The invisible force field around Takuno was not a simple defense; it was the Tenseigan's absolute dominion over the essence of gravity.
One must realize that the Tenseigan was an existence capable of precisely controlling the orbital trajectory of the vast moon; its level and precision in manipulating gravity had long since surpassed the realm of Ninjutsu.
The gravitational fields created by a mere dozen or so Chibaku Tensei appeared so small and laughable before a power that could pull the stars, like a stream trying to shake the ocean.
The gravitational fields stacked layer upon layer, attempting to tear Takuno apart and pull him into that tomb of rock.
However, Takuno didn't even need to consciously resist; the Tenseigan, swirling with mysterious blue light, flickered slightly.
The terrifying gravity, sufficient to tear continents asunder, seemed to strike an insurmountable absolute barrier and was completely neutralized within a few feet of him.
His robes did not flutter, and his form did not move; it was as if he stood at the center of a storm yet enjoyed absolute tranquility.
Madara's pupils constricted violently. The ultimate sealing technique he had launched with all his power as the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki couldn't even make his opponent move a single step!
This could no longer be described as a disparity in power; it was a crushing defeat on the level of fundamental rules.
The battlefield fell into a dead silence, with only the futile echoes of the Chibaku Tensei shattering the earth, reflecting the collapse of Madara's worldview.
Takuno looked at the massive rock spheres formed by the dozen or so Chibaku Tensei above, his lips curling into a playful arc.
He could even do this: the Tenseigan in his right eye suddenly flashed with a deep blue light.
In the next moment, under Madara's horrified gaze, those dozen or so giant spheres suspended in the sky—which should have completely suppressed him—suddenly and completely disintegrated without warning!
What terrified Madara even more was that the gravitational black holes at the core of the Chibaku Tensei, which should have been under his absolute control, had now completely escaped his grasp.
The countless rock fragments scattered by the collapse did not fall according to the laws of gravity; instead, under the Tenseigan's mighty power to dominate gravity, they were pulled and restructured!
In an instant, an ultra-giant rock sphere, many times larger than any previous Chibaku Tensei and capable of blotting out the sun, hovered above the battlefield.
The shadow it cast enveloped the entire area, even obscuring most of the light from the blood moon.
Takuno looked up slightly at the massive object he had casually condensed, but he shook his head gently, seemingly with a trace of imperceptible regret.
He whispered, "The stuff Madara's Chibaku Tensei brought up... is still too little. This magnitude isn't even a warm-up for me, far from the final version..."
His gaze returned to the pathetic Madara on the ground, his tone as if he were merely evaluating a collection piece he wasn't quite satisfied with.
"But... for the current you, it should be enough."
The moment Takuno's words fell, Madara seemed to clearly "see" a playful arc curl at the corner of the mouth beneath The Collector's Fox Mask!
A premonition of death instantly seized him!
"Not good!" Alarm bells rang in Madara's heart as his survival instinct overwhelmed everything else.
Disregarding his dignity as the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki and the source of his opponent's power, he frantically poured his remaining chakra into his legs and fled for his life away from the giant sphere's shadow at a speed beyond his limits!
However, it was all too late.
Takuno merely had a slight thought.
In the next moment, that ultra-giant rock sphere suspended in the firmament like an asteroid carried a terrifying potential energy far exceeding the original gravity of the Chibaku Tensei, bestowed by Takuno.
With a posture that could destroy everything, it crashed down toward the position Madara had just fled from!
Yet no matter how Madara tried to escape, or used Limbo: Border Jail clones to confuse him, Or even tried to use the repulsive force of Shinra Tensei to forcibly push away that ultra-giant rock sphere restructured from the Chibaku Tensei by Takuno, It was as if it had locked onto the essence of his soul, ignoring all spatial and physical interference, always hovering precisely above him.
And with every change in position, that sun-blotting shadow grew a fraction closer, the pressure like a tangible shackle that made the air itself solidify.
Finally, after another futile dodge, Madara hovered in mid-air, a flash of unprecedented solemnity and determination crossing his Rinnegan.
He understood that Takuno's level of power had completely transcended his cognition; this lock-on was a crushing blow at the level of rules, and simple evasion was meaningless.
"Hmph... in that case..."
Madara growled, only six Truth-Seeking Orbs remaining around him.
