Seeing the movements of the five tailed beasts in front of him, Hiruzen naturally understood what they were trying to do.
Retreat?
Did they really think Konoha was a place they could come and go from as they pleased?
A cold smile tugged at Hiruzen's lips. So what if two of Shin Susenju's arms had been broken? Behind it there were still countless more.
Hiruzen pressed both hands down onto the scroll that had summoned Shin Susenju, pouring a massive amount of chakra into it.
The pallor on his face deepened yet again.
Boom! Boom!
Dozens of arms on Shin Susenju's back moved all at once, turning into a storm of fist shadows that rained down toward the five tailed beasts below.
The berserk barrage swallowed the five great beasts in an instant.
Enraged roars echoed nonstop from within the billowing dust.
If it had been just a single tailed beast facing Shin Susenju, it would only have had the qualifications to be one-sidedly pounded. But five tailed beasts fighting together—when they unleashed their power at once, the force really was terrifying.
As the pummeling went on, Tailed Beast Bombs (Bijuu Dama) kept blasting out of the dust cloud, slamming into Shin Susenju's body with thunderous detonations.
Crack, crack!
One after another, arms of Shin Susenju shattered, only for more arms to immediately join the fray from behind.
For Hashirama, the combined assault of five tailed beasts would only have counted as a minor annoyance. But for Hiruzen, it was a very big problem.
Compared to the ocean of chakra Hashirama had once possessed, Hiruzen's reserves were such that even activating Shin Susenju at full power was already pushing it.
Standing atop Shin Susenju's head, Hiruzen could feel the flaw in front of him. If he kept trading chakra with tailed beasts like this, he was going to get drained to death.
He had to finish this quickly—ideally in one breath, ending the battle outright!
Hiruzen raised his hands, fingers flying through seals, then bit his thumb and slammed his palm down.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Technique)!"
With a puff of smoke, Enma's figure appeared beside Hiruzen.
The moment he arrived, Enma quickly swept his gaze around. And when he finally processed the scene unfolding before his eyes…
Even Enma, who had been through more battles than he could count, couldn't help but be stunned.
"Old friend, I'm afraid I'll be troubling you a bit this time."
Hiruzen's weak voice held a faint rasp as he spoke to Enma.
"This is a lot easier than most of the fights we've been in."
Enma blinked, then understood, and let out a small laugh.
He stretched both hands out and pressed them onto the scroll as well, flooding it with his chakra.
With Enma's help, Hiruzen's burden clearly lightened.
The dozens of arms behind Shin Susenju instantly swelled to hundreds, all joining the barrage at once.
Faced with the sudden surge in attacks, the five great tailed beasts still weren't in any mortal danger—but by the same token, they couldn't do anything to Shin Susenju either.
While the five tailed beasts and Shin Susenju deadlocked, nearly half of the shinobi from the four villages managed to pull out of the center of the battlefield.
The Mist-nin in particular had completely withdrawn from the area where the five tailed beasts were fighting and were already preparing to fall back toward the outer perimeter.
Seeing this, none of the jinchuuriki had any intention of clinging to the fight.
Their only goal in the first place had been to buy their own forces time to retreat.
Isobu was the fastest to react. His four limbs suddenly pulled tight, shrinking into his massive turtle shell.
"Eifu (Shadow Caress)!"
In the next instant, his whole body began spinning, rolling forward like the Akimichi clan's Nikudan Sensha (Human Bullet Tank).
Only, the direction of that roll wasn't toward Shin Susenju—it was straight backward.
Before Hiruzen even had time to respond, Isobu had already punched through the edge of Shin Susenju's attack range, rolling at high speed further and further away.
As he rolled, Isobu's body shrank at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In just a few heartbeats, he had vanished from everyone's line of sight.
On a stretch of ground that had been torn apart by shockwaves—
A palm-sized turtle was almost a blur as it scrambled toward Yuto.
