Chapter 247: Do You Really Think the Mizukage is Innocent, Meow?
Tailed Beast Chakra violently spewed and dissipated like an out-of-control waterfall from the three, forcibly melted, severed tails of the Three-Tails Isobu.
Accompanied by its sky-piercing shriek of extreme pain, this created an image of tremendous impact.
Every Mist Anbu ninja who heard it in the distance felt their scalp tingle and a chill run down their spine.
Zabuza Momochi stood frozen. His eyes, usually filled with killing intent and indifference, were now occupied by deep shock and disbelief.
He had somewhat predicted that this "Lava Release monster" from Konoha, Ikeizumi Uchiha, might be the only existence capable of clashing head-on with the Fourth Mizukage.
But he absolutely did not anticipate that the first Ninjutsu clash between the two sides would end in such a crushing manner!
The one holding the upper hand was actually the Uchiha ninja fighting with his individual power!
The Fourth Mizukage, plus the power of the Tailed Beast it was essentially two against one! Yet, in the face of the opponent's natural disaster-like Lava Release Kekkei Genkai, they seemed so utterly fragile?!
A drop of cold sweat involuntarily slid down Zabuza Momochi's forehead, tracing a path down his contorted cheek.
Normally, with his "Demon" mentality, he was long accustomed to life-and-death battles.
Facing any strong enemy, the emotion that should surge up would be a bloodthirsty battle spirit, not fear.
However, at this moment, an emotion he hadn't experienced in a long time, named fear, quietly coiled around him like an icy viper:
For a brief second, his body instinctively warned him Flee!
Flee this place immediately!
Although he fiercely suppressed this momentary impulse with his powerful willpower.
He couldn't deny the cowardice quietly brewing in his heart.
"...The Fourth Mizukage, who can perfectly control a Tailed Beast, is already a monster beyond common sense." Zabuza Momochi's voice was dry and hoarse, carrying a hint of shock that he himself hadn't detected.
"That man Ikeizumi Uchiha he's even more of a monster than a monster! Without the Tailed Beast, a near-infinite source of Chakra, can an ordinary ninja truly achieve that level of... inhumanity through training?"
Mei Terumī on the other side also felt the residual, scorching hot wind mixed with sulfur and burnt smells blowing towards her.
She had to squint her eyes to barely make out the battle situation in the distance.
Her beautiful long hair was messily whipped about by the gale, making her look somewhat disheveled.
Her delicate face was now filled with shock. Fine beads of sweat covered her smooth skin.
She couldn't even tell if the sweat was cooked out by the terrifying high temperature or scared out by the scene before her.
"Is this is this the ultimate weapon Konoha has been hiding all along?"
Mei Terumī involuntarily clenched her fist, muttering: "Konoha allowed such an extremely dangerous existence to enter the Land of Water. Are they formally declaring war on the Land of Water?"
This thought sent a chill down her spine.
She realized her tightly clenched fist was also already covered in sweat, slick and wet.
Drip... Drip... Viscous, scorching lava droplets slowly slid off Ikeizumi Uchiha's elementalized body, hitting the scorched ground with a slight sound, burning out small pits.
He was expressionless, walking forward step by step.
With every step he took, the ground beneath his foot instantly melted, leaving behind a footprint burning with fierce flames.
Thick smoke billowed up from his body like a warning signal, the extreme high temperature warping and shaking the air violently around him.
This made his figure appear exceptionally illusory and elusive in the sole eye of the Three-Tails Isobu from a distance.
Like a ghostly shadow from purgatory, impossible to lock onto a specific location.
The intense pain from its severed tails continued to stimulate its nerves. The fatal danger premonition brought by the approaching opponent, originating from the Tailed Beast's instinct, caused the Three-Tails Isobu to feel a strong palpitation!
The pupil in its single eye consequently trembled violently!
"ROAR!!!"
It let out an earth-shattering roar. The massive Tailed Beast Chakra within its body erupted frantically at an unprecedented speed. Flesh buds and Chakra violently squirmed at the severed ends of the three melted tails.
They were rapidly restructuring and healing at a visible rate!
At the same time, it performed its most instinctive defensive action its pair of thick forelimbs instantly retracted into the heavy, spiked carapace. Its ugly, colossal head also quickly drew back!
Its massive body curled up to the maximum, ultimately forming a gigantic sphere completely encased by an incredibly hard, grey-white carapace covered in huge spikes!
