The Qi of the Void Nether was no ambush. It followed the cracks in the barriers that a century of peace had worn smooth, seeping in layer by layer like ink-black tides. It was more violent than the Void Root, purer, feeding on existence itself. Wherever it passed, Chakra scattered, light and shadow went out, and the consciousness of living beings was swiftly stripped away, leaving only hollow shells standing numbly in place, no longer even capable of fear.
In Leaf Square, the crowd whose warmth had just been rekindled by the awakening of their bonds was swallowed by the ink-black waves in an instant. Children's cries cut off abruptly, women's calls froze in midair, and even the Breath of Return to Truth flowing through the air was savagely shredded by the Qi of the Void Nether.
Boruto touched his toes to the air, and the silver radiance of his Jōgan flared as he forced open a curtain of light. But the instant the Qi of the Void Nether touched the membrane, it gave off a sizzling hiss, corroding and piercing through it at a speed visible to the naked eye. Veins bulged along his arms, Chakra pouring out like a flood, yet he could only slow it down, not stop it.
"It's devouring 'existence'!" A metallic sweetness surged into Boruto's throat. "Not bonds, not Symbiosis, but the most fundamental 'I am' of living beings—memory, consciousness, life itself, all of it is being erased!"
Sarada leaped to his side, her Eternal Mangekyo fully open. Violet-gold pupil flames tore through the ink-black tide, weaving into a vast barrier in midair. Yet in just three breaths, cracks covered the barrier. The sharpest ocular power of the Uchiha line was like paper before the Void Nether. She gritted her teeth and drove the