Rubble and dirt poured down from the collapsed dome.
They struck the azure gravitational barrier and were instantly pulverized. Dust swirled through the air, carrying the pungent scent of soil mixed with the rot and blood unique to an underground laboratory, forcing its way into their nostrils.
Hyuga Xiao stood in the sticky mixture of blood and pus.
He did not look back. He merely reached behind him and pulled Hinata behind his back. The violent gravitational field turned into the gentlest starlight barrier the moment it touched her, firmly keeping every lethal shard of debris, acidic mist, and foul odor outside.
Hinata stood barefoot in Xiao's shadow. She looked up at his broad, upright back and felt that familiar, domineering Stellar Chakra. Her heart, which had been pounding violently from exerting her power, miraculously calmed.
As long as he stood in front of her, even this hellish laboratory was as safe as the courtyard behind the Hyuga Clan estate.
"Cough... cough cough!"
Ten meters away, Danzo crawled out of the rubble in a miserable state.
The bandages around his head were in disarray, and his clouded left eye stared fixedly at Hyuga Xiao's true body descending from above. That gravity, capable of suppressing everything, pressed down on him so hard that even his breath tasted of blood.
He could not escape.
The path above had been sealed by gravity, while the corpses of his subordinates and rampaging mutated monsters surrounded him. Danzo knew well that before a monster capable of tearing apart the Leaf Village's strongest barrier alone, any attempt to flee would only make him die faster.
"Hyuga Xiao..." Danzo gritted his teeth and abruptly clasped the metal sealing ring around his right arm with his withered left hand.
"Crack!"
A piercing sound of snapping metal rang out.