Can Iron Sand Recognize Its Master?

Under the cover of night, the wind in the canyon was torn by the steep rock walls into piercing howls.

The dull rumble of wagon wheels crushing gravel was magnified endlessly in the dead silence, like a heavy hammer striking everyone's heart again and again.

Midnight had arrived.

The canyon's narrowest pass resembled the gaping maw of a giant beast, ready to swallow this secret convoy whole.

Xuan had long since melded into the darkness. Like a rock without warmth or life, he was embedded in the cliff's shadows.

He moved.

Not his real body, but the black mist tendrils he had buried beneath the sand, silently controlling the soulless White Zetsu corpse.

"Thud."

With a dull impact, the "corpse" disguised as a wounded Leaf Allied Forces soldier rolled down a slope and landed less than ten meters in front of the transport convoy. Its body was twisted unnaturally, a standard Hidden Sand Village kunai embedded in its chest, blood soaking through its army-green vest.

The convoy came to an abrupt halt.

"Stay alert!" The leading jonin barked. Six puppet masters immediately spread out, their puppets springing from scrolls in an instant. The clacking of rotating joints echoed through the canyon as they formed an impenetrable defensive formation.

"Saeki, go take a look," the jonin ordered.

Saeki Ryosuke, the accompanying technician, frowned tightly and warned in a low voice, "Captain, this could be a trap. That body is in too convenient a spot."

"That is precisely why we need to confirm it." The jonin's voice carried the steadiness of a battle-hardened veteran. "Whether it is a trap or the corpse of a real ally, we cannot simply ignore it."

Saeki Ryosuke had no choice but to inch forward cautiously.

Every step he took was exceedingly light, as though he were treading not on sand and gravel but on explosive tags that could detonate at any moment.

Now!

Xuan silently pressed his right palm against the rock beneath him, sending a stream of pure chakra through the stone and deep underground.

The black mist buried in the sand was no longer merely a collection of tendrils. It transformed into countless particles finer than dust, seeping through gaps between the grains like spilled mercury toward the underside of the transport carts.

This was not an attack. Even its chakra fluctuations were so faint they could be ignored.

It had only one purpose: attachment and marking.

Like parasites clinging to bone, it silently crawled across the transport carts' metal chassis and completely locked onto that highly condensed Magnet Release chakra source.

Saeki Ryosuke had just crouched down, preparing to turn over the "corpse."

On top of the cart, Chiyo Saori, who had been resting with her eyes closed, suddenly snapped open her aged yet sharp eyes!

"Something's wrong!" Her voice was hoarse, but it carried a metallic, penetrating edge. "There's something underground!"

Before her words had even faded, her withered fingers moved rapidly over the shoulders of the black puppet before her like an artist playing a symphony of death.

Bzzzz—!

A piercing vibration rang through the air. Nine chakra threads, nearly invisible to the naked eye, shot from her fingertips like nine venomous snakes, connecting with uncanny precision to nine hidden points around the canyon walls.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Rock shattered, and dust billowed!

Nine grotesque high-grade puppets bursting with killing intent broke through the mountainside, instantly occupying every vantage point and blind spot within the canyon.

Their positions followed a hidden pattern, their auras connected to one another. In the blink of an eye, they formed a three-dimensional killing formation—the Nine Palaces Soul-Locking Formation!

Every escape route was sealed shut at that moment.

At the center of the formation, the main puppet Chiyo Saori called [Hundred-Mechanism Burial: Crow] slowly rose. It had three heads and six arms, each arm equipped with a different deadly mechanism.

At that moment, its central pair of arms spread wide. Two pitch-black magnetic vortices spun wildly in its palms, drawing in all the iron sand from the surrounding ground. Like two dancing black dragons, the sand spiraled upward with a teeth-grinding screech.

Chiyo Saori's killing intent had locked on.

Yet, faced with this inescapable killing trap, Xuan's lips curled into a cold smile from within the shadows.

That's more like it. Only this is worthy of being deconstructed by these eyes.

"I found you." Chiyo Saori gave a cold shout as [Crow] thrust both arms forward!

"Secret Technique: Iron Sand Prison!"

The swirling black dragons of iron sand exploded instantly, becoming billions of iron-sand spikes denser than torrential rain and sharper than steel needles. They poured down over the area where Xuan hid, indiscriminate and all-consuming.

