"Miroku! Do you still intend to stop me?!"
"Do not forget! You and I were originally one!"
The eight serpent heads roared in unison. The sound carried a physical shockwave of spiritual energy, slamming violently against the main hall of the shrine.
Behind the cracks of the temple doors, Miroku bit her lower lip so hard it bled, staining her robes. Behind her, little Shion let out a terrified scream, her small body trembling like a leaf caught in a gale.
The fragile protective shield flickered wildly, on the verge of shattering completely.
Standing before the barrier, Uzumaki Menma's dark red haori fluttered violently in the wake of the roar.
However, the shockwave—enough to shatter the mind of a seasoned Jonin—hit him as if striking an invisible mountain. Even the white, three-eyed fox mask on his face didn't budge an inch.
Through the empty eye sockets of the mask, he calmly gazed at those eight pairs of vertical pupils, eyes filled with destruction and contempt.
Moryo's roar came to an abrupt halt.
The eight heads recoiled slightly. For the first time, a clear sense of confusion reflected in those molten gold eyes.
This tiny human… could actually ignore its spiritual pressure?
In that brief moment of hesitation caused by Menma's anomaly—
"Move!"
Uchiha Hikari's voice cut through the air like a cold blade.
Her Mangekyo Sharingan, spinning with its complex patterns, locked onto Yomi. The man stood beneath Moryo, staring at Menma in shock and uncertainty.
"Ice Style: Crystal Ice Mirrors!" Haku's voice rang out, youthful yet firm.
His hands blurred into a series of seals. In an instant, a frigid chill erupted!
Countless tiny ice crystals condensed and multiplied in the air. Within a heartbeat, a shimmering labyrinth of smooth ice mirrors rose around him and Kimimaro.
Five Dark Medical Ninjas, who were about to pounce on Hikari, were caught off guard. They were instantly separated and trapped in various corners of the crystalline maze.
The mirrors reflected the dark purple glow of Moryo and the blood-red hue of the shrine, creating a grotesque and surreal atmosphere.
"Damn it! It's Ice Style! Break it!" a burly ninja with a hideous scar across his face roared, his hands moving through seals.
"Earth Style: Earth Flow River!"
The ground shook violently as a thick mudslide crashed toward the ice walls like a giant python.
"Wind Style: Pressure Damage!"
Another lanky ninja spat out a sphere of highly compressed, raging wind, tearing through the air toward another mirror.
"Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire!"
"Lightning Style: False Darkness!"
"Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet!"
Five Jonin-level Dark Medical Ninjas unleashed five different elemental jutsu simultaneously.
Blazing fire dragons, violent wind spheres, hissing lightning spears, roaring water dragons, and surging mudslides! Five powerful surges of chakra slammed into Haku's labyrinth.
BOOM—!!!
The deafening explosion nearly drowned out Moryo's hissing.
Ice shards and broken chakra light flew in all directions. The air was instantly filled with the scent of ozone, steam, and the heavy stench of wet earth.
Haku's face turned pale. His body swayed. The ice mirrors vibrated violently, countless cracks spreading across the surfaces. It looked as though the structure would collapse at any moment.
To maintain such a massive range while withstanding the full assault of five Jonin was a heavy burden for one so young.
"Haku."
Kimimaro's calm voice pierced through the roar of the explosions.
Just as the maze teetered on the brink of collapse, his figure appeared like a ghost behind the burly ninja who had used the Earth Style.
His speed was so immense that the Dark Medical Ninjas had no time to react.
With the veins around his eyes bulging, Kimimaro opened his right hand. Beneath the skin of his palm, dozens of razor-sharp, white bone spurs—shining with a metallic, cold luster—burst forth like a blooming flower of death.
They tore through his own flesh and lunged toward the man's heart with a piercing whistle.
Puchi! Puchi! Puchi!
The dull sound of bone entering flesh echoed in quick succession.
The sneer on the burly ninja's face froze. He looked down at the blood-stained white bone tips protruding from his chest, his eyes wide with disbelief.
He hadn't even seen how the boy appeared.
"The first one," Kimimaro said tonelessly.
He jerked his arm back, bringing with it a spray of warm blood. The body hit the ground with a heavy thud.
"You bastard!"
The lanky ninja screamed, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. He wove his signs again, a violent wind blade forming in his palm.
"Ice Style Secret Jutsu: Thousand Flying Water Needles of Death!"
Haku gritted his teeth against the dizziness of chakra backlash, changing his hand seal.
Countless sharp ice senbon rained down like a storm from the fragments of the mirrors and the moisture in the air. They blanketed the lanky ninja from every conceivable angle, sealing off any path of escape.
The man was forced to cancel his jutsu, ducking desperately between the ruins of the ice mirrors. His trench coat was shredded by the needles, leaving bloody gashes across his skin.
"Kill the Ice Style user first!" Yomi bellowed.
The ninja using Fire Style spat out a torrent of flames, attempting to burn through the obstacles to reach Haku.
At that moment, Uchiha Hikari moved.
She didn't even look at the fire ninja. She simply raised her left hand and pointed a slender finger toward the incoming flames.
"Amaterasu."
