With a single, almost casual gesture, Chiba set his will into motion - and the serpents of Ryūchi Cave obeyed like the world itself had issued an order.
The battlefield trembled.
At first, it wasn't the giants. It was the sheer spread - thin, fast snakes slipping through corpses, stone, and churned mud, threading between shinobi boots and broken weapons as if the ground had turned into living veins. Then came thicker bodies, piling into the same lanes, stacking and flowing until the earth disappeared beneath a slick carpet of scales. They weren't famous summons. They weren't named monsters with legend wrapped around them. They were Ryūchi's "lesser" serpents - barely aware, crude, relentless - and they carried the one advantage no disciplined formation could endure for long.
Numbers.
Numbers so obscene that Konoha's front line froze for a heartbeat, minds refusing to accept what their eyes were reporting.
"Is… is this real?" someone whispered, voice cracking.
And then the fear truly arrived - because behind that crawling tide, heavier presences began to move.
Sarutobi Hiruzen stumbled back without meaning to, eyes widening as if searching for a flaw in reality. Even veterans who had survived wars and massacres stood rigid, staring at the reptilian flood like they were looking straight into death.
Kakashi felt cold sweat creep beneath his forehead protector. Beside him, Guy's eyes bulged, his throat working as if the world had suddenly stopped making sense.
"Hey, Kakashi…" Guy blurted, disbelief thick in his voice. "Don't you think this is a little past insane?!"
Kakashi swallowed hard, never taking his gaze off the writhing field.
"It looks like… he's brought Ryūchi into Konoha. One of the Three Sacred Regions."
Yamato hesitated, throat tightening. "Senpai… what do we do?"
Kakashi exhaled slowly, as if he could bleed the tension out through breath alone.
"At this point… we fight."
And in that same instant, Hiruzen pinned his last shred of hope on two men.
Jiraiya and Orochimaru exchanged a look - silent, heavy, urgent. If they didn't move now, Konoha would be swallowed before it even understood what was happening.
Jiraiya slammed his hands together and drove his palm into the ground.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"
The impact boomed like thunder. Smoke erupted, and three massive silhouettes formed at once - like fortress walls rising in the middle of chaos.
Gamabunta. Gamaken. Gamabiro.
The air filled with the stink of oil, sweat, and summoning smoke. Gamabunta blinked once, then jolted as if he'd been dropped into hell, pipe trembling at the corner of his mouth.
"What the hell is this?!" he roared. "Jiraiya, did you summon us into Ryūchi?!"
Jiraiya's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "No. This is Konoha."
Gamabiro choked. "What?! Ryūchi's already taken over Konoha?!"
Gamaken - quiet as ever - stared forward, his usually composed posture slipping into a restrained tremor.
"It's not just Manda…" he murmured, voice low like a cracked prayer. "There are other presences… many…"
Jiraiya didn't answer. There wasn't a word in the world that could soften what they were seeing.
Meanwhile, on the opposite flank, Orochimaru was already moving. His hands formed seals with a precision that bordered on elegance, indifferent to the panic around him. Then he slammed his palm to the ground, and the earth answered with violence.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu: Edo Tensei!"
The soil split.
Two coffins erupted upward, heavy and inevitable, as if the world was vomiting its own graves. Their lids blew open - and two figures stepped out as though death had been nothing more than an intermission.
Senju Hashirama.
Senju Tobirama.
For an instant, Konoha's emotional tide reversed. Hope surged through the ranks like fire.
"The First…!"
"The Second…!"
Many clung to the illusion that this was enough - that two legends could crush any threat, even with the ground crawling with snakes.
But Orochimaru alone knew the truth.
His Edo Tensei was still imperfect. Hashirama and Tobirama had returned, yes - but nowhere near their peak. Kage-level power, unmistakable… yet not the kind of strength that erased worlds. Against an endless tide, "enough" was a word that got people killed.
