Deep within the underground stone hall of Rōran, time seemed to stand still. Only the Dragon Vein's energy rose and fell slowly like the tide, giving off a steady glow.
Sai had treated his own external injuries and Sakura Haruno's. He knelt in a formal posture, quietly awaiting orders, his expression so calm that nothing suggested he had just undergone the upheaval of capture and surrender.
Sakura Haruno huddled beside the cold stone wall, staring blankly at the unconscious Naruto. Pain and inner struggle occasionally flickered in her eyes, but she dared not make a sound.
Toyotomi Yinglang stood before the unconscious Naruto Uzumaki. His scarlet Mangekyō Sharingan activated silently, dark spirals and triangular blades of light rotating slowly in his pupils with a cold gleam that penetrated the essence of souls and energy.
He reached out without touching Naruto, merely holding his palm above his abdomen-the location of the Nine-Tails' seal.
"Let's begin."
As he murmured, his fingers spread slightly. An extraordinarily complex dark-gold halo rose from his palm, blending pure Spiritual Energy, Dragon Vein power, and a profound understanding of sealing jutsu.
He was not forcibly breaking the seal. Instead, with exceptional skill, like the finest surgical blade, he slipped through the gaps in the barrier formed by the combined Four Symbols Seal and Eight Trigrams Seal, penetrating, probing, and then... extracting.
First target: Nine-Tails chakra.
The process was not easy. Although Naruto was unconscious and the Nine-Tails' will lay dormant, his chakra remained full of violence and hatred. Toyotomi Yinglang carefully controlled his power, avoiding the core areas that might stimulate the Nine-Tails' own consciousness, as though skimming oil from the surface of a boiling vat. Strands of blood-dark crimson chakra, laden with an ominous, destructive aura, were drawn out, separated, and compressed by the dark-gold halo.