Pitch-black flames ignited silently in mid-air.
The roaring fire dragon crashed into the black flames like a stone into an ocean. It didn't even cause a ripple before being consumed entirely.
The fire ninja's pupils shrunk. The eerie black flames acted like a parasite, tracing the path of the fire chakra and spreading onto his body in an instant.
"AAAHHH—!!!"
A scream of inhuman agony echoed across the battlefield.
The black flames burned silently. No matter how much he rolled, swatted at them, or tried to use Water Style to save himself, it was useless.
Flesh and bone turned to nothingness under the absolute heat of the black sun. Only a sickening smell of charred remains lingered.
Within seconds, only a small pile of black ash remained.
The terrifying power of the Mangekyo instantly paralyzed the remaining three Dark Medical Ninjas. The madness on their faces was replaced by a hollow fear; their movements became fatally stiff.
Kimimaro and Haku seized the fleeting opportunity.
"Dance of the Camellia!"
Kimimaro's figure was like a bolt of lightning. Sharp bone blades erupted from his arms, shoulders, knees, and even his spine. He transformed into a high-speed whirlwind of death, tearing into the ninjas using Water and Lightning Style.
The defense of the Water Dragon Bullet was fragile before such absolute speed and sharpness. The two ninjas only had time for a short cry before being swept into the storm of blades, reduced to a spray of blood and shredded flesh.
"Ice Style: Ice Rock Dome of Nothingness!"
Haku slammed his hands onto the ground. A massive wall of ice rose abruptly, slamming into the retreating Yomi.
The moment Yomi's body went numb from the impact, countless sharp ice spikes erupted from the wall, skewering him and pinning him to the air.
Blood trickled down the frozen protrusions.
In just a few breaths, Yomi and his five Jonin-level Dark Medical Ninjas were wiped out.
At the center of the battlefield, the confrontation between Menma and Moryo reached its peak.
"ROAR—!!!"
Thoroughly enraged by Menma's "indifference," Moryo's massive dark purple chakra body churned violently. Its eight serpent heads opened their maws simultaneously.
This was no longer a roar. It spat out eight concentrated streams of wicked chakra, as thick and viscous as black tar.
Everywhere these streams passed, a corrosive hissing sound followed. Even the hard bluestone floor of the shrine was dissolved into deep furrows.
The eight torrents converged from different angles, surging like a world-ending flood toward Menma and the fragile main hall behind him.
It intended to swallow this tiny obstacle and the last remnants of hope within the temple, dissolving them into nothingness.
Menma remained still. The white mask looked particularly eerie under the glow of Moryo's frenzied chakra.
Beneath the mask, his right eye suddenly revealed the crimson Three-Tomoe Sharingan. Then, the tomoe spun wildly, stretching and deforming.
A power far deeper and more domineering than Moryo's—a terrifying force that seemed to originate from the very source of the world—erupted!
"Tsukuyomi."
It was silent.
Moryo's mountain-like body suddenly stiffened.
The eight hideous heads froze. The violence and disdain in those molten eyes were instantly replaced by boundless horror and emptiness.
The eight streams of destructive chakra stopped just meters away from Menma, frozen like a petrified waterfall.
Deep within Moryo's consciousness, a completely different, even more hopeless world descended.
A mountain of corpses.
A literal, endless mountain of corpses.
A battlefield of twisted, broken, and decaying bodies stretched to the horizon, meeting a dark red sky made of the same remains.
Viscous blood flowed like rivers through the gaps of the dead, gathering into massive, bubbling pools of gore.
The air was thick with the suffocating stench of rot and iron, nearly solid enough to touch.
In the center of this battlefield, atop a throne made of severed limbs, sat a dark red Nine-Tailed Fox. Behind it, a moon hung as red as fresh blood.
A spike-haired youth leaned lazily against this throne. He lifted his gaze, his Sharingan looking down with cold, absolute arrogance—disdainful of all living things.
And Moryo, the demon who called itself the incarnation of destruction, was now nothing more than a tiny insect pinned to this sea of blood and corpses.
An unimaginable malice locked onto it from every corner of this world—from every decaying eye socket, from every drop of foul blood.
That was not the hatred of an individual. It was the rejection and killing intent of an entire "world."
It was as if the heavens and the earth were screaming for its annihilation.
"No… Impossible…!"
Moryo's consciousness let out a silent, distorted shriek. Its proud, dark chakra, capable of corroding all things, had no power to resist in this world of pure malice and despair.
An instinctual fear it had never experienced before coiled around its core like a frozen serpent.
Back at the shrine.
Moryo's massive chakra form was now like a soulless husk, twitching and rolling violently. The eight heads writhed in agony, letting out silent hisses, no longer able to manifest any offensive energy.
The wicked fluctuations it emitted became chaotic and weak.
"Now! Miroku!"
Menma's cold voice struck like a thunderclap, piercing through Moryo's chaotic cries and the lingering echoes of the battle.
Inside the main hall, the Priestess Miroku, who had long been prepared, let out a resolute light from her eyes.
She bit her tongue and spat a mouthful of blood, saturated with the power of the Priestess, onto the seals she had prepared.
"Secret Art: Sealing!"