Chapter 283: Divine Thunder Palace
A distance away from Sasori's battlefield, at Neji's location.
"Neji, can you see how the others are doing?" Guy's voice came through Neji's radio.
Bang! Bang!
Neji's Gentle Fist collided with his clone's. Hearing his teacher's voice, he quickly leaped back to create distance.
"Byakugan!"
His X-ray and long-distance vision activated. His gaze pierced through rivers and rock walls, reaching Sasori's battlefield. The sight of over a hundred chakra signatures shocked Neji.
However, he quickly noticed that many of these signatures were connected via chakra threads to a single core figure. The person fighting that figure possessed an immense chakra reaction of their own. He also spotted the chakra signatures of Sakura and Lady Chiyo.
"Sakura's chakra is severely depleted; her situation is not optimistic. She has been rescued by Lady Chiyo. There is another person—likely a reinforcement—who is currently engaging the Akatsuki enemy," Neji reported to his teammates.
Whoosh!
As soon as he finished speaking, he clashed with his clone again. Facing a duplicate that could perfectly mirror his abilities, including his Kekkei Genkai and Taijutsu, was an exhausting ordeal.
"Rotation!"
Two Nejis collided in a spinning dome of blue energy.
"Reinforcements? That's excellent news. But we need to deal with these clones quickly so we can support Sakura and Kakashi," Guy's voice crackled in his ear again.
"Mhm..."
Outside the main battlefield, a head poked out from the ground.
"That Sasori... he was hiding quite a lot! To think he collected so many puppets. If those ninjas were handed over to me, I could get so much done," Zetsu muttered, practically salivating at the sight of a hundred puppets with secret arts and bloodlines.
If they truly fought, even Pain might find it troublesome. The sheer variety of abilities made them too versatile.
"But who is this Jhin? I've never heard of him. Judging by his tone, is he a survivor of a nation Sasori wiped out?" Zetsu had scoured the ninja world for centuries but had no record of this individual.
Looking at the man's Lightning Style—which was successfully dismantling the puppet army and fighting Sasori to a standstill—he was clearly a powerhouse. Zetsu wondered if, should the man survive, he should have Pain invite him to join the organization.
However, Zetsu doubted that Lightning Style alone could defeat a hundred human puppets.
Rumble!
Lightning clashed with vibrations. The countless bolts descending from the sky seemed to hit an invisible barrier, suddenly reverting to raw chakra before vanishing into the air.
"What kind of bloodline is this? It actually neutralized my Lightning Style. It seems to be a method of assimilating deep-level particles to achieve neutralization. The bloodlines in this world are truly varied," Tonbo Tobitake marveled. Even with so many clones and an extensive intelligence network, there were still things outside his scope. The ninja world was vast indeed.
"Well, this Shadow Clone's chakra is running low. Time for the final move. I'll leave the rest to Chiyo and Sakura."
Tonbo glanced at the recovering Chiyo and Sakura, then back toward Sasori. After this bout, Sasori had lost dozens of puppets, leaving him with about fifty. Sasori was truly in a league of his own, using a secret technique to preserve the chakra of his human puppets for his own use. All Sasori had to expend was the chakra needed to maintain the threads.
It was a formidable art. But having exhausted this many puppets, Sakura and the others should be able to handle the rest. This was just one of Tonbo's two hundred clones; even with his "Limitless Mode" minimizing consumption, it had reached its limit.
"Playing a Lightning Style ninja with this kind of result is enough."
Tonbo didn't plan on using other tricks. The combination of Lightning Style and Natural Energy was sufficient to weaken Sasori. He would end with one last move and then exit. His goal was merely to nudge the plot back onto its track; as long as there weren't massive deviations, he could accept the outcome.
His hands blurred into seals. In just four seconds, he completed fifty-some signs.
"What an incredible Lightning Style user. You are more skilled than those brutes from the Cloud Village," Sasori remarked, seeing the speed and complexity of the seals. He knew a final move was coming. After his rare praise, he unfurled his final scroll.
He had already decided: this man would be his most satisfying masterpiece—surpassing even the Third Kazekage.
"Divine Thunder Palace!"
"Eighteen Enslaved Demon!"
RUMBLE!
BZZZZZZT!
Lady Chiyo's elderly eyes suddenly regained a youthful sharpness. She grabbed Sakura and fled toward the edge of the battlefield.
"What is that jutsu?" Sakura gasped.
"Likely a forbidden technique from both Sasori and that man." The terrifying energy surging behind them left no doubt—a single stray hit from the aftershocks would mean certain death.
Did that boy Sasori hold back against us earlier? Chiyo thought in horror. She hadn't expected him to be capable of this.
"Yikes! Run!" Hiding underground, Zetsu broke into a cold sweat. He used his Mayfly Jutsu to frantically escape the blast radius. He looked back at the sky, where three hundred massive spheres of concentrated lightning energy hovered.
"Where did this guy come from? This move is on par with that old man from the Tsuchigumo clan!" Zetsu recalled En no Gyoja of the Tsuchigumo clan; his forbidden jutsu, Fury, felt similar to what this blonde man was doing.
Both were village-destroying techniques. And both utilized natural energy—Senjutsu. Zetsu truly hadn't expected such a strong freelancer to exist.
"That is...?"
Kakashi, Naruto, and the others were pursuing Deidara when they were struck by a sudden, inexplicable sense of dread. Looking back toward the Akatsuki base, they saw massive thunderclouds gathering, with gargantuan lightning orbs encircling the entire area. Even from this distance, the pressure was terrifying.
"Sakura... are they okay?" Naruto asked, his voice trembling with worry. Even he could tell that if this was an enemy's attack, Sakura and the others were in grave danger.
Kakashi quickly tapped his radio. "Guy, status report!"
"Kakashi-sensei... Akatsuki... enemy... it's... support..." Neji's voice filtered through the static before the signal cut out completely.
Kakashi noted the lack of panic in Neji's voice. "Naruto, keep pursuing. Sakura should be fine."
"How do you know?"
"Neji didn't sound panicked. Though the signal was bad, I can deduce that someone is helping them fight Sasori. Since Sasori is a puppeteer, he couldn't possibly be the one using that Lightning Style," Kakashi explained.
Still, he wondered who could use such a technique. He could only think of the Land of Lightning or the Fire Capital's elite guards, who possessed powerful secret Lightning jutsus—specifically the four-man barrier techniques capable of wiping out a village.
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