Chapter 257: Mōryō Was Holding Back?
The instant Hikaru Uchiha made her move, Kakashi, Darui, and Temari seemed to grasp what was happening too, and threw themselves forward with everything they had.
In their current state, they were nothing but dead weight — which meant getting clear of the terracotta army's striking range as fast as possible was the only priority.
At that same moment, Shion felt a hand clamp down on her shoulder from behind.
Got her.
A flicker of satisfaction crossed Hikaru's eyes — but in the next instant, her pupils contracted sharply, and she activated Susano'o almost on pure instinct!
A crimson skeletal frame snapped into place around her, wrapping her body in protection.
And then a cloud of dust rose from the desert floor...
She'd been struck. Sent flying by a single blow.
How was that possible?!
As a war weapon forged for the Uchiha clan centuries ago, Hikaru's raw strength needed no explanation.
On this entire battlefield, there was only one being capable of hitting her hard enough to send her flying in a single strike.
Beneath the heavy, clouded sky, everyone present witnessed it happen.
"Heh heh. I knew you people would try something clever."
"If you'd simply conducted the exchange honestly, I might have thought a little better of you."
"And there it is. A thousand years gone, and humanity is still the same wicked breed it always was."
That low, ancient, weathered voice rang out across the battlefield — except this time, it came from the mouth of the female white-robed figure who'd been exchanging words with Hikaru just moments earlier.
She was Mōryō.
The other body had merely been the decoy.
"ATTACK!"
Ōnoki roared the order almost before anyone else could react.
The same old man who normally complained endlessly about his aching back finally showed, in this moment, the true authority befitting a Tsuchikage.
His voice carried a booming, powerful weight that gave no hint whatsoever that its owner was pushing seventy.
At his command, the tens of thousands of coalition shinobi surged forward without a moment's hesitation, charging an enemy force many times their own number!
In an instant, the battlefield that had been eerily silent just moments before erupted into deafening chaos.
Countless war cries tore out of shinobi throats all at once.
"Heh. Wicked, foolish humans."
Mōryō, gripping the struggling Shrine Maiden, glanced back once at the tens of thousands charging toward him, then simply raised a single hand and swept it forward — and a thunderous, uniform boom rolled across the entire battlefield.
The hundred-thousand-strong terracotta army took a single step forward, and it shook the ground like an earthquake!
Perfectly synchronized, immaculately ordered, as though every single unit had been coded flawlessly by some unseen hand.
Compared to that, the shinobi coalition — for the first time — looked less like a real army by comparison.
The shinobi coalition roared with battle cries. The terracotta army advanced in absolute, deathly silence.
An army from a thousand years past. An army of the present day.
Silence, and thunder.
Living things, and dead things.
Two utterly different kinds of existence, colliding in that instant!
Blood. Severed limbs. Torn flesh. War cries. Screams of agony. Silence.
The moment the two forces made contact, this wildly mismatched war exploded into full, white-hot intensity.
Countless shinobi threw their own flesh and blood against these warriors carved from stone.
This was, inevitably, going to be a brutal, merciless fight.
The enemy wasn't even alive.
How could living men hope to fight to the death against something that had never lived at all?
Even as terracotta warriors fell in droves at first contact, their shattered bodies slowly knit back together, and they rose again, resuming their silent march to carry out Mōryō's will.
But the shinobi who fell never rose again.
Even those merely wounded and downed were crushed flat, pulped, beneath the terracotta warriors' relentless, merciless marching feet.
"Ninjutsu squad!"
"NINJUTSU SQUAD!"
Someone bellowed across the battlefield.
"Fire Release — Great Fireball Technique!"
Squad after squad of Konoha shinobi formed hand seals in unison, spewing scorching fireballs from their mouths.
Countless fireballs, like a monstrous rain of flame, streaked toward the terracotta army — emotionless, tirelessly advancing, advancing, advancing.
The combined firepower of an entire organized fire-release squad was genuinely terrifying.
The countless fireballs converged into a single roaring tsunami of flame, raging violently across the vast desert.
"Wind Release — Great Breakthrough!"
At that, a number of Sunagakure shinobi added their own wind-release techniques into the mix.
Wind fed the fire's fury; fire drew strength from the wind.
That already-massive sea of flame surged upward, forming something like a sacred mountain connecting heaven and earth.
Except now this "mountain" toppled — falling directly toward that endless, boundless mass of terracotta warriors.
The Konoha shinobi cast an expressionless glance at the Sunagakure shinobi nearby.
The Sunagakure shinobi returned the same flat look.
Were they comrades?
