On the opposite side of the battlefield, Hiashi Hyūga faced both Nagato and Kiyomi at once.
The air between them twisted under the force of three entirely different chakra systems clashing at full output.
Hiashi's aura was the first to flare.
White chakra surged from his body in a violent bloom, streaked through with thin black lines that crawled along his skin like ancient ink.
The Hyūga's ancient energy vessel responded to him with perfect synchrony despite the vast distance; the transmission was perfect.
The chakra was not like normal Hyūga chakra.
It was denser, hotter, and older, a pressure that made even Nagato's Rinnegan flicker for a moment.
Hiashi stepped forward, and the ground cracked.
Rotation erupted around him, no longer a sphere but a growing vortex.
The white-black chakra infused it, shaping it into a giant whirling dome that tore the forest apart in one sweep.
Kiyomi and Nagato leapt aside, narrowly avoiding the expanding wave.
Kiyomi's eyes already spun, Mangekyo patterns twisting like dark stars.
Her Susanoo rose immediately, black armor forming with smooth precision.
Her left eye activated first, then.
A shimmering ripple erupted around her feet, distorting the ground.
The air warped.
The soil cracked and softened.
Chakra threads around the battlefield twisted into chaotic spirals.
Enmetsu.
Her chaos field.
Hiashi sensed the distortion through his Byakugan immediately.
His vision blurred at the edges, depth perception shifting.
The disruption was enough to destabilize his stance.
Kiyomi didn't waste the opening.
She charged.
Her Susanoo swung its dual hammers down on Hiashi.
Hiashi's gaze sharpened.
He stepped forward.
His palms shot out in a straight, clean line.
Two Vacuum Palms burst forth.
Pure white.
Sharp-edged.
Compressed with far more force than any Hyūga could normally produce.
The blasts struck Susanoo's hammers head-on.
Kiyomi staggered backward instantly, her armor rattling under the pressure.
Cracks rippled across the hammer-frames before they stabilized.
Nagato swept in behind Kiyomi.
A blade of natural energy formed, nearly translucent but heavy with compressed force.
He brought it downward in a clean, decisive arc.
Hiashi raised an enlarged special chakra mode arm to block.
The collision detonated a crater beneath them.
Hiashi's arm flickered, stressed by the sheer density of natural energy.
Nagato pressed harder, forcing Hiashi's rotation back a step.
Kiyomi's right eye flashed.
Shōmetsu.
Focused entropy.
Hiashi twisted.
The outer layer of his chakra cloak evaporated instantly, leaving a dark burn mark across the white aura.
However, more white chakra surged, repairing the gap before Kiyomi could follow up.
Kiyomi leaped back, narrowing her eyes.
Hiashi countered immediately.
He thrust both palms forward, sending out a Vacuum Palm that had grown into a massive shockwave, three times the size of a normal one.
The attack hit Kiyomi's Susanoo dead center. Its armor cracked but held, though Kiyomi was shoved back several meters across the torn ground.
Nagato stepped forward and thrust his hand toward Hiashi.
His golden Rinnegan pulled.
Gravity shifted around Hiashi, making the ground under his feet suddenly weightless. His balance wavered for an instant.
Nagato seized the moment.
He raised both arms.
A large 'meteor' of natural energy began forming above the battlefield.
Hiashi looked up.
He crossed his palms.
White chakra surged.
His enlarged arms extended to twice their normal range.
Twin Dragon Palms erupted.
Two colossal dragons of pure Hyūga chakra roared upward, slamming into the descending meteorite.
The impact exploded the entire structure into blinding fragments.
Each fragment still carried gravitational force.
Hiashi's rotation expanded again and shredded them before they could crush him.
Meanwhile, Nagato had no time to breathe.
The monk-samurai formation descended next.
Spectral fists and sword flashes rained from above, each carrying a vestige of natural energy and ancient war techniques.
Nagato exhaled sharply.
