---Third POV---
After carefully sensing the distance, Ryouma made up his mind to go big.
"Shukaku, I'll leave the chakra to you."
"Understood." Shukaku formed a seal with both hands and began supplying chakra at full power to the chakra seal pool on him.
Ryouma sheathed Lostvayne, placed both hands on the ground, and shouted to Minato and Obito.
"Buy me ten seconds!"
Seeing his unusual actions, Ōnoki in the sky instantly sensed something was wrong. Although he didn't know what Ryouma was about to do, stopping him couldn't be a mistake.
"Han, go stop him."
At the order, Han, in his Five-Tails form, kicked his hind legs and charged forward, the whistle of steam resounding across the battlefield once again!
Ōnoki himself rapidly formed hand seals.
The earth began to quake, and with a deep, rumbling roar, a gigantic golem of rock and soil, ten meters tall, crawled up from deep underground.
The rock golem stomped heavily toward Ryouma, the ground shattering beneath its feet, sending up clouds of dust. In the blink of an eye, it had reached close range, raising its massive, pillar-like fist high into the air, then slamming it down toward him with unstoppable force.
Obito tried to absorb the rock golem into the Kamui space, but a sharp pain surged through his eye, disrupting his visual chakra flow, a fatal flaw for a precision space-time technique like Kamui.
As expected, the swirling ripple that had started forming on the golem's surface vanished instantly.
"Damn it!" He clutched his eye.
Whoosh.
With a faint slicing sound, the rock golem, just about to smash Ryouma's head in, suddenly vanished from sight.
Boom!
A shockwave blasted through the area. He quickly looked to the right.
The golem had reappeared directly in the path of the charging Five-Tails, slamming into its head and pinning it down onto the street.
Minato stood atop the golem's head, eyes fixed intently on Black Zetsu, who floated motionless in mid-air.
"This guy… why isn't he moving at all?"
Even if he couldn't use long-range jutsu, he should at least be commanding more summoned beasts to interfere. Could it be those earlier were all he had?
Still uncertain, he used the Flying Thunder God Technique once again and returned to Ryouma's side.
Ten seconds passed in a flash.
Sensing that the chakra had reached its destination, Ryouma quickly used Earth Release.
In an instant, countless cracks spread across the land like a spiderweb, covering nearly the entire Iwa stronghold. The roar of the earthquake was deafening, like thunder crashing down from the heavens, shaking the heart of every Iwa ninjas on the battlefield. The ground was no longer stable. It churned like a raging ocean, violently trembling.
The once-sturdy bunkers around them now seemed fragile and weak. One after another, they collapsed into piles of rubble, dust rising high into the sky and blotting out the sun.
The Iwa ninjas, stunned by the sudden, massive-scale Earth Release, couldn't form any organized defense. All they could do was scatter and flee, darting through dust and debris, searching desperately for a safe foothold.
---
Deep beneath the Iwa stronghold, a man with a full reddish-brown beard stood outside a prison cell with his arms crossed.
Behind him was none other than Jiraiya.
His condition was far from good. Not only was his body bound in iron chains to a thick wooden pillar, but black chakra-disrupting rods were also pierced into each of his limbs. Dark red blood stains had long since dried on his body.
Minato and Ryouma had judged correctly, if they didn't rescue him this time, the next time they retrieved him, it would likely just be his corpse.
This prison had been specially constructed. The ground inside was lined with powerful traps, triggering them would leave no chance of escape.
Although it appeared that only Rōshi was guarding the cell from the outside, in truth, several Iwa sensory ninjas were hidden nearby. Should any enemy infiltrate, they would be discovered in less than a second.
"We should've just killed him. What's the point of all this?"
Rōshi was clearly displeased with Ōnoki's decision. In his view, instead of using Jiraiya as some kind of bargaining chip or plot element, it would have been more straightforward to just kill him and weaken Konoha's forces directly. The idea of cooperating with that shady, half-black mystery man also felt incredibly unreliable to him. And it wasn't just this incident that frustrated him, he had grown dissatisfied with various battlefield decisions made earlier as well.
He had already made up his mind: once this war with Konoha was over, win or lose, he no longer intended to stay in Iwa.
