Battle of the Valley of the End (II)

The sky over the Valley of the End had changed completely.

The sky had been torn in two. One half was a churning, boiling vortex of crimson clouds, stained a savage dark red by the Nine-Tails' chakra, with lightning writhing through it and thunder roaring like a dying beast. The other half was a dense, heavy bank of deep green clouds, brought forth by Hashirama Senju's boundless vitality, brimming with endless life force and slowly revolving with the majesty to suppress all things.

The two halves of the sky collided and tore at each other directly above the canyon, their boundaries distinct yet interlocking like jagged teeth. The mere sight weighed on people's hearts and left them struggling to breathe.

Many people had gathered to watch on either side of the canyon, but all kept far away, hiding among more distant cliffs and woods, using various ninjutsu, secret arts, and even telescopes to peer at the battle in terror. Many Konoha ninja had come, representing every clan. Even some old-timers whose injuries had yet to heal, or who normally paid no attention to worldly affairs, had appeared, each looking grimmer than the last. The Uchiha contingent was there as well, led by Elder Xuan, who was being supported, and Yinglang. They gathered on a high slope with a passable view and watched in silence. Yutian remained hidden somewhere darker, standing guard. Kagami had not come; whether he had not received word or simply did not wish to come was unknown.

At that moment, no one spoke. Every sound was drowned out by the terrifying, soul-shaking auras emanating from the two figures in the center of the canyon.

The battle had long since begun. Or rather, it had long since surpassed "battle" in the ordinary sense.

There was no probing, no holding back. From the very beginning, they struck at each other with everything they had!

"Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence!"

Hashirama Senju clapped his hands together, his shout booming like thunder. In an instant, countless massive trees burst through the rock beneath his feet, growing and spreading wildly like living green dragons, baring their claws and fangs as they lunged at Madara Uchiha and the Nine-Tails opposite him! Every tree was harder than iron, sharp at the tip, and imbued with immense vitality and suppressive power. Wherever they passed, even the rocks blackened by the Nine-Tails' chakra were forcibly shoved aside and crushed!

"A paltry trick!"

Madara Uchiha stood proudly atop the Nine-Tails' head, his scarlet Sharingan coldly watching the sea of trees surging toward him from every direction. He did not even form hand seals. Beneath him, the Nine-Tails let out an earthshaking roar, its nine tails sweeping forward like nine crimson mountain ranges!

Boom, boom, boom, boom-!!!

The tails crashed head-on into the wooden dragons! There was no technique, only the crushing collision of raw power! Terrifying shock waves exploded outward in rings, stripping another thick layer off the already ravaged cliffs on either side of the canyon! Countless great trees snapped and shattered beneath the Nine-Tails' brute force, but still more surged forward in an endless succession!

"Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence!"

Hashirama changed his hand seal. Countless enormous, uncanny purplish-red flowers suddenly bloomed among the shattered remains of the trees, their centers spewing golden pollen that blotted out the sky! Potent enough to numb the body and devour chakra, the pollen rolled toward Madara and the Nine-Tails like a sea of yellow fog!

"Hmph! Tailed Beast Bomb!"

Madara snorted coldly. The Nine-Tails abruptly opened its enormous jaws, and a pitch-black chakra sphere, wreathed in dark red arcs of lightning and filled with destructive energy, instantly formed and compressed inside its mouth. Then-it fired!

The black Tailed Beast Bomb shot upward against the oncoming tide. Wherever it passed, its terrifying energy annihilated and vaporized the golden pollen, exposing a straight corridor of vacuum! Without slowing, the Tailed Beast Bomb hurtled straight toward Hashirama Senju, who was controlling the forest behind it!

"Wood Release: Wood Dragon Technique!"

Before Hashirama, a lifelike wooden dragon, larger than any of the trees before it and covered in imposing scales, rose from the ground. It gave a soundless roar and opened its jaws to bite down on the incoming Tailed Beast Bomb!

Szz-boom!!!

The wooden dragon and the Tailed Beast Bomb collided in midair. Rather than exploding immediately, they entered a brief, terrifying stalemate! Pitch-black destructive energy and emerald-green vitality furiously clashed, canceled each other out, and annihilated one another, producing teeth-grating friction and shrieking energy! The stalemate lasted roughly two breaths-

"Detonate." Madara's lips moved slightly.

The Tailed Beast Bomb abruptly contracted inward, then-exploded!

World-destroying black light swallowed the wooden dragon, along with a vast stretch of forest and cliffs behind it! An enormous hemispherical dome of black energy, over a hundred meters across, expanded outward. Everything it touched, whether rock, trees, or scattered Wood Release chakra, was reduced to nothing!

"Lord Hashirama!" Among the Konoha ninja watching from afar, someone cried out involuntarily.

