What!
I can't move...
This is!
His eyes slowly shifted, and Yagura Bi instinctively tried to look behind him. Almost by reflex, he assumed that the culprit behind his sudden immobility was Chiba—the youth's Slug Sage Art clone at the right hand of that Susanoo behind him.
Although he had no idea how Taki Chiba had become young again and taken on the appearance of a child in such a rushed moment, he was certain of one thing: the current Taki Chiba was definitely not the Taki Chiba of those days. There was no need to even mention his strength.
To be honest, although the Taki Chiba of that time had been a genius among geniuses in terms of strength among youths, with no one of the same or similar age able to rival him, perhaps not even Hatake Kakashi from his own village—the fastest Jonin promotion in Shinobi World history—could compare to him. He had even defeated Yagura Bi himself.
But that did not mean that Taki Chiba had been especially difficult to deal with in an objective sense. In fact, if Yagura Bi had not been gravely ill back then, if the medicine sustaining his life had not been close to failing, he could still have easily killed that brat.
Yagura Bi had always been very clear about this. His defeat at Taki Chiba's hands had not truly meant that Chiba had surpassed him at the time. Rather, Yagura Bi's condition had already deteriorated to a certain point. He had practically had one foot in the grave. It was precisely because he had one foot in the grave that he had wanted to risk his old life to solve a major problem for the village: the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki's frequent rampages.
And the solution to that major problem had