The artificial sun hanging high at the center of the moon's inner dome emitted constant light and heat, yet its core was not magma but a bizarre space constructed from pure energy.
Deep within the majestic castle floating in the air, countless servant puppets stood lined along the corridors.
In a hall within, the decaying Otsutsuki Shuto was guiding the young Toneri to perceive the stellar power of the Giant Tenseigan, teaching him how to use it.
Suddenly, on the star chart floating in the center of the hall, the node representing the [Crab Puppet] at the passage entrance abruptly dimmed, turning into a dead, ashen gray.
Shuto's face, wrapped in seal-covered bandages, turned towards the star chart. A cold anger silently spread.
"Foul vermin actually dare to defile the sacred land of Hamura-sama!" His hoarse voice was like the rustling of dry leaves.
Hum-!
A piercing alarm instantly tore through the castle's silence!
Below the castle, countless hidden hatch doors simultaneously swung open!
Hundreds of combat puppets leaped out in unison!
They wore ancient-styled brown robes, their faces tightly wrapped in layers of bandages, a headband tied around their foreheads bearing the distinctive clan crest of the Otsutsuki Clan's branch family.
These combat puppets moved with precise and swift actions, like well-wound killing machines, landing steadily on the backs of giant puppet eagles that had already been hovering in wait.
These puppet eagles had dark red masks covering their heads. Their massive wings suddenly spread, stirring up silent air currents!
Screech-!
The combination of over a hundred puppet eagles and combat puppets shot forth like a rain of black arrows released from a bow, diving fiercely towards the direction of the barrier exit below the artificial sun!
At the same time, in the vast sky below the artificial sun.
Menma's figure hovered in the void, his black robe fluttering in the microgravity. The levitation power granted by Tennyo allowed him to fly freely without external aid.
Behind him, two massive summoning beasts were radiating immense pressure.
On the left, Suzaku elegantly spread its wings. Hikari and Kanon stood on its back, Hikari's deep blue clan garments and Kanon's fiery red hair flowing in the wind.
On the right, Seiryu coiled. Shisui, Hizashi, and Kimimaro stood firmly on the dragon's spine.
Shisui's expression was grave. Hizashi's Byakugan warily scanned the dome, while Kimimaro's Byakugan also surveyed the sun in the sky.
The team was advancing towards the 'sun' at the center of the dome!
"Above! Enemy attack!" Hizashi's Byakugan was the first to detect the movement. He issued a sharp warning, his voice sounding muffled and oppressive in the vacuum.
Before his words faded, pale yellow dots of light were already closing in like a meteor shower!
The puppet eagle knights uniformly raised their arms. Their palms instantly erupted with dazzling light!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Dense clusters of Chakra Light Balls tore across the sky, weaving into a deadly net of light covering the sky, pouring down upon the group!
"Scatter! Counterattack!" Menma's voice remained steady, yet it was perfectly clear in everyone's ears.
Seiryu let out a roar, lightning blazing around its body. It transformed into a twisting blue lightning bolt, narrowly avoiding several thick energy beams. The lightning collided with grazing light balls, exploding into silent sparks.
Suzaku's crimson wings gave a powerful flap. A violent heat wave formed a shield, detonating several incoming light balls prematurely into gorgeous yet dangerous energy fireworks!
On Suzaku's back, Hikari's eyes were sharp as knives.
Her hands formed hand seals so fast they turned into a blur, "Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Nail Crimson!"
Her cherry lips parted slightly. Dozens of blazing orange fireballs, like violently blooming flowers of death, shrieked towards the diving puppet swarm!
At the moment the flames spewed forth, her wrists flicked, sending over a dozen steel shuriken shooting out, hidden precisely behind the churning waves of fire!
Thud! Boom!
Flames and shuriken played a symphony of death!
Several puppet eagles leading the charge were precisely pierced by the shuriken wreathed in flames. Blazing fire subsequently consumed them, blasting them into fragments in the air!
The puppet riders on their backs turned into scrap along with their mounts.
"Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets!"
Kimimaro leveled his arms. The skin on his ten fingertips instantly split. Ten pale finger bones gleaming with a cold luster shot out like bolts from a crossbow, leaving with an ear-piercing shriek!
The speed of the bone bullets surpassed the limits of visual capture, leaving ten nearly straight white afterimages in the air!
Thud thud thud thud!
Precise pinpoint kills!
The dense sounds of impact and explosion rang out like popcorns popping!
Puppet eagles hit by the bone bullets, whether their tough skeletons or wrapped 'flesh', were easily pierced and torn apart like rotten wood!
Over a dozen puppet eagles, along with their controllers on their backs, disintegrated with a roar under Kimimaro's precise and ruthless pinpoint kills, turning into a sky full of debris and wreckage!
Menma glanced at Kimimaro's performance with satisfaction, 'Byakugan combined with Shikotsumyaku even allowed for high-precision sniping at medium to long range.'
"Adamantine Sealing Chains!"