Sage Art: Caustic Rebirth ruptured from the cuts on his shoulder.
Acidic vapor burst outward, melting dozens of incoming strikes and healing his wound simultaneously.
Kiyomi countered with raw precision.
She launched a targeted Shōmetsu burst, dissolving entire lines of incoming attacks with pinpoint entropy.
The moment Kiyomi's Shōmetsu sweep cleared the air, Hiashi blurred forward again, his chakra mode cutting through the smoke with frightening speed.
Nagato's eyes sharpened.
He raised his hand.
The golden Rinnegan pulsed twice.
A semi-transparent dome burst outward around him, a thickened, glossy chakra membrane forming in an instant.
Its surface rippled like liquid glass, catching the light strangely.
Sage Art: Mucosal Reflection Field.
Hiashi struck it with a full-force Vacuum Palm.
The dome bent, twisted the attack, and sent it spiraling sideways.
The redirected blast tore a groove across the ground far to Nagato's right, missing him entirely. The dome shimmered again and folded the leftover force back into itself.
Hiashi's Byakugan flared in irritation at the warped angles.
He adjusted his footing.
Then he attacked head-on.
His palms extended, white chakra forming into twin dragon heads larger than before.
Unlike Twin Lions, these were predatory, serpentine, and heavy.
They snapped toward Nagato with suction force, each one pulling violently at Nagato's chakra.
Nagato let them hit.
The dragons latched onto him, fangs of pure chakra digging into his cloak.
They began draining him immediately, pulling his chakra through direct contact.
But they absorbed only chakra. Not natural energy.
Nagato waited until Hiashi committed to the pull.
Then he detonated a sudden burst of gravitational natural energy outward.
The dragons shattered instantly.
Hiashi staggered back half a step, surprised, but kept his guard up.
Kiyomi rushed in from the flank, left eye twisting space around Hiashi's ribs again.
Her Susanoo hammered down once more, but the chaos field she projected was the real danger, warping Hiashi's footing, bending his angles of movement.
Hiashi pivoted sharply.
Rotation erupted upward, a pillar of white light towering into the air, shaking the branches above them.
The giant vortex smashed the Susanoo hammers aside and forced Kiyomi back with one sweep.
The monk–samurai formation descended again.
Nagato responded instantly.
His skin shimmered with a thin, translucent defensive layer of senjutsu slime.
The dispersing armor.
It dissolved incoming blows on contact, the vapor corroding each fist and blade that touched him.
At the same time, his internal healing acids repaired the strain in his left arm, knitting micro-tears in an instant.
Kiyomi flicked her right eye upward.
A series of thin entropy lines shot into the formation, dissolving entire rows of incoming strikes before they could land.
Hiashi slammed the ground with both palms.
A massive white shockwave erupted outward, obliterating the remaining formation and carving a clean circle of broken earth around him.
Ryusei's clones flickered in at that moment, intangible and fluid.
They intercepted several lingering monk-blades and slammed senjutsu into Hiashi's flank, disrupting his chakra flow for a brief instant.
One clone took a palm strike and dispersed like mist, leaving behind a tiny pulse of energy.
Kiyomi used the opening.
Her Mangekyō spun faster.
She activated her left eye again, Enmetsu twisting the air around Hiashi, making his depth perception skew just enough for Nagato to act.
Nagato raised his arm high.
The golden Rinnegan concentrated natural energy into a sphere over his palm.
But instead of striking downward, he pulled.
The natural energy in Hiashi's last Vacuum Palm, still lingering in the air as residual motion, folded back around into Nagato's vortex.
Nagato redirected it.
He returned the attack.
The white shockwave Hiashi had launched moments ago reconstituted and slammed back toward him from the opposite angle.
Hiashi's eyes widened.
He pivoted sharply and met the reflected strike with another Rotation, dispersing it in a burst of air.
But the effort drained him for a moment.
Kiyomi's right eye flared.
A precise Shōmetsu beam aimed for his lower ribs.
