Halfway through his command, the Kazekage paused.
The Shadow Guard was his final reserve. Yesterday's experiences had left a significant psychological scar; he found himself hesitating to commit his last elite unit.
"Shadow Guard, prepare for battle. Await my orders."
"Ah... Yes! Understood!"
The Sand ninjas were momentarily caught off guard. They exchanged glances before accepting the command, but they could all sense the lack of confidence in their leader's voice.
Allowing an enemy to rattle one's composure is a cardinal sin for a leader. This moment of indecision dealt a significant blow to the Kazekage's prestige.
The Kazekage felt their budding skepticism and grew incensed. He redirected his rising fury toward the unseen Konoha insect-users.
When I catch these wretched Leaf bug-tamers, I will snap their limbs one by one. I'll make them regret every second they spend drawing breath.
But the thought unsettled him, and he immediately changed his mind. No, I must kill them instantly. They are far too dangerous.
This internal shift only deepened his sense of shame. He vowed to personally execute these Konoha shinobi—to eliminate a lethal threat and to purge his own inner demons.
Two days of Aburame Tetsumaru's "theatrical" tactical maneuvers had successfully driven a Kage to the brink of a nervous breakdown.
Suna's Company 4 had lost only one man during the initial swarm attack. Tetsumaru and Nara Yoshito had hand-picked this unit not because they were weak, but because they were the strongest.
No matter how elite a unit is, winning a battle inevitably leads to a psychological "cool-down" period. This relaxation was Tetsumaru's secondary reason for the choice.
The primary reason? The Suna company was genuinely powerful. They had withstood an ambush almost entirely unscathed.
A reputation for being the strongest, coupled with a proven victory, meant the Suna command hierarchy would naturally view this company as a solid anchor on their line. This wasn't a miscalculation; it was a fact.
From that moment on, Company 4 became "invisible" to the Suna commanders. They were taken for granted and subsequently ignored.
This was the tactic of Breaking the Strongest Link. Once the anchor point is shattered, the rest of the line collapses like a house of cards.
However, breaking the strongest link never involves a brainless frontal charge. Rigidly following doctrine is a recipe for disaster.
It was similar to the classic Chinese stratagem of Besieging Wei to Rescue Zhao. When Sun Bin executed that plan, he didn't charge straight for the capital of Daliang.
The Qi army first attacked Xiangling, the ancestral home of the King of Wei. This forced the Daliang garrison to deploy reinforcements, which the Qi army then intercepted and annihilated in the field. This move simultaneously weakened the capital's defense and proved the Qi's combat lethality.
Only then did they begin the "siege" of Daliang. Even though they never launched a true assault on the city, everyone believed the Qi intended to wipe Wei off the map. Because of this belief, the King of Wei desperately recalled his main army from the Zhao front, leading to their famous ambush at Guiling.
Tetsumaru's four waves of feints were designed to achieve a single goal: to make Company 4 feel psychologically isolated. Once they were "alone," he would unleash his true combat power to wipe them out, tearing a massive hole in the Suna line.
Inside his ball of armor beetles, Tetsumaru was sealed in darkness, but he was accustomed to perceiving the world through the Secret Technique: Domain Field Barrier. The lack of sight didn't hinder him in the slightest.
As the command was issued, the true Swarm Tide began.
First, the Flight-Locusts struck. Then, the Poison-Needle Beetles launched the second and third waves. On the surface, it looked identical to the previous harassment, but when the quantity changed, the quality followed.
The Sunabachi Company proved its elite status. They quickly adapted to the swarm's rhythm, handling the continuous attacks with practiced ease. They were so efficient they didn't even need to use Legion Jutsu to hold the line.
Suddenly, a massive wall of black and green crested the ridge, surging down like a tidal wave crashing against the shore. The "spray" of the wave was a cloud of millions of locusts; the "flood" beneath was a carpet of beetles stacked dozens of layers deep.
In an instant, the locusts transformed from a dense swarm into a literal storm cloud that blotted out the sun. The ground beneath them vanished under a half-meter-thick "insect rug."
Faced with a natural disaster in the shape of a swarm, even these battle-hardened Sand ninjas were stunned. Their primal instincts screamed a single truth: We can't fight this. We're dead.
