Chapter 379: Planetary Devastation
A playful voice drifted through the weeping air, sounding directly behind Pain.
The Rinnegan user's pupils constricted.
"Do so-called 'Gods' run away too?"
Uchiha Akira stepped onto the empty air as if strolling across a paved courtyard. He followed closely behind the fleeing Akatsuki leader, his expression utterly relaxed, hands resting casually at his sides.
A few moments later, Pain finally stopped.
They had arrived at a desolate, jagged valley, far beyond the borders of Amegakure. The perpetual rain still fell here, slicking the dark stones with moisture.
Pain turned around with agonizing slowness. His face was a mask of cold indifference as he stared down the Uchiha.
"I am not running away." His voice echoed flatly against the canyon walls. "It is merely that God does not wish for the blood of mortals to defile his holy land."
Pain spread his arms wide, the black cloak billowing in the wind.
"Uchiha Akira. Your arrogance will end here. This place... will serve perfectly as your grave."
Akira let out a soft, amused breath. "A grave?"
He glanced around the dreary, rain-soaked canyon. "The environment is indeed nice. Beautiful hills, clear waters. Since you like it so much, I'll leave it for you to use."
Pain's gaze sharpened into daggers. He stopped wasting words. Conventional ninjutsu held absolutely no meaning against the monster standing before him. To enforce his divine will, he had to use that technique.
Pain abruptly brought his hands together, his palms slamming shut with a sharp clap.
"Chibaku Tensei!"
He pulled his hands apart. A sphere as black as ink, dense and heavy with concentrated chakra, materialized between his palms. It slowly drifted upward, climbing higher and higher into the weeping sky until it hovered like a dark sun above the valley.
Then, the world tore apart.
An indescribably terrifying gravitational force erupted from the black sphere. The ground beneath their feet groaned, trembled, and finally shattered. Countless massive boulders were violently ripped from the earth, hurtling frantically toward the black sphere as if summoned by a desperate master.
It was not just the rocks. The standing water in the valley, the ancient trees, and eventually entire mountain peaks were uprooted, groaning under the sheer stress of the gravitational pull before spiraling upward into the sky.
Miles away in the distance.
Kakuzu trudged through the mud, a heavy money box slung over his shoulder and a captive Hidan dragging behind him. He felt the tremor first, then heard the deafening roar of the earth tearing itself apart.
He stopped dead in his tracks. His green eyes widened in absolute terror as he stared at the horizon.
Mountains were floating into the sky.
"Are you kidding me?" Kakuzu swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. "Is this something a human can even achieve?"
Without another word, the hardened veteran tightened his grip on his money box, spun on his heel, and sprinted in the opposite direction as fast as his legs could carry him.
Back at the center of the cataclysm.
Uchiha Akira stood casually atop a massive slab of bedrock that was currently rocketing toward the sky. The crushing gravity tore at his clothes and whipped his hair wildly around his face, yet his posture remained perfectly straight.
"Chibaku Tensei, is it."
Akira tilted his head back, watching the sphere of earth and rock rapidly expand as it swallowed thousands of tons of debris. It was a truly magnificent sight. This was one of the ultimate ocular techniques of the Rinnegan—the very same jutsu once used to seal Kaguya Otsutsuki.
"If it were an ordinary person, they would probably truly despair right now," Akira murmured to himself.
Unfortunately for Pain, he was not an ordinary person.
The corner of Akira's mouth lifted into a sharp smirk. "Your technique is certainly interesting. But only slightly."
Hovering in the distance, the Deva Path sneered. "Are you still talking tough? Under this gravity, you cannot even move. Become a part of this star and perish."
Pain pushed his chakra output to the absolute limit. The gravitational pull surged exponentially.
The massive bedrock beneath Akira's feet instantly splintered into dust. Stripped of his footing, Akira was yanked violently toward the expanding planetoid in the sky, shooting upward like a fired cannonball.
Right at that moment, Akira closed his eyes.
The chakra resting dormant inside his body surged like a bursting dam, violently crashing through the final physiological limiter.
His heart. The human body's most fragile, yet most powerful engine.
"The Eighth Gate."
His eyes snapped open.
"Gate of Death."
A blinding red pillar of light erupted from his body, piercing straight through the dark clouds. The sheer force of the shockwave halted his upward momentum entirely.
Blood Steam.
It was the terrifying, volatile energy generated by boiling one's own blood. Yet, unlike Might Guy, this crimson vapor did not scorch Akira's skin or burn away his life force. His body handled the apocalyptic power with terrifying ease.
Pain's breath hitched. "What... is that?"
Red chakra? The suffocating pressure radiating from the Uchiha was so heavy it made the very air feel like lead.
Akira stood suspended in the sky, bathed in the boiling blood-red steam. His dark hair stood on end, and his entire figure emitted a blinding crimson glow. He looked exactly like an Asura crawling out from the deepest pits of hell.
"This technique," Akira's voice cut through the roaring winds, calm and absolute. "Is called Evening Elephant."
He pulled his fist back and threw a single punch toward the massive Chibaku Tensei looming above.
