In the center of the courtyard, Ren Uchiha's brow furrowed.
The violent Dark Chakra had coalesced into the shape of a Rasengan within his palm, but now the energy began to spiral wildly around the core of the dark sphere! With his current level of control, it was impossible to compress or stabilize. From the moment it took shape, this deep, obsidian Rasengan began to expand toward a state of total instability.
However, Ren never intended to control it!
He saw this as the perfect opportunity to test if an Expanding Rasengan could substitute for a Tailed Beast Bomb to fire a Menacing Beast Beam!
Standing amidst the sea of fire, he slowly raised the throbbing orb. Then, unhinging his jaw—which, in this half-tailed beast state, split all the way to his ears—he swallowed the dark, ticking time bomb of a Rasengan whole!
The next instant, the savage Dark Chakra exploded within him!
Anger, pain, emptiness, frustration, jealousy, fear... Countless negative emotions flooded Ren's mind, igniting a primal urge to destroy everything in sight! His throat, chest, and abdomen swelled violently, bloating his body like an overinflated balloon. Cracks even began to spiderweb across the surface of his skin as the sheer volume of power reached its breaking point.
Forced to drop to all fours to maintain any semblance of control, Ren hit the ground just as the four massive fire dragons roared toward his face!
BOOM!
The explosion's high temperatures and concussive force sent the bloated, unable-to-dodge Ren flying. He skipped three times across the white sand of the garden, carving a massive trench in the ground before rolling to a stop.
As he scrambled back to his feet, Ren's face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated violence! The veins around his crimson snake pupils throbbed and thickened. One prominent blood vessel even pulsed across the back of his head, connecting directly to the Cursed Seal of Heaven on his neck, prying a gap in the Evil-Sealing Method!
The surrounding Natural Energy was instantly sucked dry! A surge of overwhelming power flooded his system. Ren's eyes locked onto the stunned Jie Uchiha behind the smoke of the fire dragons, and a sudden, sharp killing intent flared in his distended snake pupils.
"Wait! I didn't mean to kill this old man!" Ren thought frantically.
Suddenly, a line of text flickered before his eyes:
[Warning: Under the influence of Natural Energy, a new personality is being born.]
[Talent: Combat Intuition (S+) activated. The primary personality has avoided being consumed by the sub-personality.]
Under the influence of his Combat Intuition, Ren's conscious mind felt as though it were being stripped from his physical form. He suddenly found himself floating in mid-air, looking down at his own body from a third-person perspective.
He watched his half-tailed beast self as if it were being controlled by someone else. Looking at the arrogant, cold, and murderous snake pupils on his own face, Ren felt a surge of panic.
"What is going on?!"
Before he could process it, the 'Half-Beast Ren' raised his chin and aimed his open maw directly at Jie Uchiha in the sky! If he let this beam loose, the old man would be vaporized instantly! Ren could only use his detached consciousness to desperately pull the trajectory of the attack off-course.
The next second, 'Half-Beast Ren' dug his claws deep into the earth.
He roared at the heavens!
A sonic boom erupted from his mouth, the recoil shattering the ground beneath him into dust. The swallowed dark energy erupted as a massive, obsidian pillar of light!
A Menacing Beast Beam!
The beam tore through the sky, traveling nearly three kilometers! It pierced through pavilions, collapsed manors, and evaporated entire sections of the river... It punched a hole straight through the ancient Uchiha Ancestral Shrine of the Naka River. Finally, it traced a long arc and slammed into the forested territory belonging to the Senju Clan on the other side!
BOOM!!!
The ground convulsed. It felt as though an 8.0 magnitude earthquake had struck Konoha! A pitch-black mushroom cloud rose high above the Senju district. The instantaneous heat of the wildfire burned more brilliantly than the sun itself!
Back at the epicenter, the mere shockwave of the blast sent Jie Uchiha spinning through the air. He was hurled over a hundred meters, landing with a splash in a distant pond.
Soaked and trembling, Jie crawled out of the water, his eyes wide with horror as he watched the black beam vanish into the horizon.
"What... what even is that?!" he stammered.
Unfortunately, the only one who might have recognized it—Takeyoshi Uchiha—was still paralyzed by the Sage Art: Eye of White Rage.
"That kid... he really tried to kill me just now," Jie thought, shivering as he remembered those indifferent, blood-red eyes. "If it hadn't veered off at the last second, I'd be dead!"
His face suddenly paled. He remembered he wasn't the only one there. "Oh no—Yashiro is still over there!"
Meanwhile, in a seemingly ordinary residence in Konoha...
In a study filled with specimen jars and biological samples preserved in formalin, Orochimaru was flipping through records he had retrieved from Root. Though someone had tried to erase the tracks, Orochimaru's keen eyes found what he was looking for: records of supplies used specifically for Wood Style training.
Seven years ago, in the year 40 of Konoha.
To gain access to Konoha's Forbidden Jutsus, he and Danzo had secretly collaborated on a project that had supposedly been shut down—the fusion of First Hokage cells to replicate Wood Style. He had thought the experiment a failure, but now... it seemed Danzo had hidden something interesting.
"The Cursed Seal is far from perfect; it only stabilized because of Ren's terrifying physical constitution," Orochimaru hissed to himself. "Transforming from a snake to a dragon... a Sage Mode that looks like a shortcut, but hides unknown risks. Heh, the White Snake Sage is playing a deep game."
"When one truly masters the Senjutsu of Ryūchi Cave... will they still be themselves? The influence of Ryūchi Cave's Natural Energy is far more troublesome than imagined. I must study Wood Style first—to see how the God of Shinobi integrated such power into his body."
"And while I'm at it, I can help the boy cultivate that pitifully weak 'Artificial Tailed Beast' inside him."
Orochimaru's snake pupils narrowed, settling on a name on a list of recent Root graduates.
[Kinoe]!
A cold, predatory smirk spread across his face.
Suddenly, the sky outside the window darkened! A black mushroom cloud billowed from the south of Konoha. Then, the tremor hit—a violent earth-shaking boom followed by a shockwave that swept through the village and slammed into Orochimaru's window!
Crack!
The glass splintered. Orochimaru's smile froze.
"What is this? Did the Nine-Tails break loose?!"
"No... wait. The Evil-Sealing Method on the Cursed Seal was pried open... and this Natural Energy..."
Orochimaru's heart skipped a beat, his scalp tingling. He looked toward the explosion—the Senju territory, right next to the Uchiha district.
He realized today was the day his "dear disciple" was scheduled to return home.
Orochimaru's face twisted into a mask of realization and fury.
"REN UCHIHA!!!"
"What have you done now?!"
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