Perhaps because Orochimaru's Edo Tensei was still imperfect, the reanimated body of Senju Hashirama—which Hyūga Satoru had just shredded with Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags—recovered at an agonizingly slow pace.
That delay was everything.
Edo Tensei bodies didn't "die" the normal way, but they weren't truly flawless either. They could be stalled, restrained, and—most importantly—sealed.
And sealing was one thing Satoru didn't fear.
Kushina's teachings had long since carved sealing fundamentals into his bones. Against an opponent like Hashirama, destroying the body was pointless. But if he could clamp a seal onto the reanimated vessel, even temporarily, it would cut Orochimaru's combat power in half—right here, right now.
A sharp ripple of air flashed.
Satoru was already in front of Hashirama.
The First Hokage's head had nearly reformed, and this time—unlike earlier—there was a faint glimmer of awareness in his eyes. Whether it was residual will or Orochimaru's control tightening, Satoru didn't care.
His hands were already moving.
Four Symbols Seal.
The hand signs were long, intricate, and unforgiving—advanced sealing work that demanded absolute focus. Satoru held his breath and poured chakra into every seal formation with surgical precision.
Just one more beat—
Then darkness burst up like ink.
It didn't come from Orochimaru.
It came from beneath Tobirama's feet.
The blackness shot across the ground and wrapped around Satoru's position before he could fully shift his stance—
And the world collapsed.
Sky, earth, sound, distance—everything was swallowed by an endless void.
A pitch-black domain.
Even the Byakugan failed.
For the first time in his life, Satoru—born with eyes that saw through walls and bodies alike—was effectively blind.
He completed the final seal out of instinct… but when his palm thrust forward—
Hashirama was gone.
The space in front of him was only darkness and chaos.
A sharp chill crept up Satoru's spine.
He tried to reach for his Flying Thunder God mark—
Nothing.
It was there. He knew it was there.
But inside this black world, his perception couldn't grasp it. It was like trying to touch a thread that didn't exist.
"What is this…?"
"I've never heard Orochimaru could do something like this…"
His mind snapped through possibilities at lightning speed, and then recognition struck like a blade.
Tobirama.
Dark Walking Art.
A genjutsu crafted by the Second Hokage specifically to neutralize visual prowess—built to cripple the Sharingan… and just as deadly to the Byakugan.
The darkness wasn't a ninjutsu curtain.
It was an illusion so complete it hijacked the senses and smothered perception.
Even worse—inside the technique, chakra flow was subtly disrupted, making it harder to reorganize chakra and escape… and harder to "feel" external anchors like Flying Thunder God marks.
To dispel it, there were only two ways:
Break the genjutsu yourself—
Or kill the caster.
Neither was easy.
Which was exactly why genjutsu made the Uchiha feared in one-on-one combat… and why Tobirama's counter-techniques were so vicious.
But Tobirama's technique had met the wrong target.
Satoru exhaled once.
Then brought his palms together.
Yin and yang chakra—two opposing currents—surged through his chakra network like twin rivers colliding. Chakra spilled from his tenketsu in controlled pulses, forming a thin, protective shell around his body.
To most shinobi, reorganizing chakra under pressure was difficult.
To a Hyūga who lived and died by chakra precision?
It was discipline.
It was muscle memory.
The darkness trembled.
Then—danger.
A razor-sharp killing intent bloomed from the "southeast" of the void, close enough that instinct screamed before thought could form.
Satoru moved.
In the real world, Kabuto had found his opening.
The moment Satoru appeared rooted, Kabuto flashed in and formed a chakra scalpel—aiming straight for Satoru's neck.
But the thin chakra shell delayed the cut by a fraction.
A fraction was enough.
Even blind, Satoru felt the blade pierce the shell, and in that instant the attacker's position "existed" in his mind—sound, pressure, contact.
Satoru's hand snapped forward.
"Eight Trigrams—Sixty-Four Palms!"
His first strike drove into Kabuto's lower abdomen.
Kabuto's involuntary grunt gave Satoru exactly what he needed—confirmation, shape, posture.
Then the storm began.
"Tat—tat—tat—!"
Palms hammered into Kabuto's torso in a ruthless cascade. Even without perfect visual confirmation on every tenketsu, Satoru's precision was still terrifying—he disrupted Kabuto's chakra flow across much of his trunk, shredding internal control.
Kabuto was blasted backward, lifted off his feet, and slammed hard into the ground.
And as the final strike landed—
The darkness shattered.
Light returned like a snapped chain.
Satoru's vision snapped back into place.
Before he could even turn fully toward Kabuto—
A scream cut across the battlefield.
"Aa—!!"
A body was flying toward him at high speed.
"Kakashi!" Shisui's voice came sharp and low from afar.
In the same instant, Tobirama darted forward and kicked Shisui away with brutal efficiency.
Only then did Satoru fully realize the scope of Tobirama's technique:
Dark Walking Art wasn't single-target.
It was wide-area.
Kakashi and Shisui had been trapped in the same darkness—blinded, suppressed—and neither of them could match the Second Hokage's taijutsu even at partial strength.
Kakashi was hurled toward Satoru.
Satoru stepped in and caught him midair, arms locking around him—
The momentum dragged Satoru backward several meters before he stabilized.
The next breath—
Tobirama closed the distance instantly, kunai slicing toward Satoru's temple in a clean killing arc.
Satoru's eyes sharpened.
Now that the "blindfold" was gone, Tobirama's speed was fast—but not invisible.
Satoru flicked Flying Thunder God—
And sent Kakashi away.
Then he dropped low and surged forward, palm slamming into Tobirama's chest.
The impact drove Tobirama back two steps.
And Satoru didn't stop.
He unleashed a torrent of close-range pressure—his taijutsu was a hybrid now, blending Hyūga Gentle Fist with brutal hard-fist impact. Every strike carried crushing force and tried to disrupt chakra points on contact.
Against a living opponent, it would have been fatal.
Against an Edo body?
The Gentle Fist sealing effect was limited… and raw damage meant almost nothing.
Tobirama absorbed the hits like a corpse that didn't care about bones, tendons, or pain.
After a dozen rapid exchanges, Satoru's eyes narrowed.
He was reading Tobirama's rhythm.
Learning his angles.
Finding the seam.
But time was bleeding away.
Behind him—
The shattered Hashirama body finished repairing.
And rose.
Two Hokage.
Two Edo bodies.
Even without jutsu, even with stiffness, even at imperfect strength—
Their combined pressure snapped tight around Satoru like a vice.
Hashirama's style was broad and monstrous—huge swings loaded with terrifying momentum.
Tobirama was the opposite—technical, sharp, precise.
One forced openings.
The other punished them.
Satoru's footing shifted, forced defensive for the first time in several breaths.
The battlefield had splintered into chaos.
Elsewhere, Jiraiya and Orochimaru had escalated into summon warfare—Bunta's presence and Orochimaru's writhing sea of snakes turned the plain into a nightmare of crashing bodies and churning chakra.
Orochimaru's eyes—cold and delighted—kept sliding back toward Satoru.
Not because Satoru was losing.
Because he wasn't.
Because even with Tobirama and Hashirama pressing him, Satoru still hadn't broken.
Orochimaru's smile thinned.
"A prodigy… in the Hyūga…"
Even he couldn't hide the note of interest in his voice.
And Satoru—caught between two dead legends—quietly exhaled.
So this is the real test.
His hands flexed.
His chakra shifted.
And his eyes locked forward, calm as a blade.
Because if this battle had someone who could turn the tide—
It wasn't Jiraiya.
It wasn't Kakashi.
It wasn't Shisui.
It was him.
…
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