Four hundred kilometers from Konoha.
The unbroken mountain ranges had stretched across this continent for countless tens of thousands of years. Ancient pines on the ridges rooted themselves in cracks in the rock, untoppled by wind, unbroken by lightning. Even the fallout from three Shinobi World Wars had not made them lose a single leaf.
But today, these old things were all finished.
A gigantic beast clad entirely in black liquid armor charged from the southeast. With every step of its four legs, the earth sank beneath it. What it left behind were not footprints, but a trench more than a hundred meters wide.
The towering mountains along its path did not even have time to react.
The instant the beast's head struck a mountainside, the entire mountain split down the middle. Shattered rock blasted out to either side, and dust surged into the clouds. From a distance, it looked no different from a volcanic eruption.
It was far more than ten times the size of the Nine-Tails.
Its black liquid armor flowed along the contours of its muscles. A scarlet eye sat in the center of its forehead, its pupil holding none of a living creature's reason, only the most primitive, most savage instinct for destruction.
"Roar-"
That roar shook every bird within thirty kilometers out of the sky. Those still alive flapped desperately, while the dead plummeted straight down.
It had only one target.
Konoha.
That complete key.
Ten meters underground.
Half of Black Zetsu's body merged with the soil as he followed the beast westward. Every few seconds, a cataclysmic tremor came from overhead. Gravel and sand mixed with groundwater poured over his face, but there was not a trace of retreat in his single yellow eye.
Only fanaticism.
"Good. Very good."
His throat still carried the