Uproot Them All

Jiraiya's sleeves fluttered wildly in the blast of air, his gaze fixed on the two men's clasped wrists, a smirk playing on his lips. "This kid... even his skeleton is like a monster."

The aftershocks of that Monster Strength were still pushing forward.

Tsunade felt the strength in her arm being slowly devoured by the bottomless vortex in the palm of her opponent's hand.

My shoulder muscles were tense, and large beads of sweat appeared on my forehead.

"The Senju Monster Strength relies on precise control of Chakra."

Naruto lowered his eyelids to look at her, his tone casual, "Your punching technique is all messed up now, which means your mind is even more chaotic."

Tsunade clenched her teeth and followed up with her left fist, striking Naruto directly in the ribs, a blind spot.

Naruto shifted his upper body to one side, precisely dissipating most of the force, and then pressed down hard with his left elbow, firmly locking her forearm joint.

With her attack thwarted, Tsunade used the momentum to spin around, sweeping her right leg with tremendous force towards Naruto's lower body, causing the paving stones along the way to ripple and swirl.

Naruto flipped his ankle, his boot sole striking her half an inch before she landed, forcefully cutting off her entire combo.

After a series of failed attempts to change her moves, Tsunade's breathing became erratic.

In his mind, Hashirama's silhouette, Nawaki's face, and the blood at the corner of his broken mouth overlapped and intertwined.

Her throat felt like it was stuffed with a handful of waterlogged cotton, and her raised fist involuntarily slowed down by half a breath.

In a life-or-death struggle, even half a breath can be a fatal weakness.

Naruto grabbed her wrist with his other hand and pulled her forcefully towards him.

The two closed the distance to the point where they could hear each other's breathing.

The scalding Yang Release Chakra surged along the skin where they met, forcefully breaking through her taut muscles and suppressing the rampaging meridians.

What you're afraid of isn't losing at all.

Naruto looked directly into those bloodshot eyes. "What you're afraid of is that after you come back with me, you'll have to keep your eyes open and keep living."

These words were like a sharp, tempered knife, precisely piercing through the festering sore that had been hidden for over a decade.

Completely losing her mind, Tsunade raised her right knee and recklessly slammed it into Naruto's abdomen.

The dull thud of flesh colliding echoed.

Naruto's chest and abdominal muscles trembled violently, and the crack beneath his feet expanded outwards by more than a meter.

He took the heavy blow head-on, his back remaining ramrod straight, without even flinching.

"Alright, let's call it even. We'll call it even. The person is mine."

Naruto placed his hand on her shoulder, forcefully pressing her down to stop. "Consider this punch me paying for it. Don't let the dignity of the Legendary Sannin become a laughingstock for the casino owner and Orochimaru."

He released her, brushed the dust off Tsunade's shoulder, and whispered in her ear, "If you really want to kill me, go back to your room tonight, take off your stockings, and beat me slowly. That thing is too tight and restricts your movement. Now, save your energy."

He blurted out words behaving like a thug.

Tsunade's anger was trapped in her throat by this unconventional and nonsensical remark, leaving her unable to vent it.

Her already shattered emotional rhythm was completely disrupted. She leaned against a broken stone pillar, panting heavily, her eyes shifting from resentment to confusion.

Jiraiya abandoned his spectator expression and strode forward.

"Tsunade, my teacher didn't even get to see you one last time before she died."

Jiraiya's voice was unusually serious. "Hidden Leaf doesn't need a drunkard who runs away now. The village needs a pillar of strength, someone who can take charge of the mess left by the dead."

Shizune approached with red eyes, clutching the black card tightly in her hand.

She didn't stand in front of Tsunade as usual, but pleaded in a low voice, "Lady Tsunade, please go back and take a look. Just one look."

[System notification sound]

[Ding! Target: Tsunade Senju | Affection +5 (Current: 45) | Stage: An Interesting Guy | Note: Her psychological defenses have been forcibly dismantled a second time, and she has developed a subconscious masochistic dependence on the host. It is recommended to maintain a domineering and high-pressure approach.]

In the shadow of the eaves a hundred meters away.

The Kabuto Yakushi pushed up his reflective round-framed glasses and closed his notebook.

He assessed softly, "The psychological wounds that Lord Orochimaru and Lady Tsunade of the Uzumaki clan. That Yang Release is too domineering; if we talk about resurrection now, our bargaining chips have become less valuable. I really want to conduct a thorough investigation to find out just how many trump cards this monster is hiding."

"It doesn't matter."

A hoarse, sticky sound seeped from the cracks in the wall.

A pale, thin snake slithered across the rubble of the ruins and silently stopped three meters from Tsunade.

The snake opened its mouth and spat out a broken fragment of an old necklace.

On the fragments, the dark red, aged bloodstains had long since dried and turned black.

Tsunade's gaze was fixed on that shard.

The tremor that had just been suppressed by Yang Release returned, creeping up the spine like a persistent, insidious infection.

My breathing became erratic again.

Naruto turned his head, his gaze passing over the ruins, and precisely locked onto the shadow under the eaves a hundred meters away.

A predatory smile spread across his sharply defined face.

Dou felt a chill run down the back of his neck; that look in his eyes was clearly a hunter's declaration that he had spotted his prey.

The high-stakes gamble, which will begin in three days, has only just started.

Amidst the ruins and rubble, a fragment of a tattered old necklace lay quietly on the ground.

The dark red, aged bloodstains had long since dried, but in Tsunade's eyes, that color was magnified infinitely.

The trembling that had just been suppressed surged wildly up my spine like a persistent, lingering infection.

Her breathing became completely erratic, and a hissing sound came from her throat.

Before she could react, a black leather boot stomped down heavily from the side.

Click.

The fragment that carried the memory of death, along with the bluestone slab beneath it, was crushed into fine powder.

Scalding hot Yang Release Chakra overflowed from the soles of the boots, like a heat wave passing through, completely evaporating the bloodstains attached to them.

Naruto withdrew his leg, looking down at her with a brutal and uncompromising tone. "If you can't even withstand a piece of scrap metal, what makes you think you deserve to make me wait for you for three days?"

There was no comfort, no tenderness.

His way of dealing with fear was to crush the source of it completely in front of her.

The foot that shattered the shards reacted a full three seconds faster than Tsunade's own reflexes.

Shizune, standing behind the broken wall, was stunned.

A surge of unprecedented sense of security crashed into her heart, an overwhelming protective instinct that she had never experienced in the more than ten years she had been by Tsunade's side.

[New peripheral target: Kato Shizune | Affection +10 (Current: 15) | Stage: Budding - Projection of Security]

The mechanical noise of the system had just faded when the airflow ahead abruptly changed.

Tsunade stared at the pile of powder on the ground, her chest heaving violently.

The golden chips in his palm almost pierced his skin, and his knuckles made a dull thud.

Orochimaru's probing had pushed her to the edge of a cliff, and the suffocating feeling of having nowhere to retreat finally found an outlet.

Without warning, the ground beneath her feet collapsed, and she transformed into a blue afterimage, crashing head-on into Naruto.