The earth trembled violently.
More than two kilometers away, the ANBU watched the battle between Fox and Uchiha Madara through binoculars.
White Ram coated chakra onto his feet, anchoring himself firmly to the tree trunk so the quake wouldn't throw him off.
When he glanced at the leaves beside him, even the raindrops were being shaken into the air.
In the distance—
A colossal wooden Buddha statue, hundreds of meters tall, burst from the ground.
The Threefold Wood Golem, already over a hundred meters tall, was enough to drive ordinary shinobi into despair.
But now—
That towering, five-hundred-meter wooden Buddha…
Just how much chakra would it take to create something like that?
"So… that's Lord Fox's Top Transformed Buddha…" White Ram murmured.
Blossom Deer stepped up beside him.
"Back when Fox followed Adviser Shinnosuke on missions to the Land of Waves and the Land of Hot Water… even though he couldn't save him, Fox's strength skyrocketed after that."
"We just… can't keep up anymore."
White Ram nodded.
"He's fighting Uchiha Madara… of course his strength has reached a legendary level."
Blossom Deer exhaled.
"Even if it's Madara… in front of something like that—he has to die."
White Ram nodded again.
"He must die."
A five-hundred-meter Buddha statue had already surpassed the limits of their imagination.
Even if it did nothing—
If it simply collapsed—
It could wipe out an entire city.
And then—
The rain suddenly weakened.
No…
It didn't weaken.
It vanished.
Dry.
Heavy.
A suffocating stillness fell over them—
A sensation that should never exist in the Land of Rain.
"Captain! Look up!" one of the ANBU shouted.
Every ANBU raised their heads—
And cursed the narrow eyeholes of their masks.
"That… that thing is at least three kilometers wide…"
A meteor, several kilometers in diameter, crushed through the clouds and descended toward the earth.
Because of its sheer size, it looked slow—
But in reality, it was moving far too fast to escape.
"Run!"
The ANBU scattered in panic.
They were far enough from the center that they might survive.
But Fox's Buddha?
There was no way it could escape.
White Ram glanced back and estimated the scale.
That meteor…
It looked like it had been created specifically to counter Top Transformed Buddha.
Yako looked up.
The immense pressure from the falling meteor forced both him and the Buddha toward the ground.
He had thought his Top Transformed Buddha was already the pinnacle of large-scale destruction.
But Madara?
Madara had something even more absurd.
That old man…
After losing to Senju Hashirama, he had never accepted it.
For nearly thirty years, he had been searching for a way to defeat Top Transformed Buddha head-on.
And now—
He had done it.
Heavenly Obstruction—Shinra Tensei Starfall (Tengai Shinsei).
The natural enemy of Top Transformed Buddha.
One was massive.
The other—
Even bigger.
Hashirama and Madara… you two really do love playing with big things…
Perfect Susanoo stood at barely a hundred meters tall—
Not even one-fifth the size of the Buddha.
Madara roared:
"The same technique will never defeat me twice!"
"You counterfeit!"
"You worthless imitation!"
"Why is your Top Transformed Buddha only five hundred meters tall?!"
"Only half of Hashirama's?!"
"This is boring!"
"Utterly boring!"
"Why can't you be as strong as Hashirama?!"
"Only Hashirama can truly excite me!"
Susanoo's wings burst open.
Madara soared into the air.
Yako glanced around.
Is he trying to take me down with him?
"Wood Release: Thousand-Hand Wrathful King!"
Countless wooden arms erupted upward.
They smashed into the descending meteor—
Shattering chunks of rock that flew in every direction.
They hammered against Susanoo—
Causing explosive bursts of ocular chakra.
Far away, White Ram and the others barely escaped the meteor's impact zone.
"It's coming down! Use every defensive jutsu you have!"
Earth Release walls.
Water barriers.
Everything they had—
Raised in desperation.
The shockwave hit.
Trees.
Boulders.
Everything became high-speed projectiles.
