Tsunade stood tall, blonde hair catching thin sunlight filtering through the canopy, glinting like metal.
She stared at the Root base entrance barrier. The warmth and teasing she'd shown Sarutobi earlier had been stripped away—what remained on her face was only cold, focused seriousness.
Her thoughts settled as she replayed the intelligence Orochimaru had provided:
Inside Root, gathered the elite heirs of Konoha's clans—members Danzō had coerced, stolen, or tempted into service—representing the most extreme, most shadow-soaked portion of each bloodline.
And with Root having siphoned Konoha's resources for years—bottomless funding, bottomless authority—plus their emotionless, goal-at-all-costs operating doctrine…
Root was no longer just a "black glove" assisting ANBU.
At equal manpower, Root's combat capability was Konoha's undisputed number one.
Breaking this place was nothing like suppressing Otogakure alone.
"Sound Village" had been Orochimaru's prison and material warehouse—a laboratory with walls.
Other than Orochimaru himself, Kabuto, the Sound Four, and Kimimaro, the rest were disposable.
But Root—
Tsunade narrowed her eyes. Everyone here was an elite shinobi, meticulously filtered by brutality and purpose.
And so, silently, Tsunade activated Reappearance to replicate the Explosive Blood technique.
No grand spectacle.
From the outside, it was as if she simply inhaled and straightened her spine.
But within her body, the Senju bloodline roared awake like a volcano.
The ancient lineage surged to dominance, drowning out everything else.
Her chakra synthesis speed, total volume, circulation rate, recovery, toughness, durability—
Every stat tied to life and power spiked across the board, multiple times over.
The last traces of travel fatigue vanished instantly, replaced by an almost explosive fullness of strength.
At this level, her crude Wood Release alone could erase a few hundred ordinary shinobi in a breath.
But—
Not enough.
She needed absolute, undeniable crushing power.
She needed to show Sarutobi—the Sarutobi—something he could not argue with.
She needed to declare to the entire village: the Senju name had never faded.
Her gaze sharpened.
Something like an invisible shackle snapped.
BOOM.
This time the change couldn't be hidden.
Her body surged upward, height jumping from a compact 1.6 meters to a towering 1.8—her presence exploding outward, no longer inferior to Orochimaru, only slightly shorter than Jiraiya.
Her already outrageous figure became even more exaggerated in proportion—powerful, violent, and overwhelming.
Her loose clothes tightened instantly, stretched into an almost skin-clinging outline that made every curve look like it had been carved.
Then—
The skin at the left side of her forehead bulged, hardened.
A gray-white horn punched through.
Spiraled, ridged, and sharp.
Gray-white pigmentation spread outward from the horn's base, staining the surrounding skin like layered keratin scales.
Even her once healthy pale complexion shifted faintly toward an ashen hue.
For a moment, she looked like something that had stepped out of a myth—holy, brutal, and faintly inhuman.
Not a "new form."
A glimpse of what had always been buried inside Senju blood.
A tiny fragment of the Ōtsutsuki iceberg, exposed.
Even more obvious was the energy.
Around her body, blue chakra flared like a furnace—visible, violent, roaring.
A chakra storm detonated outward, warping the air with a low, dense hum.
Pebbles and loose earth were blasted away in a perfect ring.
Falling leaves disintegrated into dust before they could touch her.
Sarutobi, leaning against a tree, couldn't hide his shock anymore.
"What… is that?!"
His instincts screamed "Eight Gates"—a suicidal boost technique.
But when he focused…
This was not the chaotic self-destructive frenzy of the Gates.
It was immense but strangely stable.
Old.
Heavy.
Like an ancient door being opened, not a life being burned.
Tsunade breathed, feeling the torrent inside her settle into her bones.
She'd already tested her upper limits before.
The technique she'd modeled Explosive Blood after—mixed-blood "Sachiko"—had four stages.
But no matter what Tsunade tried…
Two-stage was her wall.
Even forcing a third or fourth stage with Reappearance produced no further change—extra chakra simply sank into nothing.
Orochimaru had offered a theory after hearing Eisen's explanation of chakra's nature:
Bloodline limits—Wood Release, Sharingan, Shikotsumyaku—
They weren't "flesh miracles."
They were information fragments hidden in chakra, awakened and expressed.