Kanon's voice carried the unique Chakra Resonance of the Uzumaki Clan.
She raised her right hand and thrust it forward fiercely!
Several Chakra Chains, as thick as an adult's arm, covered in golden sealing seals, materialized behind her.
The chains didn't attack single targets but lashed out like giant whips against the densest flank of the puppet eagle swarm!
Boom!
Crack…!
The tremendous force, carrying the properties of sealing techniques, shattered and twisted the puppet eagles' tough skeletons like rotten wood wherever it passed.
The wrapped dark materials were easily torn. The puppets on their backs were directly blasted apart by the immense power contained in the chains!
With one strike, over ten puppet eagles along with their puppets were turned into dust!
The team rapidly ascended amidst the fierce counterattack, quickly approaching the outer wall of the artificial sun that emanated vast energy fluctuations.
However, the puppet army showed no fear. Their formation instantly changed, like a well-trained swarm of bees, fearlessly attacking once more.
Even more Chakra Light Balls poured down like a storm, completely enveloping Suzaku and Seiryu!
"Shura-sama! How do we break through?!" Shisui, after attacking the artificial sun with Fire Release Ninjutsu, found its defenses astonishing and saw no way to breach it.
Menma, standing in the sky, did not answer.
He simply slowly raised his right hand.
Above his palm, the air abruptly distorted and collapsed!
A heart-pounding destructive energy madly gathered and compressed!
In the blink of an eye, a dark energy sphere, only the size of an apple, deep as an abyss, took form!
It hovered quietly in Shura's palm, its surface wrapped in) high-speed rotating Wind Attribute Chakra, cutting the surrounding space,
stirring up fine spatial ripples.
Extreme compression brought extreme dead silence, as if even the surrounding light was being devoured by it!
"Great Spiralling Ring!" Menma's voice was calm without a single ripple.
There was no earth-shattering prelude, just a gentle push of his wrist.
The pitch-black small sphere drifted silently towards the impregnable sun barrier.
The moment of contact!
Boom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
An indescribable light of destruction erupted violently on the surface of the artificial sun!
First, there was an extreme white dot, which instantly expanded into a pure white that swallowed everything!
The white light was so intense it instantly stripped everyone's vision!
Following closely was a terrifying roar powerful enough to tear eardrums, as if the entire space was howling in agony under this blow!
The blinding light instantly engulfed everyone's vision!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A devastating shockwave, centered on the sphere of light, spread madly in all directions in a perfect sphere!
Wherever it passed, space violently shook, groaning under an unbearable burden!
The pursuing puppet eagle swarms, like pieces of paper fed into a shredder, were silently disintegrated and vaporized the instant the shockwave reached them, completely disappearing along with the puppets on their backs!
Even with the protection of Seiryu and Suzaku, Shisui, Hizashi, Kimimaro, and the others were shaken to their core by this world-shattering display of power!
Kanon instinctively tightened her grip on Suzaku's feathers, while Hikari's Sharingan narrowed slightly against the intense light.
As the blinding glare subsided slightly, a scene of utter devastation unfolded before their eyes.
A gigantic hole over a hundred meters in diameter had been blasted open in the seemingly indestructible pale yellow barrier of the artificial sun!
From within the hole, a soft golden light shone through.
Even more terrifyingly, the chaotic currents formed by the explosion faintly outlined the silhouette of a slowly rising... mushroom cloud, composed of dust and dissipated energy!
A look of unconcealed shock appeared for the first time on Hikari's usually cool face, the destructive light reflected in her Mangekyo Sharingan.
'Last time when he fought me, he didn't use this move... Damn it, this guy… he wasn't even going all out against me!' Hikari glanced at Menma with a hint of resentment.
"Go!" Menma's cold voice shattered the dead silence. His figure turned into a black streak as he shot into the gaping wound!
Suzaku, carrying Uchiha Hikari and Yuzuki, followed closely behind, charging!
Seiryu, carrying Shisui, Hizashi, and Kimimaro, also plunged into this violently torn passageway!
Passing through a brief golden tunnel, the scene before their eyes brought an even deeper shock!
The interior of the artificial sun was not the sea of molten lava they had anticipated.
Before them was a vast, boundless void.
The space presented a deep, dark blue, with countless tiny, glowing dust particles suspended within it like stars. In the center of this void, the most eye-catching feature was a giant, waning moon!
And further away, diagonally above the waning moon, a majestic castle of exotic style floated silently!
It was constructed entirely from massive, neatly cut gray-white stone blocks, with cold, sharp lines. Its towering spires stabbed into the void, and its huge arched windows were tightly shut. Its style was completely different from any architecture in the Ninja World, carrying an ancient and aloof European aesthetic.
Countless meteorite fragments of varying sizes, like loyal guards, orbited both the waning moon and the aloof castle, forming a massive, slowly rotating meteorite belt.
The meteorite belt, like a planetary ring, silently guarded the core of this space.
"That is-" Kanon murmured softly, her pupils reflecting the cold, lonely castle.
