Time itself seemed to halt in that instant.
Kushina's lips lingered briefly against Ryoma's, leaving him unsatisfied—yet her cheeks flushed red as she pulled back.
"Save Grandma Mito!" she urged, voice trembling but firm.
Ryoma nodded, his hands flashing into seals.
In that moment, the world itself darkened.
A suffocating, overwhelming aura erupted outward, spreading like a tidal wave crashing against the land. The ground quaked violently as if the entire continent shuddered.
The colossal, thousand-meter-high Buddha statue rose fully into view. Compared to it, entire mountain ranges looked like mere garden rocks.
Countless massive palms stretched outward, blotting out the sky.
All of Konoha shook beneath its presence.
"What's happening?!"
"An earthquake?!"
"No—look up there! What is that?!"
The people of the village poured into the streets, staring wide-eyed at the unfathomable giant looming above the clouds. Its countless arms reached skyward, as if heralding the end of days.
In the Uchiha compound, clan head Uchiha Shuna was holding a meeting with Mikoto and young Obito when the tremors hit.
They rushed outside—and Shuna froze in shock.
"That… that's the ultimate technique of the First Hokage!"
Though decades had passed, he remembered. As a boy of three, he had stood at the village gates and glimpsed, from afar, the legendary Battle at the Valley of the End.
That Buddha—those countless arms—were burned into his memory. A sight that had haunted him for a lifetime.
But now… it was here again.
"Could it be Ryoma…?" Shuna whispered, disbelief twisting his face.
The boy who once wielded Wood Release should never have been capable of this. Even Orochimaru's test subjects had shown only pitiful fragments of Hashirama's power.
There was a difference between simply having Wood Release—and wielding the true Wood Release of the God of Shinobi.
Mikoto and Obito were equally shaken.
They recognized it instantly. They had seen Ryoma summon the wooden colossus at the Sea Bridge… but this—this was on an entirely different scale.
Ten times larger. Ten times more terrifying.
Elsewhere, in the Hyūga compound, the eldest elder, Hyūga Tenjin, once a disciple of the Second Hokage, collapsed to his knees the moment he saw the towering Buddha.
"This… this is the greatest technique of the First Hokage's Sage Art Wood Release…" he whispered, trembling in awe.
Behind him, other Hyūga followed suit, bowing low in reverence.
But among them, young Hiashi Hyūga could not resist activating his Byakugan, straining its power to magnify his vision. His gaze cut through the mist, piercing a kilometer's distance…
There! Atop the colossal Buddha… a figure stood upon the crown of the Wood Golem itself.
Hiashi's eyes widened. That silhouette—so familiar—
Suddenly, pain seared his vision. Blood trickled from his eyes before his sight went black. His body collapsed.
"Hiashi!" cries echoed as the next heir of the Hyūga fainted, throwing the clan into panic.
The other noble clans of Konoha were equally shaken. Elders who had lived since before the founding of the village trembled at the sight.
"Impossible…"
"That jutsu—could it be…?"
"Who wields such power…?"
Far away, on the border of the Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning, two monstrous chakras clashed violently.
"Lightning Release: Lightning Oppression Horizontal Chop!"
"Earth Release: Earth Dragon Bullet Technique!"
The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, and the Third Raikage collided, their ultimate techniques detonating with a thunderous roar.
The battlefield shook, a massive boulder shattering under the force.
Hiruzen staggered back, blood trailing from his lips, while the Raikage stood firm, glaring with burning eyes.
Nearby, Orochimaru and Tsunade fought against the Jinchūriki of the Eight-Tails, the half-transformed Fugai.
Even against the two Sannin, the half-tailed beast form of Fugai held the advantage. A single punch had already sent Orochimaru crashing to the ground, though he slithered back up with gleaming eyes, whispering to himself.
"The power of the Hachibi… I must study this…"
But then—
The ground trembled. A violent quake rippled across the battlefield.
"What's going on now? Another earthquake?!" Tsunade shouted.
The Eight-Tails' chakra flared wildly within Fugai, his expression twisting.
"I… I don't know why, but the Hachibi's power is restless!" he growled.
The Third Raikage narrowed his eyes. "Could it be your seal weakening?!"
"I don't know… But look!" Fugai pointed toward the distance.
There, towering over Konoha—
A Buddha with a thousand arms, larger than an entire mountain range.
The Raikage's face hardened. "What in the world… is that?!"
Fugai's voice was low, grim.
"The Eight-Tails… is afraid."
At that moment, a white figure descended from the sky.
