The white puppets raised their arms.
Their bone blades gleamed coldly.
More than five hundred of them packed together, surrounding everyone without a gap.
Hashirama pressed his palms together, chakra already beginning to surge.
Madara's Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan spun rapidly, and his lips curled into a cold sneer.
"Small fry are still small fry, no matter how many there are."
He had barely finished speaking.
A clear shout rang out in the distance.
"Stop!"
The voice was bright and clear, belonging to a young man, but it carried with tremendous force, traveling far beneath the eerie purple sky.
Every white puppet stopped moving at once.
Their half-raised bone blades froze in midair.
It was as though someone had pressed pause.
Everyone froze in surprise.
Ryuto immediately swept his Ki Sense toward the voice.
In the distance, a group emerged from around the corner of a stone building.
There were about a dozen of them.
Their clothes were strange: pure white robes in a style none of them had ever seen, made of fabric that looked like silk yet faintly reflected light.
What stood out most were their eyes.
Every one of them had a pair of Byakugan, all activated, with veins bulging around their eyes.
And the chakra fluctuations coming from these people... were absurdly powerful.
Ryuto swept his senses over them, and his heart lurched.
Even the weakest had noticeably more chakra than Hyūga Tenshu.
The young man leading them had chakra as vast as Hashirama's and Madara's, and it felt even more... concentrated.
The group moved quickly, reaching the edge of the encirclement within seconds.
The white puppets automatically parted to let them through.
The young man at their head looked to be in his early twenties, handsome but composed, even a little cold.
He glanced over the