Blood was just the container.
Explosive Blood wasn't increasing bloodline concentration.
It was brute-forcing dormant information fragments to the surface, making them manifest.
At the time, Tsunade had been confused.
How did a bloodline technique become a chakra theory?
Orochimaru's answer had been cold and precise:
"Chakra is information. The universal compressed blueprint. Flesh, spirit, memory, will—even the 'elements'—are just different forms of chakra expression."
And if chakra could become stone, water, thought-clones…
Then why would "bloodline information" be any different?
Tsunade exhaled, long and steady.
In a few seconds, she adapted fully to the strength—strength capable of moving mountains.
Her cells were singing.
Her chakra was roaring.
Now.
She moved.
No wind-up.
She raised her right fist and poured that monstrous chakra into it, wrapped it in superhuman power, and punched straight into the invisible barrier—
The forest's silence was ripped apart.
The barrier—hardened, sophisticated, engineered—shattered like glass.
The point of impact collapsed inward.
Cracks flashed across the entire surface like lightning.
In less than a second, the barrier disintegrated completely.
And in that instant—
Her second-stage boosted sensory field flooded down the entrance tunnel like a broken dam.
The underground maze mapped itself inside her mind.
Dozens—hundreds—of chakra signatures.
Their footwork was messy.
Their chakra spiked.
They were already mobilizing toward the entrance.
She'd been detected even before she hit the barrier.
Of course.
She and Sarutobi hadn't tried to hide.
She was here to break Root openly.
Tsunade's mouth curled into a cold smile.
Preparation meant nothing in front of absolute power.
She spread her stance, dropped her weight, braced—
—and suddenly froze.
A sharp discomfort.
Tight.
Restrictive.
She looked down.
Her green haori, which had once covered her thighs, now barely covered half her enlarged, rounded hips.
Her loose pants had become a deep-blue, skin-tight compression layer, pulling her new shape into humiliating clarity.
A black vein almost popped on her forehead.
You have got to be kidding me.
She willed the Wordstock Tights to thicken in key areas.
It hid the outline…
…but produced an even more obvious, awkward bulge.
Less embarrassing in one sense.
More visible in another.
"Tch."
She changed strategy instantly.
The Wordstock shifted again, becoming a reinforced boxer-short style, thickened evenly—making her hips look even wider, but at least eliminating the worst of the outline problem.
Fine. From now on, I'm making every piece of clothing out of Wordstock. No more wardrobe sabotage.
Then she clapped her hands—
Smack.
A crisp sound.
And she shouted, loud enough for the old Hokage to hear:
"Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence!"
Strictly speaking, she didn't actually know the technique.
She'd never trained Wood Release properly.
This was brute-force activation: insane chakra volume plus bloodline instinct.
The name was more "signal" than "seal-work."
But the result—
Was biblical.
The earth howled.
Not one root.
Not ten.
Countless.
Massive roots—thick beyond reason—exploded into growth beneath the Root base.
Rock strata.
Rebar.
Pipes.
Steel frameworks.
Everything man-made became flimsy paper before that natural violence.
Not crushed.
Lifted.
The entire underground base—vast and labyrinthine—was hauled out of the earth like a wreck dragged from the deep.
Walls snapped.
Floors buckled.
Metal screamed as it twisted.
But—
No raining debris.
No catastrophic rubble shower.
Because as the structure fractured, thick trunks wrapped around the rooms and held them.
New branches lashed outward, catching every stone, every falling beam, every sliding panel.
Every Root shinobi flung by the upheaval was snared midair by living wood.
The entrance vanished.
In its place—
A colossal tree rose, towering over Konoha's skyline, clawing at the clouds.
Broken rooms, scattered instruments, bound shinobi—everything became part of the tree's grotesque "ornamentation," a cruel beauty of flesh and wood and architecture fused into one display.
From first rumble to full emergence—
just over twenty seconds.
The thunder carried across Konoha.
Windows vibrated.
The village trembled.
Merchants, children, elders—everyone stopped and stared at the monster tree stabbing into the sky at the village edge.
"What… is that?!"
"Earthquake?!"
"What kind of jutsu does that?!"
Panic, shock, confusion erupted across streets like wildfire.
