---Third POV---
Sasori pulled out a scroll from his robes, preparing to use a puppet technique that he hadn't fully completed yet.
But how could Ryouma give him such a chance? In a flash of lightning arcing around his body, he suddenly transformed into a bolt of thunder and dashed right in front of Sasori, slashing down with his sword.
A bright, electric-blue arc sliced through the air. Sasori's entire right arm, along with the scroll in his hand, was struck by the blade and fell to the ground.
Sasori hadn't expected that even at this age, Ryouma could still be so fast. But fortunately, unlike ordinary puppeteers with fragile bodies, his real body was also a dangerous puppet.
Right after Ryouma delivered what even Sasori had to admit was a beautiful slash, a spiked rope suddenly shot out from his abdomen. The spikes glowed with a purplish light, clearly poisoned.
Normally, someone who had just executed a slash would still be in their post-attack lag and absolutely unable to dodge such a strike. But luckily, Ryouma had already prepared for this. He used the Flying Thunder God Technique to teleport away just in time. While battling the Third Kazekage puppet earlier, he had left a Flying Thunder God mark on the ground.
Sasori's seemingly certain strike hit nothing but air, and he cursed inwardly, "Damn it!"
He simply couldn't understand, how could someone of Ryouma's age still use so many high-level ninjutsu? Lightning Release was one thing, but space–time ninjutsu too? Did he really master that at age six?
He tried to reconnect with the arm he lost, but just like with the Third Kazekage puppet, the parts severed by Ryouma were already useless.
"Rasengan!"
Before he could regroup, five Narutos rushed toward him, each forming a blue sphere in his hand.
With no other choice, Sasori gave up on retrieving the scroll from the ground and focused on dealing with the enemies in front of him. Facing the pincer attack from five shadow clones, he flung off his outer black robe, revealing his puppet body beneath. Two rapidly spinning blades extended from his back and instantly sliced through the surrounding clones.
But Naruto's shadow clones didn't go down without a fight. Two of them managed to land their Rasengans, smashing Sasori's spinning blades.
At that moment, mist suddenly filled the field. Large amounts of water materialized out of nowhere, gathering into a massive water spear that Ryouma held and hurled forcefully at Sasori.
The extremely compressed, heavy water tore through the air and closed in on Sasori in a blink. Realizing he couldn't dodge this one, Sasori didn't hesitate. He activated a scroll embedded in the groove on his back.
A large amount of chakra burst from the joints of his puppet body, forming a circular white shield.
This was a jutsu inspired by the Mechanical Light Shield Block taught to him by Chiyo.
The Hard Whirlpool Water Blade struck the shield, creating an ear-piercing screech like it had hit solid steel.
Ryouma, however, showed no concern at all.
After all, the Hard Whirlpool Water Blade was specifically created by the Second Hokage to break through Susanoo's defense. Its greatest feature was its armor-piercing ability against chakra-based defenses.
He formed a hand seal, activating the second stage.
The massive water suddenly began to spin rapidly, transforming into a fierce, drill-like water tornado.
Boom!
The shield of the Mechanical Light Shield Block shattered with a loud crash.
Sasori was hit directly by the powerful water jutsu. His puppet body cracked and crumbled inch by inch. Even the ground beneath him was blasted into a massive crater several meters deep, with spiderweb-like cracks spreading in all directions from the impact.
Ryouma walked to the edge of the crater. First, he used the Rikugan to examine the area. After confirming there were no abnormalities, he shouted to Naruto, "Go check on the queen over there."
"Got it!"
With Naruto's response, Ryouma leapt down into the center of the crater. By now, Sasori's entire puppet body had been completely destroyed, leaving only a trembling core still intact.
Ryouma hadn't expected that even after such devastation, Sasori's core would still be functional. It seemed that in his past-life memories, the reason Sasori ended up impaling himself on two puppet blades was because he truly wanted to die.
"I do admire your will to survive, but unfortunately, we stand on opposite sides."
