Myriad Snake Array and Lava Scouring the Ground

The will of Conqueror's Haki struck like an invisible tidal wave, sweeping across the entire basin in an instant.

Orochimaru's elongated neck suddenly stiffened, and for the first time, genuine shock flashed through his golden slit pupils.

He felt as though his mind had been struck viciously by a red-hot iron hammer. It was not genjutsu, nor was it any mental attack ninjutsu he knew. It was something more fundamental, more primal... an overwhelming crush.

Like an ant gazing up at a god, only to have its entire spirit crushed beneath the god's careless glance.

His body instinctively sprang backward, putting dozens of meters between them.

"Th-this is..." Orochimaru clutched his throbbing forehead. For the first time, the greed and excitement on his face were replaced by an emotion called wariness.

Just how many secrets was this Uchiha brat hiding?

"Can't you understand human speech?" Yan raised his head. The flame-patterned mask on his face seemed to take on a dark crimson sheen within the dim basin. "I said, you're very noisy."

He slowly raised his right hand.

No hand seals.

No unnecessary movements.

At that moment, Orochimaru's combat instincts sounded a frenzied alarm. Without hesitation, his hands rapidly formed seals before his chest.

"Since you refuse to become a work of art willingly, let me help you take this final step!"

"Summoning Technique: Myriad Snake Array!"

As he completed the final seal, the ground beneath his feet churned violently like a boiling swamp.

"Hissss—!"

Tens of thousands of vividly colored venomous snakes surged madly from underground like floodwaters bursting through a broken dam. They varied in size and shape, every one of them flicking a scarlet tongue and radiating a nauseating stench and deadly poison.

In the blink of an eye, the stone plaza had become a writhing black ocean made of snakes.

The sea of snakes roiled and roared, sweeping in from every direction toward the solitary black figure at its center.

This was no ordinary summoning technique.

Every snake was infused with Orochimaru's chakra, controlled by a single unified will to form a perfect formation that could attack or defend. They could devour a small mountain in an instant, crush steel into fragments, and digest any living thing that entered the formation—bones and soul alike—until nothing remained.

This was one of Orochimaru's proudest large-scale offensive ninjutsu, a weapon of war he used to wipe out armies and destroy villages.

He refused to believe this Uchiha brat could stir up any trouble within this endless sea of snakes!

Yet faced with a sight that would make even Kage-level experts' scalps tingle, Yan merely stood where he was without moving.

He did not even assume a defensive stance.

It was as though the writhing sea of snakes before him, reeking of death, was nothing more than earthworms commonly found along country field ridges.

His Observation Haki clearly sensed the life force of every snake, as well as the cold chakra belonging to Orochimaru within them.

It was immense.

And also... fragile.

Like a castle piled from sand. It looked magnificent, but one kick was all it took to make it collapse completely.

The vanguard of the snake sea had already reached his feet.

The foremost dozens of venomous snakes raised their heads, bared their coldly gleaming fangs, and bit down at his calves without hesitation.

"Pfft, pfft, pfft..."

A dense series of teeth piercing flesh rang out.

A cruel curve returned to Orochimaru's lips.

He had been bitten!

Every one of the venomous snakes he had cultivated possessed venom refined hundreds of times, mixed with more than a dozen neurotoxins and cell-destroying toxins. Even a Tailed Beast would be instantly paralyzed after taking so many bites.

However, his smile lasted only a tenth of a second before freezing completely on his face.

The venomous snakes biting Yan not only failed to inject their venom, but seemed to have bitten into red-hot iron. Violent sizzling erupted from their mouths as plumes of white smoke rose.

Their bodies visibly began turning charred and carbonized from the head down, before crumbling into black powder scattered across the ground.

Yan remained standing there.

His pant legs had been bitten full of dozens of holes, but the exposed skin beneath was completely unharmed, without even the slightest red mark.

"So that's it..." Orochimaru's golden slit pupils stared fixedly at Yan's body. "It isn't a defensive ninjutsu... Your body itself possesses such absurdly high temperatures? Like a walking furnace..."

His gaze grew even more feverish.

"Wonderful! This body was practically born for immortality!!"

The sea of snakes did not stop.

Under Orochimaru's control, the snakes in the rear trampled over their companions' ashes and surged forward even more frantically. They no longer tried to bite him. Instead, they coiled around him layer upon layer, attempting to strangle and crush Yan to death through sheer physical force.

One layer, two layers, three layers...

In the blink of an eye, Yan's figure was completely swallowed by a ten-meter-tall "mountain of snakes," formed from countless serpents coiled and tangled together.

"Creak... creak..."

From inside the snake mountain came the teeth-grinding sounds of muscles and bones being compressed to their limits.

Orochimaru folded his arms and quietly admired his "masterpiece."

"It's over," he rasped with a laugh. "Even if your body is a furnace, before absolute physical pressure, you can only be crushed into pulp. Next, all I need to do is slowly extract your interesting soul and bloodline limit from that pile of flesh..."

He stopped halfway through his sentence.

Because that black mountain formed of countless snakes had begun to... glow.

At first, a thread of dark crimson light seeped through the gaps between the snakes, as faint as a candle flame in the wind.

Then the light grew brighter and hotter.

The entire snake mountain seemed to transform into a massive red lantern lit from within.

"Sizzle—!"

The venomous snakes on the mountain's surface began spewing white smoke in large patches, releasing shrill hisses. Their bodies twisted and melted beneath the extreme heat, turning into pools of bubbling, charred liquid.

A terrifying heat wave powerful enough to ignite the air exploded outward from the snake mountain!

Orochimaru was driven three steps back by the blast of heat. He raised a sleeve to shield his face, his eyes filled with disbelief.

"This temperature... Impossible!!"

The rock walls of the basin began turning red from the heat, softening, and even dripping molten lava.

Meanwhile, the snake mountain was visibly disintegrating and collapsing from within.

A cold voice tinged with impatience rang clearly from the heart of the snake mountain.

"I told you... you're very noisy."

"And I hate reptiles."

"So..."

"Cold-blooded creatures should obediently hibernate in hell."

The instant his words fell, a pillar of dark crimson light shot violently into the sky from the peak of the snake mountain, like the sword of divine punishment at the dawn of creation!

"BOOM—!!!"