The autumn rain in the Land of Grass was pale blue.
Yet not a single Stone Shinobi wished to remember what had happened that day...
The sky was dim. Black clouds rolled overhead like a herd of galloping, roaring wild horses, piling thicker and thicker, pressing lower and lower. The raging wind swept through, carrying scattered raindrops that lashed the earth like countless silver chains.
Rainwater slowly streamed down the Stone Shinobi's cheeks, yet they could only tremble as they stared at the towering blue giant atop the mountain.
"Rumble..."
A dazzling bolt of lightning suddenly flashed through the gloomy world. The blue giant standing alone upon the summit faced the lightning, yet shone with an even more brilliant radiance.
"Konoha's Blue Asura..."
Blue-white light flickered across Ōnoki's face. Hovering amid the torrential rain beneath a straw hat, Ōnoki narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists. For a moment, his memories seemed to return to countless years ago, and the helplessness he had felt before that nearly identical blue giant surged up within him once more...
Only this time, he was no longer the obscure, ordinary ninja he had once been...
"This is definitely not Susanoo!"
The Asura Giant was as crystalline and translucent as sapphire. Tens of thousands of blue fluorescent streaks scattered outward, bathing the entire darkened sky in a ghostly blue glow. Yet Ōnoki could still tell that compared to Susanoo, whose Chakra was nearly solidified, the Asura Spirit Body seemed somewhat more illusory.
"Test it with ninjutsu first!"
At Ōnoki's command, countless Stone Shinobi forcibly suppressed their instinctive human terror of such a colossal being and charged toward the mountaintop.
Dragons and serpents surged from the earth, mountains overturned, and enormous boulders fell from the sky, only to silently pass through the spirit body's form as