"Damn human!"
Shukaku roared and swung one massive arm toward its own head.
As a body of chakra and sand, Shukaku had no reason to fear hitting itself. Jie, on the other hand, was only human. If that palm landed, he would be crushed.
The palm came down hard enough to smash Shukaku's own head apart.
But it never reached him.
Jie could have used Kamui to let the attack pass through him. Since he had already decided to subdue this tanuki, he might as well do it properly.
Jie made no obvious movement.
He simply stepped down.
The next instant, a huge dent appeared on top of Shukaku's head.
Pain shot through Shukaku. Its massive body lurched, and the arm it had raised froze in midair, unable to fall any farther.
"How?"
"A human can actually hurt me?"
Shukaku's small eyes widened in disbelief.
It was different from the other tailed beasts. Its massive body looked solid, but it was made entirely of sand. Its real core was the chakra holding that sand together.
Shukaku had fought strong humans before, but none of them had ever hurt it like this.
This human had.
Who exactly was he?
Why could he hurt a tailed beast?
For the first time, fear appeared in Shukaku's mind.
Before Shukaku could think any further, Jie's second stomp landed.
The dent in Shukaku's head caved in even deeper. A ripple spread down from the top of its head and passed through its whole body.
This time, even Shukaku's control over its sand body began to loosen.
Cracks spread across its body. Large chunks broke away, turning back into ordinary sand and falling into the desert.
Shukaku let out a furious roar, but Jie's third stomp had already come down.
This time, Shukaku did not even have the chance to struggle.
Its head burst apart into sand, and the rest of its body collapsed with it. Sand poured down from its massive frame like a waterfall.
In only a few seconds, a new dune appeared in the desert, and Shukaku's figure completely disappeared.
Jie's expression did not change.
He had only destroyed Shukaku's sand body, not the chakra that truly made Shukaku what it was.
Tailed beasts were nearly immortal in their own way. Jie could kill Shukaku if he wanted, but waiting decades or even centuries for it to revive would be pointless.
He had come to capture a tailed beast, not waste one.
Although Shukaku's body had disappeared, Jie could still sense its chakra hidden in the desert before him.
Since Shukaku had not run yet, Jie was in no hurry.
After that lesson, it should have learned some fear.
He looked at the stretch of sand in front of him and spoke calmly.
"Well?"
"Do you have an answer to the two choices I gave you?"
Shukaku remained hidden in the sand and did not move.
Jie waited for a moment, then understood.
"You want to play dead and run later?"
Shukaku was trying to use the nature of its body to blend into the desert and slip past Jie's senses.
Unfortunately for it, Jie had no intention of letting it go.
He had come all the way from the Land of Fire. There was no way he would return empty-handed.
Either Shukaku would come with him obediently, or it would become nourishment for the newly restored Ten-Tails.
Jie began forming hand seals.
If Shukaku thought hiding in the desert would let it escape, then Jie would simply destroy the desert around it.
Once the sand around Shukaku was gone, he wanted to see how it planned to keep resisting.
This tanuki was coming with him one way or another.
"Dust Release: Detachment of the Primitive World Technique."
A clear, glowing cube formed in Jie's hand.
At his command, a beam of light shot out.
Hidden beneath the sand, Shukaku saw the movement and was briefly startled.
What was this human trying to do?
Had he failed to find Shukaku and started attacking the desert at random?
Shukaku still could not understand where this monster of a human had come from.
The strange phasing technique and space-time ninjutsu were already difficult enough to understand, but neither compared to the fact that Jie could actually hurt it.
Those three stomps hurt more than anything Shukaku had suffered since its birth.
Even that hateful fox, with all its extra tails and arrogance, had never made Shukaku feel pain like that.
Was this human already stronger than that fox?
Shukaku rejected the thought immediately.
When the old man of Six Paths created the tailed beasts, he had given nearly half of the Ten-Tails' chakra to that damn fox. How could an ordinary human compare with that kind of power?
Unless he was a reincarnation of Indra or Asura, there should be no chance.
But Shukaku could not sense either chakra from Jie.
Jie's old Indra and Asura chakra had already fused into his growing Six Paths power, leaving only faint traces Shukaku could not detect.
While Shukaku was thinking, the Dust Release beam swept across the sand in front of it.
The moment Shukaku saw what it did, it almost jumped out of the desert.
In a desert, finding Shukaku among endless sand should have been nearly impossible.
But who could have expected Jie to erase the sand itself?
Wherever the light passed, more than ten meters of sand vanished into nothing, leaving a deep trench behind.
Compared with the whole desert, it was nothing, but it was enough to alarm Shukaku.
More importantly, Jie's beam was not sweeping randomly. It was shaving away the sand around Shukaku's hiding place.
He had already found it.
He was trying to erase the surrounding sand and force it out.
Even Shukaku had no answer to such an unreasonable method.
It could not win.
It could not escape.
Now even its hiding place was being destroyed.
Jie swept the Dust Release beam once more, erasing another layer of sand around Shukaku.
At last, the yellow sand gathered again, and Shukaku's body slowly reformed in front of him.
"Human," Shukaku said, holding back its anger, "what exactly do you want?"
Shukaku had come out, just as Jie expected.
"The same thing I said before."
"Either submit obediently and become my pet. ...Or take another beating, then become my pet."
Before Jie could continue, Shukaku cut him off.
"Impossible!"
"Absolutely impossible!"
"I will never submit, and I will never let a human treat me like some tamed beast!"
Shukaku glared at him, furious.
If it was only submission, Shukaku might have been able to endure it.
Even becoming something like a summoned beast was barely acceptable. Jie's strength was obvious. Submitting to someone like him would be humiliating, but at least there was a reason for it.
But being treated like a tamed beast was different.
That was something Shukaku would rather die than accept.
Death was not the end for a tailed beast.
But once it accepted that kind of humiliation, the shame would follow it forever.
If it ever met that damn fox again, Kurama would laugh at it for the rest of its life.
Jie stopped smiling.
He had already given Shukaku more than one chance.
Did this tanuki really think he had no temper?
"I gave you two choices," Jie said coldly. "But you insist on creating a third."
"If you want to test my patience that badly, then prepare to become nourishment for the Ten-Tails."
This was not the only Shukaku in existence.
After Jie returned to his own timeline, he could still go to Sunagakure and capture that era's One-Tail.
Jie did not plan to waste any more effort on this one.
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