At the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth.
Deep underground.
Inside a dark, empty cavern, an old man with white hair and a withered, decaying aura sat upon a stone chair.
Three pale wooden tubes extended from his back.
The other ends were connected to the enormous statue behind him.
A constant stream of energy flowed from within the statue, traveling through those white tubes and into the old man's body, barely sustaining his corpse-like form.
He was Uchiha Madara.
A legend who had once shaken the entire shinobi world—yet in the history of that same world, he had long since been recorded as dead.
The man once known as the Asura of the Shinobi.
"Hashirama… I've already found the one who will carry out my plan. Just wait. I'll prove to you that my path was the correct one."
Uchiha Madara slowly lowered his shriveled eyelids and muttered to himself.
If there was one person in this world he could never truly let go of, it was without question Senju Hashirama.
The two had known each other since childhood.
They had once been close friends.
Both possessed power great enough to shake the shinobi world, and both once carried ideals lofty enough to change it.
And yet, in the end, Madara had lost to Hashirama.
That defeat was something he had never truly let go of.
"Madara-sama~"
Not long after Madara's intermittent muttering faded, a half-black, half-white figure slowly emerged from the ground before him.
It was Black Zetsu and White Zetsu.
"Madara-sama, we ran into a very interesting Konoha shinobi on the battlefield."
"That guy actually defeated a force of five thousand Sunagakure shinobi by himself. It was incredible."
White Zetsu spoke in his usual exaggerated tone, waving his hands around dramatically as he described it.
It was almost as if he was afraid Madara would not understand unless he acted it out.
"Oh?"
"One man defeated a force of five thousand?"
Hearing White Zetsu's words, Uchiha Madara slowly opened his aged eyes a little.
That kind of achievement was enough to surprise even him.
And if Konoha truly had someone that powerful, then that person could very well become an obstacle to the Eye of the Moon Plan.
"Yeah, yeah. Everywhere that guy went, the Sand shinobi broke and ran. And his ability is really strange too—bright, flashy, blinding."
White Zetsu continued gesturing wildly, his voice as theatrical as ever.
"A golden ability?"
Madara frowned slightly.
During the Warring States Era and throughout his life, he had seen all kinds of bloodlines and secret techniques.
But something like this… he had never heard of before.
"We infiltrated Konoha's position and deliberately gathered information," Black Zetsu said before White Zetsu could continue rambling.
"It's said that during this war, he awakened and developed a new power of his own, which he named Light Release."
"This Light Release not only possesses extraordinary destructive power, but also grants him a fluid body similar to the Hōzuki Clan's Hydrification Technique, allowing him to ignore physical attacks."
"That is how he was able to fight an entire Sunagakure brigade alone on the battlefield."
Seeing the doubt in Madara's eyes, Black Zetsu explained it directly.
Compared to White Zetsu, his words were far more reliable.
If White Zetsu were left to explain it alone, he would probably ramble on forever without getting to the point.
"A secret technique similar to the Hōzuki Clan's… and it can ignore physical attacks…"
As Madara muttered to himself, he recalled the Hōzuki Clan's abilities.
"Yes," Black Zetsu continued. "But that isn't the strangest part. His Light Release appears to have no elemental weakness. On the battlefield, he was struck by all kinds of elemental attacks, yet remained completely unharmed."
"What?"
"No elemental weakness?"
When Madara first heard it was only a technique similar to the Hōzuki Clan's secret art, he had instinctively looked down on it somewhat.
After all, while the Hōzuki Clan's technique was indeed effective against physical attacks, it also had a clear weakness.
A properly applied Lightning Style attack could directly break through that kind of defense.
But now Black Zetsu was saying that this so-called Light Release had no elemental weakness at all?
"Yes. None."
Black Zetsu's tone grew solemn.
Not even he—someone who had lurked in the shadows of the shinobi world for a thousand years in pursuit of reviving his mother—had ever seen an ability this strange.
"What is that shinobi's name?"
After hearing all of this, Madara's expression turned serious as he asked.
For people he considered beneath notice, he would not even bother asking for their name.
The fact that he asked now meant only one thing.
He had acknowledged this person.
That was precisely why Black Zetsu and White Zetsu had not mentioned the name at the start.
"Yagami."
Black Zetsu and White Zetsu answered at the same time, both unconsciously stressing the name.
"A civilian shinobi?"
Madara asked after a brief pause.
This surname did not belong to any notable clan in Konoha.
In fact, even across the entire shinobi world, it was not the name of any major family.
"He is a civilian shinobi, but his powers are really flashy, Madara-sama."
White Zetsu answered first, then made another exaggerated gesture as though he had been blinded by the light itself.
"Mm."
Madara paid no attention to White Zetsu's antics.
"Keep watching him closely."
He gave the order in a calm, heavy voice.
Since Konoha possessed such a strange power, it might truly become a threat—or at the very least, an inconvenience—to his plans.
He could not afford to be careless.
"Madara-sama, no need to worry about that."
"I already left several spore clones inside Konoha's camp."
White Zetsu grinned, his tone full of smug pride.
On the battlefield between Konoha and Sunagakure, the fighting had already continued for nearly an hour.
Although the Sand shinobi had clearly fallen into a disadvantage, Chiyo's encouragement before the battle had prevented them from collapsing outright. Even now, they were still gritting their teeth and resisting with everything they had.
"Laser Beams!"
"Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!—!!!
Yagami raised his hands like guns, his index fingers shining with golden light.
From his fingertips, blazing laser-like rays fired out one after another without pause.
At this moment, he was a true mobile fortress.
Wherever the enemy lines were densest, he moved there.
Wherever Konoha's shinobi needed support, his firepower followed.
As for the other major force on the battlefield, Orochimaru was currently taking on Chiyo and Rasa at the same time.
With their puppets damaged, one side's combat strength had already dropped by several levels.
The other was still recovering from serious injuries.
As a result, even with the two of them working together, they could do little more than barely hold Orochimaru back.
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