Hiashi blocked with a palm strike, the white chakra cloak flickering as entropy scraped its surface.
The ancient vessel surged again, repairing the damage instantly. He was way ahead of both of them in terms of chakra.
Nagato followed with a gravitational oscillation that struck Hiashi's stance directly.
The Hyūga staggered.
Kiyomi's Susanoo hammered down.
Nagato's blade of natural energy swept in from the right.
Hiashi countered with twin palms.
Pure white shockwaves clashed against chaotic distortion and natural-energy pressure.
They separated again in a burst of dust.
All three landed on opposite sides of the clearing, breathing hard.
Hiashi's black markings pulsed along his skin.
Nagato's golden aura flickered with internal healing acid.
Kiyomi's Mangekyō spun, each eye straining slightly from repeated entropy use.
Ryusei's clones flickered behind Nagato and Kiyomi again, reinforcing their chakra flow and redirecting lingering formation attacks and baiting Hiashi's Byakugan in unpredictable angles.
The monk–samurai formation reformed on Hiashi's side, ready to strike again.
Hiashi's transmission core, connected to the ancient vessel, pulsed like a second heartbeat.
Nagato's golden Rinnegan drew in more natural energy until the ground trembled.
Kiyomi's left eye twisted space. Her right eye glimmered with dissolution. The stalemate held.
She steadied her breathing as the dust settled again.
She hadn't expected this.
Not even remotely.
Before today, she always assumed the comparison between Uchiha and Hyūga was mostly a joke.
Something repeated by ignorant civilians because both happened to be dojutsu users in the same village.
Nothing more. But facing Hiashi like this, feeling that ancient white energy crushed the air every time he moved…
Facing both her and Nagato combined, who were both, in Ryusei's own words, above even the 'peak Kage territory'.
She finally understood what Ryusei meant when he warned her that the Hyūga clan held far deeper secrets than people realized.
She could see it now.
She turned her head slightly, scanning the distant battlefields with her Mangekyō's clarity.
Fugaku and Renjiro were locked with Jiraiya and Mito, none of them able to gain ground.
Tobirama and Ashina's clash shook the entire valley, but neither could seal or outmaneuver the other completely.
Hashirama and Orochimaru's fight was tearing through the forest layer by layer, but Edo regeneration made it a losing battle in the long term.
Every major front was deadlocked.
Even Ryusei, far above them, was now being gradually overwhelmed by that mysterious powerhouse whose chakra output eclipsed everything else.
The air itself distorted every time the two collided.
It was obvious Ryusei was burning a monstrous amount of chakra to keep that entity away from his allies and buy everyone time.
Kiyomi's jaw tightened.
Despite the destruction stretching across half the surrounding land, the translucent, otherworldly spiritual barrier around Konoha still held.
Untouched.
Uncracked.
It continued to protect the village completely.
She shifted her focus back to Hiashi, who looked like he hadn't tired at all.
The ancient vessel feeding him limitless white energy.
That was the real problem.
They couldn't win a battle of attrition against someone who technically never ran out of chakra.
But then she remembered Ryusei's words before the battle.
He, more accurately, his special clone, was already searching for the source of that energy outside Konoha.
Everything they were doing here, every second they bought, was helping him.
Their struggle wasn't pointless. It was crucial.
To steal it.
To cut it off.
And then overturn the entire situation in their favor, just like always.
Kiyomi inhaled once, steadying her pulse.
If he succeeded, everything would change.
But they still had to hold until then.
Just as she reset her stance, her enhanced sensory mode from Hashirama's cells caught something in the distance.
A body collapsed.
A chakra signature flickered out.
Hiruzen Sarutobi.
The Third Hokage was surprisingly already gone.
And Kanae Hyūga was sprinting toward them, her killing intent so sharp it left a pressure trail behind her.
Good. Another reinforcement.
Maybe enough to finally break the deadlock here… and take some of the pressure off Ryusei.