A massive golden sphere of light exploded in the underground cavern.
It wasn't an ordinary Rasengan. As Naruto fell, he forcibly mixed a touch of an unfamiliar Lightning Release nature transformation into his Senjutsu Chakra. It wasn't meant to cut—it was meant to paralyze.
"Just... shut up!"
The roar echoed through the enclosed space, shaking loose stones from the walls. The enormous crimson eye coiled in the middle of the underground river contracted sharply. The chakra shock wave it had been about to release was cut off, trapped inside its roots with a muffled boom.
Black sap splattered everywhere.
"Now!" Gaara reacted fastest.
He clapped his hands together. The sand that had just been scattered gathered again, forming a massive hand that tightly gripped the pulsing core of the main root. "Desert Layer Great Burial!" The sand didn't just cover the outside. It wormed through the cracks and into the roots, cutting off their chakra flow.
Kurotsuchi spat out a mouthful of blood and climbed out of the rubble. "Don't let it catch its breath! This thing's assimilating the earth's veins!"
The rock beneath her feet softened at once, surging toward the base of the main root like thick cement. "Earth Release: Added-Weight Rock Technique!" The mud, which had been meant to restrain its movements, suddenly grew thousands of times heavier, pinning the writhing roots firmly to the riverbed.
"You really went overboard." Darui shook his numb arm and looked at the orange-clad figure atop the main root. "With a jutsu that big, if you'd been off by even a little, we'd all have been buried alive."
Naruto knelt on the still-twitching "eyeball," gasping for breath. The markings around his eyes from Sage Mode were fading, and his right hand trembled slightly. That last attack had nearly drained the chakra