Just as everyone's nerves were stretched to the limit, ready at any moment to face a possible attack...
The tremors spreading throughout the Alternate Space suddenly stopped.
There was no warning whatsoever.
The world, which had been shaking violently a second earlier, fell deathly still the next.
The cracks in the ground remained, and fallen rubble still lay scattered everywhere.
But the rhythmic, heavy tremors had vanished.
This sudden silence was even more unsettling than the tremors themselves.
No one in the team relaxed.
Everyone maintained their fighting stance, their eyes constantly scanning their surroundings as they waited for a follow-up attack and for the enemy to appear.
But nothing happened.
The Alternate Space returned to that gray, deathly silent, empty, barren world with nothing in it.
It was as though that minute of violent shaking had been nothing but a collective hallucination.
Tsunade slowly lowered her fists.
She did not let down her guard, but she withdrew her gaze from the direction of the tremors' source and turned it to Sasuke Uchiha and Kakashi Hatake.
"...What happened?"
Sasuke shook his head.
Kakashi remained silent.
The sudden change had left them confused as well.
Meanwhile, over a hundred kilometers away, Naraku's heartbeat stopped again.
The ten percent of his chakra he had accumulated had been completely exhausted, without even a trace remaining.
His chakra pathways were empty, like a dried-up riverbed.
Without chakra to drive them, the Drums of Liberation naturally stopped.
His heart became still again, and his body remained pinned in place by Time Freeze, utterly motionless.
But a trace of a smile arose in Naraku's consciousness.
He had already sensed it.
After the tremors stopped, the chakra signatures of Tsunade and the others had not continued moving farther away.
They had stopped.
And they were standing guard