White Zetsu's body split in two and fell to the ground. Thick white fluid gushed from the cut, thicker and stickier than the liquid inside the bamboo, like melted candle wax. Its upper half crawled two steps across the ground, fingers clawing at the dirt, black soil packed beneath its nails. Then it stopped moving.
Neji's Byakugan worked at high speed, his eyes trembling rapidly in their sockets like a malfunctioning camera frantically trying to focus. The underground root network was too complex: over thirty thousand bamboo stalks, over thirty thousand nodes, each connected to the nodes around it in a spiderweb topology. Finding the "core" of that structure-the "brain" of the entire Bamboo Forest-meant searching not a few stalks, but tens of thousands.
"I can't find it!" A trace of frustration crept into Neji's voice. "It's too big, too complicated. The core isn't in the Bamboo Forest. It might be deeper underground, or inside Kabuto's base! It's controlling this forest remotely somehow. It isn't here!"
Chisen cut through another bamboo stalk. White fluid sprayed out, splashing across his face and glasses. The white slurry coated his lenses, blinding him. He took his glasses off, gave them a couple of careless wipes against his white coat, then put them back on. The lenses were streaked, but at least he could see.
"Then we change tactics," Chisen said. "Forget the core. Kill the White Zetsu. Kill them all, and the bamboo loses its reason to exist."
Guy had already begun. His speed rose little by little, not jumping straight to its peak, but increasing gradually, like turning on a faucet. His fists and feet exploded through the White Zetsu horde, every punch bringing a howl of wind, every kick a dull impact. Their bodies might as well have been paper before