Shiraishi's sheer might far exceeded the calculations of the three combatants left on the field.
A single Photon Geyser had comprehensively decimated the Hidden Rain Village, and with the terrain now converted into a boundless desert of silver sand, the absolute terror of his strength was laid bare.
Though Jiraiya had mentally prepared himself for the Kazekage's power, he had still vastly underestimated this man's apocalyptic capacity for destruction.
If this technique were to be unleashed upon Konoha...
Those horrific sources of light traveled at a velocity that made reaction or evasion practically impossible.
As an ability derived from a card that even the system's specialized lens could not fully decipher, its destructive radius was monstrous, reducing the proud Hidden Rain Village to absolute ruin in a mere instant.
It wasn't just Jiraiya; even Elder Fukasaku and Elder Shima looked on from a distance, their wrinkled faces completely paralyzed with dread.
"Gamabunta, are you alright?"
"I'll live... but Jiraiya is in extreme danger."
Jiraiya's expression was despondent. Staring at the bodies of the Rain shinobi strewn across the silver sand, a cocktail of grief, fury, and profound powerlessness welled up in his chest, forcing him to violently cough up a dark stream of blood.
"Jiraiya-sensei, look closely at this scenery. Remember it well," Nagato spoke slowly as he stepped to the vanguard. He gazed at the destruction with a seemingly detached expression, yet his internal emotions were a turbulent storm.
"This is the exact brand of agony that the struggles of Great Nations invariably inflict upon small countries."
No matter what paths they had walked, Nagato and Konan loved the Hidden Rain Village and the Land of Rain more than anyone else. Witnessing their homeland reduced to ash brought a devastating sorrow to their hearts.
Meanwhile, Obito—the only one to emerge entirely unscathed from the photon assault due to his Kamui—found himself immediately beset once more by the razor-sharp edge of Unohana Retsu's blade. He was forced to maintain his intangibility to survive continuously.
The woman before him possessed the terrifying and bizarre ability to inflict direct damage upon the soul. Though Obito had tried multiple times to catch her off guard with Kamui's distortion, her flawless combat instincts allowed her to cleanly evade every trap.
Sensing that Shiraishi had already dropped a definitive strategic payload with the Photon Geyser, Unohana's eyes flashed with a chilling, bloodthirsty light. She decided to unleash her own absolute compliance method:
"Carriage of thunder, bridge of the spinning wheel. With light, divide this into six!"
An incantation?
Hearing Unohana begin her chant, Obito arrogantly chose not to interrupt her, curiously allowing her to manifest the technique. In an instant, a torrent of spiritual pressure erupted, and six massive pillars of golden light slammed down from the firmament.
Bakudo #61: Rikujokoro! (Six Rods of Light Prison)
Kikyo had previously imbued a fraction of the Shikon Jewel's localized spiritual energy into Unohana's spiritual core, allowing her to briefly manifest a spell of this nature.
Though the Shikon Jewel was structured from the convergence of four distinct souls and possessed a high-tier spiritual essence, its fundamental concept differed entirely from Unohana's native Reiryoku. Borrowing its power was a crude, forced channeling that exacted a massive, exhausting toll on her physical frame.
The moment the incantation was completed, Obito's body was locked dead center within the six beams of light. Despite possessing an unparalleled space-time ninjutsu, his physical form was completely pinned, rendering him immobile.
What kind of technique is this?!
As Obito's face contorted in sheer terror at a methodology that defied the known laws of chakra, Unohana's face turned deathly pale. Yet, the Zanpakuto in her hand did not hesitate for a microsecond, slicing forward to unleash a catastrophic wave of cutting force.
Crap!
With Obito temporarily unable to shift into his Kamui dimension, he stood on the precipice of execution. Suddenly, Zetsu erupted from the silver sand below. A White Zetsu clone threw its own body forward to act as a human shield, and under the razor-sharp edge of Unohana's blade, it was instantaneously cleaved into four neat pieces!
Capitalizing on the distraction, Black Zetsu swiftly dragged the thoroughly exhausted Obito into the depths of the earth, vanishing from Unohana's line of sight.
Black Zetsu was fraught with an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Shiraishi's faction was simply too powerful. Leaving aside the Kazekage who could obliterate a village with a single motion, both the purifying shrine maiden and this berserker swordswoman were exceptionally dangerous entities.
At this point, Akatsuki was essentially broken. No matter how resilient Nagato and Konan proved to be, they stood virtually no chance against Shiraishi.
