"Boom!"
Ōnoki struck like a cannonball, shattering the row of floor-to-ceiling windows in the office.
Shards of glass flew in the night wind. Several sharp pieces stuck into his thick plaster shell, making a dull thud.
He rushed out of the Tsuchikage Building.
He hovered in the night sky. The gale swept across his wrinkled face like a knife.
The fractured bones in my lower back are protesting fiercely.
A tearing pain shot up my spine and straight to the back of my head.
Ōnoki clenched his teeth tightly. He swallowed the blood seeping from his gums, the metallic taste filling his nostrils.
He ignored it.
Chakra, carrying his heavy lower body and dragging his mangled remains, flew straight to the border canyon outside the village.
A few kilometers away.
Ōnoki stopped above the canyon.
He lowered his head.
The earth trembled. The mountains shook.
Even the pebbles on both sides of the canyon were constantly bouncing on the soil.
It stretches as far as the eye can see.
Tens of thousands of dark green Chakra were lined up in a dense, black metal formation.
The tracks gripped the ground tightly, crushing every protruding rock. Sparks flew everywhere.
Thick black smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe. The black smoke stretched out and covered half the sky.
The roar of the engines sounded like tens of thousands of wild beasts roaring at the same time.
The sound waves crashed against Ōnoki's eardrums, making his mind go blank.
His breath hitched for a second. His heart pounded against his ribs.
The old man's legs trembled uncontrollably inside the plaster cast.
"Monster..."
His emaciated chest heaved violently.
Despair. This is something that no human can stop.
But he couldn't retreat. Iwagakure was right behind him.
Ōnoki raised his arms and clasped them tightly together in front of his chest.
Ten fingers were tightly clasped together. The knuckles were pale, and the skin was so taut it looked like it was about to burst.
"I'll fight you to the death!"
Ōnoki roared, his voice splitting in two, spitting out a few drops of blood.
The Chakra within his body was being drained out relentlessly.
Inside the plaster cast, the ruptured wound oozed a large amount of blood, staining a large area of the white bandage red.
Between his hands, a semi-transparent cube-shaped barrier rapidly expanded.
A blinding pure white light shone at the center of the barrier.
The light pierced the dim night sky, illuminating the canyon below in a stark white light.
" Dust Release: Dust Release: Detachment of the Primitive World Technique!"
Ōnoki pushed his arms forward suddenly.
The cube-shaped barrier suddenly stretched out.
A massive white beam of light, tens of meters in diameter, carrying a devastating pressure, swept straight down towards the front row of tanks below.
Wherever the beam of light passed, the air emitted a piercing, eerie shriek.
Even the rock walls on both sides of the canyon were brushed aside by the white light and instantly turned into invisible ashes.
There was no sound. The matter was directly broken down into atoms.
Inside a heavy command vehicle at the rear of the army.
Orochimaru stood in front of the control panel.
A blinding white burst of high-energy light erupted on the screen. The alarm beeped incessantly.
His thin, yellowish eyes stared at the screen, and he licked his chapped lips.
Fingers rapidly tapped on several metal buttons, producing a crisp "click-click" sound.
" Dust Release." Orochimaru's throat was dry.
"Frequency confirmed. Reverse frequency shield, maximum power grid connection."
He slammed his palm down on the red main control gate.
In the canyon.
The radar antennas on the roofs of the hundreds of bulldozers in the front row rotated simultaneously.
"Buzz--"
A low, electronic buzzer abruptly drowned out the roar of the engine.
Suddenly, a faint blue light shone on the dark green armor surface of each tank.
Lights intertwined.
Instantly, a hexagonal honeycomb-shaped energy shield was formed.
The shields of hundreds of vehicles were linked together, creating a huge, eerie blue curtain of light in the sky above the canyon.
The next second.
The white beam of light from Dust Release slammed heavily into the blue light barrier.
"Boom!"
There is no silent decomposition of matter.
Two extremely opposing Chakra frequencies collided.
A deafeningly loud and violent explosion erupted.
White and blue light intertwined and swirled. A blinding fireball expanded above the canyon.
A small mushroom cloud rose into the sky.
The shockwave swept across the mountainside. Large chunks of rock broke off and crashed onto the armored vehicles below.
Thick smoke and dust instantly engulfed the front row of tanks.
The high temperature directly burned the soil on the ground into crystals.
Ōnoki was suspended in mid-air.
His hands hung limply at his sides. His Chakra was depleted; even levitation was a struggle.
My body plummeted straight down in the cold wind, falling more than ten meters before I regained my footing.
He stared intently at the billowing smoke below.
He was breathing heavily, his chest tightening. A gurgling sound came from his lungs.
"Turn to ashes... it must have turned to ashes," he murmured.
This was the most prized weapon of his life.
Nothing can survive in Dust Release.
The mountain wind blows through the valley.
The thick smoke and dust were torn open by the wind, and the yellow sand dispersed.
Ōnoki's eyes widened suddenly, his eyeballs almost bulging out of their sockets.
Beneath the smoke.
Not a single one of those hundreds of heavy tanks was missing.
The dark green armor surface was charred black by the explosion. In some places, the paint was blistering and peeling off.
The reddish manganese steel base layer is exposed.
That's all.
It didn't even leave a shallow crater. The armor was completely intact.
"Gala. Gala."
The heavy tracks at the bottom of the tank continued to turn relentlessly.
Crushing the scorched earth on the ground.
Without even slowing down, it continued its advance towards Iwagakure like a black iron wall.
The heavy machine gun turret on the roof of the vehicle rotated, its cold muzzle pointing towards the sky.
The string that had been taut in Ōnoki's mind for decades.
It's broken.
His proudest technique Dust Release, is an invincible Ninjutsu capable of disintegrating everything.
They couldn't even split open a piece of the tank's metal.
The common sense of the Shinobi World, built up over decades, crumbled into dust before these tens of thousands of steel monsters.
Ōnoki was trembling all over.
The bleeding inside the plaster cast intensified. Blood trickled down his thighs, dripping into the air.
The muscles in his old face completely lost control and twitched together.
Despair completely overwhelmed him.
He turned his head.
A dry cracking sound came from his neck.
He was looking down at the entrance to the canyon below, where Kitsuchi was leading a large force.
"Withdraw!"
Ōnoki roared. His voice cracked completely, filled with a desperate sob.
"Retreat immediately!"
He frantically waved his withered arms.
"Activate the last line of defense!"
" Ten Thousand-Person Earth Style Wall!"