Chapter 346: Triple Gates! Something Strange!
At this moment—
On a mountain peak standing independently beside the massive pillar where the Tenshukaku sat:
"Hmph!"
"Can this thing really break through Susanoo's defense?"
Hyuga Shota, eyes wide with Byakugan, cast a sidelong glance at the Chakra Cannon beside him, still sizzling with smoke. His face bore a touch of arrogance, clearly looking down on this weapon from Kumogakure.
"A cowardly, underhanded trick like this—only you Cloud types would stoop to it."
"To a true shinobi, this kind of scrap metal is utterly useless!"
Beside him, Killer B pushed up his sunglasses, shooting a peculiar glance at this member of the Hyūga Clan sent by the Fire Daimyō. Yet he still explained good-naturedly,
"This is in response to the skeletal giant defense that Uchiha Ci revealed during the collapse of Yunming."
"We specially swapped out the Chakra shell for a solid tungsten armor-piercing round, with penetration power rivaling an S-rank ninjutsu."
"Even with the old man's strongest Lightning Release Armor, he'd still take minor injuries from a direct hit."
"Uchiha Ci…"
Killer B's face darkened as he looked toward the northern gate, a cold smile tugging at his lips.
"There's no way he can withstand this attack."
"And that means—he'll fall here, all because of one small oversight!"
Creeeeak!
CRACK!
BOOM!!
A deafening explosion rang out as thick smoke surged into the air.
The incoming shell crashed down like a meteor, blasting a crater nearly a hundred meters wide into the ground in front of the gate.
The earth shook violently!
Web-like cracks spread across the land.
"Is that brat dead?"
"Did our cannon do the trick?"
Even from atop the city walls, the tremor could be felt like an earthquake. Countless shinobi and samurai stared in horror at the point of impact, their eyes filled with disbelief and a trace of fear.
It was as if thunder had struck beside their ears. Even as trained shinobi, they couldn't help but feel a chill run down their spines in the face of such terrifying firepower.
"Silence!"
Rami turned with a cold shout.
"Back to your positions! Prepare the next jutsu!"
"Move!"
After forcibly steadying the troops, he turned quickly to Motoi and asked in a low voice,
"Well? Motoi, is he dead?"
"I… I…"
But Motoi was trembling all over, his hands frozen stiff, staring in horror at the smoke-covered area below the wall.
"So terrifying… so cold… such evil chakra!"
"What the hell is that thing!!?"
Seeing his reaction, Rami's face changed drastically. Realizing something was wrong, he immediately roared at the nearby subordinates:
"Hurry!!"
"Send word to the War Stop Line—activate Plan B! Launch the jutsu now!"
At his order, the shinobi who had previously used Lightning Release: Lightning Illusion Flash of Lightning Pillar retreated, and a new group of specially attired shinobi stepped forward from the kilometer-long city wall.
They were clad in red Iwagakure uniforms, with red-tied Iwa forehead protectors.
As soon as they arrived, they began forming hand seals.
Meanwhile—
The smoke before the gate, reeking of sulfur, suddenly trembled.
A blazing giant hand tore through the haze and swung wide, scattering the dense smoke with a gust of wind—revealing the terrifying figure behind it!
The skeletal giant surrounding Uchiha Ci—
Its arm and hand were missing, along with the shoulder and half of the fierce skull face, all blasted away.
Flames burned furiously at the points of impact.
Cracks covered the entire Susanoo.
But most shocking of all was the boy half-shielded by the Susanoo—
His left side, including half his head, was reduced to bare bone. Strands of flesh were madly regrowing along the bleached skeleton, rapidly knitting together organs and muscle.
Cough cough
"Damn… You bastards really brought armor-piercing rounds?"
His injuries completely healed in seconds, Uchiha Ci pulled a robe from a sealing scroll and threw it over his shoulders, coughing up a wad of black phlegm.
"No wonder Orochimaru got driven off. These savages are climbing the wrong damn tech tree!"
On the city wall, the moment they heard the clear, youthful voice cursing—saw Uchiha Ci perfectly fine in the giant crater—
A deathly silence fell.
Uchiha Ci blinked, puzzled. He looked up at the wall.
