"What is this... ninjutsu?"
Gozu's terrified voice became the last echo he left in the world.
The next second, under everyone's utterly horrified gazes, the red energy in Shengu Xuan's palm, like a miniature sun, suddenly contracted into a point of light smaller than a needle's tip.
There was no earth-shattering explosion.
There was no world-destroying shock wave.
There was not even a sound.
A crimson ray as fine as a strand of hair, almost impossible to catch with the naked eye, flashed from Shengu Xuan's palm.
"Pfft."
A faint sound rang out, like fabric tearing.
Gozu had been preparing to attack again. The vicious grin on his face, the terror in his eyes, the movements of his body-everything abruptly froze in that instant.
An inconspicuous red hole the size of a needle's tip appeared in his chest.
Then, radiating from that hole, countless crimson cracks spread across his entire body like a spiderweb in an instant!
"Crack... crack..."
An eerie cracking sound rang out.
Starting from within, Gozu's body... disintegrated and collapsed inch by inch, turning into the finest red dust.
From feet to head, from skin to bone, from organs to blood, every cell that made up his body was utterly annihilated by that incomparably domineering divine authority of detonation, leaving not a single trace.
The entire process was terrifyingly quiet.
A breeze swept past, scattering the red dust as though it had never existed.
Gozu, a rogue ninja from Kirigakure and one of the Demon Brothers, was simply... erased, completely and utterly, before everyone's eyes.
"..."
It was as though the entire world had been muted.
Time froze completely at that moment.
"Gulp..."
Naruto Uzumaki swallowed with difficulty. His mouth hung open and his eyes were as wide as bells, yet he could not make a sound. The enemy he had just been shouting about sending flying had simply... turned to ash? Without shedding even a drop of blood?
Sakura Haruno was so frightened that she collapsed to the ground. She had just been one step away from death, yet now the demon who had wanted to kill her had vanished in a way she could not understand at all. Overwhelming terror and the bewilderment of surviving a brush with death brought her mind to a complete standstill.
"H-how... is that... possible..."
Sasuke Uchiha, whose hand had been split open between his thumb and forefinger by the impact, was now completely stunned as well.
Even with his Sharingan pushed to its limit, he had only caught a blurry flash of red light.
Then a living, breathing Chunin, far stronger than he was, was simply gone.
Not killed, but "deleted"!
What kind of power was this?!
This wasn't ninjutsu at all! Ninjutsu used chakra to produce supernatural phenomena. It involved a process, an energy form! But what had that been? No hand seals, no chakra fluctuations-just a raised hand, and a person was gone?
Sasuke looked at Shengu Xuan's right hand, still held out level, a trace of red lightning lingering around its palm. Then he looked at his own hand, still bleeding and trembling slightly with humiliation. An unprecedented sense of helplessness engulfed him in an instant like an icy tide.
The gap...
So this was the true gap between them?
He had still been congratulating himself for blocking a single blow, while the other already possessed the authority to casually "erase" an enemy from this world!
But no one was more shaken than Kakashi Hatake.
His one exposed eye was filled with shock and... fear ten times greater than when he had seen Shengu Xuan crush him yesterday!
He had anticipated that Shengu Xuan would use the Dragon Talisman's power, but he had thought it would be an uncontrollable, large-scale explosion like yesterday's.
But what had he seen?
Precision!
Absolute precision!
He had compressed terrifying energy capable of leveling a mountaintop into a single ray, solely to annihilate one enemy without harming a single blade of grass or tree nearby, without even leaving the slightest mark on the ground!
What terrifying control was this?!
This was already beyond anything a Kekkei Genkai could explain!
This was authority that only a god could possess!
Creation and destruction, separated by a single thought!
"G-Gozu?!"
Unlike Kakashi's shock, after a brief, deathly silence, Meizu, the other Demon Brother, let out a shrill howl of disbelief.
He violently yanked back the chain wrapped around Kakashi and staggered several steps backward, staring in terror at the empty spot before turning toward the boy standing at the bottom of the crater, whose expression had not changed in the slightest.
"You... what did you do to Gozu?! You monster!"
Meizu went completely mad.
He and Gozu were brothers who had fought their way out of the Bloody Mist Village together. They had depended on each other for survival and were each other's only family. He could not accept that his younger brother had vanished from the world before his very eyes in such a bizarre way!
"A monster?" Shengu Xuan slowly lowered his hand, the red light in his palm gradually dissipating.
He raised his eyelids, his pitch-black eyes looking directly at Meizu for the first time, filled with condescending pity.
"No, I just... did a little cleaning."
"Cleaning?"
"Cleaned up one... noisy insect, that's all." Shengu Xuan's tone was as casual as if he were saying, "Nice weather today." "Now it's your turn."
"Aaaah-! I'll kill you!!"
Shengu Xuan's dismissive words completely burned away Meizu's last shred of reason.
Boundless rage and fear stripped him of all judgment. Roaring, he poured all the chakra in his body into the chain and claw blades in his hands, then charged recklessly at Shengu Xuan in the deep crater like a crazed beast!
He would avenge his brother! He would tear this monster to pieces!
"Don't go!" Seeing this, Kakashi instinctively tried to stop him.
But it was already too late.
Faced with the figure charging toward him with overwhelming force, Shengu Xuan did not even lift his eyelids.
He merely raised his right hand again and gently snapped his fingers in Meizu's direction.
"Snap."
At that moment, the crisp sound was like a death sentence pronounced by the reaper.
"-Detonate."
A single cold word left Shengu Xuan's lips.
There was no ray, no light.
Meizu, charging swiftly through the air, suddenly stiffened.
He lowered his head in terror and saw that, at some unknown point, a scarlet totem mark of a coiled divine dragon had appeared on his chest.
It was exactly the same as the one that had appeared on Shengu Xuan's arm!
When... did this...
That was Meizu's final thought.
Boom-!!!
This time, it was a real explosion!
An indescribably violent surge of explosive energy detonated inside Meizu's body!
Without giving him any time to react, Meizu's body swelled and burst in an instant like a ball stuffed with ten tons of explosives!
Flesh, bones, organs, chains, claw blades... everything burned and vaporized in those scarlet flames, leaving not even a drop of blood!
A small mushroom cloud rose into the air, scorching waves of heat spreading outward and baking the ground pitch-black.
The entire process was clean and swift.
Another Chunin was gone.
In less than a minute, two Kirigakure rogue ninja whom even Kakashi found troublesome had been dealt with-one "erased," the other "detonated"-without so much as touching the hem of Shengu Xuan's clothes.
Shengu Xuan slowly withdrew his hand and brushed nonexistent dust off himself, as though he had merely crushed two ants.
He raised his head, his gaze passing over Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi, who had already turned completely to stone, and settling on the distant forest shrouded in a faint mist.
"You've been watching the show from the shadows long enough, rat. Isn't it time you came out?"
His voice was not loud, yet it echoed clearly across the silent training ground.
"Or do I have to invite you out myself?"
Kakashi, Sasuke, and Naruto jolted in shock and all turned to follow Shengu Xuan's gaze.
There... was another enemy?!
Before you continue