As soon as the two Hokage steadied themselves, Hashirama's eyes swept the battlefield - and his face tightened. Tobirama went still too, gaze razor-sharp, reading the chaos in silence until he finally exhaled, as if he'd recognized disaster before it finished arriving.
Orochimaru let out a low chuckle. "My apologies for summoning you again, First… Second." His tone was almost polite. "As you can see, the Mizukage of Kirigakure has brought Ryūchi into Konoha. This is life or death."
Hashirama stared toward the horizon, disbelief deepening. "The Mizukage you mentioned… Chiba? How does someone reach this level?"
"A terrifying man," Tobirama replied flatly. Then his eyes shifted, sharp as steel. "And why would he do this here? And behind him… that's the Hyūga Clan."
Hiruzen rushed forward, urgency and shame choking his voice. "First-sama! Second-sama! It's that bastard Chiba! Just like he did with the Uchiha, he's incited the Hyūga to betray Konoha! If he leaves with them, the village… is finished!"
Hashirama's brow furrowed. "Even the Hyūga…?"
Orochimaru's smile curved, faint and cruel. "Not only the Hyūga. Tsunade also abandoned Konoha and allied herself with Kirigakure."
The Senju brothers' expressions shifted instantly - not shock, but something heavier: disappointment.
"What, exactly, happened here?" Tobirama demanded, voice hard. "Hiruzen. Explain yourself properly."
Hiruzen went silent.
Blaming Chiba was easy. Admitting his own failure wasn't. And in front of those two, every excuse shrank to nothing.
Hashirama released a grave sigh. "Tobirama… perhaps entrusting Konoha to Hiruzen wasn't the right choice." His gaze moved across the field like someone surveying a house gone rotten. "Look at what it's become."
Tobirama's smile held no humor. "We wanted the Senju to blend into the village. That was part of the plan. But now… Senju, Uchiha, Hyūga - everyone has turned away. And Tsunade… chose to leave." His eyes settled on Hiruzen, cold. "Don't push all the blame onto others. If not for your incompetence - and the pressure you placed on everyone - these cracks wouldn't have become betrayal so quickly."
Hiruzen lowered his eyes. His dignity seemed to crumble, piece by piece, beneath the sound of war.
Orochimaru's gaze returned to the battlefield, where the situation was already turning into a massacre in slow motion.
"Enough," he said. "If you two don't act now, Konoha falls."
In the serpent ranks, Jiraiya was already bleeding fatigue. Gamabunta had found Manda in the chaos - an old rivalry colliding head-on, fang against blade, body against body. Gamaken held off a multi-headed serpent alone, its mouths striking in alternating rhythm to break his guard. Gamabiro fought savagely against another monstrosity that surged and vanished through bodies like a living landslide.
But they were three toads.
And Ryūchi felt like an entire world.
ANBU, ROOT, clan forces, full units - one by one they were forced back, broken, swallowed. Kakashi, Guy, and Yamato fought as if every strike had to repay a hundred debts of fate… yet the tide refused to thin.
Hashirama and Tobirama exchanged a brief look.
They nodded.
It was time.
Across the battlefield, above the chaos, Chiba watched as if the land were a board and the armies mere pieces. His expression was far too calm for a man surrounded by thousands of enemies.
When the two Hokage advanced, he smiled faintly.
"First… Second."
Hashirama's voice was steady. "You are the new Mizukage of Kirigakure… Chiba?"
"I am."
Before Hashirama could continue, Hiruzen erupted - not with strategy, but wounded pride dressed as confidence.
"You really think you can walk out of here with the Hyūga and escape?!" His voice boomed, trying to be louder than fear. "Konoha isn't the village it once was. We've grown precisely to face threats like you. And besides…" A forced smile cracked across his face. "…they're already here."
As if fate itself obeyed his script, reinforcements surged in. Elite units. ANBU. ROOT. At their center stood names with weight - Kakashi, Guy, Yamato - alongside the two Sannin and the Hokage himself.
