Cold moonlight poured down like a waterfall through a hundred-meter-long fissure, cutting this hellish underground ruin into two starkly divided halves of light and shadow.
Hiruzen Sarutobi stood atop a broken stone pillar, the night wind making his black battle uniform snap loudly. The heavy stench of blood mixed with the sour odor of rotting wood assaulted his nostrils, churning his stomach. Even this battle-hardened Hokage could not help but frown.
His gaze swept downward.
The ground was littered with the mangled corpses of Root elites, while expensive experimental equipment had been smashed into heaps of scrap metal. At the center of the ruins stood Hyuga Xiao, completely unblemished, holding the unharmed Hinata Hyuga's left hand. Before them stood a malformed monster nearly four meters tall, half its body made of rough wood and the other half swollen flesh.
That was Danzo.
Though his appearance had been utterly distorted, his facial features fused together, Hiruzen Sarutobi would never mistake that dark, greedy chakra presence.
"Hyuga Xiao! You..."
The Third had barely spoken when the mutated Danzo moved.
After devouring Astral Matter, Danzo's sanity had been swallowed by endless hunger. Hiruzen Sarutobi's appearance diverted Xiao's attention for one ten-thousandth of a second.
For this monster, that was enough.
Bang!
The rock beneath Danzo's feet collapsed with a boom, spiderweb cracks spreading outward. His massive, twisted body vanished in an instant.
Pure physical explosive power. The grotesque fusion of Astral Matter and Hashirama Cells had given his muscle fibers a contraction force beyond human limits. The air was forcibly blasted apart, producing a deafening sonic boom.
"Die!"
Danzo's hoarse roar still echoed where he had stood, but his right arm, transformed into a massive wooden spike and wreathed in dark-blue Stellar Chakra, had already stabbed toward Xiao's heart from behind.
Too fast.