The instant the final syllable left Teizawa's lips, the gorge's time seemed to congeal.
Bunmatsu, Kurotsuchi, and every Iwagakure shinobi who'd infiltrated the area almost simultaneously lifted their heads…
Not because of an order.
Because of a living creature's most primal instinct in the face of catastrophe.
And then they saw it.
The mountains on both sides…
Those cliff walls, carved into countless gullies by wind and sand… were moving.
Not the tremor-shudder of an earthquake. Not the collapsing crumble of a landslide.
The entire mass of rock, from its roots to its peak… turned inward, slowly, like two enormous stone gates being pushed by an invisible hand.
As if someone had truly grabbed the mountains with their bare hands and flipped them over.
And then… slammed them down!
"Vmmm…"
A bass hum so deep it surpassed the limits of hearing rolled up from the planet's core.
It wasn't a sound.
It was vibration, acting directly on bone and organs.
Everyone could feel their knees going weak, their teeth chattering.
Blood pounded madly against their eardrums.
At first, the mountains' turning was unbearably slow.
So slow you could see every crack on the rock face widening, every boulder loosening, every sheet of sand beginning to pour like a waterfall.
But that slowness was more terrifying than any speed…
"H-hey, hey, hey…" Kurotsuchi gaped, her voice dry as sandpaper scraping. "How is this possible…?"
The pride and eagerness on her face… were pulverized in that instant.
Those eyes that always glittered with sly confidence were wide open now, her pupils clenched tight.
Reflecting a sky that was slowly tipping over.
"This is fake, right?"
She whispered, as if she could talk herself into it. "It's genjutsu… it has to be genjutsu…"
But the shaking under her feet, the thickening stink of dust in the air, and the screaming alarm bell deep in her instincts… all of it told her the same thing.
It was real.
Nearby, a young Iwa-nin's kunai slipped from his hand with a sharp clatter.
He didn't even notice. He just stared upward, lips trembling.
"The mountain… the mountain's falling on us?"
That sentence dropped into the dead silence like a stone into stagnant water.
And the chain reaction hit immediately.
"You've gotta be kidding…"
"How do you fight that…"
"R-run… run!"
Voices erupted in disorder throughout the Iwagakure formation.
Some started backing away. Some froze in place. Some dropped to their knees and began retching…
Not from nausea.
From sheer, absolute terror…
"Ghk."
A loud swallow cut through the hush.
Then another. Then another.
These were elites, hardened by the most brutal conditions in the Land of Earth.
And now they looked like sheep stunned by a natural disaster.
Despair spread fast, like the shadow cast by the mountains on both sides…
"What are you idiots doing just standing there?!"
Bunmatsu's roar detonated like thunder.
The veteran jōnin was the first to wrench himself free of the shock…
Not because he was braver.
Because he'd been to the edge of death too many times.
His body reacted before his mind could.
Veins bulged on his forehead. "Move, now…!"
The last word was practically ripped out of his throat.
"Move?" Kurotsuchi snapped her head around, her face showing something close to collapse for the first time. "Move where?!"
She jabbed a finger toward both sides…
To the left, a mountain wall flipping down on them. To the right, another mountain wall flipping down on them.
The mass was too enormous, the coverage too wide…
The entire gorge had become a gigantic stone coffin, its lid closing shut.
Bunmatsu's expression stiffened.
Only now did he truly understand…
why the enemy had chosen to camp here.
Why they'd shown no reaction even after sensing an ambush.
Why the bonfire had been built so bright, like it was welcoming them in…
It had all been planned.
Every detail, every choice, every decision that looked stupid on the surface.
All of it had been bait, carefully designed by that Wind Shadow who looked so young.
And they, the self-important hunters…
had been trapped the moment they stepped into the gorge.
They were fish in a jar.
"Rrrrrrumble…"
The mountains' turning abruptly accelerated.
That initial slowness had been an illusion.
Like the fragile moment of balance before a boulder finally tips over a cliff.
Once it crossed a critical point,
gravity, potential energy, and that horrifying force controlling it all
drove the process toward irreversible destruction.
On the cliff faces, tens of thousands of tons of rock began to fracture and slide.
Millstone-sized chunks broke free first, screaming through the air as they smashed toward the gorge floor.
Then larger slabs.
Like whole little hills being torn off at the root.
And finally, the mountains themselves…
Those two walls, towering a hundred meters high, closed like a pair of massive palms.
Blotting out the stars. Blotting out the moonlight. Blotting out every last shred of hope.
"We have to… we have to do something…"
Bunmatsu shouted, trembling, trying to rally the Iwa-nin into defense.
"Doton: Doryūheki (Earth Style: Earth Flow Wall)!"
"Doton: Iwagakure no Yoroi (Earth Style: Rock Armor Technique)!"
"Don't spread out! Stay together…!"
Defensive jutsu flared in the darkness, only to be swallowed by a larger shadow.
Earthen walls surged from the ground, then shattered under the first impacts.
Layers of stone armor crawled over bodies, then split under the mountains' crushing weight.
Kurotsuchi stood where she was.
No hand seals. No attempt to run.
She only tilted her head back, staring at the mountains drawing closer.
"This kind of enemy…"
She heard herself speak in a strange, calm voice. "How could anyone ever beat this?"
It was resignation.
And, in a way, relief.
Bunmatsu rushed to her side.
He reached for her arm, but she lightly shook him off.
"It's useless," Kurotsuchi said, turning to him with a smile that looked worse than crying. "We… lost."
Not because of tactics. Not because of strength.
But because they weren't even playing on the same dimension…
Like ants unable to understand why a human can crush their nest with one step.
They couldn't understand either.
What sort of existence could turn mountains into hands, and bring disaster down with a single gesture.
At the very end, Bunmatsu bit through his tongue.
The sharp pain gave him one last sliver of clarity.
His hands flew through seals faster than he ever had in his life.
The ground bulged, forming a half-sphere of rock that covered him and Kurotsuchi…
But they both knew it was nothing more than a ant trying to stop a car.
"Boom…"
The two mountains slammed together in the center of the gorge.
In that instant, the sound vanished…
Or rather, it was too immense, beyond anything human ears could process.
All anyone felt was a solid, crushing shockwave squeezing in from every direction.
Eardrums ruptured. Blood seeped from eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
Then came the grinding.
Rock on rock, a low, heavy groan, as if the earth itself were crying out.
Dust exploded upward, forming a mushroom cloud hundreds of meters high that swallowed the entire gorge.
Boulders cracked, rolled, piled.
Sand poured, buried, filled.
When the last stone stopped tumbling, when the last veil of dust slowly sank… the gorge… no longer existed.
In its place was a landscape completely remade.
The mountains on both sides had collapsed inward, stacking into a new ridge of stone where the gorge floor used to be.
All the carts, the camp, the bonfire, the bodies… everything that had existed inside the gorge was buried beneath dozens of meters of rock and sand.
And atop that newborn mound of stone, a figure quietly appeared.
Teizawa stood at the highest point, his robe spotless.
He looked down at the graveyard he had sculpted with his own hands, his gaze flat and calm.
As if the one who had overturned mountains just now hadn't been him at all.
The night wind swept past, lifting fine dust.
He slightly raised his head and looked east… toward the Land of Earth.
"This little welcome gift…"
Teizawa murmured, his voice dissolving into the wind, "I hope you like it."
(End of Chapter)
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