The enormous black lightning giant collapsed with a thunderous crash like a sandcastle, dissolving into black sparks of lightning that scattered across the sky before vanishing completely between heaven and earth.
All that remained was a massive, bottomless crater, its edges flowing with lava and marked by crystallization.
At the crater's edge, a charred figure crashed heavily to the ground.
It was the Third Raikage, A. He had returned to human form, his body blackened and split open, his life force as faint as a guttering candle in the wind.
He struggled to raise his head, his clouded gaze turning toward the Three-Aspect Wisdom King still standing at the crater's edge, glazed immortal light flowing around it like a god descended to earth.
The Wisdom King's enormous body slowly shrank and faded away, revealing Neji below, still dressed in snow-white robes, though his face was slightly pale.
He walked step by step to the dying Raikage and looked down with calm white eyes at this opponent who had reached the end of his life.
"Cough... cough, cough..." A coughed up black clots of blood. His voice was weak, yet it carried a trace of relief and a warrior's pride. "...Good... good punch... Neji of Konoha... you... won..."
Neji silently watched him. The faint three-colored immortal radiance in his eyes flowed before finally turning into an almost inaudible sigh.
"This punch," he said slowly, his voice clearly reaching A's ears and carrying a warrior's respect, "is in tribute to your unyielding warrior's soul."
He raised his right hand. At his fingertip, a three-colored point of light quietly emerged, condensed to the utmost and containing the power of creation and destruction of the three aspects.
"In your next life," Neji said coldly and indifferently, like the judgment of the Deva Path, "do