Yes. And no.
Simply thrown together temporarily, under the pressure of survival, prodded into cooperation by a certain powerful figure's provocation.
Once this battle ended—
They'd be enemies again.
The flame-wreathed "mountain" collapsed, scattering fire in every direction, and every eye watched, transfixed.
A combined fire-and-wind technique cast by over twenty fire-release shinobi working alongside more than ten wind-release specialists — even a Kage would need to give something like that a wide berth.
And then, dark silhouettes began emerging from within that roaring sea of flame across the desert, their footsteps sending sand jumping with each perfectly synchronized step, and what everyone saw next made every throat go dry.
Wasted effort.
Even with their bodies scorched glowing red by a technique combination that far exceeded S-rank on its own, the terracotta warriors' march didn't slow for even a moment.
"Can't hold back anymore. I'm going in."
Killer Bee, watching this grimly, didn't hesitate, charging straight toward the battlefield.
Behind him, Gaara rode a wave of sand into the fight as well.
"This old man's going too. Hokage, keep an eye—"
Ōnoki's brow, furrowed the whole time, hadn't relaxed once, and now he too prepared to join the fight. But just as he turned to tell the Hokage to watch for the right moment—
He found the spot she'd been sitting in already empty.
...
"Mōryō's forces, huh."
"Not bad."
At a corner of the vast desert, three figures in black cloaks patterned with red clouds stood watching the raging battle from a distance.
"This Mōryō is genuinely dangerous."
"We can't let him be revived."
Konan, a paper flower tucked into her hair, watched the scene ahead with visible concern.
Not just the Five Great Villages' forces were down there — two thousand Amegakure shinobi were fighting too.
In just these few moments, she'd already watched more than a few of her own village's shinobi die.
"Nothing to worry about, for now. The five Kage have entered the fight."
Pain, his pale lavender ripple-patterned eyes cold, watched the battlefield ahead.
At Pain's words, Itachi glanced over too.
The Five Kage...
Which meant the Hokage had entered the fight too.
But the moment Itachi's eyes found her, he blinked in mild surprise.
Was that Hokage... flying?
...
A figure wrapped entirely in blue-and-pink chakra flame streaked across the sky like a comet, tearing straight toward the dense mass of terracotta warriors below!
That's...
The Hokage!
Ōnoki, who'd only just rejoined the fight himself, stared at the sight, stunned.
She'd only just learned the Light and Heavy Rock techniques — and she's already wielding it at THIS level of mastery?
"Sakura!"
A shout rang out from the battlefield below, and Sakura glanced down.
There was Hikaru — the one Mōryō had just kicked away moments ago — waving up at her from below.
Clearly, having tried to ambush Mōryō and gotten ambushed right back, Hikaru was furious and wanted revenge.
But the chaos of the battlefield made it impossible for her to pinpoint Mōryō's exact location.
Sakura saw this and immediately dove down, scooping Hikaru up around the waist, and shot off again toward the rear of the terracotta army.
"His physical strength is massive. Even a first-stage Susano'o probably can't withstand him."
"Should be about the same category as you."
Taking advantage of the moment, Hikaru quickly relayed the intel she'd just gathered.
"Mm. Got it."
Sakura's expression didn't change at all, hearing this.
If anything, hearing that Mōryō was "the same category" as herself only stoked her own eagerness for the fight.
"Sakura!"
Another shout rang out below.
Sasuke.
Clearly, he'd spotted Sakura and Hikaru flying overhead too.
"No room!"
"Sit tight back there like a good boy!"
Seeing Sasuke apparently wanting to tag along toward Mōryō too, Hikaru poked her head out from Sakura's grip and yelled back down at him.
Sasuke's hand, mid-swing through the air, froze in place, wearing an expression somewhere between speechless and annoyed, watching the fading streak of light disappear into the distance.
Then, in that same dark sky, a white shape caught his attention.
"Deidara!"
"Take me over there!"
Sasuke cut down a terracotta warrior closing in on him with a single stroke and shouted up at the sky.
"Huh?"
"You little punk!"
"I've still got a score to settle with you!"
Deidara scowled at Sasuke waving up at him from the ground.
The last time Konoha had gone after him, this exact Uchiha brat and Kakashi had absolutely fried him with lightning.
"I saved your life once."
Sasuke was referring to the Obito incident.
"..."
...
"Old man, I'm heading over there too!"
Kurotsuchi, currently bombarding terracotta warriors with rock spires from the sky, called down to Ōnoki, watching Deidara carry Sasuke off toward Sakura in the distance.
"ABSOLUTELY NOT!"