He was tired of seeing Ōnoki's self-righteous face. Maybe once the Fourth Tsuchikage took power, he would consider whether to return.
Crack, crack, crack...
His ears were very sharp, he seemed to hear the sound of rock strata fracturing.
"A massive chakra signature is approaching us!"
Hearing this report from his subordinate, Rōshi frowned and was just about to give an order when an unexpected event occurred.
The underground chamber they were in suddenly began to shake violently. Dust and chunks of stone rained down from above, but strangely, the very spot they stood on showed no signs of cracking.
A few seconds later, the quake came to an abrupt stop, and everything fell silent again.
He seemed to realize something and looked up above his head.
There, the perfectly sealed ceiling suddenly split open along a perfectly straight vertical line, then pulled apart like a pair of doors, revealing a clear, azure sky that had no business being connected to a subterranean prison.
"What... is this?"
Looking ahead at the now unsealed front, he saw the Five-Tails slowly rising, having just thrown off the giant rock golem that had pinned it down. All around were shattered ruins, and among them, the crushed bodies of Iwa ninjas who hadn't escaped falling debris in time.
---
"To be able to use Earth Release from such a distance… just how strong is that guy's chakra control?"
Ōnoki saw Ryouma's grand move clearly from above.
He had actually raised the entire prison holding Jiraiya straight out of the ground from halfway across the stronghold, it was as if he had artificially created a mountain!
"Obito!" Minato called out.
Obito immediately understood. His Mangekyō Sharingan in his right eye began to spin, forming a spatial vortex that absorbed his body.
When he reappeared, he was already inside the prison where Jiraiya was held.
Seeing Jiraiya's miserable state, he immediately reached out to pull Jiraiya into the Kamui space.
"Lava Release: Scorching Flow Peak Rock!"
At the same time Obito appeared, Rōshi unleashed his jutsu, spitting out a barrage of molten lava fireballs.
Feeling the intense heat rushing toward his back, Obito didn't want to give up the precious opportunity Ryouma had created. He planned to absorb just Jiraiya's body into Kamui at top speed, then activate intangibility to dodge the incoming attack, it should be enough time.
But someone else was faster.
Minato and Ryouma used the Flying Thunder God kunai on Obito's body and instantly teleported in.
Facing the incoming lava attack, Ryouma drew Lostvayne and slashed once.
"Full Counter!"
An invisible domain expanded outward, reflecting all the searing lava fireballs back at even greater speed. In Rōshi's stunned gaze, they blasted into him and sent him flying.
"Great!" Obito shouted excitedly, and at the same time, his hands didn't stay idle, right after touching Jiraiya's shoulder, he immediately activated his eye technique to absorb him.
However, unexpectedly, the moment he touched Jiraiya, a series of black, tadpole-like markings emerged from Jiraiya's body and quickly spread onto him.
Zzzzz...
It sounded like an electrical short circuit.
The chakra within his body was disrupted by an unknown force, interrupting the activation of Kamui. In the blink of an eye, the black markings spread all over him, rendering him immobile.
What the heck is this?
He couldn't open his mouth to speak and could only use his eyes to direct his question toward Minato and Ryouma.
Looking at the unknown type of curse marks covering both Jiraiya and Obito, Ryouma looked troubled. He had spent most of his time studying fūinjutsu and had only learned a handful of curse-related ones.
"A trigger-type curse mark?"
It was Minato's vast knowledge that allowed him to instantly recognize the jutsu.
---
"Heh heh..."
Black Zetsu stood at the bottom of the small hill Ryouma had raised, letting out a cold and sinister laugh as he formed hand seals.
A massive summoning formation slowly manifested in the air before him.
Boom!
Thick smoke billowed as a figure slowly stepped out.
---
On top of the small hill, Minato asked Ryouma, "Can your counter bounce this curse mark away?"
"I'm afraid not," Ryouma shook his head. "If it were only the curse mark on Jiraiya-senpai, maybe I could try, but the one on Obito would just bounce back onto Jiraiya-senpai."
And considering Jiraiya's current physical condition, if that happened, Ryouma believed he wouldn't survive the impact.
"In that case..." Minato's expression turned serious. "I'll try to dispel the curse. Buy me some time."