Even Kakashi, recently out of the hospital, had been half-reading Icha Icha Paradise while dragging Team Seven through a dull D-rank task—
The tremor nearly knocked the book from his hand.
When his gaze lifted and locked onto the tree, his dead-fish eyes sharpened into focus, pupils tightening.
"…Wood Release."
The word left him low and stunned.
As Yamato's former ANBU captain, he knew Wood Release.
But this—
This was not Yamato.
This was an order of magnitude beyond.
In the Hokage Tower, Nara Shikaku stared from the window and felt his blood run cold.
Tsunade had returned.
Then left urgently with the Third.
Now this colossal Wood Release appeared.
A thought—absurd and terrifying—hit him:
Did Tsunade-sama awaken true Wood Release… like the First Hokage?
He forced a slow breath, eyes going heavy with calculation.
"Konoha's sky…"
"…is about to change completely."
And the closest person of all—Sarutobi himself—
stood beneath the tree's shadow, face utterly blank with shock.
He understood the implication better than Kakashi, better than Shikaku.
This was near Hashirama-level terrain rewriting.
For a moment, he couldn't speak.
Only the low roar of leaves in the wind filled the air.
Then an ANBU appeared behind him, kneeling, awaiting orders.
Sarutobi's eyes cleared in an instant.
Shock fell away.
The Hokage returned.
This tree wasn't merely a "village disturbance."
It was a geopolitical bomb.
If news of Wood Release at this scale leaked to the other four Great Nations—especially Kumo and Iwa—
The reaction could be catastrophic.
A new arms race.
Or worse…
A new world war.
The shadow of the Third Shinobi War fell across Sarutobi's heart.
He inhaled, shoulders rising with effort, and barked commands with steel in his voice:
"Seal the information!"
"ANBU—full deployment. Emergency first-level lockdown."
"Any attempt to transmit information about this tree or today's disturbance—speech, writing, images—will be treated as treason. Execute immediately."
"Raise perimeter barriers to maximum alert."
"Move!"
"Yes!"
ANBU vanished, running to enact an almost impossible censorship.
At the tree's base—the eye of the storm—everything was oddly calm.
Tsunade stood bathed in sunlight, violet diamond seal on her forehead bright, and the horn on her temple gleaming with holy menace.
She placed a pale hand on the bark—rough like dragon scales—and closed her eyes.
Her sensory field swept across the entire tree and the bound base remains.
When she opened her eyes—
Confirmed.
Every chakra-bearing presence was captured and bound.
Wood Release was draining them, leaving no strength to resist.
Only one small complication appeared:
An Aburame operative, at the last instant before being drained, released a swarm of special kikaichū—tiny, toxin-loaded, far smaller than standard.
They tried to burrow into the branches' seams, secreting poison that hissed and corroded the wood in small black spots.
But then—
A stronger absorption surged.
The insects stiffened.
Their chakra and life force were swallowed whole.
Within seconds, resistance died.
Sarutobi approached, struggling to steady his mind.
He looked at Tsunade's back—straight, unshaking—and his expression turned complicated:
shock, disbelief, a strange rising awe…
She had surpassed his expectations.
Close enough to Hashirama's shadow that "unifying the shinobi world" no longer sounded like pure madness.
He opened his mouth—
And Tsunade's chakra surged again.
Wood rippled.
Dozens—hundreds—of wooden upper-body Tsunade constructs grew out of the trunk like living surveillance nodes.
Wood clones.
Expressionless.
Precise.
They ignored debris and broken walls.
They moved like tools, not people—heading directly for Root's core:
the intelligence archives.
Tsunade closed her eyes and shared their senses.
Chaos poured into her mind—and then filtered into clarity.
Two seconds.
Her lips curved.
Found it.
One clone at the base core tore away a half-collapsed metal door with vine arms.
Inside: orderly shelves of sealed scrolls.
The clone's vine arms lashed out and extracted stacks of scrolls and files—sealed, coded, categorized.
Moments later, another clone slid down the trunk like a living rope and placed the bundle into Tsunade's hands.
She didn't read a single page.
She marched straight to Sarutobi and handed him the evidence like a blade.
"Read it, Sensei."
This had been Orochimaru's plan:
Negotiation with Sarutobi → likely refusal → wager.
Smash Root by force → undeniable strength.
Put Root's crimes, in ink and blood, directly into Sarutobi's hands.
