Chapter 175: Capturing Black Zetsu Alive
Stelle's gaze swept over the chaotic battlefield, her mind racing as she rapidly issued commands to the surrounding shinobi. "Where is the Barrier Team?" she barked, her voice cutting through the din of explosions. "Are they in position yet?"
A familiar telepathic connection flared to life within her consciousness. The voice of the Yamanaka Clan Head echoed directly in her mind, steady despite the tension. "Hokage-sama, they are in position. We are awaiting your signal to activate the barrier at a moment's notice."
"Good," Stelle replied mentally. "Relay the command immediately: initiate the highest-tier Sealing Formation."
Without missing a beat, she reached into her ninja pouch and withdrew a compact sealing scroll. She slammed her palm against its center. A puff of white smoke erupted, revealing a massive, heavy scroll in its place. Grabbing the thick parchment, she hurled it forward. The heavy paper unrolled across the cracked earth with a loud thud, stretching out for several meters. The surface was completely covered in dense, obscure, and highly complex sealing formulas that crisscrossed in a dizzying array of black ink.
She bit down hard on her thumb, drawing a bead of crimson blood. Dropping to one knee, she rapidly smeared the blood across the parchment, adding the final, crucial strokes to the complex matrix. The moment the formation was complete, she slammed her bloodied palm directly into the center of the seal.
A torrential flood of chakra poured from her body into the parchment. The dense black runes and crimson seals instantly reacted, glowing with a brilliant light as they peeled themselves off the paper and floated slowly into the air, hovering like living entities.
"Activate the barrier!" she commanded.
The Yamanaka Clan Head instantly broadcasted her order across the village. At seven strategic locations around Konohagakure, the Uzumaki clan elites activated their respective seals. The nodes flared to life, connecting and pulling at one another until a massive, pale-gold barrier erupted into the sky. The translucent dome completely enveloped the hidden village, sealing it away from the impending devastation.
Sensing the formation of the outer dome, the floating runes from Stelle's scroll shattered into thousands of golden light particles. They shot high into the sky, merging smoothly with the apex of the barrier. The connection was established, directly linking Stelle's immense chakra reserves to the defensive matrix. The pale-gold dome instantly thickened, its defensive weight becoming heavily visible to the naked eye.
Just as the barrier solidified, the invader hovering high above the village finalized his own devastating technique.
"Massive Shinra Tensei!"
No blinding light descended from the heavens. Instead, an invisible, apocalyptic wave of pure repulsive force exploded outward. The sheer pressure warped the very air as it constantly expanded, slamming violently against the apex of the golden dome.
A horrific, ear-piercing screech tore through the sky, sounding exactly like a mountain of steel grating violently against thick glass. The noise assaulted the eardrums of every shinobi below, forcing many to cover their ears in agony.
Under the crushing weight of the invisible attack, the pale-gold barrier was brutally squeezed and stretched. The transparent dome twisted and deformed inward right before everyone's terrified eyes. The golden runes flickering across its surface began to dim rapidly, threatening to extinguish entirely under the overwhelming pressure.
At the seven anchor points, the Uzumaki clan elites maintaining the nodes felt their chakra reserves being violently ripped from their bodies. The barrier acted like a bottomless vortex, desperately draining them to sustain its structural integrity against the Almighty Push. The youngest member of the barrier team suddenly convulsed. Blood poured from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth before he collapsed heavily onto the ground, his chakra completely exhausted.
Seeing the strain on the network, Stelle gritted her teeth and forcefully cranked up her own chakra output. This was a defensive matrix she had personally designed; no one understood its complex mechanics better than her. She quickly realized that the sheer magnitude of the repulsive force could not simply be absorbed or blocked outright. It would break them.
Instead, she radically altered the barrier's operational flow. Her left hand blurred through a rapid series of hand seals, forcibly shifting the internal structure of the golden runes.
The massive dome suddenly warped inward under the crushing gravity. The golden light across the lower sections of the barrier dimmed to a faint glimmer, channeling all available power to a single, concentrated point at the very apex. The light at that focal point surged with blinding intensity, meeting the invisible wave of destruction head-on.
It was not a simple collision of opposing energies. It was a precise, calculated deflection.
A mocking sneer curled Stelle's lips. "Try this on for size. Uchiha Reflection!"
Caught by the specialized reflection matrix, the apocalyptic repulsive force was forcefully redirected. The invisible wave of unmatched destructive power ricocheted off the apex of the dome and shot diagonally toward the dense forest west of the village.
The moment the redirected energy slammed into the earth, the entire region convulsed in a violent earthquake. As far as the eye could see, the lush, towering green forest simply ceased to exist. The shockwave spread forward with frantic, unhindered momentum. Everything in its path was instantly pulverized and annihilated, swept away like brittle, dry weeds.
In the span of a few short breaths, a massive, abyss-like trench was carved directly into the landscape.
The Anbu and regular shinobi hiding in the shadows stared at the apocalyptic scar in absolute horror. Cold sweat drenched their backs. If that invisible wave of destruction had landed squarely on the village, Konoha would have been instantly flattened into a crater of pulverized ruins.
Stelle stared at the newly formed canyon, her left eyelid twitching uncontrollably. Sure, she had managed to aim the reflection toward the undeveloped wilderness extending past the training grounds, avoiding any civilian casualties or property damage. But looking at that ridiculously deep trench, she realized the village would eventually have to fill it in and level the terrain. That was going to be a massive, expensive public works project.
