Chapter 445: Seven Gates Open! Hanzo is Executed
Might Guy paid no heed to Hanzo's cold taunts.
He slowly lowered his center of gravity, shifting into his signature opening stance. With every breath, the latent chakra within his body began to climb, rising in a terrifying, step-by-step crescendo.
"This is the true blaze of youth!" Guy declared, his voice ringing across the shattered battlefield. "In Konoha, even a fool who knows nothing but taijutsu can become a hero who protects his comrades!"
He crossed his arms in front of his face, muscles bulging against his green jumpsuit.
"Eight Gates..."
A roaring tide of green chakra erupted from his core. The sheer pressure of his energy shattered the earth beneath his boots, sending loose stones and debris levitating into the air.
"Sixth Gate: Gate of View... OPEN!"
In an instant, Guy's skin flushed a deep, burning scarlet. Boiling green energy steamed from his pores, radiating an intense, suffocating heat.
A flicker of genuine surprise crossed Hanzo's dead, reanimated eyes.
"Interesting," the legendary shinobi murmured through his respirator. "But before my Body Flicker Technique..."
Hanzo vanished.
This time, his speed eclipsed his previous movements entirely. A deadly shadow materialized in Guy's blind spot, the weighted chain of the kusarigama shooting forward like a striking viper, aiming directly for the taijutsu master's heart.
"Too slow!" Guy roared.
He disappeared from his spot, leaving behind nothing but a cratered footprint. Raw, unadulterated physical speed shattered the sound barrier. A deafening thunder-crack split the air, sending shockwaves rippling through the mist.
Hanzo's vision blurred. Before his mind could even register the movement, a fist wreathed in friction-ignited flames buried itself deep into his gut.
"Morning Peacock!"
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Countless flaming fists rained down upon the legendary shinobi like a localized meteor shower. The sheer velocity of the strikes ignited the air itself. Every single punch carried enough kinetic force to pulverize solid mountain rock. Hanzo, the former demigod of the ninja world, was reduced to a mere sandbag, juggled mercilessly in mid-air without a single fraction of a second to fall or counterattack.
'Damn it...'
A cold spike of terror pierced Hanzo's battle-hardened mind. Could any mortal human truly possess taijutsu of this caliber?
His Edo Tensei body shattered and burned under the relentless barrage, paper-like debris flaking away only to rapidly stitch itself back together.
"Ibuse!" Hanzo forced his hands together, desperately weaving a seal through the onslaught.
Down below, the colossal salamander opened its cavernous maw. A thick, near-liquid cloud of purple poison gushed upward like a geyser, instantly swallowing the airspace and engulfing both combatants in a deadly toxic dome.
"Useless!" Hanzo sneered, a hideous grin twisting beneath his mask as his body reformed within the mist. "Breathe even a single whiff of this and your life is forfeit!"
Yet, from the very epicenter of the corrosive purple cloud, Guy's voice echoed out—muffled, yet impossibly steady.
"If the poison is the problem..." The air pressure suddenly spiked. "Then I just have to blow it away!"
A fiercer, infinitely wilder aura detonated from within the toxic fog. The boiling green vapor violently shifted into a blinding, ethereal blue.
"Seventh Gate: Gate of Wonder... OPEN!"
The shockwave of pure energy blasted the surrounding poison back by several meters.
"Hanzo!" Guy's battle cry tore through the heavens. "Behold! This is youth at its absolute climax!"
Guy thrust his hands forward, locking his fingers together to form a peculiar, specialized tiger seal. Every muscle fiber in his body drew taut to the absolute limit, veins bulging against his crimson skin. The very atmosphere around him seemed to be violently sucked away, condensing into a vast, localized vacuum at the center of his palms.
Pure, instinctive dread seized Hanzo's soul. The sheer atmospheric pressure crushing down on him was suffocating.
"Daytime Tiger!"
BOOM—!
Guy's palms shot forward with devastating force. The hyper-compressed air violently expanded, taking the shape of a colossal, blindingly white tiger. It let out a deafening roar as it charged, tearing the very fabric of the air apart.
In a fraction of a second, the terrible wind pressure escalated into an apocalyptic hurricane.
The deadly poisonous mist was treated like a mere candle flame in a typhoon—snuffed out and scattered into nothingness. Down below, the massive bulk of the great salamander Ibuse was violently flipped over, its heavy body hurled into the distance like a discarded toy.
"Impossible!" Hanzo screamed, his voice cracking in absolute despair.
The Daytime Tiger struck him head-on.
A titanic shockwave erupted upon impact, ploughing a massive, canyon-like furrow across the war-torn landscape. Hanzo's Edo Tensei body burst apart under the sheer kinetic devastation. His entire upper half simply vanished, atomized by the crushing air pressure.
When the howling winds finally died away, Guy dropped to one knee. He gasped for air, thick plumes of white steam rising from his overheated, blistering skin.
"Hah... hah..."
Despite the agonizing toll on his body, he looked up and grinned, flashing his signature bright teeth.
"That... is youth!"
In the distance, the designated Sealing Squad stood frozen, staring at the devastated terrain with slack-jawed awe. They only snapped out of their stupor when Nara Shikaku's urgent voice crackled sharply over their earpieces.
"What are you waiting for?!" the commander barked. "Seal him now!"
The shinobi jolted awake. "Yes, sir!"
Several elite Sealing Squad ninja rushed into the crater. They unrolled large scrolls, flinging lengths of ink-inscribed sealing cloth over Hanzo's slowly regenerating remains.
"Sealing Jutsu: Tiger Vision Stare!"
