The Golden Convoy jolted forward through the rolling dunes. Colonel Ka sat imposingly atop the Golden Tank's turret, blowing thick rings of cigar smoke into the air. As he brushed sand from the armor, he loudly cursed the madman who had just tried to sell him shoddy batteries, his crude obscenities carried far away on the desert's dry wind.
More than ten meters beneath the yellow sands, Kabuto Yakushi had not gone to Iwagakure. He hid within the dim strata, gripping the faintly glowing Chaos Seed tightly in his hand. Kabuto's eyes were full of gloom. He had initially thought this mortal was merely foolish, but their recent encounter had made him realize a more dangerous fact: the thought processes of extreme materialists like Colonel Ka had been completely welded shut by the laws of physics. If left unchecked, people like him would form a physical insulating layer within the Shinobi World, blocking the spread of Chaos. Those thugs who believed only in gears and gunpowder would become blind spots the Chaos Virus could not infect.
Kabuto decided to abandon ineffective mental communication. Since words could not move him, he would use the crudest method possible—smash open the mortal's skull and forcibly stuff the Chaos Seed into his brains. Kabuto rapidly formed hand seals, continuously channeling chakra into the veins of the earth. A dull tremor rose from deep beneath the sand, and the Mutant White Zetsu forces lurking in the area received their awakening order.
The massive dune ahead of the convoy abruptly collapsed without warning. Dozens of Mutant White Zetsu, pale all over and covered in purple-black bone spurs at their joints, burst from the sand. Crawling on all fours like malformed arthropods, the monsters swiftly spread out and completely blocked the convoy's path. The tracks screeched to