The Critical Point of Backlash and the Hokage's Personal Expedition

That streak of scarlet spread rapidly across the snow-white paper, like an ominous flower.

Baishi's fingers trembled slightly.

He did not look at the top-secret file on Bunpuku, the One-Tail Jinchuriki. Instead, he lowered his gaze to his own palm.

Beneath his skin, it felt as though countless streams of molten iron were racing through him, scorching his Meridians and internal organs.

It was not a sharp stabbing pain, but a dull burning sensation that spread from within.

He tried to mobilize Chakra to suppress it, but the moment his power came into contact with that violent Leyline Energy, it was like ice falling into a furnace—instantly devoured and assimilated.

The power stolen from the Kyoto Underground Palace had ultimately exceeded the balance that Hashirama Cells and Yin Release ocular power could sustain.

Conventional nurturing had already failed.

Like a caged beast, it had kept testing and battering against its restraints. Now that it had finally found the cage's limit, it had begun its most frenzied counterattack.

Baishi slowly closed his eyes. Cold sweat slid down from his temples and dripped onto the collar of his Hokage Haori.

He could feel the out-of-control energy wildly consuming the vitality within his body.

If this continued, within three days, he would be burned alive into an empty shell.

He had to find a new "anchor."

An anchor vast enough, primal enough, and powerful enough to contend with Leyline Energy and rebuild the balance within his body.

His gaze returned to the bloodstained document on the desk.

The One-Tail, Shukaku.

Originally, he had planned to pressure the border, politically blackmail, and manipulate intelligence to gradually force Sunagakure into a corner, then seize the Tailed Beast without bloodshed and at the lowest possible cost.

It had been a perfect, reliable political arrangement.

But now,