The Inescapable Storm of Death

The rain seemed to have been muted the moment the ground collapsed.

In its place came the thunderous roar of the earth's crust being forcibly torn apart, the bellow of tons of rock and soil crashing down. Yan's body lost weight along with the ground beneath his feet, plunging toward a bottomless abyss. His Observation Haki was like a crumpled sheet of paper as the structure of the surrounding space underwent violent, chaotic reconstruction under Rock's Earth Style ninjutsu.

"Earth Style: Earth Core!"

From above the canyon, Rock's voice carried a twisted delight at a job well done. This was no ordinary trap. As captain of the Hidden Rock Village demolition unit, he had developed this battlefield-altering ninjutsu specifically to deal with enemies possessing unusual mobility or defensive abilities. In an instant, it could create a sealed execution ground a hundred meters deep.

The fall lasted less than three seconds. When Yan's feet touched solid ground again, he was already at the bottom of a vast vertical stone shaft. Looking up, the sky had been reduced to a small, hopeless square framed by gray rock walls. The only exit was sealed shut by a massive boulder over twenty meters thick.

Catching a turtle in a jar.

It was indeed an old trick, but sometimes the oldest tactics were the deadliest.

Yan did not look up. His gaze fell upon the steep rock walls around him. Something there was being activated. His Observation Haki caught it. Not one, not a hundred, but tens of thousands of tiny, wildly restless chakra sources, like an illuminated spiderweb, densely covering every inch of stone from the valley floor to its rim.

Explosive tags.

"Can you see them, 'Lava'?" Rock's voice descended from a hundred meters above, echoing like the verdict of a judge from hell. "I'm very curious whether those eyes of yours can count all our little 'greetings.'"

The Hidden Rock ninjas beside him let out a restrained, cruel burst of laughter.

"Thirteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-four." Yan's voice rose from the valley floor, as calm as if he were reciting dishes from a menu, yet every person heard it clearly. "Twelve thousand are standard issue. One thousand have been mixed with gunpowder to amplify the explosions. The remaining seven hundred and sixty-four contain special metal powder that disrupts chakra. You arranged them carefully. Even the spacing was calculated down to the centimeter, ensuring the blast waves would perfectly collide and stack, creating an absolute 'annihilation point' at the center of the canyon."

The laughter above the canyon stopped abruptly.

The scar on Rock's face twitched. The smugness on his face froze. This intelligence was the highest secret of the operation. No one besides him and several core subordinates knew it. How had that monster learned it? Had Konoha's intelligence network infiltrated them that deeply?

No. That was not it.

Rock suddenly realized the truth. It was not intelligence. In those few seconds of falling, that monster had forcefully "seen" through everything with his abnormal perception.

A chill crawled up Rock's spine. This enemy was even more terrifying than the files had described.

"Since you can see so clearly, then you should understand that you have no way out." Rock forcibly suppressed the unease in his heart, his voice turning colder. "We studied every record of your battles. Your body can turn into magma, making you immune to most physical attacks and ninjutsu. But elemental transformation is not true nothingness! It merely converts your body into another form of energy and matter. As long as you exist in this space, you can be affected by pure, extreme physical shockwaves!"

"We don't intend to burn you to death. We'll use the pressure generated by tens of thousands of overlapping explosions to crush the inch of space you occupy, along with your very existence, into a pancake!"

Before his words had faded, another rumble came from the top of the canyon.

"Earth Style: Earth Flow River!"

"Water Style: Great Waterfall Technique!"

Dozens of ninjas acted at once. A muddy torrent of earth and stone and a towering deluge descended like two gray dragons, pouring madly into the hundred-meter-deep shaft.

They were not attacking. They were "filling" it.

They would fill every last gap in the canyon with the densest possible medium. Water and earth were perfect conductors for shockwaves. They intended to ensure that not even the slightest fraction of the explosions' power would go to waste, that all of it would strike Yan.

