The smoke and dust cleared, and Deidara had already risen from the ground.
A corner of his clothes had been blown to pieces, and several small wounds marked the back of his left hand. But he did not lower his head to look at them. Instead, he stared at the figure emerging from the smoke ahead.
The probing was over. The fact that Lightning Release countered clay had been confirmed. If conventional tactics would not work, then he would use another approach.
Deidara slipped his left hand into the clay pouch at his waist, pulled out a large lump of white clay, and stuffed it into the mouth in his palm.
The sound of chewing was exceptionally clear in the silent forest clearing.
He chewed slowly, not as if pressed for time, but as if confirming the final formula of some creation. Then he bent down and spat the chewed clay onto the ground.
The clay swelled, took shape, and grew across the ground—first bones, then muscles, then a scale-like shell covering its entire body. A massive dragon. Pure white, with a wingspan far wider than Sasuke Uchiha had expected, its head lowered.
Deidara flipped onto the dragon's back, gripping a bony protrusion behind its neck with his left hand. The dragon spread its wings—a burst of air pressure swept fallen leaves and gravel across the ground in every direction.
Then the flying dragon took off. It was far faster than Sasuke Uchiha had anticipated, launching upward almost like a projectile and rising over ten meters in the blink of an eye.
Tobi had not changed position. Working with Deidara, he was making subtle adjustments beneath the ground—chakra from his fingertips spread through tree roots and shallow soil toward every corner of the battlefield.
By the time Deidara rose into