His vessel trembled slightly, reacting instinctively to the divine scale of the construct.
He didn't hesitate.
His aura burst outward in a violent surge.
White-green senjutsu flames coiled around his frame.
The horn on his forehead split into two jagged curves.
Spectral snakes spiraled into his spine, merging deeper.
His torso broadened, bones shifting, organs adapting.
Sage Art: Orochi's Ascension.
A massive serpent-spirit body erupted behind him, fused to his real form, its fanged jaws hovering above his shoulder.
It wasn't a summon; this was natural energy manifesting as a body extension, controlled directly by Orochimaru's chakra.
Hashirama's eyes narrowed a fraction.
"So you had something like this hidden."
Orochimaru's voice carried a sharper vibration than before, deeper, almost reverberating from two bodies at once.
"I evolve and ascend, Hashirama. That is my true nature."
The Thousand Hands descended.
The serpent-spirit lunged upward, jaws clamping down on one of the wooden arms.
Venomous senjutsu burned through the thick wood, dissolving part of the construct.
But the statue ignored the damage.
Another hundred arms fell at once.
Orochimaru lifted his real arms, and from each shoulder and rib, hundreds of serpents burst outward, spreading into a living storm.
Sage Art: Viper Coil Dominion.
The serpents wrapped around the falling hands, slowing them, draining chakra from the wood itself.
But each serpent that succeeded was crushed by another incoming strike; each wooden arm that was destroyed was instantly replaced.
Hashirama pressed forward.
He didn't need speed.
His presence alone controlled the battlefield.
Orochimaru slid back, fangs bared, mind racing.
He shifted his senses fully into Serpent Eye Vision to track every angle, every chakra thread, every shift in the statue's structure.
The battlefield opened itself to him in layers of vibration and thermal flow.
He blinked once.
"Too many."
He dropped into the earth again, Ophidian Shadow Merge letting him slip out of the statue's crushing zone.
He rose behind Hashirama—
—only for the Wood Human to emerge from the ground, massive arms swinging sideways.
Orochimaru barely twisted away in time, the glancing blow tearing a line across his chest.
His vessel regenerated the wound instantly.
Hashirama watched it happen, expression grim.
"You would have been a threat even in my era," he said.
Orochimaru spat a senjutsu beam, Basilisk Fang, slicing through one of the Wood Human's fingers.
The severed piece regenerated immediately.
"This is inefficient," Orochimaru muttered, annoyed. "Too much vitality. Too much stability."
Hashirama closed the distance in a single stride.
"Then stop fighting nature and yield to it."
Orochimaru's aura tightened.
He responded with something far more dangerous.
The serpents from Viper Coil Dominion suddenly turned, redirecting themselves into the forest, diving into the wood and grass.
The plants trembled.
Hashirama's eyes widened slightly.
"You're trying to influence the environment…?"
Orochimaru's pupils thinned to razor slits.
Sage Art: Serpent's Covenant.
The vines twisted.
The roots flexed.
The trees bent in unnatural angles.
For a brief moment, Orochimaru's senjutsu resonance hijacked the battlefield's plant life, creating a pulsating, synchronized twitch across the entire forest.
Hashirama responded instantly.
He slammed both palms down.
The advent of a World of Flowering Trees erupted across the ground.
Massive blossoms opened everywhere, releasing thick clouds of sleep-inducing pollen that purged Orochimaru's chakra influence in seconds.
The entire forest inhaled, then returned to Hashirama's control.
Orochimaru clicked his tongue, mildly irked but not discouraged.
"So that's how far your connection to nature goes. Impressive."
Hashirama lowered his stance, preparing for another wave of the Thousand Hands.
But then—
The air above Orochimaru twisted violently.
A wave of natural energy erupted outward from him.
Not an offensive strike.
A cleansing.
The ground beneath him cracked, then smoothed.
All pollen evaporated.
The lingering effects of Hashirama's influence reset.
Even Edo chakra signatures flickered uncertainly for a moment.
Hashirama's eyes widened.
"You tried to purge Edo Tensei…?"
Orochimaru, however, exhaled slowly, steam drifting from his serpent-spirit body.
It didn't harm Hashirama's Edo core, but it erased his immediate dominance.
Sage Art: Molting World.
The Thousand Hands slowed.