Like a steel giant turtle that had protected all its vulnerable parts.
This was its most proud Absolute Defense posture!
The fact proved its sense of danger was not mistaken!
Just the second after it curled up BOOM!!!!!!
The scorched earth beneath Ikeizumi Uchiha's feet suddenly burst apart! A powerful, unmatched impact force, as if a volcano erupted beneath his feet, burst forth!
His completely lava-elementalized body was, at this moment, seemingly dragged into a crimson torrent of destruction by this force!
In the eyes of all the distant onlookers, only a blinding crimson flash streaked past, too fast for the limits of visual capture.
The next moment!
Ikeizumi Uchiha's figure had already appeared, ghost-like, directly above the Three-Tails Isobu, which was curled into a sphere.
Below him was the Three-Tails' heavy, spiked "shell," which boasted absolute defense!
Ikeizumi Uchiha, suspended in mid-air, had his right arm, which had already accumulated energy to the maximum, now swelled into an incomparably colossal, miniature sun-like lava sphere!
The destructive energy compressed within caused the surrounding space to slightly tremble!
Without a moment of hesitation, his movement was simple and brutal. He slammed the lava giant fist, which contained the power to incinerate mountains and boil seas, down fiercely onto the Three-Tails Isobu's back!
This was clearly the Three-Tails Isobu's strongest defensive position, yet Ikeizumi Uchiha was attacking precisely here!
BOOM!!!
The moment the fist and the carapace collided, a terrifying, thunderous sound, like a meteor striking the earth, erupted.
The intensely violent impact force actually caused the Three-Tails Isobu's most prized and incomparably hard dorsal carapace to emit a tooth-grinding crack!
One distinct fissure after another rapidly spread outward from the point of impact, like a spiderweb!
Even more terrifyingly, the extremely hot lava energy wildly seeped into the carapace through those fissures, scorching the Three-Tails Isobu's internal flesh and organs made of Chakra.
"ROOOOAAARGH !!!"
The Three-Tails Isobu, curled within its carapace, let out another deafening, mournful shriek, a sound filled with unprecedented pain.
But this was far from over!
Ikeizumi Uchiha's punching right arm began a violent expansion and compression once more at the shoulder.
Even more ferocious lava energy was maniacally injected into the arm.
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE !!!
A stronger, terrifying impact force, like a volcano in full eruption, again fiercely pierced into the Three-Tails Isobu's carapace through his right arm!
PFFFFFFT !!!
This time, a beam of extremely condensed crimson lava, like a red-hot steel needle piercing leather, effortlessly drilled through the Three-Tails' heavy carapace defense!
And with irresistible force, it tore through layer after layer of the tough, Chakra-constituted flesh and muscle tissue.
Then
It forcefully pierced out from the underside of the Three-Tails Isobu's abdomen!!!
This lava beam had actually penetrated its immense body straight through!
Forming a terrifying, front-to-back, transparent, and still-melting scorch hole!
"ROOOOOW OOOOOW !!!"
An indescribable agony instantly swept through every inch of the Three-Tails Isobu's consciousness.
It could no longer maintain its curled defensive posture and began to roll wildly like a maniac.
Its massive body was like an out-of-control, colossal millstone burning with Tailed Beast Chakra flames, frantically crashing and rolling in all directions without purpose!
Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!
Hills and small mounds were easily smashed to smithereens by its collisions.
It ploughed deep, terrifying trenches, tens of meters deep, into the ground.
It attempted to use this carpet-style, indiscriminate, destructive rolling to crush the tiny human who had brought it endless pain into dust!
However, this irrational, manic behavior, besides destroying the already ravaged battlefield even more thoroughly, and scaring the distant, injured Mist Anbu ninjas into scrambling further backward in a desperate flight
Posed not a single thread of threat to Ikeizumi Uchiha.
His figure had long since vanished from the spot, looking down dispassionately at the Tailed Beast caught in agony.
The heat wave washing over them was almost suffocating. Kitsujirō couldn't help but squint its eyes, the only way to make them feel a little better.
It looked at the battered, frantically rolling Tailed Beast in the distance and spoke: "Meow, Izumi-sama once gave me a simplified overview of the Nine Tailed Beasts' information. I remember the Three-Tails is named Isobu, and it excels in various powerful Water Release techniques. However "
It paused, and the cat paw pointed to the hellish environment around them: "Izumi-sama's Lava Release has baked the surrounding environment until there is almost no moisture left. The earth is cracked and dry, the air is scorching, and the water vapor has been massively evaporated, meow."