"First Step!"
A compressed cannon of solid white air, wrapped tightly in a spiraling aura of blood-red chakra, blasted upward. It slammed fiercely into the half-formed planetoid.
A deafening, muffled boom echoed across the heavens.
The massive sphere, which had been frantically devouring the landscape just a second ago, was violently forced to a dead halt by that single punch. Deep, jagged fissures spider-webbed across its rocky surface.
"It's not over yet."
Akira stepped onto the empty void. The sheer force of his movement compressed the air beneath his foot into a solid platform.
"Second Step!"
"Third Step!"
"Fourth Step!"
"Fifth Step!"
Five punches. Executed in a single, fluid breath. Every single strike landed on the exact same microscopic point of impact.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Under the terrifying, continuous bombardment of compressed air and blood steam, the massive Chibaku Tensei finally reached its breaking point.
Crack... Rumble...
It shattered.
The legendary jutsu, powerful enough to seal a Tailed Beast, was physically beaten into fragments by bare fists. The dark sphere imploded, sending a catastrophic shower of pulverized rock and dust raining down upon the earth.
The Deva Path hung frozen in the air, watching the apocalyptic shower of falling debris.
His mind went entirely blank.
"How... is this possible..."
That was Chibaku Tensei. That was God's masterpiece. Yet a mortal had just shattered it with his bare hands?
Who exactly was the God here?
Akira stood amidst the falling rain of boulders. The red steam surrounding him did not weaken; instead, it grew even more violent, whipping around him like a localized hurricane.
He looked down at Pain and offered a brilliant, terrifying smile.
"Warm-up finished. It's time to send you on your way."
The atmosphere around Akira grew thick and viscous. The air itself was warping, a clear sign that his chakra concentration had reached a critical, world-breaking extreme.
Akira crouched slightly, dropping into a low starting stance.
At that exact moment, the entire world seemed to fall dead silent. The wind stopped howling. The debris stopped falling.
The Deva Path did not hesitate. He spun around and flew desperately toward the higher atmosphere. Even Chibaku Tensei had been broken. Facing a monster like Uchiha Akira, there was zero chance of victory. Survival was the only objective.
"Too late," Akira whispered.
"Accumulate!"
The terrifying crimson power violently condensed, taking the shape of a massive, roaring red dragon that coiled around Akira's body. The chakra circulated with blinding speed, burning the oxygen from the air.
Akira locked his eyes on the tiny black dot fleeing into the clouds.
"Since you like playing God so much," Akira's voice reverberated through the sky, "then let me show you what a true..."
The red dragon roared.
"...God-Slaying Technique is!"
"Night Yao!"
To suit his own personal aesthetic, Uchiha Akira had shamelessly rebranded the technique's name.
With that single movement, heaven and earth lost all color. The world inverted into stark black and white.
High above, the fleeing Deva Path suddenly felt his body sink. The space around him warped and locked down under the sheer mass of the approaching chakra.
He couldn't move a single muscle.
Pain struggled violently just to turn his head over his shoulder.
What he saw was a furious crimson dragon, its gaping maw opened wide to devour the very sky. And inside the center of that dragon's head was Uchiha Akira's cold, stern face, leading with a right foot that spelled absolute death.
Miles away in the hidden base, Nagato's frail, emaciated main body let out a raw, desperate roar.
But before Night Yao, all struggle was entirely futile.
The kick connected.
Right to the center of the chest.
The Deva Path instantly disintegrated. Flesh, bone, and black fabric were vaporized on a molecular level. Not even dust remained.
The blinding red pillar of light pierced straight through the space where Pain had just existed. Without losing a single fraction of its momentum, the dragon blasted higher into the sky, violently striking the upper atmosphere.
The sky above the entire Land of Rain—a thick, perpetual layer of dark, weeping storm clouds that had smothered the country for decades—was forcibly blown wide open. A massive, gaping hole was torn through the heavens.
Sunlight.
Warm, golden, long-awaited sunlight poured through the massive tear in the clouds, shining down upon the perpetually overcast land.
The endless rain finally stopped.
The entire world seemed to hold its breath as Uchiha Akira's figure slowly descended from the heavens. The violent red steam surrounding his body gradually dispersed into the wind as he released the Eight Gates.
...
Outside Amegakure.
Deep within the secret base, Nagato violently lurched forward, vomiting a massive pool of black blood onto the floor.
"Nagato!" Konan cried out, her voice cracking with panic as she rushed over to catch his collapsing frame.
Blood poured freely from all seven of Nagato's orifices. He slumped against the machinery, his chest heaving erratically.
"Gone... it's gone..."
Nagato's Rinnegan eyes were wide and utterly lifeless as he muttered to the empty air.
"My Deva Path... Yahiko..."
His voice broke into a hollow, trembling rasp.
"Kicked out of existence..."
Faced with that kind of absolute, reality-shattering power, his own so-called status as a "God" was nothing more than a pathetic joke.
"Nagato! Pull yourself together!" Konan pleaded, her hands trembling as she looked at his broken state, her heart twisting in absolute agony.
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