Because he wasn't sure whether the enemy had set up a two-stage trigger, he didn't dare recklessly teleport Obito and Jiraiya away using the Flying Thunder God Technique. He could only rapidly form hand seals on the spot to try to dispel the curse on Obito.
Noticing Minato's actions, Ōnoki clapped his hands mid-air, activating a sealing technique he had laid in the floor of the specially made prison. Having held Jiraiya captive for so long, there was no way he and Black Zetsu would have relied on just a simple trigger-type curse mark.
As chakra flowed, black sealing marks lit up all over the prison floor.
With sharp reflexes, Ryouma swung Lostvayne again, and the area of Full Counter rapidly expanded, covering the entire hilltop.
The sealing technique, not yet fully activated, was instantly rebounded and destroyed, the black ink-like marks splattering in all directions.
"It can bounce that too?!"
Ōnoki in the air was visibly shaken. This battle had been frustrating for him, he couldn't use his Dust Release offensively and could only use it to defuse attacks, and now even the sealing technique he had high hopes for had failed.
"That damn Zetsu, even now he's still showing off with his summoning beasts?"
He looked down at the smoke with a foreboding feeling.
It seemed ever since the battle began, Zetsu had been putting in minimal effort, which was a big contrast to his earlier diligence while setting up the sealing formations.
---
Inside the prison atop the hill, Ryouma had just swung a Full Counter to completely reflect the sealing marks beneath his feet. But in the very next moment, a sudden and inexplicable sense of dread surged through him.
But he didn't see any threats with his Rikugan...
He didn't have time to think. Just as he prepared to swing his blade again to launch another Full Counter, he realized, he couldn't move. No, it wasn't his whole body, just his arms.
Splurt!
Bright red blood sprayed from his chest as two black rods emerged from the air, impaling him through the torso.
Zzzzt!
That same short-circuit-like sound echoed again, instantly interrupting his attempt to activate the Flying Thunder God Technique.
"Partner!" Shukaku, who had been quietly sitting on Ryouma's shoulder providing chakra, noticed the abnormality in Ryouma's condition.
It reacted immediately, leaping into the air and reaching out to grab the two black rods that had appeared out of thin air.
Bang!
A dull impact rang out through the air. It was sent flying from the hilltop by some invisible force, crashing to the ground. After destroying several bunkers, it was buried under the rubble.
"Ryouma!"
Everything happened so fast that Minato still didn't know how those two black rods had suddenly appeared inside Ryouma's body.
And judging from the way Ryouma looked, it seemed as if something had bound him from behind. Shukaku had likely been struck by the same force.
Then, a voice echoed from mid-air.
"Your countering ability… If you can't swing your sword, you can't activate it, right? I'm not wrong, am I?"
Madara slowly descended to stand in front of Ryouma.
Looking at the Rinnegan in his eye socket, Ryouma, speaking weakly, said, "So it really was your eye technique... No wonder I couldn't see it… cough cough..."
"You seem to know about my Rinnegan. Where did you get that intel?" Madara, as if greeting an old acquaintance, actually started conversing with the boy in front of him.
Ryouma's lips curled into a slight smile.
"Of course I got it from... Right now!"
He suddenly released his right hand, Lostvayne dropped to the ground. In the next second, black sealing marks surged from the hilt of the blade.
In the blink of an eye, the marks spread across the ground around him and quickly climbed all over Madara.
Boom!
At that signal, without disrupting the ongoing curse dispel, Minato summoned a shadow clone, who formed a Rasengan and charged at the now-sealed Madara.
But Madara had never considered the others around Ryouma a threat. Everything he had set up was just to take down Ryouma alone.
Faced with such a "ridiculous" attack, he activated the ability of the Preta Path, absorbing the sealing formations spreading across the ground, and simultaneously turned toward Minato's real body with an arrogant expression as he raised his right hand and opened it.
"You want to dance too?"
With a single burst, the force instantly shattered Minato's shadow clone and then surged straight toward Minato himself.
Boom!
That one Shinra Tensei leveled the small hill Ryouma had raised. In the smoke and dust, the figures of Minato, Ryouma, and Shukaku were nowhere to be seen.
However, Madara didn't feel the impact of striking a living body.
"They teleported away at the last second? Just the kind of trick a weakling would resort to."