The Wood Human hesitated.
The forest paused for a fraction of a second.
Orochimaru lifted his head, eyes glowing brighter, slit pupils contracting to pinpoints.
Hashirama readjusted his stance in a single calm motion, his massive constructs waiting for his command.
Orochimaru answered him with something far sharper.
His Sharingan spun.
The golden iris darkened.
The black Mangekyo-pattern thickened.
And his same-colored as his chakra mode Susanoo erupted into existence.
Not the crude, bulky giant most Uchiha used.
It was a weaponized extension of senjutsu.
The armor formed instantly around his serpent-augmented body, a tight, coiled construct of shimmering chakra shaped like interlocking dragon heads and serpentine coils.
It wasn't fixed — it moved, shifted, and molded itself with each breath.
The moment it appeared, the air itself trembled.
Orochimaru flexed one hand.
The Susanoo armor reacted like a living serpent — twisting, shrinking, expanding, reshaping its limbs into blades, then into crushing coils, then into spear-like dragon skulls made of pure chakra.
Hashirama's eyes widened slightly.
He had never seen a Susanoo behave like a fluid organism.
And then the nature release flood began.
Flames erupted along one arm.
Wind spiraled along the next.
Water condensed under its joints.
Lightning webbed through its ribs.
Earth hardened its striking points.
All five nature releases flowed perfectly through the Susanoo, conducted without resistance — a feat no other Uchiha had ever achieved.
Orochimaru did not waste the advantage.
His Susanoo lunged.
A single blow from the serpentine armor shattered the nearest still frozen Wood Human's arm, splintering it cleanly.
Then, another instant swipe dissolved an entire row of the Thousand Hands, the combined elemental surge carving a trench straight through the forest.
Hashirama tightened his stance.
"That Susanoo… it obeys you like a limb."
Orochimaru's voice was low, vibrating through the distorted air.
"My Susanoo is not a cage. It is a body I perfected."
Hashirama swept his arm.
The remaining Thousand Hands rushed forward in a wave.
Orochimaru answered instantly.
His Susanoo expanded — not to its full colossal form, but to a mid-sized, towering frame optimized for reach and destructive torque.
The dragon heads along its shoulders roared chakra, then reshaped into massive cleaving arms.
The next collision split the battlefield apart.
Wood shattered.
Elemental chakra detonated.
The ground caved under the combined force.
Orochimaru's Susanoo carved through another dozen wooden arms, burning and erasing them with elemental fusion.
Hashirama countered with new constructs, Wood Human arms weaving into barriers and battering strikes.
Orochimaru reshaped the Susanoo again — this time compressing it into a close-body armor for maximum protection and speed.
It coiled tightly around him, letting him slip between attacks with serpent-like agility.
Hashirama summoned another wave of arms from the Thousand Hands.
Orochimaru's compressed Susanoo blurred, fist slamming forward with a five-element burst that obliterated the incoming wood.
The clearing turned into a crater.
Hashirama slid back one step.
Orochimaru slid back one step.
And then everything stilled.
They were evenly matched now — not in power, but in the ability to dismantle each other's strengths.
Orochimaru's senjutsu made him slippery, unpredictable, and impossibly adaptive.
Hashirama's Edo Tensei, physical augmentation to restore his peak, and his newly found endless Sage Mode, in this form, made him immovable, inexhaustible, and unbreakably stable.
The world around them slowly tore apart under the strain.
Neither gained ground. Neither backed down. The fight had reached its true equilibrium.
Orochimaru's eyes were still something between a three-tomoe stage and a Mangekyo, a strange hybrid born from what he had done to them in the past.
But once they adapted to this vessel's natural-energy affinity, they awakened a completely new trait — a single, unique evolution.
It didn't grant new illusions or esoteric space-time tricks.
It simply allowed him to control his Susanoo with absolute precision, reshaping it like a living extension of his own body.
Everything else he was doing now came from his vessel's nature itself.
The reason he could maintain such overwhelming senjutsu output, twist natural energy for so long, and perform techniques even Ryūchi Cave's elders once labeled theoretical was simple:
Orochimaru had reached the second stage of Snake Sage Mode, the one no human had ever achieved through the so-called 'Serpentine Dominance' ritual.
