Soon, the two sides finally came face to face.
At the front stood Danzo, clad in a new, almost ceremonial battle uniform, its dark cloth and plated armor exuding both authority and madness.
His right arm was still wrapped and sealed, the bandages faintly pulsing underneath, a reminder of the monstrous power hidden there.
Around him stood his small formation of Edo Tensei.
Sasuke Sarutobi, calm and composed, the legendary shinobi of the Warring States era.
Kagami Uchiha, his red eyes gleaming faintly and his face curious.
Mito Uzumaki, her crimson hair swaying, her expression distant yet regal.
Izuna Uchiha, fierce, silent, the only one still under Danzo's direct control.
And finally—Sakumo Hatake.
That last summon was almost accidental.
Even Danzo didn't fully understand how he had succeeded this time.
He had attempted to call the White Fang dozens of times before and failed, but recently, something shifted.
The summoning circle had flared brighter than usual, and Sakumo's spirit had answered.
Danzo considered it fate—or perhaps irony—that the man now stood among his pawns.
Izuna, however, was a different matter.
During Danzo's earlier trials, for this exact operation, he'd tested the Uchiha's control limits, pushing the boundaries of Edo Tensei manipulation.
To his shock, Izuna's Susanoo had then manifested new, unrecorded spirit weapons, for the first time since the contact—ethereal long lost relics of the Uchiha legend: the Totsuka Blade and the Yata Mirror.
Danzo had researched obsessively afterward.
The Totsuka Blade—a spiritual weapon that could pierce and seal anything it struck.
The Yata Mirror—an ever-shifting barrier imbued with all elemental natures, capable of nullifying any attack, physical or spiritual.
Even for Danzo, the implications were staggering.
With these weapons, Izuna's Susanoo was nearly invincible.
And yet, here they all stood under his command.
Danzo's eyes flicked toward the distant treeline, narrowing as his hatred sharpened.
The boy was back.
His first strike had failed.
Despite all the preparation, the rehearsed attacks, and his new presence erasing technique.
Not only had Ryusei survived, but he had evaded Danzo's Flying Raijin seal entirely.
The initial plan—to mark him mid-escape and track him down later—had crumbled.
He hadn't expected the brat to use those slugs as instant transport nodes, teleporting the same way Minato did.
It still bothered him.
He had assumed the boy's Reverse Summoning was limited to the Shikkotsu Forest, which would take precious seconds.
Instead, Ryusei had somehow pinged a slug fragment nearby and teleported instantly, right under their noses.
That was something Tsunade never did, for example. So it wasn't accounted for by them.
But it didn't matter.
Danzo wasn't angry anymore. Obviously.
Because the boy foolishly returned.
Giving him another opportunity.
And it also told him something important.
Perhaps it was not entirely foolish.
"He came back," he murmured, eyes narrowing.
"Which means he's hiding something worth dying for."
Also, if he still, with his current world-class enhanced sensing, alongside Mito Uzumaki, couldn't sense his hideout after all this time, then whatever he was protecting was significant.
And that made it valuable.
Danzo's lips curled into a small, cold smile.
"Then let's see what secrets you'll bleed to protect."
Behind him, the Edo Tensei stirred, ancient power humming faintly through the ground.
Danzo knew that just one touch to him or his allies, with that marking, and Konoha could forever hunt them down anywhere they went.
Across the field, Ryusei and his allies emerged from the shadows, Tsunade, Ashina, Kiyomi, Kanae, and Renjiro forming a line beside him.
The air between the two groups crackled like a drawn blade.
Ryusei's slit-eyed gaze met Danzo's.
"You brought an audience for me," he said quietly.
"Five corpses and a coward behind them."
Danzo's eyes gleamed. "You should be honored. Few in this age are worth such effort."
For a moment, the world seemed to still, the calm before the inevitable collision.
Ryusei's chakra surged, spreading like a silent wave."Then let's see if you finally learned how to finish what you start, Danzo Shimura."
"Finish what I start?" he said. "That's exactly why I came here, Ryusei Senju. To erase every last trace of your kind—for good this time." Danzo's tone was cold but steady.
Ryusei's eyes swept over the battlefield once more.
A faint, mocking smile tugged at his lips.