Obito's expression beneath his mask was hideous, his mental fortitude heavily taxed. "Nagato's Rinnegan..."
"Rest assured," Black Zetsu hissed softly. "I will find a way to secure at least one of them."
According to their prior strategic agreement, Shiraishi was supposed to yield one of the Rinnegan to Zetsu. But after witnessing the Kazekage exercise such absolute, dictatorial power, Zetsu could no longer be certain if the man had any intention of honoring his word.
The ruined landscape of the Hidden Rain Village was steadily being buried beneath a shifting ocean of silver sand. Shiraishi hung suspended in mid-air, looking down upon the three resisting shinobi with the cold, unblinking gaze of an ancient deity.
Jiraiya was down on one knee, his lifeblood dripping heavily onto the silver sand as his consciousness began to blur. Nagato had already moved forward, shielding his old mentor behind his own back.
"Konan, prepare to unleash that technique."
"Understood..."
In the original history, Konan had prepared six hundred billion explosive tags to eliminate Obito.
However, due to the compounding industrial advancements and production capabilities introduced across the villages in this era, her current arsenal of explosive tags far eclipsed that number.
Among the combatants left on the field, a fully unhinged Konan represented a threat level that was, in many ways, more volatile than Nagato himself.
An endless sky of paper tags transformed into origami birds, fluttering into the heavens to surround Shiraishi from every conceivable quadrant.
A chain reaction of explosions detonated across the firmament without rhyme or reason. Shiraishi immediately raised a massive barrier of Magnet Release to shield himself.
As the concussive blasts rippled continuously across the sky, Shiraishi attempted to channel his photon energy once more. But Konan refused to grant him a single window of operational freedom. A colossal origami crane manifested in the clouds, diving downward with terrifying velocity.
Uchiha Kaede exhaled a massive torrent of Fire Release to intercept it, but the giant crane abruptly fractured into tens of thousands of miniature paper birds, each immediately igniting into a roaring fireball.
The complete destruction of their home and the critical condition of Nagato and Jiraiya had stripped Konan of all reservations. She was fighting with total disregard for her own life.
Seeing this display, Shiraishi's expression shifted subtly. The continuous, overlapping detonations of the explosive tags targeted his exact coordinates, forcing him to constantly adjust his positioning and maneuver defensively. At that exact moment, Nagato's true killing blow was finally initialized.
Nagato brought his palms together in a resounding clap. With fresh crimson blood streaming continuously from his Rinnegan, he unleashed his ultimate absolute sealing art:
"Chibaku Tensei!" (Planetary Devastation)
As a forbidden technique of the Rinnegan, it demanded an astronomical toll of chakra. His palms highly concentrated his remaining energy into a dense, pitch-black sphere.
The orb automatically floated into the highest strata of the sky, immediately generating a colossal, overriding gravitational pull that began violently tearing up everything within the surrounding miles.
The uprooted earth and bedrock rushed upward to form a gargantuan celestial sphere, intent on encasing the target within an inescapable core, completely stripping them of their mobility.
Bolstered by the unified strength of the Six Paths, the sealing potency of Nagato's Chibaku Tensei was exceptionally high. Even an entity of Shiraishi's caliber found himself temporarily incapable of breaking free from the crushing, upward gravitational pull.
In truth, Konan's initial swarm of explosive birds had served a singular tactical purpose: to pin Shiraishi down and lock his coordinates for this exact moment. That setup alone had expended a staggering thirty billion explosive tags.
The remainder of her massive, multi-hundred-billion-tier arsenal had been meticulously synchronized to merge directly with Nagato's Chibaku Tensei.
Having unleashed their respective peak hidden arts, the two lifelong companions perfectly synthesized their powers, forging the single most devastating combined offensive in their arsenal!
Imbued within the core of the rising Planetary Devastation were six hundred billion highly compressed explosive tags, woven directly into the fabric of Nagato's absolute sealing matrix. It was a localized apocalypse designed to systematically eradicate Shiraishi.
"Jiraiya-sensei, this time, it is our turn to stand in front of you."
Those soft, quiet words carried the unyielding resolve of Konan and Nagato. High above, the burning, cataclysmic satellite continuous cracked and detonate with internal explosions, while Nagato poured his remaining lifeforce into maintaining the Chibaku Tensei, determined to lock Shiraishi into a definitive grave.
Secret Art: God's Paper Mars!
This was the ultimate combination of ninjutsu born from the bond between Konan and Nagato—and it represented the final, defiant roar of the Hidden Rain Village.
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