"Big tanuki, you're being too loud. Why don't you turn into a Husky for me to play with?"
Shengu Xuan's voice was not loud, yet amid the howling winds and flying sand and stones of the Forest of Death, it seemed to possess a soul-piercing magic, reaching the ears of everyone present with perfect clarity.
The One-Tail, Shukaku, had been in an utterly frenzied state, ready to tear everything before him to pieces. Upon hearing those words, his mountainous body abruptly stiffened. His enormous eyes, patterned with cross-shaped stars, stared fixedly at Shengu Xuan, as though he had just heard the funniest joke in the world.
"Hahaha! A Husky? What kind of lowly creature is that? You worthless brat without a shred of chakra, how dare you talk so big to the great me!" Shukaku let out earth-shaking laughter. The sound waves from that laughter shattered the few remaining towering trees nearby into splinters. Shukaku raised his enormous claw of densely compressed sand high, ready to smash Shengu Xuan into pulp with its terrifying, all-destroying power.
Yet Shengu Xuan did not even move to dodge. He simply stood quietly where he was, a cold smile full of malicious amusement curling his lips.
Deep within his eyes, the ancient "monkey" totem erupted with dazzling, dark-purple light!
"Transformation divine authority, activate."
Shengu Xuan slowly uttered those words, raised his right hand, and aimed his palm at the enormous sand claw blotting out the sky overhead.
A purple beam almost too fast for the naked eye to catch shot from Shengu Xuan's fingertips and instantly sank into Shukaku's massive body!
There was no deafening explosion, nor any earth-shaking collision of chakra.
The instant the purple beam entered Shukaku's body, the whole world seemed to have been paused.
"Wh... what is this feeling? My