It wasn't Minato.
It was only his Shadow Clone.
Yet the moment Ryusei registered that, shock still rippled through him.
Because there was no Flying Raijin mark anywhere near him currently.
So, Minato's clone didn't teleport here himself with the ordinary Flying Raijin mark clearly.
The real Minato himself had somehow sent it across space itself just now.
A straight cut. A spatial tear.
The same mechanism he used for Flying Thunder God: Guiding Thunder when he flung objects away… except this time applied in reverse, and far faster, subtler, almost intentionless.
Ryusei had only one thought.
'So he probably can't do it on himself… only on external objects… like weapons, tags. Even clones. He took Guiding Thunder and flipped it, a spatial jutsu-shiki that can throw something through space the same way it ejects it. From defense to offense now. Efficient… and annoying.'
The clone's hands were already up.
Each palm held a different Rasengan, both completely new to Ryusei again, not used during the previous clashes.
The right hand spun with a sphere that rotated backward against its own chakra flow, compressing inward.
Reversion Rasengan.
It didn't explode.
It imploded.
A silent crushing vacuum that dragged everything toward its core.
The left hand shimmered faintly, the air around it rippling like a slowed heartbeat.
Temporal Rasengan.
Infused with Minato's time–space formulae.
Its impact froze a small area for a fraction of a second, a localized time stop.
Ryusei's narrow eyes sharpened.
'Not good. These aren't meant to kill me. They're meant to hold me still for some reason for a moment.'
He moved to strike the clone before either sphere could fully touch him, but by then, Minato's real body, far behind Ashura, had already acted.
Another spatial tear.
Another delivery.
Something streaked toward him already; bright, radiant, and deadly.
Ashura's newest Celestial Release, a never-before-seen kekkei-tota release, which was pre-programmed into him by his father before he opened his eyes today.
Star-like projectiles made of Wind, Fire, and Lightning, exploding in dazzling bursts, across space.
Brilliant arcs of chakra soon cut in front of Ryusei like falling meteors, piercing everything on their path.
Ryusei reacted instantly.
The moment he felt the three-layer trap closing, the clone's twin Rasengan, Minato's spatial tear, and Ashura's incoming celestial barrage, through it, he unleashed the technique he had been saving until now.
A fluid twist of his spine, then a coiled spinning-back kick fired out at superhuman speed.
The Seventh Gate roared to its maximum.
Any other human, even Might Guy, would have shredded every tendon performing this move.
But Ryusei's unique physique, built on countless layers of adaptation and inner regulation, could endure rotational forces that would snap bones and tear muscles off the bone in anyone else.
His spine moved like a reinforced channel, each motion perfectly aligned by chakra and control.
"Bright Day Serpent Dragon!"
Burst from his leg, a spiraling air-dragon of compressed force, tearing through the sky.
It wasn't Hirudora's single shockwave.
It was a vacuum drill cannon, torque, rotation, compression, and detonation all layered into one technique.
The dragon appeared compressed like a vortex, its coiled body writhing as it spun forward.
Its pull warped the air itself, drawing oxygen, mist, and even any chakra it came across into its core.
Space trembled at its passing.
Upon contact, it could implode violently before detonating outward in a shredding spiral pattern.
And Ryusei could even trigger that detonation remotely with a palm strike if needed.
Right now, he used its full drilling path.
It instantaneously devoured the clone's twofold suppression on contact, swallowing both the imploding Reversion sphere and the time-freezing Temporal Rasengan.
Then it shredded the star-like Celestial Release projectiles Minato had flung across space toward him.
But Ryusei didn't stop there.
He angled the dragon upward, from the beginning, sending it streaking across the sky in the same breath, a coiling streak of white pressure that seemed to devour the horizon on its way right toward Ashura in an instant.
However, it was only after the flashing dragon of force was already in flight that Ryusei's instincts snapped back to the space right around him again.
The celestial chakra peeled away and dispersed on contact as intended… but something else lingered.
Several small, black spheres gliding silently through the air, unaffected, slipping through the aftermath.
Truth-seeking orbs.
Hard to sense even in his current sensory peak, he only caught them in the final instant thanks to one thing alone, familiarity.
He had seen and carefully studied this annihilating chakra before, during the battle between Madara and Toneri's father. That lingering instinct was the only reason he managed to react in time at all.
His eyes narrowed even further, a deep frown cutting across his face.
'So he had these as well, the entire time… I should've expected it too, judging from Naruto at that time. He hid them the whole time for this moment, coordinated with Minato from the very start. This is truly bad.'
They were already centimeters from his chest and abdomen by this point.
A single touch meant instant annihilation.
Not even liquefying or dispersion would save him.
The Slug Sage Mode's semi-fluid body wouldn't help.
Truth-Seeking Orbs didn't just erase matter or chakra; they erased the form and nature of whatever they touched.
No regeneration could outpace conceptual erasure.
Once touched, there was nothing left to heal.
There was no blocking.
