Chapter 269 The Artificial Human
Seeing Pain's movements in mid-air, the attackers were on high alert, but the powerful ninjutsu they had anticipated did not materialize.
Just as they relaxed their guard slightly, an invisible and immense repulsive force arrived before them, sending the ten-man squad flying backward.
However, Nagato's Shinra Tensei didn't seem to have caused much effective damage. As the squad flew backward, their armor emitted a blinding light, seemingly triggering some kind of defensive mechanism.
Therefore, although the attacker squad looked disheveled, they quickly regrouped after getting back to their feet, aimed their guns at Pain in the air, and pulled the triggers.
At the same time, the captain who had previously fought Jiraiya, wielding his lightsaber, pressed a button on his armor. The strangely designed armor shifted, a burst of steam erupted, and the man was propelled into the air, attempting to attack Pain with his eerie lightsaber.
Pain, suspended in mid-air, raised his hand, instantly conjuring five black rods that shot towards his opponent.
The person in the air, protected by his armor, didn't dodge, but simply pressed a button on
his armor. A pale blue miniature force field instantly formed, firmly protecting him within. However, the black rods summoned by Pain pierced through the opponent's force field, striking him and causing him to plummet to the ground. Four of the rods pinned his limbs to the ground, rendering him immobile.
Meanwhile, with Pain holding the line, Naruto and Kurama, having had ample time to prepare their Tailed Beast Balls, completed theirs. Although the jet-black Tailed Beast Balls were identical in size to before, the slowly distorting space around them revealed the immense energy they had poured into them.
"Roar!" Kurama roared, suppressing its rage against those it had previously considered ants, and the Tailed Beast Ball hurtled towards its opponent.
Seeing this, the opposing team had no choice but to abandon their attack on Pain and instead produced grenades capable of creating defensive force fields.
They threw the force field grenades in turn, and the Nine-Tails' furious attack was largely weakened by the almost uninterrupted force fields. The remaining energy only managed to blast away a layer of dirt on the ground in front of them.
"This kind of coordination..." Jiraiya's pupils contracted. This seamless coordination of force fields, wave after wave, was something even a ninja team that had worked together for many years would find difficult to achieve. Such a level of teamwork could only be cultivated by a major clan in a great ninja village, such as the former Sarutobi clan's private army. However, the taijutsu skills that the opposing leader had just displayed did not seem to be the kind of skills that a force capable of training such a team could possess.
"Damn it! How could such power be mastered by humans!" Kurama roared, then turned back to Shukaku and cursed, "Stupid tanuki, how much longer are you going to do?"
"Why are you rushing me! You stinky fox! This move was originally prepared for you!" Shukaku retorted, then slammed his two large hands heavily on the ground. Various kinds of black runes extended from the ground toward Kurama, scattering in all directions the moment they reached Kurama's feet.
Centered on the attackers' location, a hundred-meter radius was instantly enveloped by a barrier inscribed with black runes, which then contracted rapidly.
The attackers attempted to forcefully break through the barrier using the special power emanating from the Ten-Tails, but the barrier, constructed of sealing techniques, repaired itself with every minor damage.
"Pain! Now!" Jiraiya shouted a warning.
Pain nodded in mid-air, raising his hand to conjure black rods. He then clenched his fist, sending the rods hurtling towards the attackers. Each rod precisely targeted an attacker, pinning them to the spot along with their armor.
"Pain, leave one suit of armor!" Jiraiya quickly urged.
Pain nodded, controlling the last rod to destroy the target's head, leaving the armor intact.
"You stinky fox, those eyes…" After the battle subsided, Shukaku and Kurama finally had time to observe the battlefield. However, upon seeing Pain's eyes, both tailed beasts froze on the spot.
"This is truly bizarre!" Kurama exclaimed from within the tailed beast dimension. "First, that thing's power, and then the old man's eyes!"
"Brother Kurama, what are you talking about?" Naruto, beneath Kurama, looked up, his face filled with confusion.
"Kid, after things are over here, you need to go to where Chongming and the others are." Kurama lowered its head and said seriously to Naruto.
"Eh? To the Tailed Beast Nature Reserve?" Naruto was taken aback for a moment before nodding. "I'll go then. It's been a while since I've seen Fu-nee."
As the two tailed beasts were talking, Pain arrived beside Jiraiya. After forming a hand seal, Nagato, who was in a wheelchair, and Konan, who was pushing the wheelchair, were summoned there.
"Jiraiya-sensei, and..." Nagato greeted Jiraiya before turning to Naruto.
Although he knew this blond-haired man was the current head of the Uzumaki clan, Nagato was over thirty, and calling a ten-year-old "clan head" felt a bit awkward.
"Just call me Naruto," Naruto said with a bright smile. "This is Gaara."
"Hello," Gaara, having deactivated his tailed beast transformation, nodded back to Nagato.
"Nagato, thank goodness you arrived in time," Jiraiya said after sending the two sages and the Iron-Armed Toad back to Mount Myōboku. "Otherwise, it would have taken us a lot of effort to deal with them; that blue energy is too effective against chakra."
"Let's go check on their corpses first," Nagato said. "To build such a team, their backing must be considerable."
"Okay," Jiraiya nodded, and together with Nagato's Pain puppet, they walked towards the first squad leader to be defeated.
The man, whose vital organs had been pierced by Nagato's black rods, was already dead. Pain raised his hand, and the black rods embedded in the corpse dissipated. Jiraiya also approached, intending to examine this thing that had caused them so much trouble.
"Wait!" However, at this moment, Naruto, who had witnessed this scene, suddenly shouted.
