The explosive chakra of the Two-Tails condensed into a tightly compressed sphere, spinning within a wooden hand.
Yako swung his arm, and that wooden hand suddenly surged forward, extending more than a hundred meters as it pointed toward Totai across the ravine.
The air rang with the crashing, rustling roar of Wood Release growing at high speed.
This was essentially a Rasengan made from a Tailed Beast Bomb.
Totai immediately leapt away to evade it. He was the Tailed Beast Bomb's first target.
And yet, the wooden hand could change direction with ease.
Panic flashed through Totai's heart.
Not good. The Tailed Beast Bomb was going to hit him.
He hurriedly used Lava Release: Rubber Ball.
A massive sphere of rubber enveloped him.
This secret Lava Release technique was extraordinarily powerful. Even the Third Raikage's four-finger Hell Stab couldn't pierce the Rubber Ball.
The Tailed Beast Bomb exploded in midair.
A rubber sphere was blasted away.
Dodai's fate was unclear, while Ryuuren on the ground began to change rapidly.
Within the reddish-brown chakra, more and more blue chakra emerged.
That was the true chakra of the Two-Tails.
A gigantic blue flaming panther-cat appeared atop the hill.
The fully transformed Two-Tails!
The other Cloud ninja hurriedly retreated to both sides, avoiding the searing heat of the Two-Tails' chakra.
"Hippo, Kyoichi, take the Konoha ninja and fall back to the rear flanks," Yako said.
"The Jinchūriki is getting serious. In that case, I'll show a little of my real strength too."
Hippo and Nara Kyoichi quickly withdrew, leaving the central battlefield to Lord Fox.
They formed defensive lines on both sides of him.
The four hundred Cloud ninja split into two wings, two hundred on the left and two hundred on the right.
Facing a battlefield crowded with enemy ninja across the low hills, facing such overwhelming odds, the Konoha ninja could not help but feel uneasy.
But as Konoha ninja, no matter how vast the gap in strength between friend and foe, they would never retreat. They would still raise their kunai.
Even if they died, they would not step back.
And just as the Konoha ninja steeled themselves for death, the earth beside them began to shake violently.
Every Cloud ninja froze.
Because...
The sun had been blotted out.
"Wood Release: Thousand-Hand Wrathful King!"
Beneath Yako's feet, a fifty-meter-tall Threefold Wood Golem burst from the earth.
The Threefold Wood Golem emerged in a seated posture.
And beneath it, the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King continued to rise from underground.
Senju Hashirama's True Several Thousand Hands had stood close to a thousand meters tall.
Yako had only gone through fifty reincarnations so far. He had four hundred and fifty arms, still in the middle of his growth.
Even so, his Thousand-Hand Wrathful King already stood over five hundred meters tall.
But to the Two-Tails, whose shoulder height exceeded thirty meters, what difference was there between five hundred meters and a thousand?
The Cloud ninja stared upward at the monstrous wooden giant blocking out the sun, each of them thrown into panic.
It's over...
How could anyone use chakra to create a giant this enormous?
The Konoha ninja had never seen the legendary True Several Thousand Hands of the God of Shinobi. At this moment, the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King before them was already the most terrifying Wood Release they had ever witnessed.
The legend stood right in front of them.
Fear appeared in the Two-Tails' eyes.
For an instant, it felt as though she had returned to the day she had first been captured by Senju Hashirama.
Back then, Hashirama had crushed her beneath True Several Thousand Hands.
The forms were quite different. True Several Thousand Hands bore the merciful visage of a Buddha, while the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King before her was a wrathful deity, savage and fierce.
Back then, Hashirama had called her a threat, then captured and sealed her within a minute.
Even after being sealed, the Two-Tails had been bewildered.
Why was there a shinobi so strong?
If he could capture her in a single minute, what threat had she possibly posed?
Now, seeing another gigantic thousand-handed wooden Buddha, the Two-Tails scraped nervously at the ground with her claws.
This time, Yako had no need to test her.
He didn't care what abilities the Two-Tails possessed.
What he wanted was simple:
to test the offensive power of his Thousand-Hand Wrathful King.
In any case, the Two-Tails would revive again a few years later.
One wooden arm after another sprouted forth. All through the hills came the crackling thunder of wood growing at explosive speed.
The first wooden fist smashed into the Two-Tails' shoulder, forcing her foreleg to buckle and slamming her down to the ground.
Then came the next fist.
And the next.
And the next.
The Two-Tails raised her head with difficulty and condensed a Tailed Beast Bomb.
But before it could be fired, the next wooden fist slammed into it and blew it apart.
In an instant, the Two-Tails was swallowed by thick smoke.
The Thousand-Hand Wisdom King ignored the explosion.
Ignored the smoke.
Coldly, mercilessly, it kept hammering its fists into the cloud.
