From the Nine-Tails' descent, to the completion of the Tailed Beast Ball, to Rei Kaguya striking from afar and knocking its firing trajectory off course, less than half a minute had actually passed.
Was such a brief amount of time enough for Konoha's major ninja clans to figure out what had happened and formulate response measures and plans in time?
The answer was obviously no.
So when the major ninja clans saw the Nine-Tails' Tailed Beast Ball deviate from its path and shoot toward their area, their members inevitably fell into panic and fear.
No one was willing to face the might of a Tailed Beast Ball directly.
Even Kage-level experts capable of suppressing a Tailed Beast alone would do their best to avoid giving a Tailed Beast the opportunity to use a Tailed Beast Ball during battle.
Because everyone knew that the destructive power of a Tailed Beast Ball surpassed almost all ninjutsu. Once a Tailed Beast used this move, no matter how great the advantage accumulated beforehand, it could all be buried beneath that single strike.
But now, the Tailed Beast Ball was already flying straight toward the area where they were.
Then they could only grit their teeth and force themselves to take it head-on.
"Everyone, use the Great Fireball Technique with full power toward the Tailed Beast Ball!"
As Fugaku Uchiha gave orders to the clansmen present, he leapt from the Uchiha clan compound and gritted his teeth as he charged toward the rapidly approaching Tailed Beast Ball.
As the head of the Uchiha clan, he had basically mastered the Uchiha forbidden techniques that had been sealed away for various reasons.
If the Great Fireball Technique, launched by most of the clan's elites together, could not stop the Tailed Beast Ball, then he would charge into the explosion range himself and use the forbidden technique Izanagi at the cost of the light in one eye, rewriting the reality of his death beneath the Tailed Beast Ball's explosion.
However, although Fugaku Uchiha had thought of this method, he was not certain whether doing so would truly erase the Tailed Beast Ball that had swallowed him as well.
Although Izanagi, the forbidden genjutsu, was said to deceive the world and rewrite reality, in most situations, it could only affect the caster's own state.
Using it now to erase a large-scale destructive attack like this should be the first attempt of its kind.
If it failed…
No.
For the clan.
For Mikoto.
For Itachi and Sasuke.
He had to succeed!
He shook his head fiercely and threw that terrifying thought behind him. Fugaku Uchiha stood firm on a building at the edge of the Uchiha clan compound and looked with a grave expression at the Tailed Beast Ball that was already close.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
A gigantic fireball, formed from the combined strength of more than a hundred Uchiha chunin and jonin, roared from behind Fugaku Uchiha. Carrying surging waves of heat, it blasted straight toward the Tailed Beast Ball in flight.
At the same time, the joint attacks of the other two ninja clans that had also fallen within the Tailed Beast Ball's attack range slammed toward the Tailed Beast Ball fired by the Nine-Tails.
"Eight Trigrams: Vacuum Palm!"
"Fire Release: Great Flame Technique!"
Two surging waves of flame combined with the storm created by the Hyuga clan striking the air, transforming into a massive flaming tornado that collided fiercely with the Tailed Beast Ball fired by the Nine-Tails.
Boom—!
As expected, the instant the Tailed Beast Ball collided with the three clans' combined attacks, it erupted in a violent explosion.
A massive golden radiance spread wildly in all directions from the point of impact, swallowing and destroying the nearby houses and streets, burning to ash those who had not managed to evacuate in time.
Then, without any surprise, it continued spreading toward the area where the three clan compounds were located.
Seeing that the joint attack of so many experts had failed to weaken the fully charged Tailed Beast Ball from the Nine-Tails by much, Fugaku Uchiha secretly groaned in bitterness.
At the same time, he charged without hesitation toward the golden light and flames after the Tailed Beast Ball's explosion.
His pupils rapidly transformed into the pattern of the Mangekyo Sharingan. At the cost of the ocular power of Yui Gashiki housed in his right eye, he activated the Uchiha clan's most powerful forbidden genjutsu—Izanagi.
And before the light and flames swallowed him completely, Fugaku Uchiha faintly heard a somewhat familiar voice by his ear.
"Sage Art: Great Blazing Heaven!"
…
Looking at the Tailed Beast Ball whose trajectory had been knocked off course, and the Nine-Tails whose neck had been tangled by the long, thin spine whip, Obito Uchiha's expression did not change.
He stared at the figure rapidly approaching from several kilometers away by relying on the spine whip's lock-on. Slowly, he narrowed his exposed eye.
"Finally… we meet again, Rei Kaguya."
The instant Obito Uchiha's murmur fell, Rei Kaguya's figure arrived before him and the Nine-Tails like a meteor streaking across the night sky.
In an extremely calm tone, he replied, "I was not that eager to meet you again at this time, Obito Uchiha."
Boom!
Arriving along with Rei Kaguya's answer was the massive white bone armguard his left arm had formed using the power of the Dead Bone Pulse.
That huge bone fist, as though meant to be worn by a heavenly giant, smashed heavily into the Nine-Tails' head. With irresistible force, it knocked the Nine-Tails hundreds of meters away in one breath.
Meanwhile, Obito Uchiha stood on a great tree grown through Wood Release as if nothing had happened, quietly watching as Rei Kaguya sent the Nine-Tails flying.
"Thinking about it carefully, perhaps during our first meeting, the two of us should have fought until one side won and the other lost, until one of us lived and the other died."
"Perhaps. If I had hidden my special traits a little longer back then, maybe I would have had the chance to seize the moment when you were unfamiliar with your abilities and kill you in one go, you bastard who inherited Madara Uchiha's ambition and last wishes."
Rei Kaguya casually used the Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets against Obito Uchiha.
Finger bones whose hardness and sharpness far surpassed kunai whistled through the air, then passed through Obito Uchiha's body without the slightest obstruction.
It was as if they had struck a phantom that did not exist in this world.
It was also as if they had crossed the limits of time and space, reenacting the scene of their first clash.
"Only you could kill me, but I could not kill you?"
Obito Uchiha tilted his head. Space around his right eye began to rotate like a vortex.
"Your vitality really is as strong as a monster's. Back then, I only had Wood Release: Cutting Technique. I could not kill you head-on. I can admit that."
"But if I seized an opportunity and used Kamui to exile you, you would still gradually weaken because you had no food or water, until you died silently in some unknown alternate space, would you not?"
"That is indeed possible. But I will not give you that opportunity."
Rei Kaguya looked at Obito Uchiha, who was probably speaking with him to stall for time, and furrowed his brows slightly.
"If you had not suddenly appeared and tangled with me back then, I did not even intend to stand out during that mission…"
"But that was the starting point of your becoming the Fourth Mizukage, was it not?" Obito Uchiha looked into Rei Kaguya's eyes and asked calmly.
"I did not need the spotlight from that time to naturally become Mizukage."
Rei Kaguya looked at Obito Uchiha, whose eye for some reason carried a faint, strange smile, and said with a slight frown, "Just like even without my involvement, the operation to capture Rin Nohara and turn her into the Three-Tails Jinchuriki would still have continued, and it would still have made you witness Kakashi Hatake killing her at exactly the right moment."
"You really do not leave Madara any face at all…"
Obito Uchiha said this while gazing at the Tailed Beast Ball that had just exploded in the distance, as well as the crimson wall of fire that suddenly rose into the sky like a curtain blocking the impact of the Tailed Beast Ball's shockwave.
His words even carried a trace of mockery.
"Even though he was the true Third Mizukage of Kirigakure, was he not?"
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