Chapter 492: Onoki Captured Successfully
Not far away, the battlefield hung in a suffocating stillness.
Kitsuchi stared up at Onoki, who hovered high in the air. The older man's voice echoed across the blasted wasteland, carrying a grim, absolute determination. It was the posture of a man who had already accepted his own death.
Kitsuchi's eyes instantly turned bloodshot.
"Father!" he roared, the sound tearing from his throat. He whipped his head around to glare at the thousands of Iwagakure shinobi behind him. They stood frozen, their faces pale, utterly dumbfounded by the sheer terror radiating from the purple giant looming over them. The veins on Kitsuchi's thick neck bulged against his skin.
"What are you all just standing there for?!" he bellowed, his voice cracking with desperation. "Are you going to just watch Lord Tsuchikage fight alone?!"
The words struck like a physical blow. The shinobi, previously scared out of their wits by the suffocating pressure of the Susanoo, trembled violently.
He was right. How could they cower in the dirt while their Tsuchikage prepared to sacrifice his life?
Countless emotions intertwining in that split second—shame, panic, and fierce loyalty—finally snapped the paralyzing dread, twisting into a burst of hysterical, suicidal madness.
"Fight that monster to the death!"
"Protect Lord Tsuchikage!"
"Kill him!"
"For Lord Tsuchikage!"
The primal desire to survive and the unyielding conviction to protect the Hidden Stone overwhelmed their fear of death. In perfect, desperate unison, thousands of Iwagakure shinobi slammed their hands together, their fingers blurring through hand seals.
"Earth Release: Earth Flow River!"
"Earth Release: Earth Dragon Bullet Jutsu!"
"Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall!"
The very terrain rebelled. In an instant, the ground liquefied into raging mudslides. Massive dragons formed from compressed rock tore out of the earth, roaring as they launched boulders like cannonballs. Jagged spikes erupted from the bedrock, piercing the sky. A sky-blotting tidal wave of Earth Release ninjutsu surged upward, following the blinding, conical beam of Onoki's Dust Release.
This was the full, unbridled might of Iwagakure. It was the collective will of thousands of shinobi striking as one, carrying a momentum that threatened to crush the heavens themselves as it crashed toward the colossal purple Susanoo.
Standing at the epicenter of the impending apocalypse, Uchiha Akira's expression remained entirely impassive. His visual prowess flared.
"Divine Authority: Heavenly Might!"
The already impenetrable armor of the Perfect Susanoo deepened in hue, its crystalline structure hardening into something utterly indestructible under the massive amplification of his ocular technique.
High above, Onoki's hair and beard whipped wildly in the gale. His eyes were completely bloodshot, the capillaries bursting from the sheer strain.
"Aaaaaah! For this old man... break!"
The moment the first blinding pillar of Dust Release blasted forward, Onoki forcibly squeezed every last drop of chakra from his aging cells. His gnarled hands blurred, forming the seals once more. He thrust his palms outward.
"Dust Release: Atomic Dismantling Jutsu!"
A second shot fired.
Immediately after, he pushed past his physical limits, blood dripping from his nose.
"Dust Release!"
A third shot.
Onoki had gone completely mad. He disregarded the agonizing load tearing at his internal organs, frantically blasting beam after beam of particle-dismantling light toward the Susanoo.
One blinding white flash followed another.
The terrifying cacophony of the explosions was deafening, drowning out the screams of the earth itself. The area where the Susanoo stood was instantly submerged in a searing white radiance and a chaotic torrent of shattered rock. The ground collapsed inward, forming a massive crater as thick plumes of dust soared into the clouds.
For a long time, the battlefield fell dead silent, save for the sound of falling debris.
"Huff... huff... huff..."
Onoki hovered unsteadily in the air, his frail body swaying like a leaf in the wind. Sweat poured down his wrinkled face.
"Did... did it succeed?"
Below, the Iwagakure shinobi stared with wide, unblinking eyes, their gazes locked onto the center of the swirling dust storm.
It was an apocalyptic attack. A combination of the Tsuchikage's consecutive Dust Release blasts and the concentrated ninjutsu bombardment from thousands of elite shinobi. Even a god would have been reduced to ashes, right?
Kitsuchi clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white, involuntarily holding his breath.
It had to succeed.
A slow breeze swept across the ruined wasteland. The thick curtain of dust began to dissipate.
The first thing to pierce the gray fog was a cold, metallic gleam of purple.
The mountain-like Perfect Susanoo revealed itself once again to their horrified gazes.
It still stood there.
A few pitted marks and several visible, hairline cracks had appeared on the surface of its indestructible armor. But that was all.