Because Sarutobi—great as he was—was a master of "not seeing" darkness unless it touched him.
If it stayed rumor, shadow, implication, he could bury it under "the bigger picture."
But if it became paper and signatures and names and dates—
If it became undeniable—
Then the shock would shatter his excuses.
Sarutobi took the top scroll with shaking hands and unrolled it.
His body went rigid immediately.
A secret meeting between Danzō and Hanzō of the Rain—timing, location, terms—an agreement to suppress and eliminate Yahiko's early Akatsuki.
That was only the surface.
Sarutobi's fingers trembled as he flipped scrolls, seized file bundles.
A flood of entries:
Sharingan acquisition and compatibility transplant projects
"Batch B" experimental subjects (27 missing genin and civilians) transported to a hidden site for Hashirama-cell fusion
Assassination contingency plans against the Third Hokage—staged to look like a Kumo attack
Human experiments. Abductions. Treason blueprints.
Each line was a senbon driven into Sarutobi's eyes and heart.
His comrade.
His brother-in-arms.
The "darkness for the village."
Had been plotting to kill him and take the seat.
Tsunade watched her teacher's hands shake, watched the tears of rage and grief gather in his eyes, and her chest tightened.
Was this really necessary?
Why not crush it all with force, take the hat, purge Danzō cleanly?
Why force Sarutobi to see the wound with his own eyes?
Orochimaru… you don't just kill people. You kill what they believe.
Then—
Tsunade's senses caught something.
A hidden chakra fluctuation, extremely subtle.
Her eyes snapped wide.
That sensation—
Reappearance-like.
She whipped her gaze toward the source.
And there, in the shadow—
Danzō Shimura.
Alive.
Unbroken.
His body flickering from falsehood into reality, as if squeezed out from another timeline.
Danzō fully stabilized, staring up at Tsunade—now taller than him, horned, radiating ancient brutality.
Fear was still stuck on his face.
He had triggered Izanagi at the instant Tsunade's power exploded—rewriting his "capture" into an illusion.
Otherwise he would've been hung on her tree like meat.
He tried to reassemble authority into his voice, barking like a righteous elder.
"Tsunade! What are you doing?! Attacking a Konoha elder—attacking Root's leader—this is treason! Treason against the village, treason against the Hokage's will! Hiruzen! Look at her—she's—"
His accusation died mid-air.
He finally looked past Tsunade.
Sarutobi stood hunched, frozen, scroll in hand.
Files scattered around his feet like a storm's aftermath.
Danzō's exposed eye shrank to a pin.
Cold flooded his spine.
Finished.
Those things could never see light—
Especially not in Sarutobi's hands.
Terror transformed instantly into feral violence.
A thought—mad and immediate:
Now.
Tsunade's aura just peaked. She might be settling.
Sarutobi is shaken. Vulnerable.
Kill them both.
Frame Tsunade as a traitor who murdered her teacher.
Take the hat—legitimately.
But the thought didn't even have time to become chakra.
Tsunade vanished.
A blur remained.
She appeared in front of Danzō like a teleport.
And drove a straight punch—compressed air screaming—into his abdomen.
Danzō didn't even scream properly.
His body folded and rocketed backward.
He slammed into the colossal trunk.
The tree barely shuddered.
But Danzō's skeleton—
cracked.
Chest collapsed.
Spine misaligned.
Limbs bent in impossible angles.
Organs ruptured.
A mouthful of black-red blood and organ fragments sprayed onto the ground like a hideous blossom.
He slid down the bark into a heap.
Still alive.
Because a branch speared into him and fed chakra into his body to keep him breathing.
Tsunade needed him alive.
She shook her wrist like she'd brushed off dust and looked down with contempt.
"Your malice is practically leaking, Danzō."
In second-stage Explosive Blood, her senses were so heightened she'd gained a crude analogue to Nine-Tails malice perception—small range, imperfect accuracy, but enough.
After all—
Nine-Tails was just a chakra lifeform, a fragment of the Sage's chakra expression.
If chakra was information, then Tsunade could forcibly excavate that "malice detection" data and bind it into her sensory processing.
Not surprising.
Then—
Another anomaly.
Danzō's ruined body erased itself like a smudged drawing—
and reappeared elsewhere, injuries gone.