'How incredibly troublesome,' she grumbled inwardly.
She bent forward slightly, panting heavily as sweat dripped from her chin. The sheer volume of chakra required to activate and sustain such a colossal barrier was entirely incomparable to any standard ninjutsu. Back when she was researching and developing this technique, she had focused entirely on maximizing its defensive parameters, completely ignoring the absurd chakra cost.
Now, the seven Uzumaki elites had all collapsed unconscious on the ground. The entire defensive dome was currently being propped up by her chakra alone. If she hadn't been the one anchoring the formation, the village would have been wiped off the map.
She realized with a sigh that this ultimate barrier would likely become a useless decorative scroll in the future. Nobody else in the village possessed the monstrous chakra capacity needed to activate it, let alone maintain it against a god-tier attack. Defending, she mused bitterly, was infinitely more exhausting than destroying.
A series of deafening explosions suddenly echoed from the distant horizon. The massive flying fortress, which the Nine-Tails and the other heavy hitters had forcibly driven away from the village's airspace, had finally been struck. A barrage of Tailed Beast Balls slammed head-on into the floating structure. Massive showers of sparks and black smoke erupted from the fortress's underbelly as its primary power source critically failed. The colossal weapon tilted precariously, rapidly losing altitude as it plummeted toward the earth.
Seeing the secondary threat neutralized, a collective sigh of relief washed over the surviving shinobi.
High above, the cloaked figure slowly descended from the sky, hovering just outside the barrier's perimeter. For the first time, a genuine note of surprise colored his cold, mechanical voice.
"You actually managed to defend against it completely. As expected of the strongest in the ninja world."
Stelle straightened her posture, her expression returning to a mask of absolute calm. "It seems we are at an impasse. Neither of us can easily eliminate the other. State your actual purpose. Perhaps we can negotiate."
"Purpose?" The cloaked figure let out a low, chilling chuckle. "The absolute most elite forces of Konoha are currently tied down on the battlefield. What else could my objective possibly be? It is you, of course."
He slowly raised a hand, pointing a single finger directly at Stelle.
"Fourth Hokage, your existence is an anomaly. You are far too powerful. You have obstructed the natural progression of this world, and for that, you must be eliminated."
Stelle remained entirely silent, her eyes narrowing slightly.
Right at that exact moment, a thin, pitch-black line of shadow slithered silently across the ground, rapidly approaching the cloaked figure's feet. Before the invader could react, the shadow violently surged upward, coiling tightly around his legs and forcefully locking his body in place.
"Shadow Possession Jutsu, success!" a voice called out from the ruins.
The pacing of the battle had been far too fast, with every exchange consisting of apocalyptic, large-scale ninjutsu that completely prevented the regular forces from intervening. But now that the two god-tier combatants had paused to negotiate, Nara Kajisuke, who had stealthily maneuvered through the rubble, finally found his opening.
With the cloaked figure temporarily paralyzed by the shadow binding, Stelle did not waste a single microsecond. She immediately unleashed her own ultimate sealing domain.
Her hands blurred, hurling four specially crafted kunai wrapped in explosive tags and sealing formulas. The blades struck the earth in a perfect square around the invader. Violent purple flames erupted from the hilts, spreading rapidly to connect the four points. The Four Violet Flames Formation was mere milliseconds away from fully manifesting and trapping him.
But the invader reacted with terrifying speed. A second, highly concentrated burst of repulsive force exploded outward from his body. This sheer power of spatial rules slammed into the rising purple flames, violently shattering the barrier just as the jutsu attempted to close.
A collective gasp echoed from the hidden Anbu. This was the very first time anyone in the village had ever witnessed the Fourth Hokage's ninjutsu being forcibly broken.
Caught within the immediate blast radius of the shattered domain, Stelle took the brunt of the kinetic shockwave. The overwhelming repulsive force slammed into her chest, launching her violently into the air.
Having already drained a massive portion of her chakra to sustain the village's defensive dome, her physical reactions were significantly dulled. She could not twist her body to stabilize herself in mid-air as she usually did. Instead, she was sent hurtling backward like a broken doll, crashing brutally through three consecutive stone walls before finally losing momentum.
Dust and debris rained down around her, obscuring the battlefield. But beneath the guise of her miserable crash, Stelle's sensory perception was operating at maximum capacity. She felt a familiar, dark presence lurking perfectly within arm's reach inside the rubble.
It was Black Zetsu.
As she tumbled through the air, their gazes locked for a fraction of a second. The ancient manipulator's yellow eyes widened in sudden realization.
In the very next microsecond, Stelle struck.
using the high-speed momentum of her forced retreat, she twisted her body just enough to reach out. Her left hand shot forward with the speed of a striking viper, her fingers clamping down brutally on Black Zetsu, who had been hiding flush against the ruined wall.
Without giving the shadowy entity a single moment to sink into the earth, Stelle channeled her remaining chakra and activated a one-handed sealing technique. A pale-gold, translucent barrier flared to life, instantly shrinking and compressing until it completely enveloped Black Zetsu in an inescapable spherical prison.
From the moment she was launched backward to the moment the trap snapped shut, the entire calculated sequence took less than a single second.
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