Less than fifteen minutes after Obito left the Stone Warehouse, the White Zetsu in the outer stone channels all stopped struggling.
Nearly a hundred streams of plant chakra first fell completely silent.
In the next instant, all their cores turned black.
After losing the anchor in Obito's heart, Black Zetsu no longer maintained distributed control.
He forced every White Zetsu he could reach to obey the same command.
Destroy the Stone Warehouse.
Destroy the Surgical Records.
Recover the Broken Core.
The White Zetsu sealed at the very front of the stone channel deliberately smashed their own bodies apart.
White tissue liquefied and filled the gaps in the Rock Gate.
The White Zetsu behind them grew along their fellows' remains, lifting the heavy stone slabs layer by layer.
They no longer preserved their individual bodies or cared whether they could withdraw.
Black Zetsu treated the entire network as disposable siege material.
Seven White Zetsu did not join the assault.
Before the black authority could cover them, they severed their own underground root networks and hid in the adjacent space Obito had left behind.
Two had taken part in the treatment at the Stone Warehouse. The other five simply did not want to be used as disposable material.
This did not prove they sided with Konoha or Obito.
But it did prove that White Zetsu were not entirely incapable of independent responses.
To gain absolute control, Black Zetsu first had to cover their cores with the black membrane.
Severing their roots could temporarily delay the process.
Obito wrote this method into the Duplicate and sent it to the Land of Rivers' outer guards.
The guards did not release the captured White Zetsu because of it. They only added a root-severing layer to the seals, preserving the possibility of oral testimony from individuals