"So this is probably what it looked like when Grandpa and Madara lost back then…"
Tsunade looked at the two stone statues, Hashirama and Madara, that had collapsed with a thunderous crash and now lay prostrate at the feet of Garp's statue.
She then raised her head and gazed toward the Valley of the End, where the only statue still standing tall was Garp's, and the man himself, standing atop its head.
An image surfaced uncontrollably in her mind.
The scene of the Three Legends' decisive battle, where Hashirama and Madara had been defeated beneath Garp's fists.
That image now overlapped perfectly with the two fallen statues before her eyes.
"Madara and Izuna… our two ancestral forebears didn't lose unjustly."
Fugaku stared up at Garp standing atop the heroic statue, his heart left with only a single thought.
It wasn't just the Uchiha of the Warring States Era.
Even in the era of the shinobi villages, the Uchiha would still be suppressed by this man for another entire age.
"What… What on earth was I doing back in the Land of Water? I actually thought about challenging this man!"
After snapping back to his senses, Shisui immediately broke out in a cold sweat.
At this moment, he felt incredibly fortunate that he was still just a teenager.
Even though he was an Uchiha, even though he had spoken recklessly, even though he had been arrogant and disrespectful, Garp still hadn't taken issue with him.
But even so, every time he thought about his earlier attempt to challenge Garp, an overwhelming sense of fear surged through him.
"Perhaps this is exactly why he's called the greatest among the Three Legends of the Warring States… Iron Fist Garp, Number One."
Orochimaru slowly lowered his head. Within his snake-like pupils, aside from sheer shock, there was also a trace of excitement and reverence.
From Garp, he saw a path.
A path of chakra, or perhaps a path beyond both Senju and Uchiha.
A path that asked nothing of one's birth or bloodline.
A path where mortals could surpass sages.
"When I forcibly extracted the Tailed Beast's chakra earlier, you told me not to do something unnecessary.
So, Kurama, did you already know long ago that things would end up like this?"
Inside the sealing space, Kushina looked at the Nine-Tails, who sat inside his cage, listlessly yawning.
At that moment, she recalled something.
Mito had once told her that the Nine-Tails possessed the ability to sense good and evil.
Even barriers, chakra-concealing techniques, and the like could not block this form of perception.
In other words, even before the Eight-Tails' Jinchuriki had finished condensing the Tailed Beast Bomb, the Nine-Tails already knew how this would end.
"You're the Nine-Tails' Jinchuriki, can you stop embarrassing me?
Think about it. Even me, the strongest of all tailed beasts, could only curl up in the corner of the cage and tremble when facing that old monster.
And you think just the Eight-Tails, still only his Jinchuriki, can mess around and make a slightly bigger Tailed Beast Bomb and actually shake Garp?
If that were possible, would the nine of us have needed to end up being beaten to death by Garp several times back then, only to revive and do nothing but flee?
Do you really think a single Eight-Tails' Jinchuriki can match the combined power of the other eight tailed beasts?
Hmph! If anyone could beat Garp, the nine of us would've overturned him countless times long ago.
Those few Cloud shinobi want to topple his Fist? I think it'd be easier to flip the entire sky of the shinobi world instead."
The Nine-Tails spread his hands, his smug fox face filled with disdain.
A Tailed Beast Bomb?
It looked terrifying, sure, but in front of those three monsters of the Warring States, it was nothing more than a toy marble.
A gigantic Tailed Beast Bomb?
Then it was just a slightly bigger toy ball.
Even the Tailed Beast Bomb unleashed by himself, the strongest of all tailed beasts, had been swatted away one-handed by Hashirama and Madara.
Let alone Garp, who stood above them both.
"..."
Faced with the Nine-Tails' barrage of ridicule and mockery, Kushina uncharacteristically did not explode in anger. She said nothing and silently left the sealing space.
"What's wrong with this woman? She didn't bind me, didn't extract chakra from me either?
Could it be that the Tailed Beast Bomb that the Gyuki's Jinchuriki cooked up earlier scared her stupid?"
As Kurama watched Kushina leave out of the corner of his eye, a question mark appeared on his fox-like face.
Don't be fooled by how satisfying it had felt to mock Kushina just now, he had already braced himself.
The moment he finished speaking, he had fully expected to be bound, tied up, and drained by Kushina's Adamantine Sealing Chains.
...
On the other side, the A–B–C trio stood, or lay, there in a daze.
At this ambush site they had carefully selected, whether standing, lying down, or crawling, they had an unobstructed view of the gigantic Tailed Beast Bomb bombarding the Valley of the End.
But precisely because the viewing angle was too perfect, the three of them also witnessed, with absolute clarity, the entire process of how Garp shattered that gigantic Tailed Beast Bomb into fragments with a single punch.
"H… how could this happen?"
After more than ten seconds of silence, A's murmured voice, filled with disbelief, finally broke the stillness.
B had just started to speak when A, who had been standing there muttering to himself, suddenly grabbed him with a crazed, excited, and terrified expression, shouting nonstop.
"B, tell me, why did this happen?
That was a super-sized Tailed Beast Bomb we prepared for so long! It could swallow the ocean whole, erase a small nation directly from the shinobi world's map!
Why did it turn out like this? Tell me… tell me!"
A grew more and more agitated as he spoke.
"Lord A, calm down!"
C, whose scalp was numb and whose heart had nearly stopped from shock, still forced himself to step forward and persuade him.
Now wasn't the time to dwell on this.
After the assassination failed, what he was thinking about was how to deal with the aftermath.
Yet when he recalled how, not long ago, the Third Raikage had personally declared that, within his lifetime, no Cloud shinobi were allowed to set foot in the Land of Fire, and had even personally written and sent a letter of surrender to Konoha,
And now, before that letter had likely even arrived for two days, A, the Third Raikage's own son, had brought the two of them along to carry out this assassination,
Even someone as calm, composed, and sharp as him found his thoughts in complete chaos at this moment, utterly at a loss.
...
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