Yet when the black light faded and the dust settled a little, Hashirama Senju still stood where he had been. The only difference was an enormous, thick shield before him, ancient in design and covered in wood grain-the Bracken Shield Technique. Its surface was charred and riddled with cracks, but it had ultimately stopped that world-destroying strike.

Hashirama's face was somewhat pale, his breathing slightly hurried, but his gaze remained calm. He lowered the shield and looked across at his opponent.

Atop the Nine-Tails' head, Madara Uchiha frowned slightly. He had felt it in that last strike: Hashirama's defense seemed more... "resilient" than he had expected. It was not greater power, but an indescribable "stability," as though he were wholly one with the earth beneath him and the nature around him. It was like striking a stone with all your strength: the stone itself had not grown harder, but the part connecting it to the earth had become exceptionally "secure."

Strange.

But he did not dwell on it. The battle was only just warming up.

"Is this all you amount to, Hashirama?" Madara's voice carried through the Nine-Tails' chakra, laced with cold mockery. "Then you and your dream of Konoha can crumble into the dust of history together!"

"Susanoo!"

Dark blue chakra, solid as glazed glass, surged wildly from his body. In an instant, it formed around him and the Nine-Tails into a towering figure clad in archaic armor, with wings on its back and a massive chakra sword in its hand-Perfect Susanoo! The Nine-Tails was encased within Susanoo's chest and abdomen, and their chakra began to merge more deeply! The Nine-Tails' savage malice combined with Susanoo's chilling majesty, releasing a despair-inducing, terrifying aura that seemed capable of severing space and time and destroying everything!

Perfect Susanoo: Nine-Tails Form!

Roar-!!!

Susanoo, infused with the Nine-Tails' power, unleashed a roar even more savage and piercing than the Nine-Tails' earlier roar alone. Its enormous chakra sword, seemingly capable of cleaving mountains, came crashing down toward Hashirama Senju's head! Before the blade arrived, its terrifying pressure had already severed the waterfall below and gouged a bottomless trench into the cliff!

Facing this strike that seemed like divine punishment, Hashirama Senju drew a deep breath. The last trace of hesitation vanished from his face, replaced by a resolve to stake everything.

"Madara, this is the path you chose... putting your ideals into practice through destruction."

He slammed his palms together before his chest, forming an exceedingly complex seal utterly unlike any of his earlier Wood Release hand seals! An indescribable aura, vaster, more ancient, and closer to the very origin of the world, slowly rose from him. Red markings appeared around his eyes, and a strange symbol flickered into view at the center of his forehead.

"But my path is creation, and protection!"

"Sage Art-"

"Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands!!"

Rumble-!!!

The earth groaned and split apart! A wooden Buddha statue so immense that words could not describe it burst from the ground behind Hashirama Senju and rose into the sky! How tall was it? It seemed to connect heaven and earth! How many arms did it have? Densely packed, layered upon layer, beyond counting-it truly seemed to possess a "thousand hands"! Every arm was enormous, its palm facing the sky, bearing a solemnity that held compassion for all living beings alongside supreme power.

Sage Art: Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands towered between heaven and earth!

Hashirama Senju himself sat atop the Buddha's head, faint wisps of natural energy swirling around him, wholly one with the colossus beneath him. He lowered his head slightly, looking down at the equally enormous Susanoo-clad Nine-Tails opposite him, which brimmed with destruction.

"Come, Madara. This is a clash of our ideals, and also... our final reckoning."

Perfect Susanoo's enormous sword crashed head-on into the torrent of countless arms from True Several Thousand Hands, which closed together and thrust forward like a colossal shield!

Boom-!!!!!!!

An indescribable crash! It was not a sound, but the lament of the entire space, the entire Valley of the End, and even the world beyond! At the center of the collision, space itself seemed to twist and shatter, exposing a pitch-black foundation! An energy storm terrifying beyond measure expanded madly in every direction in a sphere! Before that storm, the two enormous stone statues on either side of the canyon began collapsing and breaking apart like sculptures of sand! Farther away, entire stretches of cliff caved in, rivers changed course, and the earth tore open!

Everyone watching from afar, whether jonin or Kage-level, turned deathly pale and involuntarily retreated at full speed. Some of the weaker onlookers were even struck by stray shock waves, coughing up blood and collapsing unconscious. Among the Uchiha, Elder Xuan gave a muffled groan. Yinglang and Liuli caught him in time to keep him from falling, but his expression grew uglier still. Yutian stood farther forward, shielding them, chakra surging around him as he barely managed to steady himself.

Yinglang stared fixedly at the center of the battlefield, his Three-Tomoe Sharingan already active. Yet even with his current perceptiveness, he could see only two masses of destructive energy furiously consuming and annihilating each other. Unconsciously, he began using "Feng Shui Observation."

