After several exchanges, Hiruko was completely unusable.
The twelve elite puppeteers had displayed increasingly greater strength. Their coordination was improving, and the power they could bring to bear kept growing.
So Sasori was preparing to reveal the strength he had kept hidden.
After taking one final hit, Hiruko burst into pieces. A figure leaped out from the wreckage and landed on a nearby rock.
A short-haired youth with orange-red skin as smooth as jade appeared before the Sunagakure shinobi.
His skin was completely flawless, as if he had been carved from a single piece of white jade. He was a work of art, through and through.
This was the art Sasori had always pursued: eternal beauty, eternal art.
At once, all the Sunagakure shinobi stopped attacking and formed a defensive formation.
"Your appearance... It hasn't changed at all." Grandma Chiyo spoke in astonishment.
Although she knew that Sasori's real body was hidden inside Hiruko, she had never imagined that he would still look the way he had back then, completely unchanged from the Sasori in her memories.
It was as if everything had gone back to how it used to be. But that thought lasted only an instant before it vanished. Reality was still reality.
"You've succeeded with your Puppet Technique, haven't you?"
Grandma Chiyo asked Sasori.
Sasori looked at Grandma Chiyo for a while before answering, "My puppet art hasn't fully succeeded yet. I've only grasped a little of it.
"But I've still taken the first step toward the ultimate art."
"Is your body a puppet now?" Grandma Chiyo asked, watching Sasori. This mattered greatly to her, after all—Sasori was her grandson.
Sasori didn't answer, but he nodded.
"You..."
Grandma Chiyo opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end, nothing came out.
She knew that