Not the first evolution that came from surviving the White Snake Sage's venom, but the forbidden route the Sage had only ever revealed to a single successor: consuming a part of the Sage's own flesh, devouring lesser snake summons, and becoming the uncontested apex of Ryūchi Cave.
It wasn't balance, like Myōboku.
It wasn't endurance, like Shikkotsu.
It was domination.
Consumption.
The serpent swallowing nature itself and returning as a dragon.
The White Snake Sage finally accepted him as its uncontested first true vessel, in history, and that was why it offered the second bite, and why this body held the second-evolution essence that even legendary figures before him never touched.
Not just his active Snake Sage Mode, but his physique overall was also permanently enhanced.
His chakra, denser and colder.
His natural energy channels widened far beyond human limits.
This was no ordinary Sage Mode.
This was the completed philosophy of Ryūchi Cave.
The serpent does not coexist with nature. It consumes it.
And this second stage made it undeniable; this was the point where the serpent ascended into a true dragon, not through laboratory tricks this time, but by nature's own verdict, too.
And with it, Orochimaru claimed the strength to wield every technique he had shown here, layered atop the power he had already carved into this vessel himself. And much more.
Therefore, that was why he had also avoided using the Wood Release from the start.
Hashirama did not need to say it; relying on those cells in front of the man himself would have been pathetic, beneath his pride, and a waste of energy. His own Wood Release was a pale imitation. Using it here would only insult them both.
And yet, even with all of this, it still wasn't enough to finish Hashirama. The man in front of him was no ordinary reanimation.
He was beyond his prime, Edo Tensei perfection layered on top of his original peak strength, unlimited chakra, flawless Sage Mode without gimmicks, and vitality that even natural energy seemed unwilling to oppose.
In that state, Hashirama wasn't just strong. He was a wall that simply could not fall now.
Meanwhile, the entire time, Hashirama too felt a growing shock, the longer the fight went on.
Everything he saw from this man, the one Tobirama described as the former commander of the Kumo front, far exceeded those reports.
Tobirama's briefings suggested someone dangerous but manageable.
Someone like Hashirama could eventually restrain without a large issue.
But this was different.
This was far beyond what even Madara had shown in his prime with the Nine Tails at his side.
Hashirama had never imagined that the snake sage path, a style he had only heard about in passing during his life, infamous for killing countless shinobi who sought it, could be pushed to this extent.
And that strange golden Sharingan mutation was something he could not explain at all.
What made it worse was the fact that Orochimaru was still biologically young, still in the middle of puberty, yet already able to push him, an enhanced Edo Tensei version of himself, further than most of his original-era rivals ever had.
A part of Hashirama felt a tired indignation over it. To see such talent chosen for destruction, obsession, and selfish ambition instead of guiding others with compassion or responsibility.
He could sense it clearly from Orochimaru's aura. A cold hunger. A mind that dissected everything it saw. Curiosity without empathy.
A deep-rooted desire to surpass all limits simply because the limits existed. There was no malice in it, but no kindness either. Only a relentless pursuit of the next evolution.
It wasn't too different from the boy raging in the sky.
Hashirama had felt that presence from the moment the battle began. Raw vitality. Chaotic instincts. An overwhelming force pushing its way through creation itself.
Even Hashirama knew he could not contain that kind of pressure. Only the other presence in the air, the one cloaked in that strange divine aura, could match it.
That being's wood release was deeper than Hashirama's own. Its yang chakra was so dense it bent the natural energy around it.
Hashirama felt a strange resonance toward him, and recognition mixed with a quiet suspicion. He could not understand it.
And that being had previously chosen to attack Ryusei's weaker allies more and more, pushing the momentum heavily against them.
But Ryusei's clones shifted strategy with frightening speed.
Instead of fighting the being directly, they started battering the Konoha barrier with their bare bodies, which surprisingly worked to an extent, forcing him to divert his attention to defending it.
In doing so, they bought more and more time for Ryusei's allies to recover.
Hashirama watched it all for a moment between strikes, unable to make sense of the entire situation fully.
He had no idea who that other being was, why it existed, or how Tobirama had revived it.
He didn't know why it seemed so devoted to Konoha, either.
And from its aura alone, he couldn't read anything at all.
Only overwhelming power. Only purpose. And neither belonged to any era he understood.