The already damaged armor, freed from the restraint of the black rods, suddenly surged with violent energy fluctuations.
"Not good!" Seeing this, Nagato's main body hurriedly formed hand seals. Pain's puppet raised its hand and used Shinra Tensei to push away the about-to-explode corpse, while its other hand pulled Jiraiya back rapidly.
The next instant, the remaining energy within the armor exploded, engulfing an area with a diameter of over a hundred meters. It could be said that if they hadn't reacted in time, both Jiraiya and Pain's puppet would have been engulfed by the sudden explosion.
"It has a self-destruct mechanism?" Jiraiya's expression was grim.
"Grandpa Jiraiya, be careful!" Naruto, who had come to Jiraiya's side, warned him.
"How was I supposed to know this armor had this function?" Jiraiya gave a wry smile.
"Isn't it common sense to be wary of self-destruct mechanisms on something that looks so high-tech?" Naruto said. Having frequently visited Konoha's Scientific Ninja Tool Research Institute to test new equipment, Naruto knew very well that generally, equipment containing complex technology would have a self-destruct mechanism to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.
Take Neji, for example; if all the scientific ninja tools he carried had triggered their self-destruct mechanisms simultaneously, it would have created an explosion comparable to a Tailed Beast Ball.
"Looks like I really am outdated," Jiraiya shook his head and smiled wryly before asking, "So what do we do now?"
"The black rods Nagato created seem to have a restraining effect on this energy, so it's best not to touch them for now," Naruto said, suggesting they check the other armors.
"Alright," Nagato nodded, then had Pain take Naruto and Jiraiya with him. Meanwhile, the main body in the wheelchair was prepared to summon Pain and the two of them back at any time using the Summoning Jutsu.
This time, the armor fragments, whose energy flow was blocked by the black rods, did not explode.
However, for safety's sake, the two of them and the puppet observed the armor from a distance.
"This should be their organization's symbol," Jiraiya noticed, noting that each suit of armor had the same symbol engraved on top. "Judging by the shape, it looks like a seashell… Is there any organization in the ninja world that uses this symbol as their representative?"
"It seems not," Pain shook his head. "At least, none of our Akatsuki members have seen anyone wearing a similar pattern before."
"A seashell?" Naruto frowned upon hearing this.
"Naruto? You've seen this organization before?" Jiraiya quickly asked.
"No, not really," Naruto shook his head. "But before I came out, my teacher told me to keep an eye out for an organization called Kara in the ninja world. Do you think it could be them?"
"Has Touko heard of this organization?" Jiraiya nodded. "Then it seems we'll have to inform him first."
"Jiraiya-sensei, these people don't seem to be human," Pain said at this moment.
"Hmm?" Jiraiya looked at him with some surprise.
"They...don't bleed," Pain said, gesturing to the two to look at the places where the black rods had pierced the bodies. Normally, with such gruesome deaths, the area should have been covered in blood, but it was unusually clean.
"Not human? Could they be puppets?" Jiraiya asked in surprise. He had initially thought the lack of bleeding was due to the high-temperature burning effect of Nagato's black rods, which had stopped the bleeding. But since Nagato had spoken, that possibility was ruled out. The only thing in the ninja world capable of such an effect was a puppet.
"No, it shouldn't be puppets," Naruto said at this moment. "Before, when I sensed their presence using the ability my brother gave me, I could clearly feel the malice each of them harbored towards me. If they were puppets, I should only be able to sense the malice of the puppeteer behind them."
"Is that so?" Jiraiya nodded upon hearing this. "In that case, we can only maintain the status quo for now. Nagato, can you have the area sealed off? Since Touko knows some clues about this secret organization, we can only send a message to him now and ask him to come here."
"Alright, I'll have someone come and seal off this area right away." Pain nodded.
…
That afternoon, Deidara, who had volunteered to lead the team to seal off the scene, arrived with a team of barrier soldiers from the Land of Rain. At the same time, in the Hokage's office, Touko Uchiha also received a message from Jiraiya delivered by the communication frog of Mount Myōboku.
"First, they personally went to Orochimaru to steal the Edo Tensei, then they sent the Kara organization to attack. Is that guy hiding in the shadows finally going to show himself?" Uchiha Touko frowned after reading the message. The
Kara organization, which was supposed to appear decades later, had now surfaced. This was definitely not good news for Uchiha Touko. According to the information Jiraiya sent back, those puppet-like people were likely artificial humans created by the Kara organization, and the special energy they used was probably extracted from the other Ten-Tails in Isshiki Otsutsuki's possession.
Originally, Uchiha Touko planned to unify the ninja world and then use all its power to slowly deal with these invaders from other planets. But now it seemed that the Kara organization had probably noticed something from his actions in the ninja world, so they had jumped out prematurely.
"This is really troublesome." Uchiha Touko sighed. Putting everything else aside, the artificial humans and the ability to use the Ten-Tails' power that Kara organization had just encountered were a huge variable for the upcoming war in the ninja world.
In short, let's first figure out exactly how far their technology has progressed.
Uchiha Touko thought to himself, stood up, picked up the Flying Thunder God Technique, and said loudly, "Inahime, I need to go out of the village. Have Genma and his Flying Thunder God team come over. As for the documents that need processing these next few days, gather them all together. Send the less important ones directly to the General Staff Headquarters, and let the Chief of Staff handle them." "
Understood," Uchiha Inahime replied from outside the door.
A short while later, Genma and the other two arrived at the Hokage's office. Uchiha Touko had already changed into his battle suit and instructed the three, "Let's go to the border post in the Land of Rain."
...
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(End of Chapter)