Tsunade's eyes narrowed.
That same "Reappearance-adjacent" fluctuation.
"A reality correction technique," she concluded instantly.
But it couldn't be broad.
If it were, he'd rewrite her dead.
He could only rewrite himself, and only within limited constraints.
Exactly like Tsunade's own limitations.
Danzō was trapped:
Fight? He couldn't.Run? Even if he escaped, Root was gone, the hat was gone, and he'd become a hunted dog.
And Tsunade didn't hesitate.
She blurred in again—leaving an airburst ring behind her.
Danzō couldn't react without Sharingan active.
Tsunade's fingers landed precisely on the bandaged right arm.
RIP—!
Bandages shredded.
Beneath: a grotesque limb patterned with Hashirama-cell woodgrain—
and embedded along it:
Sharingan.
Tsunade's face twisted with disgust.
"Hashirama-cells grafted into your arm… no wonder your chakra felt familiar and wrong."
She saw it immediately:
Two Sharingan were already gray and dead.
Izanagi usage.
Sacrifices.
Everything clicked.
"So that's it."
"One eye… for one rewrite of your own reality."
Her tone iced over.
"Convenient, isn't it? Atrocious cost. Miserable scope. Still nowhere near Reappearance."
And then—without giving him a breath—
Her left hand formed a chakra scalpel sheen.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
She dug the remaining living eyes out of the arm with surgical speed.
She cradled them in a soft chakra envelope, keeping them viable while severing Danzō's ability to activate Izanagi again.
Then wood surged up and wrapped Danzō completely, binding him like a cocoon.
The branches drank his remaining chakra until he became nothing more than a breathing husk.
No suicide seals.
No last-ditch explosions.
With no chakra, they were fantasies.
Only then did Tsunade turn.
Her expression was calm.
Her voice changed.
She addressed him not as teacher, but by office.
"Third Hokage-sama."
"I recommend we immediately convene the full jōnin leadership council."
"We must conduct a public trial for Shimura Danzō—treason, murder, desecration of heroes, collusion with foreign powers."
The words public trial struck like a hammer.
Danzō's eyes bulged, throat straining in silent, muffled fury.
No tongue to plead.
No eyes to rewrite.
No chakra to die with dignity.
Only a trapped beast waiting for judgment.
Sarutobi jerked as if waking from a nightmare.
He looked at Tsunade with a face full of pain and stunned disbelief.
Tsunade saw it—the flicker of hesitation, the reflexive weakness of a man who had spent decades smoothing darkness under "the big picture."
If this stayed internal…
If this became a quiet council decision…
He might still find a way to bury it.
But a public trial meant sunlight.
It meant the jōnin corps—the real power core of Konoha—seeing everything.
No more pretending.
No more excuses.
Sarutobi's lips moved.
A delayed instinct to say "this is too big," or "we must consider stability," or "it will cause panic."
But then his gaze drifted again over the scrolls and files.
Over the stolen Sharingan.
Over the Hashirama-cells.
Over the treason plans.
And every possible excuse died in his throat as hollow and shameful.
Finally—
The old Hokage drew one long, shuddering breath…
…and nodded.
Tsunade felt a stab of pity.
But the firmness in her eyes didn't waver.
This wasn't just about punishing Danzō.
This was Konoha's rebirth.
And the next stage of Orochimaru's plan was already moving:
Expose the rot. Cut it out in daylight. Seize the center of power. Announce Tsunade's return in a way nobody could ignore.
Root's wood cage creaked with restrained hatred.
Sunlight sliced through the training-ground haze, illuminating dust motes in the air—and the brutal outline of an era changing hands.
The bell of judgment was about to ring.
Join here to read ahead.
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I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter215)
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Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 185
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 170
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/1
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Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 206
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 190
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/23
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 106
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 125
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 105
I Can Copy Unique Skills 90
Summoning an Evil God, but the 70
Supernatural Multiverse 90
My Harem Is Indescribable 80
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 86
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 68
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 81
Still playing traditional Honk 65
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 65
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 57
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 45
Transmigrated as Sukuna 59
Checking In in Demon Slayer 59
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 73
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 45
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 36
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 40
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 60
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 30
Why did they assign me to Uma 35
MYGO Beauties 43
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 30
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 31
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