Chapter 358: Who Said There's Only One Way to Use Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence?
Amamiya Kenichi silently watched Tsunade.
He knew Tsunade was in Konoha, but seeing her jump out this aggressively was still a little unexpected. More than anything, he felt that Tsunade seemed to be carrying a great deal of resentment toward him.
And the way she was looking at him was strange.
Kenichi always felt there was something odd in Tsunade's gaze, as if it contained both excitement and disappointment at the same time. It left him completely baffled.
He fell into deep thought.
Could it be that after their last fight, Tsunade had awakened some bizarre hobby?
That should not be the case. As far as he remembered, Tsunade had never had that kind of taste.
At that moment, Nagato also brought the Deva Path back down.
Shinra Tensei required preparation time and consumed a huge amount of chakra. If it could be avoided, then naturally it was better to avoid using it. With Kenichi holding Tsunade back, killing Danzo would become much simpler.
It was always better to save effort, and intelligence could not be exposed all at once. If this had been about capturing the Nine Tails, Nagato would have used that eye technique directly, but against Danzo, using it would have been a waste.
"So troublesome," Kenichi muttered as he scratched his head.
He glanced at Nagato. Tsunade had already seen Nagato's face. If she recognized him, the exposure of the Akatsuki would be brought forward.
And if the Akatsuki were exposed ahead of schedule, could they still continue developing in secret? They would probably just end up facing Konoha's investigation and suppression early.
That made Kenichi rack his brain even harder. He could not understand why Obito would do something like this.
Other than enraging Nagato enough to come kill Danzo, what was the point of feeding him that information?
The problem was that doing so would also draw the attention of the entire shinobi world to the Akatsuki.
Kenichi had already made many ninja villages start noticing the Akatsuki. Now, with Nagato pulling something like this, was the Fourth Shinobi War going to get pushed forward too?
While he was still thinking, a violent gust of pressure struck him.
Kenichi leaped back instantly.
The ground where he had just been standing shattered beneath Tsunade's punch. Seeing that, Kenichi reflexively touched his mask.
Thankfully, it was still intact.
"You dare get distracted in the middle of a fight?" Tsunade sneered coldly, clenching her fists until her knuckles cracked.
The more she fought, the more convinced she became that the man in front of her really was that brat, Amamiya Kenichi.
"Old woman, you really love lecturing people," Kenichi muttered with a pout.
That sentence only provoked Tsunade even further. Her attacks grew even more violent, forcing Kenichi to dodge one punch and kick after another.
Tsunade really was a violent woman.
No wonder Jiraiya, for all his interest in her, never dared say too much. With a woman like this, would he not be getting a few ribs broken every day if he actually married her?
And the worst part was Tsunade's absurdly advanced medical ninjutsu. She could break your ribs and heal them right after. If you tried to tell anyone later, they would probably think you were insane.
Still, with Tsunade's attacks growing fiercer by the second, Kenichi had no choice but to focus.
He had no intention of actually fighting her to the end.
His goal was simple. Let Nagato kill Danzo.
All Kenichi needed to do was hold Tsunade back and interfere with Hiruzen and the heads of Konoha's major clans long enough for Nagato to finish the job.
But Tsunade fought harder and harder, to the point that one kick almost landed somewhere extremely sensitive.
Kenichi broke out in a cold sweat.
At the same time, real irritation rose in his heart.
"Tsunade, don't push your luck. We only came to kill Danzo this time," Kenichi said, giving her one final warning.
He still knew Tsunade well enough. Their relationship had never been bad. She had even helped him before. Unless absolutely necessary, he did not want to kill her.
Tsunade did not answer.
She simply punched straight at his abdomen.
But the punch never reached him.
Instead, it struck a tree.
The moment it did, the tree suddenly grew wildly, and countless more trees burst from the ground in all directions, rapidly forming a dense forest beside Konoha's walls.
Tsunade's pupils contracted.
Hiruzen and the other high ranking shinobi of Konoha were all stunned for a brief moment.
And in that instant of distraction, they heard a voice filled with killing intent.
"Shinra Tensei!"
The next second, a figure was blasted away violently. Before he could recover, a sharp branch pierced straight through his chest. Blood sprayed out of his mouth, and then he hung limply from the branch with his head lowered.
"Danzo!" Hiruzen roared, snapping back to his senses.
Then he saw his old friend hanging lifelessly from the tree branch.
But Nagato had no intention of stopping there.
He extended his right hand.
"Bansho Ten'in!"
Danzo's corpse was violently dragged toward him.
But before the body could even reach Nagato, countless tree branches shot inward and pierced through Danzo from all directions, turning him into something like a porcupine.
Nagato sneered, then casually flung Danzo's corpse to the ground.
The man who had caused the death of his most important friend was finally dead.
Now he could leave Konoha.
Nagato glanced at the furious Hiruzen charging forward, then at the grim faced but faintly excited clan heads of Konoha, and a mocking smile appeared on his face.
"Danzo isn't that easy to kill," Kenichi said as he glanced at the corpse on the ground.
His real attention was on Danzo's bandaged arm.
He knew very well what was hidden beneath those wrappings.
At that moment, Hiruzen and Tsunade were indeed acting like they were ready to fight to the death.
Kenichi understood their reaction.
Under normal circumstances, Hiruzen might feel some sorrow over Danzo's death. He might sigh, he might lament the old days, but he would never react with such fury.
But this was no ordinary situation.
The enemy had come right to Konoha's doorstep. If they kept letting their side be slaughtered like this, how could Konoha possibly continue to stand?
The leadership of Konoha understood one thing very clearly. If the lips were gone, the teeth would feel the cold.