"I didn't expose little Uchiha Ci, so why are they all so shocked?"
With his heightened hearing, he quickly caught the whispering on the wall—
"So he is the leader of that terrifying organization!?"
"That cloak—!"
"No doubt about it. Akatsuki! That evil group is definitely tied to Uchiha Ci!"
Following their line of sight, Uchiha Ci finally realized—
The robe he had pulled from the scroll was the one Yahiko had given him: the red cloud on black cloak of the Akatsuki.
As soon as he put it on, the villain aura came flooding out.
Uchiha Ci was momentarily stunned.
Looking around at the massive crater, a strange illusion suddenly gripped him—he felt like he was Pain, currently attacking Konoha.
"If you pay me off, I'll skip your house with the Super Almighty Push. Your property value will rocket."
He shook his head, pushing away the bizarre thought—some meme from a past life forum, surely—and cleared his throat again, about to lighten the mood with a "how many floors can a bag of rice reach?"
Suddenly—
A thunderous blast erupted to the east gate!
The earth trembled violently as smoke began rising there as well.
The next moment—
"Hurry! Don't let him break through now!"
From atop the wall, Rami slammed the parapet in panic.
"Cast the jutsu, dammit!!!"
If Uchiha Ci was fine—then they were in deep trouble.
If they didn't execute the next phase, everything would fall apart!
Uchiha Ci turned his gaze to the top of the wall—
There, a line of red-clad Iwa shinobi pressed their hands to the wall and activated a jutsu.
In the next instant—
"Combined Shinobi Art: Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall of Ten Thousand Ri!"
With the collective roar of the Iwa shinobi—
The earth convulsed and surged upward.
Uchiha Ci looked on in shock as the twenty-meter wall began to rise—
Thirty meters. Fifty meters…
One hundred meters!
A massive shadow swallowed the area as the black stone wall transformed into earth and loomed like a canyon.
Uchiha Ci's eyes widened—
Only then, from the environmental shift, did he realize:
It wasn't the wall rising…
It was the ground beneath his feet that was sinking!
This wasn't just Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall of Ten Thousand Ri.
Raising the wall to one hundred meters in such a short time would be resource-intensive and tactically poor.
But if the idea were reversed—
Using Earth Release: Seismic Core in advance to hollow out a kilometer-wide swath around the inner city, causing attackers to fall into a one-hundred-meter-deep trench—
Then it all made sense.
This jutsu was actually a fusion technique performed by many Iwa shinobi:
Combined Shinobi Art: Earth Release—Super Seismic Core!
At the same time, within the inner city—
The second defensive ring used the opposite approach.
Numerous Kumogakure elites simultaneously activated another Earth Release technique—
Earth Flow Fortress.
Using the second ring as the boundary, they elevated the central area of the inner city by fifty meters, forming an earthen fortress wall nearly impossible to breach through conventional means.
Combined with the Tenshukaku built atop a central stone pillar—
The inner city now formed a three-tiered pyramid structure!
With this terrain reversal, Kumogakure gained a massive strategic advantage.
Holding the high ground, they had wide visibility and command over the battlefield.
From above, all enemy movements were clear. The destroyed barrier no longer mattered, and their defensive options expanded dramatically.
At that moment—
Uchiha Ci looked up with a slight frown, only to see—
A storm of kunai covered in explosive tags pouring down from the 120-meter wall above!
And beneath his feet—
The ground was linked to the Exploding Flame Array—the one that crippled Nagato in the original timeline.
Kumogakure wanted to wear him down with wave after wave of these attacks—just like Konan's sea of explosive tags bombarding Uchiha Obito—trying to exhaust all his chakra.
But Uchiha Ci simply restored his Susanoo's missing half with a wave of his hand and ignored it.
After all, with nearly half the Eight-Tails' chakra in his possession, he had more than enough to afford this little "Gundam maintenance fee."
What bothered him more was—
"Where did all these Iwa shinobi come from?"
Frowning, Uchiha Ci looked up at the red-clad Iwa forces.
Even if the Land of Earth daimyo had provided support, and even if Iwagakure agreed to cooperate—
"This number… is a bit too much, isn't it?"