Satsuki hovered in mid-air, mental threads spreading like an invisible spider's web, silently weaving a trap.
With a faint flick of his fingers, vast numbers of Shadow Clones were enslaved and sent to attack the other Clones nearby.
"Fools—mere vessels carrying a sliver of Chakra, and you dare show off before me?"
Satsuki tilted his chin, sweeping a disdainful gaze over the charging Clones below as though watching ants marching to their doom.
That casual air was only a performance. Everyone here was acting, waiting to see who would be the first to fall.
The Ōtsutsuki Upper Echelons, having lived for millennia, had long since ground away any thought of unity, leaving only calculations of self-interest.
Close by, Kugen, Migaki, and the other three were also tangled with Shadow Clones, each holding hidden motives. No one wished to spend their trump cards on another, preferring to let the rest exhaust the enemy first and then reap the spoils.
Those subtle schemes were all captured by Shun.
His true body gazed down at the battlefield, a faint golden Chakra drifting around him.
His Divine Eye had already been activated. Within his pupils, star-like runes spun at high speed, recording every move of the six Otsutsuki, every ripple of energy, every minute shift of Chakra.
To him, the swarm of Shadow Clones had never been simple attrition. They were bait he had meticulously arranged, using their numbers to force the six Otsutsuki to reveal their real power and hidden aces.
Thanks to Omnipotence working in unison with Divine Eye, he could duplicate other Shinjutsu.
Yet after observing for a full half-hour, the six continued to hold back, employing only basic Shinjutsu, never unveiling fresh killing moves, never showing their deepest cards.
'If further probing yields nothing, dragging this out is meaningless.'
A cold glint flashed in Shun's eyes. The runes in his pupils accelerated, and he instantly decided to change his attrition strategy.
In the next instant, the mental threads Satsuki controlled shuddered violently, as if yanked by an unseen force.
The golden Shadow Clones scattered across the plaza, who had been pinning down the other five, snapped to attention like an army given new orders, abandoning their current targets.
Countless golden figures converged, cascading toward Satsuki.
"Futile! Within my mental domain, you Clones are lambs for the slaughter—utterly powerless!"
Satsuki threw his head back in wild laughter, madness and confidence ringing in his voice. The mental crown above his head shone with brilliant violet light, streaming around him and amplifying his Mental Energy.
He raised his right hand, a spinning orb of violet energy condensing in his palm, ready to trigger the next, stronger Shinjutsu: Mental Annihilation, which could rip apart a Clone's mind and erase it completely, clearing the field.
But at that crucial instant, Shun's gaze remained indifferent, as though he had foreseen Satsuki's move.
Clapping his hands together, he shouted, "Six Paths: Mass Shadow Clone!"
Boom… Boom… Boom…
Dense clouds of white smoke erupted like bursting steam, blanketing a wide area.
Thousands of new Six Paths Shadow Clones took form, golden Rinnegan blazing in their eyes, bodies wreathed in refined golden Chakra. More importantly, faint purple Mental Energy now coiled within each Clone.
Using Divine Eye, Shun had already analyzed Satsuki's earlier mental Shinjutsu. The moment he copied it, he imbued his Clones with basic mental defenses to resist the Mental Domain's interference.
The instant they appeared, the Clones stepped forward, toes tapping the ground as they leapt skyward, breaking through the edge of the mental Domain.
Once acutely sensitive to Mental Energy, the Clones now ignored the suppression and maintained full speed.
They merged once more into a golden torrent, surging toward Satsuki with killing intent, blazing Chakra glittering in the sunlight and drowning his vision.
"Impossible! My domain can't stop them… this can't be!"
Satsuki's laughter was cut off, his savage grin replaced by deep shock.
Reflexively he drove his Mental Energy, striving to disrupt the Clones, but his threads only struck a faint purple barrier at their surface and were flung back, unable to breach their minds.
What made his heart pound even harder was that these newly-appeared Shadow Clones exuded an aura far stronger than before. He had already unleashed his full power through the Mental Crown, yet the strength of the Clones had risen right along with it.
"Something's wrong… this is definitely a trap!"
Cautious by nature, Satsuki snapped awake in an instant, a wave of dread surging through him. He cast aside every shred of contempt and the desperate urge to flee blazed inside him.
The Shun before him was far more bizarre and tenacious than he'd imagined. If the fight dragged on, he would likely fall here.
But the moment he tried to mold Chakra to tear open space and escape, he found thousands of Shadow Clones already forming an airtight siege, every path of retreat sealed off.
The Shadow Clones pressed forward step by step, their killing intent growing sharper, and Satsuki's heart sank to the pit of his stomach. He excelled at mental control and interference, not direct slaughter. Surrounded by so many suddenly empowered Clones, he could see no way to break the deadlock.