"It seems you're really determined to protect your comrades," Kenichi said from atop a tree, looking down at them.
Tsunade's face darkened. She charged again with Hiruzen, only to be intercepted by Nagato. At the same time, the Ino Shika Cho trio and the Hyuga were held back by the other Paths of Pain.
Nagato did not know exactly what Kenichi was planning, but he had witnessed that power just now.
He wanted to see just how far Kenichi's strength had grown.
If Kenichi's power had truly increased that much, then what he had said before would naturally carry more weight.
After all, the shinobi world respected strength more than anything else.
Kenichi drew in a deep breath.
He still was not very familiar with this unique nature transformation called Wood Release.
Learning Wood Release did not mean he could instantly use it at the same level as the First Hokage, but Kenichi had his own ideas.
The power of Wood Release allowed trees to erupt from the ground and even form entire forests. Yet depending on how chakra was applied and shaped, it could produce very different effects.
For example, the First Hokage could use overwhelmingly powerful techniques like Wood Release: Wood Golem and the True Several Thousand Hands.
So the question was this.
Were the True Several Thousand Hands and the Wood Golem trees?
No.
They were wood.
That was why it was called Wood Release, not Tree Release.
Kenichi's hands began forming seals at incredible speed.
A huge amount of chakra surged through his body and mixed with natural energy, becoming senjutsu chakra, something that transcended ordinary ninjutsu.
"What should I call this technique? I have no idea. Forget it, I'll name it later," Kenichi muttered.
Then his final seal locked into place.
The earth trembled.
Countless trees erupted from the ground and spread outward, surrounding Tsunade and Hiruzen in an instant.
At the same time, endless sharp wooden spikes thrust out from every direction, forcing the surrounding shinobi into frantic evasive maneuvers.
"Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence?!" Hiruzen exclaimed in shock as he leaped onto a branch.
But the very next moment he had to move again. Wooden spikes burst upward from beneath his feet, silent but incredibly fast. If he had been even a little slower, he would already have been skewered.
"No. This isn't it," Tsunade said with a frown.
For some reason, she had begun to feel a slight shortness of breath, but she did not think much of it at first. After all, shortness of breath during an intense battle was not unusual.
The normal Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence could absorb chakra from the shinobi trapped within it.
But this forest was different.
The trees were not draining chakra. Instead, they kept launching spikes and sharp branches in constant attacks.
Tsunade punched apart a wooden branch that came flying toward her.
No, it was not just spikes anymore. Razor sharp branches were also shooting through the air. Getting hit by those would be no joke.
Danzo's corpse was still over there.
Wait.
Where was it?
Tsunade turned her head sharply.
In just that instant, Danzo's body had vanished.
And standing where it had just been, sword in hand, was Amamiya Kenichi.
"This guy really knows how to run," Kenichi said as he scratched his head.
It was confirmed.
Danzo had activated Izanagi and escaped death.
Although Kenichi had tried to cut off Danzo's arm, he had been delayed for just a moment.
Five masses of explosive chakra began to gather.
Kenichi recognized the technique at once. Hiruzen was preparing Five Style Combo.
He clicked his tongue, then used Lightning Flash to force back a Shadow Clone before vanishing into the forest.
"No, the trees in this forest are constantly moving!" Tsunade shouted.
The trees were not dead.
They were alive.
They were shifting, writhing, changing positions to conceal Kenichi's location. And for Tsunade and the others, this entire forest was a living enemy.
"Very gifted. But compared to the First Hokage... still lacking," Hiruzen said as he landed on a branch, though he could not help taking a heavy breath halfway through his words.
"Something's wrong, Hokage sama. The air... it's getting harder to breathe," Nara Shikaku said after taking a deep breath and coughing.
His expression had grown grave.
He had noticed the true problem.
The air.
The farther this forest expanded, the harder it was becoming to breathe inside it.
At first he had thought it was simply because of the battle.
But now that feeling was becoming more and more obvious.
And there was nothing more dangerous to a human being than a place with not enough oxygen.
"It's this forest. We need to get out," Tsunade said grimly.
She smashed the tree in front of her apart with a Heaven Kick of Pain, but almost instantly, new trees twisted and surged forward, sealing the gap she had made.
Her expression darkened further.
The reason her grandfather's Wood Release had been able to suppress Uchiha Madara back then was not just because of Wood Release's durability and flexibility. Senju Hashirama's powerful Sage Mode had also been a crucial reason.
As an ally, fighting beside that kind of power must have felt incredible.
But from the enemy's perspective, Senju Hashirama must have looked like the most terrifying demon imaginable.
Tsunade never thought that one day, as Hashirama's granddaughter, she would personally experience what it felt like to stand against something like that.
"This lunatic..." Tsunade clenched her fists.
She really wanted to give Kenichi a proper beating, but now that this technique had fully taken shape, they were trapped.
At this point, the only option was to get out as fast as possible. The lack of oxygen was becoming more and more obvious.
"Plants release oxygen during the day through photosynthesis, but at night, apart from a few exceptions, most plants consume oxygen instead."
As Kenichi led Nagato through the forest, that thought passed through his mind.
The true killing power of this technique had never been the wooden spikes, though the spikes were certainly one of its trump cards.
Against large groups of weaker shinobi, the spikes gave it terrifying area killing power.
Against stronger opponents, the real gift Kenichi had prepared for them was suffocation.
This time, he had no intention of killing them all. Otherwise, several of Konoha's top brass would already be dead.
For now, only Danzo needed to die.
"Danzo should be over there," Nagato said suddenly.
He had sensed Danzo's location, and a trace of excitement appeared on his face.
At last.
He could finally crush that damned rat.
.....
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