The moment the Planetary Core Main Tendril sprouted, Konoha's ground did not crack open. It curled back like skin scalded raw.
Without warning, the entire Training Ground in front of the old hospital site heaved upward. Gray-purple, fleshy roots broke through the asphalt and foundations, turning woody and then gelatinous at a speed visible to the naked eye beneath the Blood Moon. In the blink of an eye, they formed a ring of thorn walls three or four stories high. Translucent Tumor Blossom buds covered the wall tops, each containing a malformed embryo curled into an imitation of a ninja's hand-seal pose.
"Don't make hand seals! Throw rocks, bayonets, anything without chakra!" Shikamaru stood on the roof of the Sealing Squad's stone chamber, his voice impossibly hoarse. He had long since thrown away his ninja tool pouch, and two fire axes swiped from logistics hung at his waist. "They feed on jutsu formulas! The flashier you get, the faster you die!"
An Anbu veteran swore, swapped his last Smoke Bomb for a brick-sized chunk of granite, and swung his arm wide to hurl it into a bud. The growth gave a piercing cry like a toddler's wail, splattering pus across the wall. Sakura sprang up the makeshift scaffolding, wrapping the medical team's tourniquets around her joints as armor straps. Using taijutsu alone, she kicked apart a succession of tendrils trying to climb the stone chamber-no burst of enhanced strength, just raw, monstrous force, her kneecaps cracking with every impact.
The Blood Moon bore down coldly from the sky. Anyone who tried to mold chakra felt as though red-hot grit had been stuffed into their chakra pathways. Konoha was using Stone Age methods to withstand a siege laid by a high-tech false god.
Three hundred meters underground.
Lin Ye descended vertically