"Where is it?" Orochimaru asked curiously.
"Here."
Like a machine, the Farmer lowered his head and fixed his gaze on the grass beneath Garaga's coils.
Orochimaru frowned slightly.
Within the prison space, Hashirama sighed:
"So many beautiful things trampled and broken by war… perhaps that is the true sorrow of the shinobi world."
Uchiha Yu reminded him coldly:
"Konoha did this."
Hashirama: "…"
Tobirama snapped, "Brother, don't talk to this guy—you're only humiliating yourself!"
The Shinobi Farmer then leapt from the serpent's head to the ground and slipped into the forest, disappearing from view.
Meanwhile…
At the lake's edge, several middle-aged villagers sat fishing idly, occasionally bragging about their catches of the day.
When one man had caught nothing, the others mocked him in unison, their laughter filling the air.
Even when a colossal serpent loomed behind them, mountain-sized, they remained oblivious, happily lost in their fishing.
Yet the moment Garaga appeared, its apex-predator aura sent every nearby creature scattering.
The fish had long since fled the area.
Just then—
The unlucky fisherman suddenly felt a tug on his line. He jerked the rod back with excitement, shouting, "Got one! A big one!!"
The others crowded over, but in the next instant, they all froze.
Ripples spread across the lake. From the deep, a massive shadow surged upward.
As it drew closer, the fishermen's pupils shrank—they finally made out the shape.
It was no creature they knew, but a giant machine of steel.
Its sleek design was highly advanced, the cockpit lined with rows of glass windows.
On either side of the top were flat oval platforms, as though meant for something to land from the sky.
It was unmistakably a medium-sized gray-white war submarine.
Splash—!
The lake's surface exploded as the enormous vessel pierced upward, water cascading off its hull with a deafening roar.
The war submarine rose like a leviathan from the depths, declaring dominion over its waters.
From Shinya's head, both Uchiha Yu and Orochimaru witnessed the spectacle.
"Tobirama, what is that thing?" Hashirama asked urgently.
"I don't know either… it must be some weapon from the Second Great Ninja War. I was already dead after the First."
Tobirama replied helplessly.
Hashirama: "…"
"Interesting… is this the Hidden Sky Village's answer sheet for the Shinobi World War?"
Orochimaru's eyes lit up with excitement.
Though he was a master in the field of biological research, that never stopped him from yearning after the world of mechanical science.
Uchiha Yu shot him a sidelong glance, sighing inwardly.
In that flashback arc, Orochimaru had indeed created something like a mechanical Naruto.
As the war submarine surfaced, the oval-shaped decks on either side—resembling helipads—suddenly shifted apart.
Two squads of ten Sky-nin each were transported up from below onto the deck, all of them wearing identical golden contraptions.
The devices looked like bird-shaped kites with twin wings.
Orochimaru's curiosity was piqued, but Uchiha Yu remained completely unmoved.
A moment later, Orochimaru realized the function of those strange golden devices.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—
With a loud rushing sound, the two squads accelerated forward along the special tracks of the deck before launching straight up into the sky.
Orochimaru's vertical pupils contracted sharply.
Uchiha Yu explained calmly:
"They inject chakra into the metal wings, creating airflow differences between the surfaces, allowing them to fly."
Orochimaru's expression shifted slightly. Suddenly enlightened, he chuckled.
"I see… I didn't expect you, Yu-kun, to have studied the integration of mechanics and chakra to such a depth. How fascinating…"
At his words, Tobirama too had an epiphany. While marveling at the genius who invented such flying machines, he was equally shocked that Uchiha Yu could so clearly explain the principle behind them.
Uchiha Yu thought to himself, utterly calm: It's just a good memory, nothing more.
Once the two ten-man flight squads had ascended into the skies, they circled like falcons with precise coordination, quickly forming a temporary battle plan.
Their ultimate target was naturally the suddenly-appearing Garaga—and upon its head, Uchiha Yu and Orochimaru.
Yet during their circling, they suddenly hurled kunai at the terrified fishermen along the lakeshore.
Whoosh—
The black kunai shot down from above, tearing through the sky like a downpour of steel rain.
"They're about two thousand meters up… from this height, throwing kunai down at the ground—even a jōnin wouldn't be able to hit so precisely… wait, they're using…"
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes.
Though his Sharingan had already reverted back to normal eyes, his extraordinary vision still caught the details. In that moment, he saw the Sky-nin wielding gun-like kunai launchers!
Ratatata—
"Ahhhh!!!"
Within moments, the fishermen at the lakeside screamed in agony, struck by countless kunai, collapsing into pools of blood.
Uchiha Yu deduced that because of their sudden arrival, the Sky-nin had grown wary. Thus, they prepared to massacre the village and relocate, hiding elsewhere to grow stronger.
In the future, every single villager here would be slaughtered by their hands.
High above the skies—
The Sky-nin didn't spare the fleeing farmers so much as a glance, and immediately flew straight toward Garaga.
Every one of their kunai rifles was aimed at Uchiha Yu and Orochimaru.
But before they could pull the triggers—
Suddenly.
The ground beneath the village split open with a massive rift, a terrifying surge of air blasting out from below, as though the earth itself had been torn in two.
The Sky-nin's faces filled with dread.
Their captain exclaimed in astonishment:
"The royal fortress—why would it activate now? Could it be… the leader has returned?"
Boom—
The thunderous sound shook the heavens.
The ground encircling the small village cracked open in a great ring. With the earth trembling violently, the little village began to slowly rise into the sky, its surface buildings tumbling away one by one.
As for the villagers, apart from those few reckless fishermen, most had already fled with their families the moment Shinya slithered into the village.
They had run off in the direction of Konoha.
But feeling the ground quaking, the villagers who had already escaped some distance turned their heads in horror—only to see their entire home rising into the heavens.
The small village continued to ascend: one meter, ten meters, a hundred meters!
Garaga's enormous serpentine body was lifted skyward by the rising land, his massive form shuddering uncontrollably.
The high altitude and the sudden sense of weightlessness left him with no sense of safety.
Orochimaru and Hashirama, still trapped within the "prison space," were both startled by the phenomenon.
Though Tobirama kept a straight face, in truth his mind was racing—he wanted nothing more than to dissect and study whatever was beneath his feet.
Standing calmly atop the serpent's head, Uchiha Yu remained as unshaken as a mountain, even in the face of a collapsing world.
He smiled.
Compared to Konoha, this was the new shinobi village territory he had set his sights on.
After the land rose to a hundred meters, the small village had completely vanished. What emerged was its true form—
An aerial fortress, its summit bristling with towering spires, its front carved with colossal human-face reliefs.
Majestic and imposing, it exuded a strange, alien sense of technology, utterly out of place in the shinobi world.
°°°
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