As he spoke, he raised Lostvayne, ready to finish Sasori off once and for all. But as was often the case, right when things seemed certain, something unexpected happened.
The ground suddenly trembled. The Ryūmyaku surged again, and a deep blue, dreamlike mist instantly filled the space. Under the influence of the mist, Sasori's body began rapidly rewinding, as if time were being played backward.
Lostvayne was only halfway through its swing when he realized that Sasori's core, along with the shattered puppet parts around it, had twisted and vanished into the fog.
Even the massive crater beneath his feet gradually rose and returned to its original, flat form.
♪The light rising above the tower,
Thoughts boil and run high,
Dragon path to be protected,
Pierce with shining blade look at the sky.♪
A sorrowful and mournful song echoed through the space. Ryouma turned toward the Source of the Ryūmyaku.
Sure enough, Sasori's figure had reappeared beside the current Queen of Rōran, Sāra.
Except for the right arm that Ryouma had severed, Sasori's body was completely intact.
"Huh? Why am I back here again?"
Naruto looked around in confusion. Just moments ago, he had run all the way to the red-haired girl's side and was about to question her, only to find himself inexplicably returned to the very starting point.
Ryouma pulled a Flying Thunder God kunai from his ninja tool pouch and threw it toward the direction of Sāra and Sasori. The kunai sliced through the air, whistling forward, but just as it reached within about ten meters of its target, it suddenly lost all momentum, became distorted, and vanished into the mist.
He reached behind him, and just as he expected, the kunai had returned to his ninja pouch.
Now having gauged the range of the time-reversal effect, he motioned to Naruto, and together they began walking through the dreamlike blue mist, stopping exactly ten meters from the Source of the Ryūmyaku.
Seeing them approach, Sāra shouted with a complex expression, "Don't come any closer! I'm begging you!"
Naruto immediately responded, "Don't worry, we'll get you out of here!"
But Sāra yelled back, "I don't need you to save me! Please, I'm begging you, stop trying to interfere with his and my wish, okay?"
Her words fried Naruto's brain. Completely baffled, he blurted out, "What are you even talking about?!"
"I said, please stop trying to interfere with us!"
This time, Naruto understood her. He frowned and shouted loudly, "I knew it! You're really a bad queen! Don't you realize how much harm the person next to you and his accomplices have caused to the civilians?"
"What?"
Sāra turned to look at Sasori and hurriedly asked, "Is what he said true?"
Sasori didn't directly answer her question. Instead, he countered, "So what if it's true? And what if it's false? That was all done by that idiot Anrokuzan. What does that have to do with our plan?"
"But…" Sāra pressed her lips together, her expression shifting. The surrounding blue mist slowly began to turn red.
Sensing that Sāra's resolve was starting to waver, Sasori sighed inwardly, Women are always troublesome.
"Once the plan is complete, there will be no more regrets in the entire shinobi world. These civilians of Rōran will understand you in the future. But if you hesitate now and the plan fails, then those who've been lost… will never come back."
His words weren't gentle, there was even a hint of threat in them, but that was exactly what Sāra responded to. This kind of cold rationale made her feel more in control.
"I understand."
Regaining her resolve, she pressed both hands onto the central control of the Ryūmyaku.
A flood of deep blue light surged into the sky once again. The mist diffused into glowing rings that layered and nested around it.
This time, the scale was clearly much greater than before. In less than a second, the entire city was enveloped in the light pillar.
From what had just happened, Naruto started to feel like this queen might be someone he could try to reason with.
"What is your goal? Let's talk about this!"
"Naruto, move aside. There's no time for that now. I'm going to kill the Ryūmyaku completely."
Ryouma formed a hand seal with one hand. His fingers slid across Lostvayne, and dark purple flames surged along it.
Seeing his action, Naruto quickly tried to persuade him, "But if you destroy the Ryūmyaku, Rōran will be destroyed too!"
"I know. But compared to letting Sasori's unknown plan succeed, I'd rather be the one to choose the final outcome myself."
