Obito's venomous whisper still buzzed in Ling's mind. It felt as though an ice pick had been driven into his brain and twisted, cold and agonizing. He shook his head violently, nearly flinging away the Black Stone cradled in his arms.
"What's wrong?" Kakashi's hand was already on his kunai, his Sharingan scanning the damp air around them as though poison might drip from it at any moment.
Before Ling could answer, the entire Shikkotsu Forest... came alive.
Not "alive" in the vibrant sense. Something deeper, something older, had been disturbed. The ground-if that thick moss and fungal mat, soft enough to swallow their ankles, could be called ground-began to rise and fall as though breathing. Around them, luminous fungi as enormous as trees flashed with unprecedented urgency, as if relaying some emergency signal. The dense natural energy in the air was no longer gentle. It grew restless, like an ocean beneath the low pressure before a storm.
"He... is trying to 'locate' this place." The Katsuyu Sage's thoughts struck everyone's hearts like heavy drumbeats. A clear, viscous fluid seeped from the surface of its mountain-sized body, swiftly covering the areas in direct contact with Ling and the Black Stone, as though forming an insulating layer. "Using the 'Key's' resonance... to erode the barrier from the other side..."
Ling felt the cold sensation of being watched, laden with Obito's crazed hatred, largely blocked by that layer of slime. But it did not vanish entirely. Like a silhouette behind frosted glass, that malicious gaze remained perceptible.
"Can you hold it off?" Sakura asked urgently. Medical chakra already glowed around her palms as she instinctively tried to do something.
"Shikkotsu Forest... has existed for ages... its foundations remain..." The Katsuyu Sage's thoughts carried an almost weary tenacity. "But the power of laws...