Chapter 93: The Tragic Battlefield
Hum—!
All sound between heaven and earth vanished.
Immediately after, an indescribable, terrifying repulsive force erupted violently, with Deva Path Pain as the center!
The Ninjutsu, Kunai, and Senbon flying through the air were crushed into the most primitive particles the moment they struck the repulsive force, as if they had hit a Wall of Sighs!
Rumble—!!!
The earth let out a desperate wail.
With the Allied Forces camp as the center, the ground for several kilometers around was pressed down hard as if by an invisible giant hand, then frantically wiped away in all directions!
The soil surged like a tsunami, and giant rocks were blown away like foam.
The so-called defense barriers, the five-thousand-man phalanx, the iron will... before this divine power, they were as fragile as a piece of soaked toilet paper.
"No—!!!"
Chiyo watched helplessly as her precious Puppets were crushed into powder; in the next second, her aged body was completely swallowed by the air blast.
In her field of vision, only a stark white remained.
That was the light of power compressed to the extreme.
There was no confrontation, no stalemate.
This was a cleansing.
A thorough, absolute cleansing.
The massive roar lasted for half a minute. When the dust settled, the original plain had vanished.
In its place was a terrifying crater, dozens of meters deep and several kilometers in diameter.
Rain began to fall again.
This time, the rainwater falling into the pit would soon turn red.
At the edge of the giant crater, Yahiko stood on a paper crane, looking down at the mess and wailing below.
"Look."
He smiled and said to Konan, whose face was pale behind him, as he pointed to the slowly rising dust cloud:
"This is the first 'truth' we are going to plant."
The wind stopped and the rain ceased.
Sunlight pierced through the dark clouds, spilling unreservedly onto this scene of carnage, yet it brought no warmth; instead, it illuminated the hellish tragedy in stark detail.
There were no heroes here, only survivors struggling for breath.
"Cough... cough cough..."
Nara Shikaku was half-buried in the mud, laboriously spitting out the grit in his mouth and nose. He looked up blankly; as far as his eyes could see, there were only severed limbs and broken arms. The five-thousand-man Allied Forces phalanx was now like sand sifted by gold prospectors; those still breathing were less than one in ten.
Moreover, they were all high-level Ninjas with special defensive means or Kekkei Genkais.
The rest... had become dust.
*Step.*
A boot with a black background and red cloud patterns stepped onto a piece of smoking rock fragment.
Yahiko led Konan as they strolled into the field as if taking a walk in a courtyard. He looked around, and those amber eyes held no joy of victory, only a kind of coldness and pickiness one might have when facing an account book.
Yahiko's voice wasn't loud, yet it clearly reached every corner of the deathly silent crater. "Kakuzu, Sasori, start working."
"Clean up the trash. Don't worry about those who aren't breathing, but for those still alive, if they are Jonin or clan Ninjas, tie them all up for me." Yahiko's tone was like he was giving instructions for housekeeping. "That is the debt the great nations owe us; we must make them yield their maximum value."
"Understood."
A sinister voice sounded behind Shikaku.
Before this Konoha Strategist could react, several thick, black Earth Grudge Fear tentacles burst from the ground. Like pythons coiling around prey, they instantly snapped the sliver of Chakra he had just gathered and suspended him in the air in a spread-eagle position.
"Ugh—!" Shikaku let out a pained groan, his limb bones making an overburdened cracking sound under the pressure of the tentacles.
A masked face with greedy eyes leaned in close to him.
Kakuzu's glowing green eyes looked Shikaku up and down as if he were looking at a succulent roasted whole lamb rather than a high-ranking member of Konoha.
"The Nara Clan Chief? Very good."
At some point, an abacus had appeared in Kakuzu's hand, his fingers moving rapidly to produce a rhythmic clicking sound. "His head has a thirty million Ryo bounty at the Bounty Station, but if he's captured alive, I believe it should at least double."
"Sixty million Ryo." Kakuzu nodded with satisfaction and even reached out to pat Shikaku's blood-stained cheek, his tone becoming surprisingly gentle. "Don't move around. If you die halfway there, you won't be worth anything."
Shikaku glared deathly at this monster who only cared about money, a sense of humiliation deeper than death welling up in his heart.
As the brain of Konoha, he had imagined dying on the battlefield or being severely tortured, but he had never imagined being valued by the pound like a pig waiting to be slaughtered.
"Bas... bastard..." A broken curse squeezed out of Shikaku's throat.
"Save your strength for cursing later." Kakuzu snorted and turned toward the next target. "Hey, Puppeteer over there, don't kill them. Although the Hidden Sand Village is poor, their technical personnel are still worth some money."
Not far away, Sasori of the Red Sand controlled hiruko, the scorpion tail behind him flexibly coiling around several relatively intact corpses.
"Truly crude art..." Sasori muttered in dissatisfaction as he looked at the fragments all over the ground. "Materials crushed like this are very troublesome to repair. However, the bone structures of these few Puppeteers are not bad; they'll barely do."
On the outer perimeter, Biwa Jūzō, carrying the kubikiribōchō, was like a hardworking farmer, giving those screaming but worthless Chunin and Genin a 'kaishaku' one by one.
"Too noisy." Jūzō's blade fell, and blood splashed onto the kubikiribōchō, being instantly absorbed by the blade. "In your next life, remember to be born in a wealthy Ninja Village. A life as a pauper like this is just suffering while alive."
This was the fate of the defeated.
Even death had become a luxury.
In the northwest corner of the giant crater was the Uchiha Clan's position. Relying on the Sharingan, they were the unit that had preserved their combat strength most completely in this catastrophe.
But it was only relatively complete.
"Clan Chief!!"
Uchiha Yashiro clutched his severed left arm, his face covered in blood, the Three-Tomoe in his eyes turning a terrifying crimson due to congestion. He looked at his Konoha comrades not far away being tied up like livestock, and his haughty pride made him nearly grind his molars to dust.
"Fight them to the end!"
Yatsuyo roared hysterically, his hand tightly gripping a Kunai. "The Uchiha Clan would rather die in battle than suffer such a humiliating disgrace! Being sold as cargo? You've got to be kidding me!"
"Kill!!"
Behind him, dozens of surviving young Uchiha Clan members were incited into a hot-blooded frenzy. Although they were terrified, the pride of a prestigious clan made it impossible for them to accept living on their knees.
The light of Chakra flared up once more, and a suicidal charge was about to break out.
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