Tailed Beast Bomb

Uchiha Yuan swallowed a mouthful of saliva. This was the first time he had seen such a massive creature with his own eyes, and he could not help staring straight at it.

However, this appearance of his looked to Shukaku as though he were frightened out of his wits.

"Know fear now, do you? But this great lord here is in a bad temper. I'll give you a choice: if you can take a single slap from me, how about I let you go?"

Shukaku split his beak in a wide, cheerful grin, feeling a playful urge rise in his heart. The sight of this weak human struggling desperately for his life under his claws must be extremely amusing, right?

"Shukaku!"

"Hmm?" Shukaku blinked in surprise, his eyes slowly widening as he let out an astonished voice: "How do you know this lord's name!"

"Look here!"

Shukaku steadied his gaze and looked toward Uchiha Yuan, feeling a strange sensation in his heart. Why were the eyes of this ant before him red? Special eyes? And why was there such a familiar feeling about them?

Yet before he could figure it out, his consciousness plunged into darkness.

Uchiha Yuan deactivated his Mangekyō Sharingan, and taking advantage of Shukaku falling into a state of sensory deprivation, he hurried to the base of its feet to concentrate a massive Chakra hand, violently ripping a handful of fur from Shukaku's backside before flipping out a scroll with his backhand.

"Tailed Beast Sealing Mark!"

Then, after confirming that no Chakra was leaking, he hoisted the scroll onto his back and turned to run.

Some time later, Shukaku opened his somewhat drowsy eyes. Just as he tried to get up, a piercing pain flared from his backside.

"Hisss~"

He immediately lowered his head to look, only to find that his backside showed no changes at all.

"Hmm? Could it be I got up too abruptly? I seem to remember some ant calling my name just now..."

He raised his head and looked around left and right, seeing nothing but the boundless yellow sand and not a single living creature.

"Never mind, I probably really just got up too abruptly."

Unable to make sense of it, he simply stopped thinking about it. Shukaku shook his head and went back to lying flat on the ground to sleep.

Tailed Beasts were aggregations of Chakra and possessed no flesh and blood of their own. The small amount that Uchiha Yuan had taken would recover in an instant, and even if Tailed Beasts were killed, they would reassemble after a period of time.

Yet because they lived for so long, they spent the majority of their time slumbering.

After acquiring Shukaku's Chakra, Uchiha Yuan did not stop to rest as he boarded a boat bound for the Land of Water.

Back on the other side, within the Uchiha Clan Grounds, Madara had just stepped into the patriarch's office and instantly realized at first glance that the person sitting in the chair reviewing documents was a Shadow Clone Technique.

"Hmm? Where did you go?"

"It's big brother~ The main body said he had urgent business and needed to go out for a while."

"Urgent business?"

"Mm-hmm, and big brother, how did you know I was a Shadow Clone Technique?"

"If it were Yuan, he wouldn't still be sitting here in the afternoon."

"..."

Uchiha Yuan's Shadow Clone Technique was speechless. In short, was Madara saying his work efficiency was low?

Madara poured himself a cup of tea and asked offhandedly:

"How did you handle that monkey's invitation?"

"Threw it away." The Shadow Clone Technique pointed to the wastebasket. "There are simply too many people wanting to cozy up to us Uchiha nowadays, and it's nothing more than wanting to follow behind us and lap up some soup. However... these shinobi clans don't seem to be of much use to us."

Madara finished his tea without speaking. After sitting for a moment, he silently left, while the Shadow Clone Technique watched Madara's retreating back, the expression on his face neither sorrowful nor joyful.

The current grand prosperity of the Uchiha was almost inseparable from the financial backing of Uchiha Yuan behind the scenes, and Uchiha Yuan's pawns merely needed to rely on the backing of the Uchiha and Senju clans. Any more than that would invite unnecessary trouble.

As for whether this would cause those shinobi clans to fly into a rage out of humiliation? The five thousand Uchiha shinobi nurtured by Uchiha Yuan were not freeloaders either.

Inside the Uchiha clan at present, the birth-encouraging policy was naturally still being upheld; as long as one gave birth to an additional child, they were directly rewarded with one hundred thousand ryo. There was no helping it—Uchiha Yuan simply had an abundance of money.

In the blink of an eye, a month passed.