No absorbing.
No counter.
Only one, 'nuclear' option remained.
Either he dodged, or he overpowered their path with something that bent reality harder than they could erase it.
Ryusei opened the Eighth Gate instantly, with no hesitation, a millisecond split between survival and erasure.
Nothing else could save him.
It was the only answer he had.
Heat blasted from his skin.
Light distorted around him.
Space bent at the edges of his silhouette.
He moved within a fraction of a fraction of a second, fast enough that even the orbs' absolute pull seemed to lag behind him.
His sheer velocity warped the space around his body, slowing their advance just enough for him to slip past, his momentum bending their paths a hair's breadth away from his vital points.
He didn't overpower them, he didn't block them, he simply moved so fast that reality itself gave him the room not to be erased.
Ryusei realized something the instant he slipped past the Truth-Seeking Orbs.
He had already revealed the Eighth Gate.
There was no point hiding anything anymore.
If he wanted to seize momentum, he had to strike now. Hard. Faster than thought. Before Ashura and Minato stabilized again.
So he used that same space-bending velocity, his steps splitting the air with cracking shockwaves, and surged straight for them.
Ashura reacted immediately, gathering light, fire, wind, and lightning into his widest Celestial Release yet, preparing to engulf the entire sky in a radiant killing net.
But Ryusei was done playing by their rhythm.
If the Eighth Gate was open, then its technique would follow.
He no longer worried about Minato's counterattacks; at this speed and durability, even Flying Thunder God angles couldn't outpace him. And Ashura was momentarily more stationary, mid-formation.
Ryusei went for him.
He drew every shred of his exploding Gates-chakra inward, spine compressing, ribs tightening, chakra spiraling through every vessel like molten iron.
The Yin Seal flared across his forehead, massively flooding golden chakra into his system, stabilizing what should have been lethal instability for a mere human.
His life-force roared outward, merging with the blood-red vapor of the Eighth Gate.
A new aura formed — crimson blazing with gold.
He twisted forward, but unlike Guy's wild charge, Ryusei didn't hurl his body as a weapon.
He shaped the chakra itself.
A single punch cracked the sky.
And from that punch — born from his bones, his lungs, his life, his Gates — burst a colossal phoenix of crimson-gold fire and air pressure.
"Yūyami Hōōken."
Twilight Phoenix Strike.
The phoenix shrieked across the battlefield, wings unfurling wider and wider, tearing the air with each beat.
Its edges wavered reality, warping space the same way Night Guy had once done — but broader, controlled, sculpted.
It flew past Ashura first, a streak of incandescent fury.
Then — right as Ashura braced for impact —
The phoenix inverted.
Its wings folded inward, collapsing space around its own core, and it detonated from within the very air around Ashura, a vacuum implosion followed by a roaring outward blast of gold-white fire traced in black.
The entire sky shook.
Ashura was swallowed up in the explosion.
Ryusei's eyes narrowed, his body trembling under the Eight Gate's toll — but steady.
In the final instant before the phoenix detonated, Ashura pulled all of his Truth-Seeking Orbs together and compressed them into a shimmering, circular shield — a small, floating black plate of absolute defense.
But even that wasn't enough.
The Dusk Phoenix Strike bent space as it detonated, crushing the shield inward, slipping through its edges, and tearing reality around it.
The blast tore through Ashura completely, shredding his body into fragments of light and splintered chakra.
For a heartbeat, Ashura was gone.
Then the impossible happened.
From the tiny surviving sliver of the Truth-Seeking Orb shield, flesh began to re-form.
Cells rewove themselves, muscles grew over bone, chakra pathways knitted back into place.
Within seconds, Ashura's entire body regenerated as if nothing had happened — not even a scratch left behind.
Ryusei's eyes narrowed sharply.
This wasn't normal regeneration.
This was something far beyond Hashirama, and possibly beyond even some Ōtsutsuki.
"So this is the true God Tree mutation..." he thought. "A version of Hashirama's gift taken to the extreme… combined with Truth-Seeking constructs capable of preserving just enough of him to regrow everything."
With each passing second, Ryusei realized how absurd this durability was.
If Ashura could save even a finger's worth of matter using that precious Truth-Seeking Orb shield of scarce material he had, he would simply be reborn again.
Over and over. A glitch in indestructibility.
Ryusei frowned, jaw tightening.
Ashura was, in total, even more durable than him, and his healing outstripped Ryusei's own.
Ryusei's body, on the other hand, was now strong or "hard" enough to bend physics outright, that kind of durable, especially in the Eighth Gate — but even that had limits.
Limits he was dangerously close to touching.
And he knew it.
He was already living a miracle by not dying the moment he opened the Gate and using that kind of a technique way more dangerous than the Night Guy again, his unique physiology keeping him intact for now.
But if he overused it… if he pushed past the threshold even slightly for a while longer…
There would be no coming back.
Yet Ashura's relentless, infinite regeneration didn't seem to leave him much choice.