This was no longer simple ninjutsu. It was a saturation physical strike created by combining Magnet Release with puppetry, powerful enough to grind a massive boulder into powder in an instant!

Xuan finally emerged from the shadows.

Facing the iron-sand storm that could shred everything apart, the pattern of his left Mangekyō Sharingan began spinning madly.

In his vision, the entire world slowed down.

Every grain of iron sand's trajectory and every tricky angle of attack was broken down, predicted, and seen through by his dynamic vision.

His body became an afterimage, weaving through gaps in death itself. Iron-sand spikes grazed his clothes and flew past his hair, but not a single one truly struck him.

At the same time, black mist surged from his right hand and condensed into an irregular black shield, precisely blocking the shockwaves he could not evade.

The rapid clinking was like hail pounding on sheet metal, dense and urgent.

"Not bad reflexes." Chiyo Saori's gaze sharpened, and the rhythm of her fingertips changed again. "Then how about this? Magnet Release: Sand-Iron Meteors!"

The iron sand filling the sky did not fall. Instead, it halted strangely in midair, then rapidly condensed and reassembled into black meteors of varying sizes, spinning at high speed as they crashed down at Xuan one after another with destructive force!

The sudden change in attack pattern drastically compressed Xuan's room to dodge.

He was forced to retreat again and again as Sand Iron Meteors blasted deep craters into the rocks beneath his feet.

Yet in that awkward moment of forced retreat, a glint flashed in Xuan's eyes.

Found it!

The Mangekyō Sharingan's insight had caught an almost nonexistent opening—at the instant [Crow] split and reassembled the iron sand, the chakra thread connected to its left shoulder joint suffered an imperceptible energy-transmission delay lasting only 0.2 seconds!

It bore traces of repair. An old wound. A weakness!

Xuan stopped retreating.

He stomped down hard, shooting forward like an arrow loosed from its bow. Rather than withdrawing, he charged headlong into the next Sand Iron Meteor!

"Courting death!" the Hidden Sand Village jonin roared.

A layer of hardened wood-like skin instantly covered Xuan's left hand. This was the defensive enhancement brought about by activating [Wood Release Potential].

He forcibly knocked aside a small meteor with that arm, then used the force to spin through the air. His right hand formed a blade, black mist churning in his palm like a venom-coated edge as he thrust straight at the seam in [Crow]'s chest armor!

That was the source of the chakra thread's delay!

Chiyo Saori's pupils contracted sharply. It was already too late to change tactics!

Boom—!

A deafening explosion rang out, duller and far more destructive than a Sand Iron Meteor striking stone.

[Crow]'s seemingly indestructible chest armor began cracking apart from the seam, countless components flying outward.

Beneath the armor, a core container protected by several layers of barrier runes was exposed to the air.

Inside the container, an iron-sand crystal glowing with an eerie blue light trembled violently like a heart. It was the source of power for this puppet and the entire Magnet Release technique.

"Bastard! You dare touch it?!" Another jonin, Akasuna Guiyan, roared with bloodshot eyes as he controlled his scorpion puppet in a mad rush forward.

But it was far too late.

Xuan's right palm had already pierced the shattered armor. The black mist in his palm swelled instantly like a living creature, turning into a greedy vortex that pressed directly against the surface of the iron-sand core.

"High-purity Magnet Release energy detected. Meets absorption criteria. Initiate?"

"Absorb it!" Xuan did not hesitate in the slightest.

In an instant, the iron-sand crystal, condensed to the extreme, melted and broke apart at a visible rate like ice thrown into a blazing fire. It was wildly drawn out and absorbed by the black mist in Xuan's palm!

[Crow]'s massive body lost all power. The red glow in its metal eyes went out at once, and with a loud crash, it dropped to its knees.

At nearly the same moment, the system notification exploded in Xuan's mind:

"Absorption successful! Successfully extracted the Third Kazekage's Magnet Release Core (Fragment)! Analyzing energy... 10%... 30%... 70%... Analysis complete! Special unlock condition triggered. [Energy Mimicry] module activated!"

Every puppet in the canyon froze, like soulless wooden dolls.

The dust slowly settled. Amid the ruins, only the kneeling [Crow] and the standing Xuan remained.

Chiyo Saori sat quietly atop the transport cart. She was neither enraged nor panicked. She merely stared coldly at Xuan with the gaze she would give a dead man.

Her voice was more piercing than the canyon's cold wind.

"You think this is just a piece of iron?"