The commander, a Jonin named Sunabachi, stared at the apocalyptic tide for a split second before snapping back to reality. He roared for his twenty-nine Wind Style specialists to prepare a Legion Jutsu.
This time, Sunabachi didn't choose the Great Breakthrough. He chose the Wind Style: Wind and Sand Tornado.
As a B-rank technique, it was far more difficult to execute than a simple gale. As a Legion Jutsu, the difficulty was exponential.
Sunabachi judged that the Great Breakthrough lacked the raw destructive mass to stop this "disaster." He had to gamble on a B-rank technique, even if the strain on his men was immense.
Wind Style: Super Wind and Sand Tornado!
Just as the three Suna ninjas in the front row were riddled by diving locusts, a colossal pillar of rotating wind erupted from the earth.
Thousands of locusts were sucked into the vortex instantly, including those who had already reached the Suna line. The three heavily wounded Sand ninjas on the ground were likewise vacuumed into the sky by the sheer atmospheric pressure.
"KEEP IT UP!!"
Sunabachi ignored the sacrifice of his men, his roar cutting through the howling gale with unnatural clarity.
Soon, two more massive pillars erupted, shredding the swarm that had tried to flank them. Only a handful of beetles managed to crawl through the gaps between the three tornadoes; every flying insect was pulverized into chitinous dust within the vortices.
After sustaining three B-rank Legion Jutsus, the entire company felt their strength beginning to wane.
But Sunabachi didn't dare lower his guard. "Prepare Great Breakthrough!"
To a Jonin, three B-rank jutsus are a drop in the bucket (unless your name is Kakashi), but even the elite Sunabachi felt a prickle of dread. He felt as if he had missed something critical.
Perched atop a Scythe-Mantis, Aburame Tetsumaru finally finished his marathon of hand seals. Despite the loss of tens of thousands of bugs and four dragonflies, the enemy company still hadn't managed to send out a distress signal. It was a delightful surprise.
Tetsumaru grinned and unleashed his technique.
Wind Style: Giant Tornado!
The technique required thirty-seven hand seals. It was a clunky, difficult-to-control B-rank jutsu that had been phased out of active service during the previous war.
However, Tetsumaru had specifically traded for it from Orochimaru. The Giant Tornado was a Senju clan original from the Warring States period, and it possessed one trait Tetsumaru loved: It could be charged.
Given enough chakra and time, the power could be scaled indefinitely—enough to rival a Legion Jutsu.
One of Tetsumaru's hidden trumps was his monstrous chakra reserve. He selected ten "streams" from his Grand Chakra Circulation. As he finished the seals, he systematically "burst" those streams, allowing a boiling torrent of chakra to flood into the jutsu.
The Giant Tornado manifested. A brilliant white pillar of wind, thicker and more violent than the three black wind columns below (now darkened by pulverized insect gore), plummeted from the heavens.
Tetsumaru's chakra volume was several times that of Orochimaru, though still nowhere near the "God of Shinobi" level. He couldn't compete with the efficiency of thirty Sand ninjas, and his Giant Tornado wasn't strong enough to destroy the Wind and Sand Tornadoes outright—especially not three of them.
Sunabachi looked up at the white vortex. Though he was horrified that Konoha possessed a Wind Style user of this caliber, he didn't think his unit's defense would break.
Tetsumaru steered his tornado to sweep from left to right, brushing against two of the Suna columns before dissipating in front of the third. Not a single Suna pillar was destroyed.
Tetsumaru's students looked dejected; the Suna ninjas let out a cheer of triumph. They thought the Aburame's move had failed.
But Tetsumaru was smiling. And Sunabachi's face went pale.
The Giant Tornado hadn't been meant to destroy; it was meant to displace. Under the kinetic impact, the three black pillars began to shift. Soon, the left and right pillars collided.
Suna's triple-vortex formation was precise: the center rotated counter-clockwise while the outer two rotated clockwise. This prevented interference and allowed the pillars to "borrow" torque from each other.
But the two outer pillars rotated in the same direction. The moment they touched, their forms shattered, twisting into violent, erratic ribbons of air.
The turbulence from the collision destabilized the center pillar. The entire defense collapsed into a chaotic mess of unguided wind.
As the pillars dissolved, everything they had vacuumed up—sand, gravel, insect corpses, and tree trunks—was coughed out. Heavy debris slammed into the earth while fine dust and pulverized insects blotted out the sun, plunging the battlefield into an eerie, artificial twilight.