"The castle of the Otsutsuki Clan on the moon." Menma's voice came through his mask, cold and certain.
The team immediately adjusted their direction. Seiryu and Suzaku accelerated again, charging towards the castle!
However, the moment they entered the range of the meteorite belt, a sudden change occurred!
Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Bzzzt!
Countless blinding searchlight beams instantly lit up from behind those seemingly dead meteorites, firmly locking onto the intruders!
Immediately after, the surfaces of the meteorites cracked open, and rows of ferocious-looking quadruple anti-aircraft gun turrets rapidly rose and calibrated themselves!
Combat puppets manned these anti-aircraft artillery pieces. The dark muzzles of the guns instantly gathered an awe-inspiring, dazzling chakra light!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
A firestorm ten times more intense than that of the previous puppet eagle riders suddenly erupted!
Dense, incredibly powerful Chakra Spheres shot forth like a metallic storm from all directions, leaving no room for evasion! The scorching trails left by the light spheres tearing through the void wove together into an inescapable net!
"Breakthrough!" Menma barked, Dark Chakra surging around him.
But a crimson figure was faster than him!
Standing on the back of Suzaku, Hikari's deep blue clan robes whipped wildly in the turbulent flow.
Her Three-Tomoe Sharingan instantly transformed into the unique pattern of the Mangekyo!
"Hmph! Annoying!" A cold, murderous shout rang out.
Without the slightest hesitation, she took a step forward and leaped away from Suzaku!
"Hikari!" Kanon's cry of alarm was drowned out by the silent explosions.
The instant Hikari left Suzaku, a torrent of Crimson Chakra powerful enough to make space tremble erupted violently from her small body!
Substantial, violent Chakra shot skyward, instantly condensing into the outline of a giant, skeletal, red humanoid upper body!
But this was only the beginning!
The skeleton was rapidly wrapped, filled, and shaped by flowing red Chakra!
In the blink of an eye, a complete-body red giant, dozens of meters tall, stood proudly in the void!
Behind the giant, a pair of massive wings, constructed from pure chakra and blotting out the sky, suddenly spread open!
Like a mythical fire demon god descending upon the mortal world!
In the giant's hand, a massive samurai sword formed from dark red chakra gleamed with a cold light capable of severing stars!
"Susanoo!"
The giant's enormous body, moving with a terrifying speed completely mismatched to its size, turned into a red lightning bolt tearing through the void, boldly charging headfirst into the incoming net of light beams and the dense meteorite belt!
The crimson giant's wings furiously spread open, forcibly tearing a gap through the dense rain of light bullets!
Facing the artillery emplacements on the meteorites ahead that were spewing furious tongues of fire, the world-cleaving giant blade in the giant's hand was raised high, carrying the supreme power to sever cause and effect and annihilate all things, and ruthlessly slashed down!
"Break-!"
Hikari's cold voice, like a judgment, resonated through the void via the Susanoo.
The enormous Chakra Sword was raised high, erupting with a blinding red light on its blade!
A single slash fell!
No fancy techniques, only violence in its purest form!
Boom, boom, boom!!!
The massive dark red sword light, like an axe cleaving heaven and earth, slammed fiercely into the dense net of light beams and the meteorites blocking the path!
Wherever the sword light passed, dozens of tracking beams were easily severed and annihilated like fragile threads!
Those incredibly hard meteorites, the moment they touched the blade's edge, were cleanly cut and shattered like tofu!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of deafening explosions continuously rang out within the meteorite belt! The meteorites struck by the blade, along with the anti-aircraft artillery mounted on them, were completely pulverized within the violent sword energy and Chakra Storm!
Countless shattered rocks and metal debris shot out in all directions like a storm!
The massive meteorites, along with their densely packed anti-aircraft gun turrets and crystal bunkers, were like rotten wood and dry grass before this absolute force!
Instantly torn apart, shattered, turned to dust!
Silent explosions transformed into balls of energy fire that violently expanded within the void, dazzling and deadly!
This crimson Susanoo became the most indestructible spearhead, forcibly carving a path of blood and fire for the team!
Every time the giant blade fell, it was accompanied by the wails of meteorites and the complete annihilation of puppet artillery!
The team followed closely behind this crimson giant, rapidly shuttling through the flashing explosions and torrents of metal fragments, constantly approaching that pale castle floating in the void, emanating a cold aura.
Shisui watched this Susanoo with a complex look in his eyes. He could feel that Hikari's power seemed to have refined further, while he...
Hizashi, standing on the spine of Seiryu, kept his Byakugan active the entire time, fixedly staring at the increasingly close magnificent castle.
Beneath the bulging veins on his temples, within those pure white pupils, besides highly vigilant solemnity, surged an extremely complex, indescribable emotion.
His Byakugan saw through those puppets, but he was horrified to discover that these humanoid puppets seemed to have once been living people!
'Is this… the aftermath of the war between the Otsutsuki Clan's main family and the branch family on the moon?'