Sand and gravel struck the side of his left knee. Pain shot through him as the shell cracked, and he grunted.
His left leg buckled when he landed, throwing him off balance for an instant.
In that instant, the sixth and seventh stones struck his back and right shoulder together.
Shell fragments flew. The impacts sent him stumbling several steps sideways. His scorpion tail whipped behind him on instinct, searching for something to brace against, but swept through more stones instead. They had already surrounded him.
Silver points of light wove a net around him. Every stone's path lined up perfectly with a route he might take to dodge.
If he darted left, a stone waited on the left. If he jumped back, one had already anticipated where he would land. If he leaped into the air, one smashed down from above and forced him back to the ground.
Before those stones, he was like a tactical manual worn thin from use. Every response he could make was already written in Barlow's eyes, then stamped onto his body by the hovering stones, one after another.
The power of Barlow's right Mangekyō Sharingan was called Soul Control.
He could control any nonliving object within his field of vision.
Soul Control coated the surface of an object under its control with a special chakra that greatly enhanced its inherent properties. A bladed weapon grew exponentially sharper, while a blunt object kept the same mass but struck with several times the force.
That was why a fist-sized stone could shatter the Emperor Scorpion's shell, and why a broken blade could become a deadlier floating weapon than the whole sword.
Together, Heavenly Eye and Soul Control let Barlow position stones along Prince's escape routes in advance. Heavenly Eye showed him where Prince would jump