Stray wind-blades shrieked through the air. Ninjas and insects alike were forced to the dirt to avoid being shredded by the shrapnel.
Before the storm had even fully settled, Sunabachi was roaring again. He commanded his men to launch another Legion Jutsu while sand was still raining down like a localized monsoon.
This time, they used the faster Wind Style: Great Breakthrough.
The gale and wind-blades tore through the yellow haze, slamming into the advancing swarm and shattering the vanguard.
The Suna ninjas felt a jolt of terror. The swarm was only thirty meters away. If they were even a second late with their rotation, they would be buried.
"AGAIN!" Sunabachi screamed.
Wave after wave of Great Breakthroughs were unleashed. The swarm was hammered back, unable to breach the twenty-meter mark.
With every wave, a layer of insect corpses coated the ground, followed by a layer of sand, then another layer of corpses. Gradually, a literal hill of dead bugs and desert sand began to rise in front of the Suna line.
The swarm was forced to climb this ridge of gore before diving down toward the Sand. Correspondingly, the Sand ninjas had to angle their jutsu upward to meet them.
Tetsumaru signaled his students to prepare their offensive jutsus. He then commanded every remaining Scythe-Mantis to begin the final charge.
And leading the Mantises was a flight of four-meter-long Exploding Locusts, diving straight into the "Hill of Gore." Their detonation triggered the Landmine Insects Tetsumaru had pre-planted in the earth.
Four minutes of combat had passed. Two minutes since the tornadoes collapsed. As the dust settled, visibility began to return.
The Sunabachi Company unleashed its eighth Super Great Breakthrough, once again pulverizing the swarm. Shrapnel and gore sprayed everywhere, obscuring Suna's vision yet again.
Suddenly, a massive explosion tore through the center of the four-meter-high gore-hill. Four separate blast points detonated simultaneously, sending a geyser of insect remains into the air. To avoid being buried alive, the Suna ninjas were forced to step back.
In that forced retreat, four high-density columns of insects burst through the smoke. Masked by the debris and the explosions, these four "spears" of the swarm were only thirty meters away when they were spotted. They were too close.
The Sand ninjas frantically accelerated their seals, completing their ninth Legion Jutsu at the fifteen-meter mark.
Wind Style: Super Great Breakthrough!
The jutsu didn't fail, but the forced casting left nearly a dozen Suna ninjas drained. The two weakest Genin suffered a chakra backlash, coughing up blood before collapsing into unconsciousness.
The desperate Legion Jutsu held its power. Under Sunabachi's precise command, it enveloped the four dense columns.
Unlike the previous "wall" of insects, these dense columns resembled giant "Snakes." When hit by the wind, they didn't scatter instantly; they were peeled away layer by layer, starting from the head.
The Suna ninjas realized the natural duration of their jutsu wouldn't be enough; it would only kill half the column.
Grit and desperation took over. The Sand ninjas squeezed their empty bodies, forcing out every last drop of chakra to sustain the wind, engaging in a direct war of attrition with the columns.
Two seconds later, the "tails" of the four snakes appeared. The final wind-blades sliced through the last of the standard insects.
The Suna ninjas exhaled, their survival instinct finally relaxing. As the tension snapped, the Genin in the company collapsed, their legs turning to jelly. Even the Chunin felt their strength fail, their limbs trembling.
Only Sunabachi, the Jonin, had strength left. But his eyes widened in horror.
When the wind-blades had finished with the snake tails, only the outer layer of insects had scattered. At the very end of each column, a solid black sphere remained perfectly intact.
"STAY ALERT! THE TAILS!" he roared.
But his command was vague, and his subordinates were sluggish from the emotional roller-coaster of the fight. Only a few veteran Chunin reacted in time.
Wind Style: Gale!Wind Style: Wind Arrow!Wind Style: Wind Blade!
Their individual jutsus were a desperate, mismatched mess. One Chunin threw a kunai wrapped in an explosive tag.
The four three-meter-wide black spheres burst from the tail of the swarm. The Suna jutsus and the explosive kunai struck home, shattering three of the spheres instantly.
But from the wreckage of the spheres, a massive, snarling Scythe-Mantis leaped forth, its blades bared.
Sunabachi felt a wave of pure despair. How is there another layer?!