"Senpou (Sage Art) — Mokuton (Wood Release) — Shin Susenju (True Several Thousand Hands)!!"
Hiruzen slammed the scroll down onto the ground with a furious shout.
Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!
Thunderous booms exploded in everyone's ears.
The entire earth seemed to shudder. The previously flat ground in front of Hiruzen began to cave in, collapsing again and again.
Bit by bit, a colossal Kannon statue with countless enormous arms slowly rose from the ground.
The reason it seemed "slow" was only in comparison to the statue's gigantic body.
To the shinobi all around, this giant Kannon was shooting upward in leaps of tens of meters at a time.
Vast.
Unimaginably vast—beyond that word, no one could even think of any other term to describe just how enormous this Buddha truly was.
The instant the towering Shin Susenju appeared, it practically split Konoha into two halves.
Half-crouched atop the Shin Susenju's head, Hiruzen's face was full of shock… and heartache.
It wasn't just because half of Konoha had been destroyed in the process. What made his heart bleed even more was that he had actually used this jutsu just to repel the assault of four villages.
It was like firing a cannon at mosquitoes. Who wouldn't feel that pain?
"So this is a jutsu the First Hokage left behind just on a whim? Just how strong was Lord First back then…?"
The corner of Hiruzen's mouth kept twitching, and there was a faint tremor in his voice.
Ninja who had never lived through the Warring States Era could never truly imagine what level those so-called "Three Great Ones" of that age had reached.
Gods… perhaps they were nothing less than that.
A terrifying wave of chakra swept out in all directions!
The Shin Susenju only needed to stand there; that incomparable sense of dread alone was enough to fill every heart on the battlefield.
For a moment, the entire battlefield fell silent—so silent you could hear the sound of people swallowing.
Clack. Clack.
On both sides—Konoha and the four great villages—shinobi's weapons slipped from their hands and fell to the ground without them even realizing it.
Fear.
To ordinary ninja, a jutsu like this had already gone beyond their understanding and imagination. At this moment, their hearts held nothing but sheer terror.
"So this is the First Hokage's jutsu…"
Danzo's eyes blazed with an almost dazzling light as he stared at the enormous Buddha whose shadow alone covered all of Konoha.
If a mere "casual" technique was this horrifying, then just what level were those other two scrolls in the pocket space?
They might very well hold enough power to unify the entire shinobi world!
A cold gleam flashed through Danzo's mind as such thoughts stirred quietly within him.
Boom!
The Shin Susenju moved.
For something so massive, its speed was neither fast nor slow, but it was still far beyond what anyone had imagined possible.
"Run!!"
Ao spun around to look at the Mist forces behind him, whose bodies had gone rigid with terror, and he roared at them like a madman.
With his shout, the commanders of the other villages finally snapped back to their senses as well, hastily issuing the order to retreat.
With that godlike disparity laid bare in front of them, the shinobi surged back like a receding tide.
Almost everyone present had been on a battlefield before—no one was afraid of death itself. But faced with something like this, no one wanted to die pointlessly.
The Mist forces, who had always been holding the very rear, moved the fastest the instant Ao's shout rang out.
Whoosh!
A powerful gale shrieked overhead as one of the Shin Susenju's arms swung down toward the ground.
Despite the Buddha's immense size, its movement was far quicker than anyone could have imagined. That enormous palm slammed down so fast it felt as if the very air beneath it would be crushed to pieces.
Boom!!
With an earth-shattering crash, the slower Iwa and Kumo shinobi were smashed straight into the ground by the massive palm, unquestionably dead.
Kitsuchi, Akatsuchi, and Darui all wore expressions of mingled fury and panic, yet not one of them dared to turn around. Instead, they ran even faster.
In the face of a jutsu like this, any resistance they could offer would be meaningless.
Maybe the Tsuchikage with his Kekkei Touta (Bloodline Selection) and the Raikage with his "strongest shield and strongest spear" could stand against it—but they themselves definitely could not.
The giant hand lifted again, then slammed down once more.
Whole swathes of ninja were crushed in an instant, without the slightest ability to resist.
Atop the Shin Susenju, Hiruzen was controlling just two of the Buddha's massive arms, swatting at the ground below like he was killing flies.
But his face had gone noticeably pale.
Just moving the Shin Susenju and freely swinging those two arms had already given him the feeling of casting high-level jutsu over and over again without pause.
And that was with only two arms.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hiruzen glanced back at the forest of hands behind the Shin Susenju and couldn't help a twitch tugging at his cheek.
If he tried to move all those arms at once, they would probably drain every last drop of his chakra in an instant.
"Still, just two arms are enough. It might feel like overkill, but if they dared to attack Konoha… then none of them are leaving alive."
Hiruzen looked down coldly at the masses of ninja fleeing like ants below.
The roaring gale rose again.
This time, one of the arms swung straight toward the Suna forces, a titanic shadow engulfing the sand shinobi beneath it.
Temari stared up at the sight before her, and her fleeing steps simply… stopped.
She couldn't run.
"It's really so frustrating… Why is Konoha this strong? Where does that leave Suna's future…?"
Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears as she spoke, her face full of unwillingness.
But what good was that unwillingness? Faced with power on this level, who could possibly stand against it?
Roar! Roar!
Two bestial roars suddenly rang out from behind, and two Bijuu Dama (Tailed Beast Bombs) streaked across the sky as twin red lights, slamming into the gigantic palm.
Boom!!
A massive explosion erupted. Shards of splintered wood flew everywhere, jolting Temari and the sand shinobi beneath the Buddha's palm back to their senses.
Besides sending chunks of debris flying and halting the palm for a brief moment, the twin Bijuu Dama had barely done any actual damage at all.
Still, that brief pause was enough for Temari and the others below to scramble out from under the palm's range.
At the same time, Temari's gaze shot toward the direction the Bijuu Dama had come from.
"Is that… Gaara, and the Three-Tails from the Mist…"
She stared at the two tailed beasts charging in their direction, eyes wide with shock.
Three-Tails Isobu's gaze held a deep resentment, its face full of reluctance as it rushed toward the Shin Susenju.
Remembering Yuto's words, Isobu shrank its neck slightly. Compared to this jutsu Hashirama had left behind back then…
The living Yuto was far, far more terrifying.
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