The wind stirred up by the blows tore the smoke away.
In terror, the Cloud ninja saw that every single punch that landed on the Two-Tails caused part of the blue flames on her body to scatter.
At one moment, blue fire exploded from the Two-Tails' body in a violent burst.
At the next, the thousand hands smashed it apart again.
After only a few dozen seconds, the Two-Tails had collapsed on the ground.
What was even more terrifying was that the attack hadn't stopped.
The Two-Tails' body looked as though it were falling apart, twisting, tearing, breaking away in chunks, like the hide of a beast that had been savaged and ripped open.
A moment ago, they could still see the panther-cat's jaws open wide.
The next moment, two fists crashed down and smashed its mouth to pieces.
Then its head, shoulders, torso, and tail were all battered apart.
Was that still a Tailed Beast...?
The Two-Tails had actually been beaten to pulp alive?
And all this while, the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King had only used a little over three hundred arms.
Only when a horrifying ripple of chakra erupted where the Two-Tails had been did the assault finally stop. A chakra shockwave spread outward in rings, like ripples racing across water.
In the distance, Totai, whose fractures were being treated by a medical ninja, stared in horror as the chakra shockwave swept toward him.
The Tailed Beast Bomb from before had not broken through his Rubber Ball, but the impact had slammed him back and forth inside it, breaking bones all over his body.
Now he could no longer spare any thought for the pain.
Only terror and despair remained in his heart.
The shockwave hit, blasting the medical ninja several meters away.
The medical ninja scrambled back in panic, resuming Totai's treatment as he asked, "Lord Totai, what was that shockwave?"
"Th-that's... the chakra released when the Two-Tails died..."
"The Two-Tails died? A Tailed Beast can die too? Can a Tailed Beast actually be beaten to death? Then what about Lord Ryuuren?"
Totai shut his eyes in agony.
"Ryuuren sacrificed herself. She was killed by Konoha's Fox. Who could have imagined that Fox's Wood Release would come to possess a fraction of the God of Shinobi, Senju Hashirama's power?"
Totai abruptly opened his eyes and shouted, "Send the order at once! All Cloud ninja, retreat!"
After pounding the Two-Tails to death, the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King still had more than a hundred arms remaining.
Its gigantic five-hundred-meter body slowly turned toward the left flank.
The two hundred Cloud ninja on that side fled in terror.
But how could they possibly outrun the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King?
More than a hundred fists shot forward and crashed down toward the earth.
Low hill after low hill was destroyed.
After a single volley, more than one hundred and fifty Cloud ninja died beneath the relentless barrage.
Among them, a jonin remained behind to command the rear guard. He ordered thirty Cloud ninja to use a combined jutsu together.
The thirty of them stood in a concave arc with both hands raised. Lightning jumped wildly from palm to palm between them.
The power of the combined Lightning Release kept growing stronger.
So the Cloud ninja even had a cooperative jutsu like this.
The combined Lightning Release formed into a sphere of electricity.
Then, in a flash, that sphere transformed into a lightning spear.
The Threefold Wood Golem suddenly leapt down from atop the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King's head.
Compared to the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King, the Threefold Wood Golem looked almost small.
But once it landed on the ground, it was still a giant dozens of meters tall.
Its palm opened wide and blocked the Cloud ninja's combined Lightning Release jutsu head-on.
The Cloud jonin saw only that the wooden palm had darkened slightly and was giving off a wisp of blue smoke.
The despair in his heart reached its peak.
Even a Tailed Beast Bomb couldn't destroy the Threefold Wood Golem.
How could this combined jutsu possibly do it?
The Threefold Wood Golem slammed both hands into the ground.
"Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence!"
The Cloud ninja were swallowed by a forest of maples, crushed to death beneath the descending trees.
After a single Wood Release technique, every Cloud ninja in sight was either dead or wounded.
The Threefold Wood Golem turned, then leapt high into the air before crashing down to the right side of the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King.
There were still another two hundred Cloud ninja fleeing there.
Seeing this, Nara Kyoichi immediately shouted, "Pursue them! Don't let a single Cloud ninja escape! Avenge the Konoha ninja who died here!"
Kyoichi sprinted through the hills, vaulting over two ridges, when the world around him suddenly brightened.
He looked up, only then realizing that he had merely stepped out from under the shadow of the Thousand-Hand Wrathful King.
Sunlight fell across the deity's face, yet it could not dispel its savage wrath.
Once he returned to the village, he was going to have a serious talk with the clan head.
Clan Head Nara Shikakaku had told him to cooperate fully with Vice Commander Fox.
But clearly, the clan head still hadn't understood just how important Vice Commander Fox truly was.
A Lord Fox who could beat a Tailed Beast to death head-on...
No amount of importance would be too much.