"Use your aces—now! This brat is seriously wrong!" Satsuki shouted frantically toward the other five.
"Stop holding back! If we don't go all-out, we're all finished!"
"Not good—Satsuki's in danger!"
Not far away, Kugen was first to sense something amiss. Seeing Satsuki's mental Domain fail and watching him trapped by thousands of Shadow Clones, his heart clenched.
Pale-blue Chakra around Kugen erupted like boiling water.
Space Tear!
He meant to rip open the battlefield's space and force his way into the encirclement to aid Satsuki. But before his half-formed seals could finish, dozens of Shadow Clones lying in wait lunged like rabid dogs and latched onto him.
The Clones worked together: some hacked at his vital points, others fell back and molded Chakra at a distance, firing Truth-Seeking Orbs in a torrent that blocked every evasion route.
Forced to retreat again and again, Kugen couldn't spare a shred of strength to help Satsuki.
The other four were far from hopeless, yet none was willing to use a trump card. Instead, they secretly slacked off even more. They acted as if they hadn't heard Satsuki's shouts, each still scheming for themselves.
"Idiots! Short-sighted fools!"
Satsuki's fury shot sky-high as he snarled, "Still scheming against each other at a time like this, still hoarding strength… Listen up! Four of us are already dead!"
"If I die, you're next! His target is all of us—no one stays out of this!"
The words exploded like thunder over the battlefield, and the other five Otsutsuki froze mid-motion. The perfunctory look on their faces vanished, replaced by a flicker of dread.
They knew perfectly well four high-ranking Otsutsuki had fallen, they'd simply clung to the hope someone else would take the brunt.
But Satsuki's roar made it unmistakably clear. Once he perished, they would be next.
The five exchanged glances and finally stopped holding back, turning genuinely serious.
The pale-blue Chakra around Kugen surged several-fold, spatial energy turning berserk as he roared, "Space Collapse!"
The space before him shattered like glass. Countless black shards swept through the Shadow Clones entangling him, ripping several to pieces in an instant.
Migaki threw his head back and bellowed. The golden gravity field around him ballooned to nearly a kilometer, space caving into a huge pit. Within the field, Shadow Clones were crushed, bones snapping as they were driven to their knees.
Cold light flashed in Murata's eyes as his void state condensed into countless razor-sharp energy blades that swept through the densest clusters of Clones.
Yojin stopped siphoning life-force on the sly. Green energy threads unfurled over a wide area, madly draining Chakra from surrounding Shadow Clones, his aura skyrocketing.
Runes around Seirin poured out, shooting unerringly at individual Clones.
With the five going all-out, the battlefield's balance flipped in an instant.
Shadow Clones tangling with them collapsed in droves and the five finally caught their breath. Terrifying Chakra interwove into an invisible pressure field that rolled toward the encircling Clones.
Without hesitation, they shot toward the spot where Satsuki was trapped. Remnant Clones along the way couldn't stop them. Energy waves casually flung out crushed the Clones into smoke that vanished in sheets.
In just a few moments, the five reached the outer ring of the encirclement, their aces ready to strike.
The scales of battle began to tilt toward the Ōtsutsuki side.
"We can't let them regroup!"
Shun's eyes sharpened as he instantly saw through the Otsutsuki Upper Echelons' plan.
Though the Shadow Clone cordon remained tight, the combined charge of the five Otsutsuki had already loosened it.
Hope of survival flashed across Satsuki's face.
At that critical instant, Kaguya beside him moved. Her silvery-white pupils blazed, her white robe snapping in the energy gale.
Amenominaka!
An invisible spatial ripple spread from her fingertip. Wherever it passed, space twisted and folded, locking Satsuki's mental Domain in place.
"A spatial jutsu—no!"
He tried to break free with Mental Energy, but the spatial power clung like maggots on bone, seeping into every corner of his Domain—inescapable.
Hum…
A soft spatial tremor sounded.
Satsuki, his Domain, and the hundreds of Shadow Clones at the cordon's core were swallowed by the warped space in an instant. Only a swirling spatial vortex remained, vanishing in the blink of an eye—as if nothing had ever existed there.
The five charging Otsutsukis' assault hit empty air and they halted, their faces ashen. They could clearly sense Satsuki had been flung into an unknown space.
"Amenominaka... she can actually wield a spatial jutsu of that level."
Kugen, himself a spatial-type user, knew best how terrifying it was.
Amenominaka forcibly translocates a slice of space into a special dimension created by the caster. Once inside, the victim falls under the caster's absolute control, with no outside interference possible.