Meanwhile, on another side of the battlefield, Ryusei faced the Edo Tensei forms of the Third Kazekage, the Second Mizukage, and two unknown warriors, an ancient samurai and a monk, who had surrounded him from the very beginning.
All four focused solely on him, their coordinated movements leaving no room for error.
The Third Kazekage floated above the field, clouds of black iron sand swirling around him like a living storm, shaped and guided by his Magnet Release.
This wasn't the weakened imitation that had once been turned into Sasori's puppet; it was the real Third Kazekage, restored in full, his true body reinforced by Edo Tensei's endless chakra and regeneration.
Ryusei knew better than to take him lightly, not even for a second.
Each grain carried enough force to pierce steel, forming weapons and barriers in an instant.
Across from him, the Second Mizukage stood calmly beside his enormous summoning, the Giant Clam. Its shell opened slowly, releasing thick waves of mist that blanketed the battlefield.
The haze shimmered faintly, capable of producing countless illusions that distorted sight, sound, and even chakra perception, making it impossible for most shinobi to distinguish reality from mirage.
But Ryusei wasn't most shinobi. His current pure genjutsu defense, together with his Byakugan, was refined enough to slice through such illusions like paper.
The mist bent and swirled, but his mind stayed clear. He recognized the clam's limited purpose; it could only sustain the mirage, and decided to ignore it altogether.
His allies were fighting far from this area, so he saw no reason to waste energy destroying something so sturdy and irrelevant.
He dashed straight toward Gengetsu, his chakra flaring as his six Inner Gates burst open one after another. Three months of relentless training with quake micro-pulses had pushed his body past its limits, refining his muscles and nerves until he could open six gates without tearing himself apart.
The result was terrifying speed. His weight-manipulation technique made him lighter, his quake pulses fired from his legs like shock cannons, and the boiling essence of Kakuo coursed through his body, propelling him forward with blinding acceleration.
The Third Kazekage tried to intercept, iron sand forming a wall in his path, but it crumbled the moment Ryusei's fist struck it. The impact shattered the metallic barrier like brittle glass, sending black particles scattering through the air.
Mitotic Regeneration pulsed quietly through his body, healing the microdamage from the extreme velocity. It also gave him the freedom to move recklessly, pushing the gates harder, running faster, attacking without restraint. His regenerative state acted as a buffer, preventing his body from self-destructing under the constant pressure.
As Ryusei closed in on the Mizukage, the other two finally moved. The old samurai stepped forward, drawing his blade in a crescent arc that hummed with condensed energy. At the same time, the monk slammed his palms together, launching a compressed blast that distorted the air itself.
Ryusei's sensory field flared to full capacity, and he twisted out of the way, the two attacks barely grazing him. But as the wave passed, he felt something strange humming in the energy itself. His eyes narrowed. "That wasn't just ordinary chakra or air blast... It contained something else..." he muttered. "Could it be… natural energy?"
Ryusei previously wondered why a genius like Tobirama and a false 'god' like Hagoromo would bother sending one monk and one samurai against him. They weren't known for any great power in this world, honestly. Yet here, he finally got his answer. These weren't ordinary men.
It also solved another mystery that had lingered in his mind for a long time, in the process, about how monks and samurai managed to rule the world for so long before active chakra even existed.
Historical records hinted they had also been 'superhuman' to an extent, compared to Ryusei's past world, especially in the so-called masters, but never explained how. Now he understood.
Maybe through decades of discipline and meditation, they reached such deep stillness and connection with reality itself that they began to sense and even use the natural energy around them.
Not like the Sage Mode of shinobi, which internalized it, but something different, 'external senjutsu'. They didn't absorb natural energy into their bodies; they shaped their strikes around it, blending natural force into every attack, amplifying it through perfect timing and focus.
And on top of that, Hagoromo must have modified them further before shipping them out to harm Ryusei.
Ryusei could tell they were now using chakra, too, something impossible in their original era. That fusion of old natural resonance and new chakra structure made their power alien, ancient yet precise.
He didn't underestimate them for a moment. He could vaguely feel the natural energy waves clearly now, but not fully like he could everything else, and it was his biggest sensory blind spot nowadays.
"I should hurry up and learn Sage Mode myself," he thought. "Seems that at the top levels, it's crucial. Hope this body grows faster for that to be possible…"
Still, Ryusei didn't find it strange that Tobirama hadn't sent more Edo Tensei after him.
Tobirama didn't have infinite control. Maybe he had infinite chakra as an Edo himself, but not infinite mental bandwidth.
Ryusei still didn't see him as a genius on the level of Kabuto, whom he considered the greatest natural prodigy this world had ever produced, who was able to circumvent this later down the line.
It also likely had less to do with any direct link to the Pure Land and more with the inherent limits of the Edo Tensei formula itself, its efficiency, coordination, and the strain of simultaneous control.
Even Hagoromo couldn't compensate for those constraints so quickly.
Still, Ryusei didn't doubt that it might become possible soon, judging by how drastically Tobirama's control had already evolved compared to Danzō's crude just months earlier.
Not to mention, Ryusei was certain that at least seven former Kage-level souls were being used to sustain the massive barrier surrounding the battlefield, a dimensional anchor of sorts that entrapped everything within, for dozens of kilometers, while completely preventing any form of escape or spatial transfer.
Even if Hagoromo was helping, controlling all of that simultaneously was very difficult.
Tobirama was also leading the four Edo Tensei fighting Ryusei while personally battling Tsunade and Kanae elsewhere.
And all of those were Kage-level entities.
Therefore, handling than ten at once with full coordination was impossible even for Tobirama, with all the improvements he made for the technique and Hagoromo's help from the other dimension.
After all, Ryusei was certain at this point that Hagoromo couldn't directly affect anything in this real world, only do so through his proxies.
Otherwise, Ryusei knew he would have already been crushed instantly; if Hagoromo could simply create ten more monks and samurai like these for Tobirama to command, it would already be over.
However, it also depended heavily on the material itself, on the souls.
Ryusei was certain that monks like these two were one-in-a-thousand-years anomalies, the kind of beings nature itself produced only once in an era.
Ryusei had already thought long and hard about how to counter this problem of the enemy's possible indiscriminate usage of Edo Tensei on him and his allies, still in the future.
Because, theoretically, as long as Konoha retained access to Edo Tensei, Hagoromo could keep interfering with the living world through it, launching new assaults and creating endless complications for him.
One obvious solution, he immediately thought of, was to use captured Edo Tensei bodies against them, fight the undead with the undead.
Yet that plan quickly fell apart. When he and Ashina attempted to use the sealed souls of powerful Izuna, which they had already captured, something went terribly wrong.
They used their own refined version of the technique, based on the Edo Tensei formula Ryusei had obtained from Orochimaru long ago, but every time they tried, the souls were violently repelled, snatched back toward the Pure Land by an overwhelming force.
The recoil was so intense that it nearly tore at their own souls before they barely managed to release the jutsu and reseal them back in time.
That was when Ryusei understood. Hagoromo had probably seized dominion, to some extent, over the Pure Land itself.
His vast spiritual mass acted as both barrier and anchor, blocking any external summoning attempts and even preventing manipulation of souls lingering in limbo on Earth, while still letting his own influence seep into the world through Tobirama's growing Edo Tensei stuff.
However, Ryusei had no time left to think, as his enemies surged forward again with renewed intensity.