Ōnoki roared, then turned to Kitsuchi, currently directing the battle below.
"Keep an eye on your daughter!"
...
At a stretch of open ground behind the terracotta army, Mōryō had already set up some strange, unfamiliar formation.
Every line and pattern of it glowed with an unnerving purple light.
And alongside it, a strange, hazy mist hung thick in the air.
Beneath that eerie purple glow, the very air carried an unpleasant, oppressive weight.
At the center of that array, dozens of meters across, Shion sat bound tightly, hand and foot.
Shion struggled, but no matter what she tried, there was no escaping it.
Deep down, she felt something stirring — something within her own body reacting to this same formation.
She knew what it was.
Mōryō.
The physical body of Mōryō, sealed within her, resonating in tandem with this array.
Before long, the Mōryō sealed inside her would break through and manifest fully in the world once more.
"My lord. A shinobi approaches."
Mōryō's soul, thanks to the earlier hostage exchange, now resided in the white-robed woman's body — which meant Yomi had regained his own independent consciousness once more.
"Mm."
Mōryō gave a flat, indifferent acknowledgment.
Right now, nothing mattered to him more than the reunion of body and soul.
"Go meet them."
At those words, Yomi's expression stiffened slightly.
He already knew who was coming.
Konoha's Fifth Hokage.
Him? Fight the Hokage?
"Something wrong?"
Mōryō's cold gaze fell on him, and Yomi's body trembled slightly.
"Your servant obeys."
Yomi had no choice now but to steel himself and go intercept the Fifth Hokage.
The clouds overhead grew thicker still, and though it was still daytime, the light had taken on something close to nighttime darkness, a chill, ominous wind howling across the land.
Under this oppressive sky, the streak of blue and pink light racing toward them, tearing across the darkness like a wound, stood out with unmistakable clarity.
"Down there!"
"Let me down!"
Hikaru had already spotted something off about the scene below.
At her words, Sakura released her grip immediately and shot straight toward the white-robed woman standing with her hands folded behind her back.
Her own instinctive certainty told her.
That's Mōryō.
"Here it comes!"
Yomi, watching that blue-pink streak of light with a grave expression, prepared to intercept it — only to spot another figure falling from high above, also racing toward Mōryō.
"I will NOT allow you to lay a hand on my lord!"
A scalpel materialized in Yomi's hand, streaking straight toward Hikaru.
"Get out of my way!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Hikaru drew the blade at her hip, flame instantly wreathing its edge, and swung it at Yomi — a man apparently too foolish to know he was throwing his life away by standing in her path.
"My lord is the ruler of this world!"
"He will now reclaim everything that was taken from him!"
"This is not something a mere mortal like you could ever understand!"
Yomi's voice rose into a hysterical shriek — this was his one and only chance to fulfill his life's obsession, and he was willing to stake everything on it, even his own life.
But at that moment, a pair of crimson eyes, each bearing three tomoe, locked directly onto his.
Sharingan — Mirror Heaven and Earth Reversal!
A blazing, ferocious flash of the blade's arc came and went in an instant, and Yomi's entire body froze rigid in place.
"Uchi...wa..."
Yomi's face twisted with pure horror, and the instant he laid eyes on those eyes, he tried desperately to look away — but it was already far too late.
He'd never have guessed, no matter how hard he racked his brain, that beyond the Akatsuki's own Obito Uchiha, Itachi Uchiha, and Konoha's Sasuke Uchiha, there was yet another Uchiha out there — a woman.
With no intelligence on her whatsoever, Yomi — who should have, in theory, held his own reasonably well against an elite jōnin level opponent — never stood a chance.
Blind to Hikaru's existence entirely, he was decapitated instantly by that single stroke of her blade.
The last of the burning chakra clinging to his severed neck detonated with a long, resonant shing as her blade slid home into its sheath.
Hikaru didn't bother glancing back at the exploding remains of Yomi's body, simply hurrying forward toward Mōryō ahead.
By then, Sakura had already closed the distance, diving straight at Mōryō.
Blue-pink chakra gathered at her fist, and then—
The strike landed!
One punch!
The verdict, revealed!
Under Hikaru's disbelieving eyes as she caught up — that blue-pink figure was sent flying backward through the air, utterly, unmistakably outmatched!
???
Am I seeing things?!
Pinky just got knocked flying?!
How is that even possible?!
Strong as Mōryō might be, there was no way he should have been able to punch Pinky clean across the battlefield in a single blow!
Unless...
Was Mōryō actually holding back, when he kicked me away earlier?
(End of chapter)
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