When he'd first started shrinking, a thought of simply running away had flashed through Isobu's mind. But when he imagined the consequences, he felt it would be much wiser to crawl back obediently.
Isobu got out of the fight astonishingly fast, and Utakata wasn't much slower. Borrowing the softness of Saiken's body, the Six-Tails tanked a blow from Shin Susenju head-on.
Using the rebound from that impact, plus Saiken's natural elasticity, he sprung backward out of range.
In mid-air he shifted back into a half-tailed-beast form, spewing out a cloud of bubbles that he used as stepping stones, vanishing from Hiruzen's sight in an instant.
With the Six-Tails and Three-Tails gone, the remaining three tailed beasts finally reacted as well.
There was no need to keep this fight going. Through the clash just now, all of the jinchuuriki had already realized that even without their attacks, this terrifying jutsu in front of them wouldn't be able to last much longer.
Just as the three remaining tailed beasts were ready to break away, Hiruzen also made his move.
"Two slipped away by accident, and you three still want to run? You really think I can't do anything to you tailed beasts?"
A hard glint flashed in Hiruzen's eyes as his fingers blurred through seals.
He was the "Professor" of ninjutsu. There was no way he hadn't studied Hashirama's techniques.
"Hokage-Shiki Jijun Jutsu — Kakuan Nitten Suishu (Hokage-Style Sixty-Year-Old Technique — Kakuan Entering Society with Bliss-Bringing Hands)!"
Hiruzen shouted, and fresh blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
With his level of power, forcing this jutsu really was pushing it.
The hundreds of arms that had been crashing down toward the ground suddenly froze in mid-air.
Then the palms of three of those arms lit up, each bearing a massive "座" (sit) character.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The three arms shot forward at incredible speed, slamming down onto Shukaku, Kokuo, and Gyuki.
All three tailed beasts felt their bodies jolt. The smooth flow of chakra inside them suddenly turned sluggish. In the next instant, both beasts and jinchuuriki alike blacked out on the spot.
The hundreds of arms that had been hanging in the air finally fell.
But they didn't smash down onto the tailed beasts—they landed all around them instead.
Rip… rip…
Under Hiruzen's control, those arms all snapped off cleanly.
The severed arms began to twist and reshape, forming into an enormous Mokuton Rougoku (Wood Release: Prison Cage) that locked all three tailed beasts firmly inside.
"It's a pity we couldn't keep every shinobi from the four villages here. Even though we killed a lot, it's still not enough to really cripple them."
"But these three tailed beasts can count as a bit of capital I'm leaving to Konoha as Hokage."
Hiruzen coughed up a mouthful of blood, speaking in a low murmur.
Just then—
A hoarse shout rang out from directly ahead of the retreating four villages' shinobi.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Technique)!"
At some unknown point, a huge array had already been laid down in the path of their retreat.
Countless giant snakes burst out of the formation the instant it activated. As soon as they appeared, they plunged straight into the crowd of shinobi.
Those who didn't react in time were either bitten to death on the spot or swallowed whole.
Hiss—hiss—
The giant snakes kept pouring out of the array. In the span of a few breaths, the area in front of it had turned into a seething ocean of snakes.
Boom!
Another thunderous impact resounded. Compared to the earlier summoning, this time a single, unbelievably massive snake appeared—towering above all the others.
Orochimaru stood cold-faced atop Manda's head, his hoarse voice drifting out:
"Every shinobi down there is the enemy. Do whatever you like."
Hearing Orochimaru's words—and especially sensing the faint note of finality in his tone—Manda swallowed the mocking remarks he'd been about to make.
His colossal body lunged straight into the mass of shinobi, and with just a casual sweep of his bulk, huge swathes of ninjas were crushed to death.
Many of them wore Mist hitai-ate—clearly, the Mist-nin were well within Orochimaru's target range too.
"Orochimaru, you're courting death!"
Yuto's expression went ice-cold as he stared toward Orochimaru in the distance, his voice like a blade of frozen steel.
Orochimaru had already betrayed him!
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