Dense black characters crawled rapidly across the cloth, binding Hanzo's reforming limbs. Half of his head managed to stitch itself together just in time for the old man to gaze at the distant, kneeling green figure. His dark sclera held an unreadable emotion.
"Never thought..." his raspy voice echoed faintly. "I'd fall to a taijutsu ninja who doesn't even use ninjutsu. Konoha... what a terrifying place."
The ink characters locked into place, glowing briefly before solidifying. The seal closed tight.
With that, Hanzo of the Salamander, the legendary demigod of the ninja world, bowed out of the war.
On the other side of the battlefield, Granny Chiyo stood amidst the wreckage, her eyes fixed on the towering dust cloud rising in the distance. A heavy sigh escaped her lips, her deeply wrinkled face finally showing a trace of resignation.
"Even that stubborn old geezer Hanzo lost..." she muttered bitterly. "Looks like I won't last much longer either."
Arrayed before her was a staggering coalition force. Hundreds of shinobi stood in standard-issue Konoha flak jackets, yet they proudly wore Sunagakure forehead protectors. Flanking them were dozens of cold-eyed Uchiha elites, the iconic red-and-white fan crest emblazoned on their high-collared shirts, their Sharingan spinning with lethal intent.
"Lady Chiyo," the leading Sunagakure jonin spoke up. He regarded the legendary elder, who currently commanded the dreaded Ten Puppets of Chikamatsu, with a mixture of deep respect and unshakeable resolve. "Please, rest now. The Hidden Sand no longer needs your worry."
Chiyo let out a harsh, cold laugh. Her chakra threads flared as she sharply flicked her fingers. The ten white-robed puppets clacked their wooden jaws in eerie unison.
"Don't need my worry?" she mocked, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "Then let this old woman see just how much you lapdogs of Konoha have improved! White Secret Technique: Three Jewels Suction Crush!"
Three of the elite puppets instantly darted forward, locking together to form a perfect triangle. A terrible, localized vortex erupted from the center of their formation. A violent suction force tore at the earth, striving to drag the opposing shinobi into the crushing vacuum and shred them to bloody ribbons.
A Uchiha jonin stepped to the front of the formation. His three-tomoe Sharingan tracked the vortex with analytical precision. He raised a hand, waving it in a cool, commanding gesture.
"Form up."
Under his strict command, dozens of elite Uchiha shinobi stepped forward, their hands blurring through hand seals in terrifying, flawless synchronization.
"Fire Release: Great Fire Annihilation!"
Individually, it was merely a B-rank technique. But when unleashed simultaneously by dozens of Sharingan-bearing Uchiha elites, its scale instantly breached S-rank territory. A vast, towering wall of superheated flame erupted from their mouths, rapidly merging into an apocalyptic, sky-blotting sea of fire that surged forward like a tidal wave.
At the exact same moment, the leading Sunagakure jonin drew his blade and shouted, "Wind Squad, follow up!"
Numerous Suna shinobi fell into formation behind the Uchiha, weaving their own hand seals in perfect harmony.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
Howling gales rose from the desert fighters. The violent gusts of wind slammed into the back of the Uchiha's flames, feeding the inferno with massive amounts of oxygen. The already fearsome sea of fire underwent a terrifying transformation. Its coverage swelled tenfold, the heat intensifying until the air itself began to warp and distort.
In that singular instant, the entire sky was painted a hellish, burning red.
Chiyo's dreaded Three Jewels Suction Crush—a technique meant to devour anything in its path—instantly collapsed, utterly overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the advancing inferno. The vacuum simply fed the flames further.
Granny Chiyo's eyes widened in absolute shock. A combined, cross-village jutsu on this flawless scale would have been completely impossible for the old, fiercely isolationist Hidden Sand.
Yet, under Uchiha Akira's absolute rule, these once-scattered, deeply prejudiced ninja had been forged into a single, unstoppable military machine.
There was no escape. Chiyo's legendary Ten Puppets of Chikamatsu caught the brunt of the blast, their reinforced wooden frames igniting before being instantly incinerated to ash within the roaring sea of fire.
The flames rolled on, washing over the elder. The very earth beneath their feet was baked into a smooth, glowing sheet of glass. Chiyo's Edo Tensei body disintegrated rapidly in the extreme heat, the paper-like fragments burning away faster than they could gather to reconstruct her.
The coalition's Sealing Squad rushed into the cooling embers, slapping restrictive tags onto her charred, crumbling form before the jutsu could force her to regenerate.
In the last fleeting moment before her consciousness faded back into the void, Chiyo gazed toward the young Sand ninja standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Uchiha. A wry, deeply relieved smile touched her lips.
"Looks like..." she murmured, the fight completely leaving her spirit. "I really was just a foolish old woman clinging to the past. The old village boundaries... they should have been erased long ago."
Her eyes softened as the sealing ink encased her vision.
"In that case... watch over that new future for me."
On the final sector of the battlefield, Explosion Release Gari was growing increasingly irritated.
Every punch he threw compressed and detonated the ambient air, triggering massive blasts that turned solid rock into fine, choking powder. Yet, his foes were a squad of elite Hidden Mist ninja, and they were proving to be as slippery as loaches in the thick fog. They refused to engage him head-on, constantly weaving through the mist and striking from the shadows.
"Hiding and dodging like cowards—come out and fight like men!" Gari roared in frustration.
Channeling his explosive chakra to the absolute limit, he slammed both fists brutally into the rocky terrain.
"Explosion Release: Landmine Fist!"
The ground violently cracked and buckled around him. Countless explosive shockwaves raced through the jagged fissures, turning the very earth into a sprawling minefield. A chain reaction of deafening detonations ripped through the sector, generating a massive blast wave that forcefully tore open the thick, suffocating mist cloaking the battlefield.
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