The shinobi landscape of the Land of Fire naturally remained the same old story: a great deal of momentum, but very little actual rain.

Uchiha Yuan's Shadow Clone Technique casually tossed yet another invitation letter into the wastebasket. This one was from the Shimura clan, and presumably Danzo must have been born.

Meanwhile, Uchiha Yuan's main body was currently standing atop a mountain valley, gazing out into the distance.

"Strange, isn't the Nine-Tails here?"

He opened the map, looked at the cluster of crosses marked upon it, and then glanced back at the valley. According to his perception, it ought to be right in the vicinity, right?

Such a massive mass of evil energy from the Nine-Tails was something Uchiha Yuan could smell the scent of with his eyes closed.

Crossing this valley led straight to the Land of Lightning. After traveling through more than half of the Shinobi World, he now lacked only the Nine-Tails' Chakra to have collected them all.

"How strange. Could it have burrowed deep into the ground? It's not Isobu the old turtle."

Underground?

Uchiha Yuan touched his chin and looked down at his feet. It seemed this was the only possibility left.

Covering the soles of his feet with Chakra, he descended along the rock face, and sure enough, the scent of the Nine-Tails grew increasingly intense.

After dropping to the bottom of the valley and running a circle around it, Uchiha Yuan actually managed to find a cave.

"Is this Nine-Tails really this huge?"

He tilted his head back to gaze upward, visually estimating the cave entrance to be a hundred meters high. This was almost comparable to a Susanoo without legs.

"Hmm... should I lure the Nine-Tails out first and then control it with Dojutsu? Would going in like this be too risky?"

Hoo—

A massive wave of fox stench blew out from inside the cave entrance, hitting Uchiha Yuan right in the face.

"Awooo!!"

"Damn it, is it that sensitive?"

Uchiha Yuan hurriedly leaped away. Accompanied by a rumbling sound, it felt like an earthquake in an instant.

At the cave mouth, a gigantic Nine-Tails fox with orange-red fur slowly emerged. The Chakra overflowing from its body seemed to condense into substance, continuously radiating an evil aura like bubbling foam.

"Ant! Are you the one plotting against this old man?!"

"This... I actually forgot that the Nine-Tails also possessed the ability to sense good and evil."

"Ant!! This old man is asking you a question!"

The Nine-Tails glared with its beastly pupils, its mouth wide open, and gathering energy for a mere three seconds, it aimed a Tailed Beast Bomb and fired straight at Uchiha Yuan.

"What the hell!"

The sound of a breaking barrier arrived, and Uchiha Yuan hurriedly executed continuous Body Flicker Technique to dodge. The explosive force directly pierced through the spot where he had just been standing, and following the trajectory, a mountain peak was sliced straight down the middle.

"This power..."

This Nine-Tails spat out an S-rank jutsu as casually as nothing, making Uchiha Yuan briefly inclined to simply turn and run.

"Roar!!"

"Stop yelling! Got morning crankiness, do you?"

Uchiha Yuan grew angry as well. These Tailed Beasts were all acting so high and mighty, with their explosive tempers, weren't they?

"Fire Release: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"

"Scorch Release: Steam Blast!"

"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"

He continuously unleashed three large-area attacks in one breath, and given the Nine-Tails' massive size, it took the full force of the damage head-on.

Yet the Nine-Tails' gaze turned even more tyrannical instead. Plunging right through the sea of fire, it charged out, its nine tails thrashing wildly around it as the surrounding rocks and trees shattered at the slightest touch as if they were made of paper.

The combination ninjutsu appeared to have caused no trouble for the Nine-Tails at all; instead, it only intensified its rage.

"Roar!--Gath..."

Here it comes again? Uchiha Yuan simply activated his Mangekyō Sharingan directly, used the Body Flicker Technique to flash right up, and pressed face-to-face against the giant fox.

"Illusion: Heavenly Lock!"

"Illusion: Earth Bind!"

The Nine-Tails, which was in the midst of condensing a Tailed Beast Bomb, halted its movements, its gaze gradually losing focus. Uchiha Yuan immediately followed up with another Mangekyō Sharingan ability, Heavenly Lock, briefly erasing its five senses.

He then sprinted behind the Nine-Tails, gathered a massive Chakra hand to rip off a handful of fox fur, sealed it into the scroll, and turned tail to run.