"Danzo… I used to think of you as nothing but trash in ability," he said calmly. "And as a coward hiding behind his Root puppets, never dirtying his own hands. But I'll admit… seeing this, I might've been wrong. You actually showed up yourself, and your Edo Tensei looks very refined. You even managed to dig up some impressive corpses."
His gaze shifted briefly among the summons, then stopped for a moment longer on Sakumo Hatake.
There was a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes, but he masked it quickly, letting his attention return to Danzo.
"Oh, and that strange erasure technique from earlier," Ryusei continued, voice edged with curiosity.
"Let me guess—it's the Second Tsuchikage's ability, isn't it? How'd you get your hands on something like that?"
Danzo's eyes narrowed slightly, his expression unreadable. "You think too highly of yourself, boy," he replied coldly. "You'll understand soon enough. Everything here is part of Konoha's evolution. The strong adapt, the weak perish. You should be honored to die proving that truth."
Ryusei chuckled under his breath, a low, humorless sound. His silence was answer enough.
Ryusei could now, more or less, piece together and reconcile the current situation and the current version of Danzo standing before him, with the one he remembered from the original timeline.
It wasn't hard to guess what had changed.
His own existence had already created ripples large enough to alter everything.
Under the pressure Ryusei had placed on Konoha, Hiruzen had likely allowed Danzo to study Edo Tensei, even helping him prepare it as a countermeasure.
And judging by the precision of these summons, Danzo hadn't just learned it—he had mastered it.
The Hashirama cell arm from Orochimaru also made sense.
That, too, must have happened earlier this time, once again because of Ryusei's interference with history.
The Sharingan embedded in that arm were likely discovered and acquired ahead of schedule as well.
But what truly unsettled him were three particular things.
He understood how Konoha's leadership could revive people like Sasuke Sarutobi and Kagami Uchiha.
They were famed for their strength in history, and their DNA was easily accessible to them.
And their jutsu, Ryusei previously saw, though totally unseen in the original story he remembered, looked perfectly fitting for shinobi of their reputation.
Mito Uzumaki's presence wasn't far-fetched either.
Her body had almost certainly been preserved with great care, and it was entirely plausible that Danzo had modified the Edo Tensei formula to restore her in a prime, middle-aged state, roughly half her true age at death, which was rumored to be over a hundred.
After all, Kabuto had once done something similar with Madara, proving it could be done.
Even summoning Izuna was feasible, if risky.
The Uchiha tombs were well-guarded, but Konoha's higher-ups could have many ways of obtaining what they wanted.
And Sakumo's inclusion was also believable if only for the fact that his remains would have probably been buried somewhere accessible to them out of respect he had.
The first thing Ryusei couldn't comprehend was how Izuna's Susanoo had manifested the Totsuka Blade during the previous attack right before he teleported away; of that, he was absolutely certain.
That shouldn't have been possible.
Yes, those spiritual weapons, the Totsuka Blade and Yata Mirror, weren't unique to Itachi's Susanoo but rather independent artifacts, ancient relics.
Orochimaru's obsession with finding that blade had proven that.
Also, if it were merely an Uchiha clan ability, Orochimaru would have searched the compound, not the world.
So, the weapons were likely universal, resonating with those possessing a strong spiritual chakra, especially Uchiha with a Susanoo.
That explained how Izuna could theoretically wield them—but why now?
He didn't have them in life.
Ryusei was certain of it.
So, where had Danzo obtained them?
And the mysteries didn't stop there.
How had Danzo managed to use Mū's jutsu, which allowed him to approach him covertly like that in the first place?
Even Ryusei, with all his soul-related knowledge, engineering, and partial soul ventures into the Pure Land, couldn't replicate something like that.
He could never simply "copy and paste" an entire technique to such a perfect level, not to mention such an advanced one.
And then there was Sakumo.
His summoning shouldn't have been possible at all.
The White Fang's soul was known to rest in Purgatory, not the Pure Land, bound there because of his unresolved regret and his son's path.
Edo Tensei could only recall souls from the Pure Land, not those trapped in between.
All of it felt wrong.
Something else was influencing this battlefield—some unseen hand twisting the normal laws of spirituality, summoning and death.
Ryusei's sixth sense burned with warning, but there was no time to dwell on it.
Whatever was happening, he would have to uncover it later.
For now, all that mattered was surviving what stood before him.