If possible, Ryouma didn't want to kill the Ryūmyaku either. After all, it was a convergence point of the natural energy flow in the shinobi world. If it were destroyed, the ley lines across the entire continent would be thrown into chaos, and many places would suffer from various natural disasters.
The consequences would go far beyond the simple loss of a small country like Rōran.
"I didn't think you had such a naive side," Sasori said mockingly from the Source of the Ryūmyaku. "Even you can't destroy the energy of this Ryūmyaku."
Ryouma ignored Sasori's nonsense and raised Lostvayne above his head with both hands. The massive chakra sealed in the Yin Seal was completely converted into blaze flames, forming a giant dark purple blade tens of meters long on Lostvayne.
His eyes shimmered as he slashed downward through the air, cutting across a critical point of the Ryūmyaku's light pillar.
The rings of blue mist shattered with that strike, half of them broke instantly. The entire light pillar visibly shrank before their eyes.
"Wait, seriously?"
Even Sasori was stunned.
Was something like the Ryūmyaku actually vulnerable to just being hacked at like that?
You couldn't really blame him for being so shocked. He had spent two and a half years researching the Ryūmyaku here in Rōran and was confident that no one in the entire shinobi world understood it better than he did. Aside from certain special sealing techniques, almost no type of attack could affect something of the Ryūmyaku's magnitude. To counter the possibility that sealing techniques might pose a threat, he had specifically inscribed a technique onto the Ryūmyaku's control core, one that would convert part of its energy into shockwaves.
Under that kind of chakra surge, no sealing jutsu could be properly deployed.
But all his calculations had never accounted for someone using sheer brute force to damage the Ryūmyaku.
Seeing Ryouma raise that giant flaming blade again, Sasori quickly shouted, "Wait! Maybe there's been a misunderstanding between us!"
This wasn't him admitting defeat, he genuinely felt there was no need to escalate things this far.
"At least hear us out, listen to our plan. If it succeeds, it might actually be something good for you too. Our plan is to use the Ryūmyaku to create a perfect world. Doesn't that sound amazing? Hey! Are you even listening?"
His increasingly frantic voice echoed in the air, but Ryouma had no intention of hearing him out. Without hesitation, he raised the massive blade and brought it down again.
CLANG!
With a flash of dark purple light, another critical point was forcibly slashed through. That was the second devastating blow in a row, and each strike had inflicted a massive wound on the towering pillar of energy formed by the Ryūmyaku. The once-endless light column could now barely cover the area of Rōran.
The dozens of blue rings once tightly nested around it were now mostly gone, only a few remained, spinning slowly and with great difficulty. The glow they emitted had dimmed drastically, as if on the verge of fading out completely.
Witnessing the Ryūmyaku's failing state, Sāra's face was full of anxiety. She looked up at Sasori and asked urgently, "What should we do now?"
"Immediately activate Dragon Fate Reversal and awaken all the Lost Mist scattered throughout Rōran."
"But… if we do that, the next time we try to activate it—"
"Enough talk! Follow my orders."
Sensing the resolve in Sasori, Sāra nodded firmly and placed her hands on the Ryūmyaku's core.
---
Meanwhile, as Sāra and Sasori were speaking, Ryouma's third strike had already fallen.
According to the analysis from his Rikugan and Breath of All Things, this third slash wouldn't destroy the Ryūmyaku completely, but it would cause it to dry up for a while.
That way, the ley lines of the shinobi world wouldn't fall into chaos, and he could stop Sasori and Sāra's plan.
Just as he delivered his decisive blow, the pillar of light from the Ryūmyaku unexpectedly shattered on its own, transforming into a massive blue cloud drifting upward into the sky.
Raaashhhhhh!
Countless fine raindrops poured down from above, glowing with blue light, breaking through the misty veil that had covered all of Rōran.
He formed a hand seal and slammed his palms onto the ground, raising a stone that shielded himself and Naruto from the rain.