"I'm not late, am I?"
Jiraiya finally arrived, and the three Sannin of Konoha stood together once more.
The Third Raikage realized the situation had spiraled out of control and immediately ordered,
"We retreat!"
Tsunade turned, her eyes widening in disbelief at the colossal Thousand-Armed Buddha towering above.
Orochimaru's lips curled into a sly smile.
"So… this is Konoha's hidden hand?"
Jiraiya stared, astonished.
"A Thousand-Armed Giant Buddha… is that Wood Release? Could that massive figure really be a Wood Style construct?"
Though Hiruzen Sarutobi's breathing was shallow, his eyes gleamed sharply. Glancing at the statue, he shook his head. "That's not the Wood Human Technique. We must return at once!"
As the direct disciple of both the First and Second Hokage, Sarutobi knew exactly what he was seeing: the legendary True Several Thousand Hands of Hashirama Senju. His first thought was of Ryoma.
"Please… nothing must happen to the village."
But then, an unsettling memory surfaced — the strange smile Danzo had worn before he left.
"Danzo… don't stir up more chaos."
Meanwhile, in Kirigakure, the sudden disappearance of the Third Mizukage and the Seven Ninja Swordsmen had thrown the village into turmoil. Power-hungry clans and factions were already circling the vacant Mizukage's seat.
Then, across the sea, a towering Buddha figure erupted into view. Panic swept through the mist.
"What in the world is that?!"
The colossal figure loomed toward the direction of Konoha. Whispers spread in fear: could it be a forbidden technique unleashed by the Leaf?
In Iwagakure, the Third Tsuchikage Ōnoki listened to reports about the Raikage's clash with Konoha and was preparing to launch a surprise offensive.
Suddenly, the earth trembled.
Ōnoki stepped to his window and froze. A giant Buddha with countless hands had materialized on the horizon.
"No… am I hallucinating?"
He rubbed his eyes, but the impossible sight remained.
"Quickly! Send squads to Konoha at once. Find out what this Thousand-Armed Buddha is!"
"Yes, Lord Tsuchikage!"
Three elite squads of jōnin immediately departed for the Leaf.
As Ōnoki stared at the horizon, memories stirred from forty years ago, when he was still young — standing in awe during his envoy mission to Konoha, before the First Hokage himself.
In Sunagakure, the Third Kazekage was stunned as well.
"That… that statue is even larger than a mountain."
But before he could act, his vision wavered. The desert around him dissolved into an illusionary wasteland, barren and empty.
"Where is this place?"
Two figures emerged.
One was a boy, no more than ten, with short orange hair and an unsettling calmness beneath a black cloak. The other was an elderly man, his gaze piercing with the unmistakable glow of a Mangekyō Sharingan.
An hour later, the Kazekage's eyes glazed wide in disbelief as life drained from him. Blood seeped into the sand until his body was swallowed whole.
The assassins — Sasori of the Red Sand and Uchiha Madara — had struck. The Kazekage's corpse vanished into the shadows, leaving Sunagakure leaderless and in chaos.
Ryoma hadn't expected that his use of Sage Art: Wood Release — the strongest technique of Hashirama Senju — would shake the entire shinobi world. By accident, his actions had also assisted Sasori and Madara's plot.
The butterfly's wings had beaten, and already the winds of war shifted. The disappearance of the Third Kazekage would ignite the Third Great Ninja War.
BOOM!
The ground quaked violently.
The source of the tremor was the training field on Konoha's outskirts — though by now it was nothing but rubble.
"Stay down!"
A colossal wooden hand, one of the Thousand-Armed Buddha's many limbs, swept across the battlefield, blotting out the sky.
The suffocating aura made both the Two-Tails and the Nine-Tails bristle in instinctive fear, their fur standing on end.
"Tailed Beast Bomb!"
The Two-Tails roared, condensing a sphere of black-and-purple chakra in its maw. In a blink, it unleashed the destructive blast, the air warping around its immense power.
The attack could have leveled a mountain.
Yet, the Buddha's giant hand descended like the Five Finger Mountain itself, swallowing the blast.
The Tailed Beast Bomb detonated against the wood, but the thousand-armed construct held steady, only scattering chips of timber.
"No… impossible!" Yugito's voice trembled as the Two-Tails thrashed helplessly.
The hand slammed down.
BOOM!
The battlefield quaked as dust billowed. The Two-Tails lay pinned beneath the immense palm, quivering in terror — as though crushed beneath destiny itself.
...
TN:
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