"I'll take the front."
Butsuma Senju faced the terrifying power of the Tailed Beast Bomb with unshaken composure. His hands blurred through seals, and just before the Eight-Tails fired, he slammed both palms to the ground.
"Triple Rashōmon!"
Three massive, demonic-faced gates rose before him. A moment later, the apocalyptic sphere of the Tailed Beast Bomb struck head-on, piercing through all three gates as if they were paper.
Boom—
The resulting explosion was even greater than before. Within a cone-shaped swath two kilometers deep directly in front of the Eight-Tails, everything ceased to exist. Only a vast, barren crater remained.
"Clan Head (Father)!"
"Even Triple Rashōmon couldn't stop it?"
The sight shook everyone who witnessed it.
"Fools." Gokuma Senju, hidden on the flank, scolded his men in a low, severe voice. "The Clan Head's aim wasn't to block the Tailed Beast Bomb—it was to alter its trajectory."
The unfolding events proved him right.
Suddenly, Butsuma—bearing a huge ninja scroll on his back—appeared at the Eight-Tails' feet. With him was Master Fayen, carrying the Amber Purifying Pot.
"What's going on? Father is completely unharmed. I thought you couldn't move while using Triple Rashōmon?"
"I see!" Hashirama's battle instincts flared. "While Father used Triple Rashōmon, Master Fayen reverse-summoned him. That way, Father could divert the Tailed Beast Bomb and reduce our losses, while also closing in on the Eight-Tails."
"That level of tactical coordination… incredible." Even Tobirama was moved, realizing for the first time the potential of such creative jutsu use.
"As expected of Father."
With the Eight-Tails briefly weakened from firing its Tailed Beast Bomb, Butsuma seized the advantage. He unrolled the giant scroll behind him and poured his chakra into it.
Golden chains erupted forth, spreading in all directions, wrapping tightly around the colossal Eight-Tails.
Having just fired a Tailed Beast Bomb, the Eight-Tails was too slow to react. In an instant, the beast was bound by the powerful Adamantine Sealing Chains.
Rooar—
The Eight-Tails bellowed to the sky, every muscle straining as it tried to rip free of the Uzumaki clan's secret sealing art.
"Master Fayen—your turn."
Butsuma's chakra reserves were immense, but he was no Uzumaki. He could not exploit the technique's full potential to disrupt the beast's chakra flow. He was holding it through sheer force, and couldn't last long.
The chance could not be missed. Fayen brought the Amber Purifying Pot to his front and began to chant. Its mouth glowed, the light quickly intensifying.
Wherever the light touched the Eight-Tails, its body dissolved into chakra, drawn toward the pot.
Sensing mortal danger, the beast slammed its tails into the ground, raising a towering wall of dust and smoke.
A sudden unease flickered in Fayen's heart, but his confidence held. He continued channeling the pot.
But as the glow grew brighter, the Eight-Tails' roar abruptly cut off. When the smoke cleared, only a severed octopus tail remained.
"A substitution jutsu? Master Fayen, where is the Eight-Tails now?" Butsuma cut off his chakra flow and turned to the monk, grim urgency in his tone.
After absorbing one of the Eight-Tails' tails into the Amber Purifying Pot, Master Fayen panted heavily. "It has completely hidden its presence. The Amber Purifying Pot has been misled by part of its chakra—it won't be able to locate it again for a while."
Butsuma Senju took a deep breath to steady himself after the heavy chakra expenditure, then immediately fired a signal flare.
"That's the signal to activate the sensory barrier."
Seeing it, Gokuma Senju gave orders over the command channel: "All jonin in the innermost layer who are skilled in the Canopy Method Formation, proceed to the following coordinates immediately. Once in position, deploy the formation to search for the Eight-Tails."
He relayed several sets of coordinates, also dispatching his own squad to the nearest points. As the jonin were already close to the center, they arrived and began their work almost immediately.
"Barrier: Canopy Method Formation."
Roughly thirty jonin at different positions released the jutsu. Around each one, a spherical barrier expanded outward. As they poured more chakra into it, the spheres merged, overlapping into a single massive formation. The range increased exponentially while the shared burden drastically reduced individual consumption.
Within this vast sensory network, the Eight-Tails' true body—hidden deep underground—was once again detected.
"Reporting to captain, the Eight-Tails is at our loca—BOOM—"
A thunderous roar cut the transmission short.
"Oboroma! Hōma!" Gokuma shouted into the comms, but no reply came. In that instant, over eight clan members dropped out of contact—jonin-level fighters, the very backbone of the Senju's standing in the shinobi world. This loss was equivalent to half a year's wartime casualties.
Butsuma's entire tactical plan had been designed to minimize such losses, but the Eight-Tails' escape techniques had thrown everything into chaos.
"Damn it!"
Furious but clear-headed, Gokuma relayed the situation to Butsuma. Then he reached into his pouch and pulled out a ninja tool scroll. Sealed across its mouth was the crest of the Ōtsutsuki clan.
A deep dread welled up inside him—not fear of the Eight-Tails, whose overwhelming strength could still be countered by Uzumaki sealing arts and the Sage clan's tools, but fear of the one who had given him this scroll and the hidden power behind them.
This was the scroll the masked "warrior of the Ōtsutsuki clan" had given him during their armor trade.
He remembered the moment clearly. The figure's low, metallic voice had rasped: "Inside this scroll is a special jutsu. It can help you locate and suppress a massive chakra target."
The warrior had paused.
"But… you will only get one chance."
Without further explanation, the scroll was handed to him.
At the time, Gokuma hadn't understood the meaning, nor had he thought of tailed beasts. But now, facing the Eight-Tails' mysterious substitution technique, his hand moved almost on its own to draw the scroll.
The moment he gripped it, a jolt like lightning shot through him. The feeling of being maneuvered by unseen hands flooded his entire body.
"That man… he foresaw even this? What is his goal?" Gokuma's jaw tightened. Could the scroll truly be trusted?
…
"Whether he trusts it or not doesn't matter."
From somewhere far away, Satsuki observed the battlefield through her giant Tenseigan. She glanced briefly at Gokuma, answering the system's unspoken question in her mind: "If he truly understands the situation, he'll realize—he has no other choice."
Within her Tenseigan, the six-petaled pupils turned without pause, just like her ceaseless thoughts and unending schemes.