The world before his eyes instantly became "different."

In his "sight," there were no crimson or green clouds above the Valley of the End. There were only two unimaginably vast yet utterly opposing forces of "momentum," frantically colliding and wearing each other down.

One came from Madara Uchiha and the Nine-Tails. It was the ultimate momentum of "destruction" and "hatred," black as ink and red as blood, churning and boiling, filled with a savage will to drag everything to its end. It resembled an evil, scarred dragon of apocalypse that still sought to burn the world to ashes, madly battering and biting at the opposing force.

The other came from Hashirama Senju and True Several Thousand Hands. It was the momentum of "life" and "protection," emerald as the sea and heavy as a mountain. It seemed gentle and all-embracing, yet within it lay an endlessly renewing power capable of suppressing all things. It resembled a boundless forest, ancient and full of vitality, rooted in the earth. No matter how the evil dragon struck, it remained unshaken, constantly wearing down the opposing assaults with its immense "volume" and "resilience."

The "volume" of both was simply too vast. Every collision consumed enough terrifying energy to instantly drain an ordinary Kage-level fighter dry. This was a true battle between those who stood at the pinnacle of the shinobi world. They were no longer competing through simple moves and techniques, but through the expenditure of their most fundamental "reserves" and "will."

Yet as Yinglang continued watching, his brows drew together almost imperceptibly.

Something was wrong.

Through his "Qi Observation," the "momentum of destruction" on Madara Uchiha's side, though savage and fierce, was being consumed in a very "tangible" way. With every assault, a large portion of that intertwined black-and-red "momentum" visibly "evaporated." It was a genuine exchange of attrition. Though Madara and the Nine-Tails seemed to possess inexhaustible power, that expenditure was clearly visible.

But the "momentum of life" on Hashirama Senju's side was being consumed in a somewhat... "insubstantial" way.

It too seemed to be "worn down" in the collisions, but that emerald-green "momentum" seemed faintly connected to the earth beneath it and the vast natural world around it. Every time it was depleted, an exceedingly faint yet continuous stream of power of the same nature seemed to gather from some unseen source, providing a barely perceptible "replenishment" and "purification." As a result, the actual depletion of the "core" of that "momentum of life" was far smaller than it appeared.

It felt... as though Madara were fighting with his own "blood," while Hashirama, besides using his own "blood," also seemed to be drawing "moisture" from the "air" in a more efficient way to sustain himself.

No, it was more than "drawing."

Yinglang concentrated, pushing his observation to its utmost, until he even felt waves of stinging pain in his eyes.

He "saw" that at the very heart of the collision between those two vast forces of "momentum," where energy annihilation was fiercest, every time Madara Uchiha's "momentum of destruction" struck and attempted to erode Hashirama's "momentum of life," a trace of exceedingly subtle, almost imperceptible pale golden "flowing light" quietly flashed past-warm and pure, bearing a certain sense of "harmonization" and "purification."

This "flowing light" appeared only for an instant, and its position shifted unpredictably. Yet every time it appeared, it precisely "smoothed out" the most violent "turbulence" caused by the impact against Hashirama's "momentum of life," or "purified" a trace of the most stubborn "destructive" impurity trying to penetrate deeper.

It was as though... an invisible, masterful craftsman were performing the most exquisite "repairs" and "cleaning" whenever tiny cracks or stains appeared on Hashirama's "great shield"!

Who?!

Who could interfere in a battle at this level? Who could possess such subtle yet astonishingly effective methods?

Yinglang's heart suddenly sank. A name leaped into his mind almost instantly.

In this shinobi world, the only one who could possess such means, who could "favor" Hashirama Senju without leaving a trace and remain almost imperceptible to others...

Was the Sage of Six Paths, who had long since "died," yet might still be influencing this world in some form!

A storm surged through Yinglang's mind. Someone is secretly helping Hashirama Senju! That's it! It has to be the Sage of Six Paths! That old bastard really hasn't let go completely! Is he maintaining "balance"? Or is he... favoring the reincarnation of Asura's chakra?! What kind of bullshit fair duel is this! He's giving Hashirama Senju cheats!

The discovery instantly brought a layer of cold sweat to his back. So behind this seemingly evenly matched battle of gods that would decide the future of the shinobi world, there was an older, more invisible pair of hands pulling the strings.

Yinglang stared fixedly at the battlefield, watching the two colossi that seemed intent on shattering heaven and earth, watching that silent yet utterly brutal attrition of "momentum." Once again, his understanding of "power" and the "chess game" was violently overturned.

The waters of the shinobi world ran deep.

And in the battle at the Valley of the End, under the Sage of Six Paths' subtle "favoritism," the scales of victory might already have... tilted before the battle even began, almost imperceptibly, yet enough to determine the final outcome.