It was a flawless, escalating killing formation. First, alter the terrain and create a sealed space. Then set the trap and prepare the fatal blow. Finally, fill the medium to raise the destructive effect to its limit. Every step was filled with the Hidden Rock Village's distinctive, ruthlessly precise wisdom of war.

The mudslide had already submerged Yan's ankles. Cold rainwater mixed with grit made him feel as though he were standing in an icy swamp. The light overhead was growing dimmer and dimmer. Soon, he would be completely swallowed by this artificial flood of mud and stone.

"Really..." Yan muttered. Rain soaked his mask, making it feel uncomfortable. "What a splendid funeral."

He slowly raised his hands.

He formed no hand seals, nor was there any sign of chakra erupting. He merely lifted his hands before his chest, interlocked his fingers, and then slowly clenched them just as the mudslide rose over his chest.

Above the canyon, Rock watched the black figure below about to be completely swallowed, a victorious grin spreading across his face. He could sense that the energy in every explosive tag below had been pushed to its peak.

Everything was proceeding according to his calculations.

"To ensure there could be no accidents, we even invited Lord Hanzo's disciple to add a special formula to the barrier that isolates space-time ninjutsu. Flying Thunder God? Kamui? You're not going anywhere."

"It's over, Konoha's 'Lava.'"

"Your legend ends here!"

He hesitated no longer. Pulling a special detonation tag marked with the character for "explosion" from his pocket, he fiercely poured his chakra into it!

"Goodbye!"

He crushed the detonation tag in his hand.

"Turn to dust for me—!!!"

"BOOM—!!!!!!!!!"

At that instant, time lost all meaning.

Sound and color vanished with it.

The world became white. A pure, destructive white light capable of searing through souls and erasing all existence.

Along both sides of the canyon, all thirteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-four explosive tags detonated simultaneously, with absolute synchronization to within one hundredth of a second.

An unimaginably terrifying shockwave was perfectly conducted and amplified through the mud and water, compressing madly from every direction toward the sole coordinate at the center of the canyon at speeds faster than sound.

Before this absolute force, enough to erase an entire mountain range from the map in an instant, space let out an overburdened wail. It twisted, folded, and even developed faint black cracks.

Above the canyon, every ninja who had performed the techniques was blasted away by the backwash. Rock used Earth Style to anchor himself firmly to the ground. The raging wind made the scar on his face tremble, but he continued staring at the white light below, his eyes filled with fervor and excitement.

He was dead!

He had to be dead!

No one! No living creature! Could survive an attack of this level! Even a complete Susanoo would be instantly crushed into powder! Even a tailed beast would be torn to pieces!

This was war! This was the art of the Hidden Rock Village!

Before an absolute war machine built on precise calculations, individual strength was worthless!

The white light lasted for a full ten seconds.

When the light faded, the entire world seemed to have been reformatted.

The abandoned factory, the hills, the canyon... all of it had vanished. In their place was a massive crater over a kilometer in diameter, so deep its bottom could not be seen. Around its edges lay vitrified crystalline material still giving off wisps of bluish smoke.

Rock panted heavily as he looked at his "masterpiece," hoarse laughter spilling uncontrollably from his throat.

"Ha... hahaha... HAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

He had succeeded! With his own hands, he had buried Konoha's most terrifying rising star! This achievement was enough to etch his name into the chronicles of the Hidden Rock Village!

"Pull out!" He wiped rainwater and blood from his face, full of high spirits as he prepared to give the order. "Clean up the battlefi... huh?"

His laughter suddenly caught in his throat.

Because at the center of that enormous crater, shrouded in smoke and steam, at the "annihilation point" where there should have been nothing left—not even a speck of dust—

A black, blurry silhouette stood there silently.

The wind scattered the vapor.

That figure became clear.

At that moment, Rock's pupils shrank to the size of needlepoints. The wild delight on his face instantly froze, then shattered inch by inch.