Tsunade snorted.
Such fancy parlor tricks, aren't you tired of putting on this act?
She flew her hands through hand seals, pressing the heels of her palms into the ground.
Wood Release: Wood Locking Wall!
A semi-circular wooden shell rose up all around her, wrapping her entirely inside in the blink of an eye.
Electricity tore through the Water Dragon Bullet as it crashed into the Wood Locking Wall, its momentum shattering on the spot. Splashes of water and electric arcs streamed down the surface of the wooden shell, leaving not even a single scratch.
Hiruzen Sarutobi's expression sank.
Wood Release.
This jutsu was the nightmare he had genuinely buried deep at the bottom of his heart all these years.
The image of the First Hokage binding the Tailed Beasts, those groups of Nine-Tails and the rest, at Konoha's main gates like guard dogs waiting for various clans to pick them out was branded into his childhood memories and could never be washed away.
That kind of strength that made one's legs turn to jelly, that kind of aura that made respect well up from inside one's bones, pushed a young Hiruzen Sarutobi to fight desperately to climb to that position of Hokage.
He had indeed lived up to expectations.
His training hadn't been in vain, he officially became a ninja, and he was even recruited into the ANBU that Tobirama Senju had just pulled together.
Pity that by the time he put on the ANBU uniform, the legend of the God of Shinobi had already drawn its curtains.
In the days following by the Second Hokage's side, Hiruzen Sarutobi was slowly stripped of his soul by those methods of Tobirama Senju's.
Once the taste of power was sucked into one's lungs, it couldn't be spat back out. He plunged