Sasuke's eyes went wide, his Adam's apple bobbing twice as he gripped that bloodstained section of the Kusanagi Sword's scabbard.
His tattered cloak snapped in the wind, half his face twitching as he stared at the empty bowl in my hand like I was insane.
"Sen Senju, what kind of outrageous lie are you telling?! Kara has sleeper agents planted in the Land of Rain, the Land of Grass, even three thousand meters beneath the Land of Snow!"
"Not to mention the alternate dimension coordinates they use to travel freely, and that fully modified human called Code! How could you possibly wipe them all out in half a day?!"
"Yeah, big bro. Shikamaru had ANBU watching them for almost six months, and they couldn't even find the door handle to their base."
"And those androids have high-tech bodies. They don't bleed or breathe, and radar can't detect them. If even one slips through..."
"Slips through, my ass. Has being Naruto and the shadow protector rusted your brains? You really think you have to catch every rat by hand?"
"When weeds grow in a field, an old farmer doesn't lie on his belly plucking leaves. He hits them with weed killer and rots the whole lot, roots and all."
Deep underground, the previously quiet neural network began rumbling beneath the soles of my feet.
The origin chakra I had just absorbed from Isshiki, a pureblood Otsutsuki, now surged wildly through the main earth veins like a huge pot of boiling oil.
The Divine Tree's thick main root let out a muffled, thunderous roar underground, its wooden conduits, more than a dozen times thicker than train cars, expanding explosively in every direction.
The crust trembled. Every grain of sand inside the planet was shuddering in time with my heartbeat.
Beneath the steel