Dozens of purple-black chakra tentacles shot out from the cracks in the ground, each as thick as a giant python, their surfaces flowing with viscous dark light that seemed alive. Their target was clear—Hyuga Xiao, who had just defeated Kakuzu and was currently in a vacuum of power.
"Xiao!"
Kurenai Yuhi's cry was drowned out by the shriek of the tentacles tearing through the air.
Those tentacles moved at an absurd speed. Almost the instant Hong sensed the malice, they had already reached Xiao. The purple-black chakra carried a dense stench of decay, like congealed malice extracted from millennia-old corpses. Merely approaching it made one's soul tremble.
Xiao's Tenseigan mode had just ended. After using Divine Void Strike: Scattering Blossom, the chakra within him was nearly depleted, and his meridians throbbed with tearing pain. He barely raised an arm, gathering azure chakra in his palm into a thin barrier—
The instant the tentacles struck the barrier, Xiao's pupils contracted sharply.
Something was wrong.
These tentacles were not merely physical attacks. The moment they touched the chakra barrier, they actually "melted" like living creatures. The purple-black chakra became a viscous fluid, seeping and spreading along the barrier's edge, before—
Drilling directly into his skin.
"Urgh!"
Xiao let out a muffled groan, and his body stiffened violently.
Cold.
An ultimate coldness spread through his blood vessels and across his body. It was not the cold of temperature, but something deeper—as though death itself was flowing through his blood. What followed was a tidal wave of negative emotions.
Despair, hatred, madness, the urge to destroy...
Countless fragments of twisted will exploded in Xiao's mind, every one steeped in malice accumulated over a thousand years. He saw mountains of corpses and seas of blood, saw civilizations collapse, saw countless living beings wailing as they