No one could even imagine what the very center of the impact looked like.
When the shockwave finally passed, the ANBU crawled back to their feet, covered in dirt.
Then—
Rain.
The rain returned.
The meteor no longer blocked the sky.
What they once hated—
Now felt like salvation.
They looked back at the battlefield.
An area three to four kilometers wide—
Completely annihilated.
The forest was gone.
In its place—
A massive crater, dozens of meters deep.
And within it—
Mountain-like piles of shattered stone.
Give it a month—
And this place would become a vast ring-shaped lake.
A few massive rocks shifted.
Pushed aside.
Beneath them—
A Wood Dragon opened its jaws.
Yako crawled out, gasping for breath.
Who would believe it?
He'd just been beaten senseless by an eighty-year-old man.
Retired old men bursting with vitality—
While young workers dragged themselves through life like corpses.
Can't compete. Really can't compete.
He scanned the area carefully.
Madara was nowhere to be found.
Yako frowned.
He clearly remembered crushing Susanoo at the last moment—
Madara's body should've been swallowed by the wooden fists.
I won, didn't I?
Then—
A black scythe burst from the ground!
It stabbed straight for his throat!
Behind it—
White hair whipping wildly—
Uchiha Madara.
His left eye had turned completely grey.
Izanagi.
Only his right eye remained—
A three-tomoe Sharingan.
Damn it… why does the Uchiha clan have something as broken as Izanagi?
You're making my resurrection system look cheap.
There was no time to deploy Absolute Defense: Crystal Mist.
Yako could only rely on Absolute Defense: Bronze Light.
At the same time—
He casually tossed a kunai.
The next instant—
Madara's strike sent him flying like a cannonball.
Madara watched the trail of dust stretch into the distance.
A strange sense of twilight filled his heart.
"To think I had to use Izanagi… against a poor imitation of Hashirama…"
"How ridiculous…"
Thud!
A black blade pierced through his chest from behind.
Yako stood there—
Gripping the assassination black blade—
His eyes locked onto the back of Madara's head.
At his feet—
The kunai he had just thrown.
On its handle was his Flying Thunder God mark—
"The Darkness of Fire."
The mark could be anything.
The Second Hokage and Namikaze Minato both used different ones.
Madara slowly turned his head, blood dripping from his lips.
Without the Rinnegan—
With only transplanted three-tomoe Sharingan—
He couldn't unleash even a fraction of his true power.
"Heh…"
"I've been stabbed in the back again…"
"The last one who did this… was Hashirama Senju…"
He glanced sideways at Fox.
"Fox… I admit it."
"You have some talent… in imitating Hashirama."
"But you're nowhere near him."
"You even resort to Tobirama's despicable technique—Flying Thunder God."
"When I am revived—"
"You will die."
Madara collapsed.
Yako didn't relax.
He stared at the body carefully.
Madara still had one Sharingan left.
Would he use Izanagi again?
But if he did—
He'd go completely blind.
And Madara still hadn't used all his trump cards.
Where was the Demonic Statue?
Where were his subordinates?
Then—
Flames erupted from Madara's body.
"Not good!"
Yako immediately used Water Release—
But it didn't work.
The rain couldn't extinguish it.
His water jutsu couldn't extinguish it.
Blue flames burst outward from inside Madara's body—
Just like the aura of his Susanoo.
When the flames finally died down—
Only ashes remained.
Madara knew Edo Tensei too well.
He had used his final Sharingan to prevent anyone from desecrating his corpse.
In the original story, Obito had been shocked to see Edo Madara—
Which meant Madara's body was never supposed to be recoverable.
Who knew where Kabuto got his biological data from.
Yako stared at the humanoid ash.
And finally exhaled.
That eighty-year-old monster…
Was dead.
Slain an eighty-year-old legend.
If Madara had been even one year younger—
Yako wasn't sure he could have killed him.
He turned his gaze toward the southeast of the Land of Rain.
"Danzo…"
"You're next."