Chapter 128: They Came Prepared
"Um... Lord Hiruko..."
Looking at Hiruko gasping for breath beneath her, Shinyo—tied to his back—tentatively opened her mouth to speak, only to be roughly interrupted.
"Shut up!"
"Don't say anything about abandoning you to escape on my own!"
"From childhood to now, the reason I could grow from a talentless ordinary shinobi to my current level is because I absolutely refuse to run away!"
"When I encounter difficulties, I overcome them!"
"When I encounter enemies, I eliminate them!"
"It was like this in Konoha Village, and it's the same now!"
Hearing Hiruko's impassioned declaration, Shinyo silently extended her arm from her sleeve and brought it to Hiruko's mouth, saying softly:
"What I meant was, Lord Hiruko, you could bite me. Your chakra would be restored immediately."
"Uh..." Hiruko's expression froze, then he shouted indignantly: "Bite what? Do you think I'm the same as those parasites in Kusagakure?"
While shouting, Hiruko's feet never stopped moving. He activated Swift Release, vanishing from his position like wind, allowing the rain of poison needles to blanket where he'd stood moments before.
"He disappeared again! Raise shields!"
Following Chiyo's command, the Sand shinobi at the encirclement's perimeter quickly hid behind puppets, sealing the field completely.
"Tch!"
Hiruko shattered a puppet with one punch, sending a Sand shinobi flying, but his body immediately retreated.
The moment he left his position, a humanoid puppet appeared where he'd stood. Its hands made a scooping motion—dozens of steel wires burst from the ground, gathering into a net formation.
Fortunately he'd dodged quickly, otherwise he would have been caught by those wires.
With his three-tomoe Sharingan, Hiruko's Swift Release could finally display its full power. He could advance or retreat at will, observing in all directions during movement, avoiding traps with ease.
"His speed is too fast! Use area attacks!" Chiyo's voice rang out again.
"Yes!" All Sand shinobi responded in unison. A squad of shinobi stepped forward, forming a line at the front. Their hands rapidly formed seals before they simultaneously blew forward.
"Wind Release: Shredding Gale!"
Sharp, blade-like mini-tornadoes aimed at the field and began sweeping back and forth like lawnmowers, chasing Hiruko's figure with relentless cutting attacks.
Meanwhile, more puppets on the outer perimeter opened their mechanisms, firing indiscriminately into the field. Various steel needles and arrows fell like torrential rain.
Hiruko's feet never stopped, constantly moving through the field. Relying on Swift Release's speed and the Sharingan's powerful perception, he dodged and weaved through numerous Wind Release attacks, dancing on the blade's edge.
But he couldn't withstand the sheer number of enemies. Their jutsu seemed endless—his evasion space gradually shrank.
When unable to dodge, he could only use Steel Release to deflect wind blades and endure arrow storms to gain more maneuvering room.
Scattered wind blades flew everywhere, cutting Hiruko's clothing to tatters, exposing his ugly face beneath the bandages.
Shinyo on his back was also cut by wind blades, her body covered in wounds. Her back bristled with embedded weapons, but she bit down hard on her lip, making no sound, afraid of disrupting Hiruko's concentration.
The earth suddenly trembled. A towering energy giant strode rapidly from the distance.
"The primary target has arrived. Let's deal with this one first!" A low voice spoke from the shadows.
"No, sister. Killing moves only have the best effect on their first use. We must save it for the primary target." Chiyo muttered quietly.
"Besides, did you notice the woman on his back?"
"It seems this Uchiha cares greatly about her. Perhaps we can use her as bait."
"Fine. Your commands have never been wrong. We'll do it your way." After Chiyo responded, she fell silent again.
"Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Technique!"
From the distance, Yasushi manipulated Susanoo to launch a massive fire dragon at the Sand shinobi army.
No matter how many ambushes they'd prepared, one massive fire would burn everything clean, solving all problems at once.
But his intelligence had already been leaked in detail to Sand Village by Konoha. Chiyo had prepared numerous contingency plans to counter his attack methods.
"Plan Number Three."
Following an elderly voice, a squad of shinobi leaped forward, rapidly forming seals before simultaneously opening their mouths wide.
"Water Release: Water Dragon Whirlwind!"
Under their combined jutsu, towering waves rose from flat ground as if transforming the area into a vast ocean, rushing to meet the fire.
Water and fire collided mid-air, erupting with a deafening roar. Under the flames' scorching heat, massive amounts of seawater instantly vaporized, forming an enormous steam cloud that rapidly expanded into a mushroom-shaped mass hundreds of meters in diameter, shooting toward the sky. The entire battlefield immediately filled with rising heat and steaming mist.
But water counters fire through mutual interaction. Under the massive water deluge, the flames lost their violent power, gradually cooling.
Supported by both sides' chakra, the two forces cancelled each other out, locked in stalemate.
A strange equilibrium formed at the battlefield's center—flames burning on the water's surface, water surging within the flames. Red and blue chakra intertwined, fire unable to evaporate water, water unable to extinguish fire.
Yasushi snorted coldly. The Mangekyo Sharingan on his left shoulder spun rapidly. The dark clouds above Kusagakure immediately seemed stirred by an invisible hand, rolling toward this direction.
Thunder crashed in the sky. A thunder dragon emerged from the clouds, lunging toward the Sand shinobi.
"Plan Number Six."
Chiyo remained unhurried as she issued commands. Her wrinkled fingers waved lightly—the Sand forces on standby immediately changed formation.
Another squad of shinobi leaped forward, tossing the scrolls from their backs. Chakra threads from their fingertips rapidly pulled.
With a clatter, in the blink of an eye, those scrolls unfurled mid-air, spitting out massive amounts of puppet machinery.
Under the control of spiderweb-dense chakra threads, these puppet machines interconnected, instantly forming something resembling a giant metal cage that dropped toward the ground.
BOOM!
This enormous metal cage crashed heavily to the ground, kicking up countless sand and stones.
Steel reinforcements at the cage's base rotated, firmly rooting into the earth, encasing the Sand shinobi position.
The next instant, the thunder dragon crashed into this metal cage. But as chakra fluctuations flashed, lightning from the thunder dragon scattered, running along the cage's surface. Each time it passed a node, part of it was diverted until everything finally entered a strange spherical puppet on the ground.
The strange sphere's entire surface displayed clear spiral patterns, swallowing the lightning energy like a bottomless pit.
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