He no longer hesitated and slammed his hands together. All the remaining Truth-Seeking Orbs responded instantly, no longer maintaining their spherical shapes but rapidly extending and deforming like flowing black liquid metal!
They constructed a massive hexagonal shield in front of him, emitting a deep, dark glow.
This shield condensed the ultimate power of Yin-Yang Release; it was the strongest absolute defense he could mobilize at this moment!
The moment the shield took shape, the sun-blotting ultra-giant rock sphere, carrying terrifying destructive kinetic energy and Takuno's unfathomable will, crashed down!
RUMBLE!!!
Time seemed to freeze at this moment, followed by a terrifying roar that could tear eardrums, echoing across the entire desert battlefield!
The moment the rock sphere contacted the Truth-Seeking Orb shield, it wasn't a simple collision, but the most brutal and direct struggle between two ultimate powers!
Blinding light erupted from the point of contact, like the birth of a supernova!
A visible circular shockwave spread frantically in all directions at a terrifying speed exceeding the speed of sound!
The earth shattered layer by layer like a fragile eggshell!
Hashirama and Tobirama, even from a great distance, were violently blown away by the impact. Their Edo Tensei bodies tumbled through the air as dust and rubble struck them like bullets.
The black shield composed of six Truth-Seeking Orbs made an overburdened sound the moment it made contact.
The dark light flickered violently, and countless spiderweb-like cracks spread across the shield's surface at a visible speed!
The absolute barrier of Yin-Yang Release was being forcibly disintegrated before Takuno's strike, which broke through technique with pure power!
The rock sphere itself deformed and shattered violently in the collision, but its volume and mass were simply too vast; its downward momentum was only blocked for an extremely brief instant by the shield.
In the next moment, the shield's light dimmed completely, and the six Truth-Seeking Orbs, like glass struck by a heavy hammer, completely shattered into points of black light and vanished into nothingness with a crisp cracking sound!
Having lost its final barrier, the core of the ultra-giant rock sphere, carrying unstoppable residual force, slammed heavily onto the spot where Madara was!
BOOOOOOM!!!
An even more violent secondary impact erupted!
A giant meteorite crater of incalculable diameter formed brazenly in the center of the desert battlefield amidst endless smoke and a storm of rubble!
The dust storm kicked up by the impact shot into the sky, dyeing it a murky yellow.
The earth trembled violently in a continuous wail, with cracks spreading into the distance like the giant mouths of an abyss.
The entire battlefield seemed to have reached the end of destruction at this moment.
Takuno hovered high in the sky, calmly watching the rising clouds of apocalyptic destruction below.
His unfathomable power was displayed to its fullest at this moment.
Hashirama and Tobirama's Edo Tensei bodies were instantly pulverized like fragile slips of paper in the destructive shockwave generated by the impact of Takuno's planet-shaking ultra-giant rock sphere.
Countless Edo Tensei fragments bearing symbols were swept up by the violent air currents and thrown far away.
The immortal characteristic of Edo Tensei played its part now; bits of debris struggled to gather in the dust-filled sky, slowly reshaping the bodies of the two former Hokage.
Hashirama's body barely managed to condense into a half-shape as he struggled to lift his head, while Tobirama had only just formed a blurry outline of his upper body; both stared at the center of the battlefield with unprecedented horror.
That terrifying giant pit, created by a single strike from The Collector, was like a meteor impact.
The bottom of the pit was bottomless, and the crust at the edges showed eerie patterns of flowing lava that had instantly cooled.
The thick smoke and dust formed a massive mushroom cloud pillar that shot into the sky, obscuring the blood moon dyed red by the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
"Cough... cough..." Hashirama's internal organs composed of Edo Tensei were still restructuring, making a raspy sound, his eyes filled with unbelievable shock.
"This... just what kind of... power is this?!"
At this moment, they finally understood what it meant for mortals to suffer when gods fight.
No, this wasn't even mortals suffering; it was the Earth suffering while gods fought.
The planet itself couldn't possibly withstand such an impact more than a few times.
But seeing The Collector's still relaxed appearance, launching such an attack didn't seem difficult for him at all.
The residual force of that strike was still raging, kicking up dust that obscured the sky like the beginning of chaos.
The towering God Tree, the giant object carrying the dream of the Infinite Tsukuyomi, groaned under the weight of the aftershocks from Takuno's world-shaking blow and crashed to the ground.
