Buzz—
A piercing high-frequency screech came from deep within Mukade's chest reactor, like tens of thousands of crazed cicadas beating their wings inside their skulls. The air turned unbearably viscous, and every vibration carried the teeth-grinding sound of tearing metal.
"Get down! Don't breathe!"
Hiruzen Sarutobi let out a furious roar, a terrifying gleam flashing in his clouded old eyes. As a veteran who had fought his way through countless battlefields, his instincts had long become second nature.
He watched the sturdy bronze pipes around them rapidly blacken and rust beneath the screech, like sugar drenched in concentrated acid, before crumbling into dust in mere seconds.
This was a Time Acceleration field.
Hiruzen clearly felt his heart pounding as if it were about to burst, his blood rushing fast enough to rupture his veins. This was not an attack on the body at all—it was forcibly stripping away the metabolism of life itself.
"Hehehe... Old man, can you feel it? This is the weight of time!"
Mukade's face, squeezed behind the observation window, broke into manic laughter. His enormous mechanical body jolted, and vast waves of purple-black flames erupted through the gaps in the window.
"Time Purple Fire!"
The flames had no heat, not even flickering light. Wherever they passed, space itself seemed to be violently compressed by a giant hand.
A Sand Ninja failed to dodge in time and instinctively tried to use the Body Flicker Technique. Yet the instant his chakra began to flow, the edge of a purple flame brushed his ankle.
There was no smell of burning flesh, nor was there a scream.
Before everyone's eyes, the Sand Ninja's legs grotesquely went from full and healthy to shriveled in less than a second before he landed, then completely weathered away. When he hit the ground, his