The sensation of chakra being forcibly drained away was like countless icy needles piercing his soul, greedily sucking away his life.
"Bzz... crackle..."
The God Tree vines wrapped around the repulsion barrier tightened further and further, the shrill draining sounds unceasing. Across the surface of the azure barrier, the initial crack rapidly spread like a spiderweb.
Hyuga Xiao could clearly feel the chakra reserves within his body dropping below seventy percent at an alarming rate.
The surrounding walls of flesh pulsed rhythmically. With every contraction, the suppressive force and sensation of deprivation within this living domain intensified. The sickeningly sweet, bloody stench in the air grew thicker, mingled with the rotten odor of contaminated ley line energy, corroding both the senses and the will.
"Lord... Xiao..."
In the distance, Orochimaru, half-buried beneath a pile of rubble, spoke as weakly as a dying candle in the wind. His shriveled body resembled a mummy dried for a hundred years, and the fanaticism for divine power in his golden vertical pupils had long been replaced by fear of death.
He was finished.
The intelligence he had been so proud of, the forbidden techniques he had spent his entire life studying—all of it was as fragile as paper before this primitive domain that followed only the instinct to devour.
Yet Hyuga Xiao, standing at the heart of this desperate situation, still showed not the slightest ripple on his devilishly handsome face.
He even looked... composed.
Those Tenseigan, glittering with azure starlight, calmly swept across everything around him.
The wildly writhing vines, the endlessly pulsing flesh walls, every node through which energy flowed... all of it broke down into the most fundamental streams of data in his eyes.
No structure at all. Just indiscriminate devouring driven by instinct...
A trace of almost arrogant scrutiny flashed