out of the ground.
The seals were nearly complete.
Just finish this jutsu.
An eye suddenly appeared on the diamond staff, "Using that seal, so Sarutobi really intended to use that move?"
At that moment a figure flashed by, Hiruzen's hand was cleanly cut off and fell to the ground.
"I know this jutsu better than you," Minato said expressionlessly.
He'd nearly had his own son turned into Hiruzen's dog with this very technique, how could he not be familiar?
With a muffled crack, the diamond-staff cage collapsed entirely.
Tsunade spun and landed a punch on Hiruzen's shoulder.
How could his old bones withstand Tsunade's monstrous fist?
His shoulder was ripped apart and flew off.
Hiruzen roared at the diamond staff, "Old friend, go! Run!"
The summoned ape looked Hiruzen deep in the eye, as if memorizing this longtime companion, then with a thud ended the summoning and returned.
Hiruzen staggered two steps and then toppled into a pool of blood.
Seals covered his body; he could not draw chakra anymore.
Tsunade stepped forward and put her foot on his back, Hiruzen nearly stopped breathing.
"Tsunade… what do you… want to do!"
"Old man, don't worry. I won't kill you yet. I want you to watch your Sarutobi clan be wiped out."
Hatred filled Tsunade's eyes.
Rengoku had just forced her to relive those hatreds; she remembered everything now.
Unless the Sarutobi are exterminated, it can't end.
Hiruzen's face was ashen; he made no sound.
Elsewhere, Konan had already taken to the air and began non-stop bombardment against Nue.
ROAR!
A massive howl rang out. The detonating tags exploded on Nue, but barely affected her.
Nue's body was far tougher than anyone expected.
"What is this thing?", Tsunade was somewhat surprised to see such a large summon.
The Gozu Tenno plan itself was top secret. Something that, in the original timeline, would only appear more than twenty years later.
Now almost no one recognized it.
After Minato pinned Hiruzen in place, he warned Tsunade, "This summon absorbs chakra. It's a bit tricky."
Pain, now fully recovered, stepped forward, "I'll handle it."
From the ground some distance away, a black-and-white head popped up.
It was Zetsu.
He looked at Pain with bewilderment.
He knew what Pain was, but he'd already searched the area a few times, he hadn't found Nagato's real body at all.
Then Zetsu's mind seemed to click on something; he stared intently at Pain.
'Could it be?'
At that moment Pain tossed a glowing black core toward Nue.
Konan's body erupted with detonating tags and she pressed them onto Nue.
Nue staggered, dazed by the explosions, and the black core flew near her.
Pain slammed his hands together and unleashed a massive pupil power.
Chibaku Tensei!
A tremendous gravitational pull yanked Nue upward toward the sky.
Trees and chunks of earth rose from the ground with it.
Nue panicked, shrieking as she bounced off rocks and tried to flee.
Tsunade leapt and landed a crushing kick on Nue's head.
Nue let out a gut-wrenching howl and was sent toward the Chibaku Tensei core.
Countless stones on the ground rushed together, soon forming a stone sphere.
Nue groaned inside the stone ball, but was sealed tight, unable to escape.
Zetsu outside watched Pain closely; he'd sensed the pupil power being used from those eyes.
'That means the Rinnegan is here.'
'Could this Pain be Nagato using transformation jutsu?'
The thought ran through Zetsu's head and then hardened into certainty.
He saw that Konan and Pain no longer had nail polish on their fingernails, evidence they weren't bothered to hide the fact that Pain was a corpse.
In other words, this Pain was Nagato.
Zetsu's face lit with tremendous delight as he slipped toward Pain's direction.
Ryunosuke, watching from the other-dimensional space, was shocked. His Nue was already formidable, but in the hands of Akatsuki's leader, it was nothing but a toy.
Nue was rooted in the Gozu Tenno seal on his back.
If Nue were sealed, Ryunosuke would be trapped in that other dimension forever, unable to return.
He glanced at the captured Hiruzen and Ishishu and gritted his teeth. He issued a self-destruct command to Nue.
Nue was barely formed and had low intelligence, without hesitation she began the self-destruct sequence.
Inside Chibaku Tensei all of Nue's energy condensed toward the center, paused for an instant, then violently exploded outward.
Minato now was the Nine-Tails jinchuriki and had the Nine-Tails' negative-sensing ability.
He reacted faster than anyone.
A golden Hokage cloak appeared around him; his teammates simultaneously took on tailed-beast cloaks.
Whoosh!
They were instantly moved out of the battlefield.
They landed in the forest where Minato had set his Flying Thunder God kunai.
At that moment a massive explosion erupted in the distance.
Although the blast wasn't on the scale of a Super Shinra Tensei, it shook the entire space.
Crack-like fissures like shattered glass appeared in midair, lingering for four or five seconds before slowly dispersing.
———
[Underground in the Land of Rivers]
There was an underground base here, its style completely different from the shinobi world above.
Black stripes crisscrossed everywhere inside the base.
In the innermost room, on a stone bench, sat a man wearing a white haori, a long braid trailing from the back of his head, with the Roman numeral IV tattooed beneath his left eye.
He swirled a wine glass slowly in his hand, seeming like someone from another world entirely.
Just as Nue's self-destruct shattered the space into fragments, the man suddenly looked up at the direction of the blast.
"Spatial curvature has reached eight?"
He stood up at once; the wineglass disappeared in front of him.
He glanced at his abdomen, "No, can't let them know!"
Then a black-red vortex appeared before him, expanding outward into a dark, hollow spatial gate.
He stepped straight into it.
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