Facing Hiruzen Sarutobi's last resort - Goton: Dairendan no Jutsu ("Five Release Great Combo") - Tsunade didn't rush in with brute force the way she always had. Instead, she drew a slow breath, and her chakra swelled with a depth that felt eerily ancient, as if sothing buried in her blood had finally answered her call.
Her hands moved - steady, practiced, undeniable.
Mokuton: Bohai no Jutsu ("Wood Release: Placard Shield")!
Hiruzen's eyes widened.
Wood Release wasn't supposed to belong to anyone alive. It was the secret art of the God of Shinobi, the Shodai Hokage Senju Hashirama - a power that had beco legend precisely because no one else could truly replicate it.
And yet Tsunade stood there, using it.
The reason was brutal in its simplicity: after Chiba gave her the diluted solution of Hashirama's cells, she had changed - slowly at first, then all at once. As Hashirama's direct descendant, her compatibility was on a different level. Her chakra, vitality, recovery, and raw physical strength had all risen beyond what she once thought possible, and sowhere along that climb, sothing in her body had awakened. The door that had always been sealed for everyone else had cracked open for her.
There was a bitter irony to it. The Senju should have been the ones to inherit and study Wood Release - especially Tsunade, the Shodai's granddaughter. But under Hiruzen's era, the Senju had nearly vanished from Konoha's center. Tsunade had left the village long ago, and she'd had no intention of letting Hiruzen or Orochimaru turn her into a specin.
Only now - on a battlefield built from consequences - did she finally grasp her grandfather's legacy with her own hands.
She couldn't compare to Hashirama himself. Not in chakra volu, not in scale, not in overwhelming dominance. But after fusing with Hashirama's cells, her Wood Release had already surpassed Yamato's, and in this mont, that was more than enough.
The earth shook.
A series of massive, heavy wooden shields erupted in front of her - grotesque face-like plates layered one over another, forming a living bulwark. The five elental dragons slamd into the defense in a continuous roar, explosions blooming in fire, lightning, wind, water, and crushed earth -
And the shields didn't break.
Hiruzen's Five Release barrage hamred at the wall like a storm against a cliff, unable to pierce the absolute defense of Wood Release.
Hashirama's Mokuton: Bohai no Jutsu ("Wood Release: Placard Shield") had once endured the terrifying force of the Kyuubi's Bijuu Dama ("Nine-Tails' Tailed Beast Ball") under Uchiha Madara's control. Tsunade's version wasn't on that level - but Hiruzen's technique wasn't a Bijuu Dama either. The gap was humiliatingly clear.
With a sharp sweep of her hand, the layered shields unfolded outward, opening like heavy gates one after another. Tsunade stepped forward from the center, unscathed, dust drifting around her like a thin veil.
Hiruzen stared at her as if the world had slipped sideways. "Y-You… how can you…?!"
Tsunade's answer was a cold exhale, the kind that carried years of resentnt without needing to shout.
"Didn't expect it, did you, Hiruzen Sarutobi?" Her eyes stayed locked on him. "This is the power Chiba gave ."
Her voice dropped - calm, but rciless.
"Today, I'm going to make you understand how terrifying it really is."
She released the shield and brought her palms together again, decisive and clean.
Clap.
Mokuton: Kaibukuro no Jutsu ("Wood Release: Great Cloth Bag")!
The battlefield lurched.
Gigantic wooden hands burst from beneath the ground, ripping through earth and stone as if the terrain were nothing more than a thin skin. They shot upward in a chain of thunderous impacts - and in the next instant, they seized Hiruzen and the Shadow Clones he'd used to unleash his Five Release barrage, gripping them with crushing strength.
Tsunade surged forward imdiately, a blur of motion and intent. Her leg drew back, chakra gathering into it like pressure building before an explosion -
Tsuuten Kyaku ("Heaven Kick of Pain").