The pressure around the Hyūga turned suffocating.
Hiashi clenched his teeth, the elders around him grim and tight-lipped. Neji, Hinata, and Hanabi felt their hearts sink - not from a lack of courage, but from the cold arithmetic of shinobi who understood when a fight stopped being a fight and became an execution.
The enemy's lineup was too vast. Any hope of "withdrawing" began to look like a joke told at the edge of a grave.
And that was exactly when Chiba stepped forward.
Just one step - small, deliberate - placing himself between two armies as if he were drawing a line across the world.
Hiruzen laughed loudly, arrogance returning like armor. "Don't tell me you intend to face Konoha alone! That's throwing an egg at a stone!"
Chiba's expression didn't change.
"Who said I'm alone?"
He lifted his hands. Seals formed one after another - clean, precise, effortless - like he was signing a document rather than preparing a massacre. The entire field tightened. Chakra flared in a hundred directions. No one dared underestimate the man in front of them.
Then Chiba drove his palm into the earth.
The ground roared.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu - Ryūchi no Dōkutsu."
This wasn't merely summoning snakes.
It was summoning a domain.
Konoha's soil split open in multiple places as if the village itself were being pierced by fissures from another world. The earlier tide had been a warning - pressure, chaos, disruption. What emerged now was something else entirely: an invasion with structure, layers, hierarchy. Serpents poured out in violent cascades - swift, venomous ones that moved like arrows; armored ones whose scales rang like blades; thick-bodied monsters that crushed stone into powder as they passed.
And then the true anchors arrived.
Orochimaru's pupils contracted the instant he felt the first presence that should have answered only him.
Manda.
Hatred flashed through his veins so fast it burned. So it wasn't just theft. It was dominion. Chiba hadn't "borrowed" a summon - he had forced Ryūchi to bow until even Manda's loyalty had been ripped out by the roots.
More monsters followed - two-headed and three-headed colossi, and a massive blue serpent that exhaled pressure like a sea-beast rising from the deep. Some moved with brutal taijutsu that didn't belong to animals. Others spat ninjutsu shaped into bites and breath. Worse still, faint traces of senjutsu clung to certain bodies - an invisible weight that warped the air and made skin prickle.
Konoha's forces began to retreat on instinct, a human line trying not to drown.
Then came the second layer of nightmare.
Three figures drifted above the chaos - light as smoke, heavy as judgment. Their presence tugged at chakra itself, as though the battlefield had become a shrine and they were its priestesses.
Tayūya-hime.
Ichikishima-hime.
Tagitsuhime.
The atmosphere changed. It wasn't only numbers now, nor brute strength.
It was authority.
And finally - like everything before had been nothing but an overture - the air turned cold.
A colossal shadow swallowed the sky.
Ryūchi's true sovereign descended - an ancient white serpent, so old it felt less like a creature and more like an era given form. Its body carried the weight of ages. Its gaze held a vast, indifferent chill, as if time itself were a forgotten toy.
When that existence settled, it lowered its head.
Respectfully.
"Greetings, Master," the voice said, sounding like it came from the world itself. "Ryūchi no Dōkutsu awaits your command."
Orochimaru went rigid, his mind refusing to process the sight. Hiruzen opened his mouth - and no sound came. Even Jiraiya, in the middle of battle, felt his spine lock as the toads faltered for a heartbeat, no longer warriors but witnesses to something that shouldn't exist: an entity worthy of the great sages… bowing to a man.
And to the Hyūga, in that instant, Chiba ceased to be merely an ally.
He looked like salvation.
Chiba lifted his gaze, cold, and his voice crossed the field with a calm that was more frightening than any shout.
"Escort the Hyūga Clan out of Konoha," he said, as if issuing a simple order.
Then the faint smile vanished. His eyes hardened, and the air itself seemed to tighten around the words that followed.
"And anyone who tries to stop you…"
A short pause.
The pause of someone deciding a life.
"Kill them all."