"Crack, crack, crack..."
Before the towering gate, Kushina and Wuye interlocked the fingers of their clasped hands, while their other hands pushed forward together.
There, golden locks unraveled ring by ring, then vanished into the doorframe with a click.
"Open."
Wuye spoke softly, then the two of them moved their joined hands apart.
"Rumble..."
Amid the roar, the towering orange-red gate slowly opened.
"What the—"
Before Kushina could see anything clearly, Wuye suddenly tackled her to the ground.
The two of them swiftly rolled away to the other side with a rustle.
Boom!
A gigantic ball of blinding light flew out from the gate, instantly expanding and exploding. A sound like the heavens collapsing and the earth splitting rang beside their ears.
Wuye covered Kushina's ears in time, keeping her from going deaf as well.
"That Nine-Tails has no sense of fair play!"
He indignantly helped Kushina to her feet, but he could not hear what he himself was saying at all. His ears only buzzed incessantly.
After quite a while, he finally heard Kushina say, "That's the sound. It comes in bursts every night. That's it."
"No way, does the Nine-Tails fire Tailed Beast Bombs for fun every night?"
Wuye was completely speechless.
"You two damned brats!"
At that moment, the Nine-Tails' earth-shaking roar came from within the gate ahead.
Wuye pulled Kushina forward to take a look, and nearly burst out laughing.
"Pfft..."
In the end, he did laugh out loud.
The Nine-Tails was sprawled on its back and bound to the ground, its limbs, nine tails, and even its neck all tightly restrained by chakra chains.
Its entire body could only move its head, so all Wuye and Kushina could see was the Nine-Tails' upside-down head, tilted nearly 270 degrees back... It looked especially ridiculous.
"No wonder