Hiruzen's breath caught. His Shadow Clones popped one after another, crushed and dispersed under the wooden grip. His main body strained against the restraint, but even with Edo Tensei's restored physical condition, he couldn't simply tear free.
"Enma!" he snapped.
The Monkey King reacted instantly. The Kongo Nyoi-bo ("Adamantine Nyoi Staff") swept in hard, slamming across the wooden palms to pry them apart. It extended, wedging itself between the massive hands and forcing open just enough space -
Hiruzen ripped himself out, landing awkwardly, barely regaining his balance.
He didn't get a second chance.
Tsunade's kick ca down.
BOOM!
The enormous wooden hand - and half of Hiruzen's body - was pulverized into fragnts. Splinters, dust, and shattered earth erupted outward. If he'd been alive, that single blow would have ended everything.
Even as Edo Tensei regeneration began stitching him back together, the sheer violence of being erased like that made the gap between them feel absolute.
Tsunade stepped in to finish it.
The staff moved on instinct, extending an arm-like limb to grab at her, trying to stop the follow-up.
Tsunade looked up with open contempt. "Hmph. You think a monkey's strength can hold ?"
She drove a single punch.
The impact launched the Kongo Nyoi-bo ("Adamantine Nyoi Staff") away like a projectile, sending it flying hundreds of ters across the battlefield - far enough that it couldn't return in ti.
Hiruzen used the brief window to recover more of his body as the regeneration continued, but even he couldn't ignore the feeling tightening around him. Not fear of death - Edo Tensei made that aningless - but the suffocating truth of the fight: he had no way to stop her. Her monstrous strength alone was already overwhelming. Now she had Wood Release on top of it.
Elsewhere, the battlefield was collapsing just as quickly.
On one flank, Shimura Danzo was being driven back by Jiraiya, step by step. This Danzo had no arm lined with Sharingan, no freedom to abuse Izanagi ("Creation of the Self"). His single Sharingan had already been forced into use earlier, in the lightning assault on Konoha - spent in his clash with Chiba.
His last trump card was Uchiha Shisui's Mangekyo: Kotoamatsukami ("Heavenly Eye Manipulation").
But without Hashirama's cells and without Wood Release stabilizing his body, using it even once ant a cooldown asured in decades. He couldn't bring himself to waste it - and that hesitation left him with nothing that could truly threaten Jiraiya.
On another front, Hatake Kakashi and Maito Gai overwheld Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura. Whatever goodwill they might once have had toward Konoha's leadership had long since been burned away. Those elders had sanctioned Edo Tensei again and again - so far gone they even allowed the dead to be disturbed, dragging fathers from their graves and turning them into tools.
Now those sa "old guard" had died… only to beco Edo puppets themselves.
Kakashi and Gai didn't soften for the irony. They pressed harder.
With each exchange, the tide tilted further toward Konoha's victory.
And at the center of it all, Hiruzen was reaching the edge of what he could endure.
Every punch, every kick forced him to spend everything just to keep standing. Without the staff, he couldn't match Tsunade in taijutsu. His ninjutsu couldn't hurt her. His versatility ant nothing against soone who could ignore damage and shatter defenses with a single blow.
Then Tsunade raised her hand and struck.
Smack.
A single slap snapped Hiruzen's head sideways. His face bruised instantly - swollen, discolored, humiliatingly visible. It wasn't just pain. It was disgrace, delivered cleanly and without hesitation, as if she were stripping away the last scraps of his authority in front of the entire battlefield.
Hiruzen's eyes burned. "You…!"
Tsunade didn't look triumphant. She looked coldly certain, as if she'd already weighed him and found nothing left worth respecting.
"Hiruzen Sarutobi," she said, voice quiet and cutting, "you can't oppose anymore. Edo Tensei might cover up the weakness of age, but it doesn't change the truth."
Her chakra tightened, pressure gathering again - controlled, deliberate, fatal.
"Now… it's ti to send you back to the other world."
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