Onoki's consecutive, life-risking Dust Release blasts, combined with the desperate bombardment of an entire hidden village, had merely scratched the surface.
"This..."
Onoki's pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks. He stood frozen in mid-air, his body rigid as if struck by lightning.
The tiny spark of hope that had just ignited in his chest was ruthlessly extinguished by a bucket of ice water.
"That's it?"
High up, at the center of the Susanoo's crystalline forehead, Uchiha Akira looked at the minor fractures on his armor. He raised a single eyebrow.
"I must say, it had some power," Akira said, his voice cutting through the silence with chilling clarity. "But it was only 'some' power."
As his words fell, Akira's Rinnegan spun slightly. A majestic, suffocating surge of visual prowess flooded the giant construct.
The next second, a scene that utterly shattered the minds of every Iwagakure shinobi unfolded.
The pits and cracks on the Susanoo's armor began to mend. The purple chakra flowed like liquid glass, smoothing out the damage at a speed visible to the naked eye. In just the blink of an eye, the colossal warrior was restored to a flawless, pristine state.
It was as if that devastating, desperate bombardment had never happened at all.
"Im... impossible..." an Iwagakure Jonin whispered. He slumped to his knees, his face entirely blank, his mind rejecting the reality before him.
Despair.
True, suffocating despair.
It wasn't just because the enemy was strong. It was the crushing realization that no matter how hard they tried, how desperately they fought, or how many lives they sacrificed... it was all utterly meaningless before this man.
"It's over..." Kitsuchi looked up at the sky-blotting giant, the focus completely leaving his eyes.
The collective fighting spirit of the village collapsed in an instant.
High above, Onoki's figure swayed violently.
He looked at Uchiha Akira, who stood untouched within the Susanoo's forehead. Only a deep, hollow bitterness remained in the old man's heart.
"Heh..." Onoki let out a tragic, broken laugh.
He had lost. Thoroughly and absolutely. The vaunted glory of Iwagakure and the stubborn persistence of the Will of Stone were nothing but a cruel joke before this man.
"Disperse."
Onoki slowly lowered his hands. The fierce, unyielding spirit that had defined him for decades vanished, leaving only a tired, defeated old man.
"Lord Tsuchikage?" The Iwagakure shinobi below looked up at him in confusion and rising panic.
Onoki paid them no mind. He struggled to control his exhausted body, slowly descending until he floated directly in front of Uchiha Akira's Susanoo.
Under thousands of pairs of disbelieving eyes, Onoki—the man who had been fiercely strong-willed his entire life, the Kage who had never bowed his head to anyone—lowered his proud head.
"This old man... concedes."
Those few words seemed to drain the very last ounce of strength from his bones.
"Lord Tsuchikage!" The Iwagakure shinobi cried out in grief, the sound echoing like a funeral dirge.
Onoki looked up at Uchiha Akira, a raw hint of pleading in his cloudy eyes.
"Uchiha Akira. This old man will go with you." His voice was hoarse. "Kill me or do as you wish, I am entirely at your disposal."
He paused, glancing back at the familiar, tear-stained faces of his subordinates below. His voice trembled slightly.
"But... please... let them go."
"Iwagakure has already lost. They no longer pose any threat to you, or to Konoha."
"I beg you... let them go!"
As the Kage of a Great Village, at this very moment, Onoki had stripped away all of his dignity to beg for the lives of his people.
Uchiha Akira looked down at Onoki from his towering vantage point.
With a thought, the massive purple Susanoo slowly dissolved into the wind, the oppressive chakra fading away.
"I already said it," Akira spoke, his tone completely indifferent, devoid of any cruelty or malice. "I only came to invite you to be a guest."
"As long as you are willing to cooperate, I have no interest in carrying out a massacre."
Hearing those words, the taut, agonizing string in Onoki's nerves finally snapped. A heavy wave of relief washed over him. A man of Uchiha Akira's god-like stature wouldn't deign to lie about something so trivial.
"Thank you..." Onoki whispered, his voice thick with exhaustion.
Subsequently, he suddenly turned around, his gaze locking onto the dazed Kitsuchi standing in the ruined dirt below. His originally cloudy eyes sharpened, flashing with a stern, commanding light.
"Kitsuchi!" Onoki shouted, his voice cracking like a whip. "What are you still standing there for?! Take the people and get out!"
Kitsuchi's entire body jerked, as if violently jolted awake from a nightmare.
"Father..."
Tears welled in the large man's eyes. He stiffened his thick neck, his face twisting in defiance as he let out a raw, desperate roar.
"I'm not leaving! I want to be with you!"
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