And at the very bottom of the bottomless meteorite crater smashed out by Takuno's ultra-giant rock sphere, Madara lay quietly.
His Sage of Six Paths Robe were already in tatters, and his Truth-Seeking Orbs had all been destroyed.
The bones in his entire body felt as if they had shattered inch by inch, his chakra was leaking away like air from a punctured bag, and every weak breath brought heart-wrenching pain.
In his Rinnegan, the arrogance that looked down on the world and the confidence of controlling everything had vanished, leaving only a bottomless loneliness and vacancy.
He struggled to turn his eyes, looking through the thick smoke toward the sky he could no longer see clearly.
"Is this... the power I spent my whole life, wagering everything to pursue?"
A bitter thought surged in his heart, his voice echoing in his deathly silent consciousness.
"Scheming for decades, calculating against Nagato, manipulating Obito, becoming the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki, opening these Rinnegan... and in the end, is this all it is?"
Takuno's figure, which crushed everything like a deity—shattering Truth-Seeking Orbs with his bare hands, creating them out of thin air, and easily neutralizing the terrifying power of Chibaku Tensei—was like a cold iron hammer, smashing his lifelong beliefs to pieces.
The Six Paths Power he was so proud of appeared so pale and weak before the opponent's absolute strength.
He had even fallen to the point of being completely crushed, lying at the bottom of a pit like an ant waiting for death.
At this moment, it was as if he had truly reached the end of his life's journey.
The glorious years of the past flashed before his eyes like a revolving lantern.
The fierce battle with Hashirama at the Valley of the End, the ambition of founding Konoha, the shock of reading the stone tablet, the patience of faking death to escape, the layout of guiding Obito, the calculation of seizing the Rinnegan, the ecstasy of becoming the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki...
Every image was incredibly clear, yet carried a kind of illusory irony.
The "Eye of the Moon Plan" he had pursued all his life was so fragile before The Collector.
He began to violently doubt whether this path, strewn with corpses and betrayal, had been wrong from the very beginning.
Was this so-called "salvation" merely his paranoid delusion?
Right at the edge of this abyss of despair and self-denial, a faint, strange pulse pierced through the physical pain and mental chaos, quietly entering his perception.
It wasn't a sound, but more like a resonance from the depths of his bloodline, a low call from the core of the earth, carrying an indescribable sense of familiarity and... allure.
"Hmm?"
Madara's Rinnegan constricted slightly, his unfocused gaze gathering a final spark of spirit.
This call... so faint, yet so clear.
On this silent battlefield completely destroyed by Takuno's power, what else could be calling him?
Was it a hallucination of the dying? Or...?
No! It could never be a hallucination!
Madara's pride would not allow him to indulge in illusions before total defeat.
This call was real!
It was like a glimmer of light in the dark, igniting the last spark of unwilling fire in his heart.
Even if the defeat was certain, even if his power was gone, he had to find out the source of this call!
"Ugh... ah!"
Madara let out a low, beast-like growl, using the last remnants of his willpower and chakra to drive this body on the verge of collapse.
He ignored the sharp pain of shattered bones and the churning of displaced organs, struggling and crawling like a vengeful spirit climbing out of hell.
Using only the fingers he could move to grip the rubble of the pit wall, he moved bit by bit, extremely slowly and with great difficulty, toward the direction the call was coming from.
Every movement was accompanied by spurts of blood, but the fire of paranoia in his eyes grew stronger and stronger.
After an unknown amount of time, as long as a century, he finally crawled out of that meteorite crater that symbolized his total failure.
As the dust cleared slightly, what entered his blurry vision was that massive God Tree, lying on the ground looking incredibly desolate.
And the source of that strange, alluring call was none other than the God Tree!
Madara's Rinnegan stared fixedly at the God Tree as a thunderous thought exploded in his chaotic mind!
"So that's it..."
Madara's mouth pulled into a twisted, knowing arc, carrying endless mockery—both for himself and for this cruel fate.
"The Ten-Tails, the God Tree, the source of chakra... I merged with the Ten-Tails and became its Jinchuriki, yet I never truly... understood it, let alone became 'one' with it..."
He understood! What he had pursued was using the power of the God Tree to launch the Infinite Tsukuyomi and drag all living beings into a dream.