"This makes it impossible for the Three-Tails, which is extremely reliant on water sources, to utilize the power of the natural environment. Its Water Release power is significantly weakened invisibly, meow."
"Although theoretically, water can counteract lava. Izumi-sama did, a long time ago, show some wariness towards ninjas skilled in Water Release."
Kitsujirō licked its baked-dry nose and continued: "However, when the water in the surrounding environment is far less than the lava, it is no longer counteraction. Instead, the lava counteracts the remaining minuscule amount of water, meow."
"It's like a cup of water not being enough to put out a volcano."
Listening to Kitsujirō's words and looking at the Three-Tails' miserable state in the distance, Jūzō Biwa inhaled a deep breath of the scorching air.
He spoke with complex emotions: "I suddenly have a question... The Three-Tails, and the Mizukage-sama, they are both puppets controlled by Obito Uchiha's Sharingan."
"Their actions are completely out of their control. In this situation, can everything they do truly be considered their 'sins'?"
Kitsujirō stopped licking its paw, tilted its head, looked at Jūzō Biwa, and countered: "What gave you the mistaken impression that the Fourth Mizukage was an 'innocent good person' before he was controlled, meow?"
Its words were like a cold needle, piercing Jūzō Biwa's subtle emotions: "Didn't you yourself say it? Before Obito Uchiha controlled the Mizukage, the Mist Village had already started implementing the cruel 'Bloody Mist Policy', meow."
"Meow, as the Kage of a village, could he possibly be unaware of the immense harm this self-destructive policy would cause to the village's future? Yagura Karatachi, during his tenure, did he try to stop or actively reform the Bloody Mist Policy?"
"If he had done so, even if he failed, it might still indicate that his crime is not deserving of death, meow."
It paused, its tone becoming sharp: "But did he do it? Could it be that someone held a sword to his throat, forcing him to execute the Bloody Mist Policy to the end?"
"Meow, in your Mist Village, is there anyone who can command a Mizukage, who wields the power of a Tailed Beast, to force him to do something?"
Kitsujirō's barrage of questions struck Jūzō Biwa's heart like heavy hammers.
Placing him once again in a state of speechlessness.
At the same time, like a sudden enlightenment, it jolted him into realization.
"...Hoo!"
Jūzō Biwa let out a long breath, a self-deprecating bitter smile appearing on his face: "It seems the fact that I'm also from the Mist Village caused me to develop a bit of unrealistic pity for the Fourth Mizukage."
His statement had, in fact, indirectly answered Kitsujirō's questioning.
No!
The Fourth Mizukage, Yagura Karatachi, had not tried to stop or reform the Bloody Mist Policy.
On the contrary, he was likely one of its firmest proponents.
While he was not the founder of the Bloody Mist Policy, he was the key driver in its continuous execution and deepening.
This point...
Was sufficient to explain many things.
Thinking this, the last trace of hesitation in Jūzō Biwa's eyes completely vanished, replaced by a cold clarity.
He said gravely: "You're right. Yagura Karatachi he himself is by no means an innocent person!"
"What What in the world happened here?!"
A figure finally rushed onto the scene, it was Ao, who possessed the Byakugan.
However, the scene he anticipated the surrounding and trapping of the rogue ninja Jūzō Biwa, leaving Jūzō Biwa in despair was nowhere to be seen.
What greeted his eyes was a sight like the end of the world.
And a gigantic Tailed Beast, rolling wildly and letting out cries of pain!
He gasped, nearly scorched by the heat wave washing over him.
Ao hurriedly turned his gaze to the familiar silhouette not far ahead, asking urgently: "Mei Terumī-sama! Mizukage-sama what has happened to him?!"
Mei Terumī did not turn around. Her gaze was still fixed on the figure in the distance, who was much smaller than the Three-Tails Isobu but impossible to ignore.
Mei Terumī spoke slowly, her voice carrying a complex emotion: "Mizukage-sama he's probably about to be killed by that 'Lava Release Beast' from Konoha "
"WHAT?!!"
Ao instantly widened his eyes. The Byakugan beneath his eye patch seemed to tremble slightly.
Wait!
What does the Lava Release Beast have to do with this?
What exactly happened?
Ao was utterly bewildered.