Thorn Killing Technique! One Move Wipes Out All of Root!

The thick smoke was pushed aside by the blast wave.

Sen stood atop a thick branch, watching coldly as the Root operatives steadied themselves in midair.

Twenty men, well-trained.

After only a brief moment of panic, they quickly found footing on tree trunks and the ground.

"That old dog Danzo really never learned."

Sen rolled his neck, his bones cracking sharply.

"Three weren't enough to send to their deaths, so this time he sent twenty."

The eternal laziness on his face was completely replaced by an icy killing intent.

Since they had no intention of letting him sleep properly,

then he could only make them close their eyes forever.

The Root captain looked at the completely unharmed Sen, and a hint of gravity flashed through his eyes beneath the mask.

"Don't give him a chance to form hand seals! Use Wind Release and concealed weapons to lock him down!"

He roared and was the first to form hand seals.

The other nineteen operatives moved in perfect unison without a word.

"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"

"Fire Release: Flame Bullet!"

Several Root members skilled in ninjutsu simultaneously spewed violent winds and flames, merging in midair into a terrifying sea of fire.

The remaining dozen or so operatives hurled a sky-covering barrage of explosive kunai and shuriken.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Dense flashes of cold steel mixed with scorching waves of fire, forming a deathly net with no blind spots.

They came crashing down upon the tree where Sen stood!

This level of saturation attack—

let alone against a six-year-old child,

even an experienced jonin would have no hope of escape in the cramped, sealed space of the Four Violet Flames Formation!

"Die, brat!"

The Root captain's eyes already held the cruel certainty of victory.

However.

Faced with this terrifying offensive that could level the tree to the ground,

Sen neither dodged nor retreated.

He did not even take half a step back.

He merely stood where he was and suddenly brought his hands together before his chest!

Clap!

A dull impact rang out from his palms.

With that crisp sound, the Divine Tree Origin within Sen, now raised to Lv4, erupted completely like a dormant volcano!

Extremely violent green chakra instantly enveloped his entire body like tangible flames.

"Today, I'll show you what real plant power looks like!"

Sen roared, his eyes locked onto the sea of fire and hidden weapons descending from above.

"Wood Release: Thorn Killing Technique—"

"Full power, activate!"

With his furious shout,

the ground within a hundred-meter radius inside the Four Violet Flames Formation seemed to groan under unbearable strain.

"Rumble—!"

A tremor ten times stronger than the explosion of the earlier explosive tags surged up from deep underground.

The hard soil and rock instantly cracked and collapsed!

The next second!

A sight that every Root operative would remember for the rest of their lives—and the last sight they would ever see—descended upon them.

Hundreds upon thousands of dark brown vines, each as thick as an arm,

shot skyward from the shattered earth like fountains!

These were no ordinary vines.

Their surfaces were covered in sharp barbs half a foot long, gleaming with an eerie blue metallic luster!

They were as hard as refined steel!

"Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!"

The explosive kunai and shuriken raining down from above,

the instant they struck those violent vines,

were effortlessly deflected and snapped apart like fragile plastic toys.

As for that seemingly ferocious combined sea of flames,

it was instantly torn into fragments by countless vines shooting into the sky, as if they were slicing a cake!

The green chakra covering the vines not only resisted the flames' intense heat, but even extinguished the remaining sparks in an instant.

"W-What kind of monster is this?!"

The Root captain's prized calm completely shattered at that moment.

As he watched the thorny forest writhe and coil through the air like crazed pythons, his voice broke with terror.

"Retreat! Don't get near those vines!"

He shouted hoarsely, desperately trying to flee toward the edge of the barrier.

But it was too late.

Since Sen had activated "full power," he had no intention of letting a single survivor escape.

"Trying to leave now? Did you ask for my permission?"

Standing amid the violent vines, Sen looked like a god of the jungle who held life and death in his hands.

He pressed both hands down sharply.

"Crush them!"

The thorny vines, which had merely been growing upward, seemed to receive an order from the god of death.

They instantly changed direction!

As though they had eyes, they locked onto the twenty panicked Root ninjas in the air and on the ground.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Countless barbed vines shot toward them at a terrifying speed impossible to follow with the naked eye!

"Argh—!"

Screams immediately rose one after another within the violet barrier!

The scene was like a true hell on earth!

One operative who had just landed and was about to form hand seals suddenly had two vines burst out beneath his feet.

They pierced straight through his calves!

Before he could even cry out in pain, several more vines struck from behind, instantly piercing through his chest.

The barbs on the vines hooked tightly into his flesh and bones.

They brutally hoisted his entire body into the air!

"H-Help..."

Another operative leaping across a tree trunk was struck across the waist by a thick vine like a whip.

With a crack,

his spine snapped on the spot, and his body flew away like a ragged sack.

Before he could hit the ground, more than a dozen vines wrapped around him, forming a huge ball of thorns.

From within came the bone-chilling sound of flesh and bones being crushed and ground apart.

In barely five seconds,

the battle—or rather, the one-sided massacre—was over.

The air was thick with the stench of blood, mingled with the earthy reek of overturned soil.

Sen slowly lowered his hands, and the green chakra swirling around him gradually dissipated.

Standing on the branch, he looked coldly upon the "masterpiece" before him.

The forest within a hundred-meter radius had been utterly destroyed.

In its place stood a deadly thorn forest woven from countless dark brown, barbed vines.

And above that thorn forest,

the twenty Root operatives—

no matter how cold-blooded or well-trained they had been moments ago—

had all been pierced through vital points by those thick vines.

Like bloody skewers of candied fruit, they were strung high in the air.

Blood dripped along the vines' barbs onto the ground, staining vast patches of soil red.

They were not quite dead yet.

The plant neurotoxin carried by the barbs was destroying their nervous systems, leaving them unable to move while allowing them to feel the heart-rending pain with perfect clarity.

"Ugh... demon..."

The captain leading the team had been pierced through the shoulder by a vine and hung upside down nearest to Sen.

His mask was shattered, blood continually poured from the corner of his mouth, and he stared at Sen with utter terror and despair in his eyes.

Sen walked over and looked down at him.

"Demon? I rather like that title."

Sen smiled faintly.

"Go back and tell that old dog Danzo..."

"No, you aren't going back."