Boom, boom, boom.
Beneath the curtain of rain, the forest shook without pause.
Blood-red light erupted skyward in continuous arcs, tearing apart the surrounding terrain and reshaping the ground into something unrecognizable.
"This person..."
Obito, who had believed moments ago that he had found the Kazekage's weakness, felt the weight of the situation settle heavily on him.
He pressed one hand against the right side of his mask.
The effort of tracking the Fourth Kazekage's attacks combined with the sustained use of Kamui was draining his chakra at a frightening pace.
Bang.
A devastating surge of force screamed in from directly ahead. In an instant, it tore up the earth beneath his position and sent the trees behind him tumbling over entirely.
The Hyuga clan's Gentle Fist.
If he had been struck directly by that, death or severe injury would have been certain.
Before the chakra shockwave had even finished spreading, Yuji's figure was already upon him. In the same instant a sweeping kick came in at full force, a motion so fast it tore a sonic crack through the air around it.
Obito phased into intangibility just in time. The strike passed through him and found nothing.
Seeing the attack fail to connect, Yuji vanished immediately, pulling distance between them.
"The Kazekage's taijutsu alone would be lethal if I allowed a single hit to land. No wonder he is considered one of the strongest shadows in the current ninja world. The threat this person radiates is genuinely something else."
Obito watched another attack fail and another rise immediately after it.
Sheets of blood were already spreading across the space around him.
He sank immediately into his dimensional space.
The only viable response available to him right now was relying on the Sharingan to observe and counter. Because the Fourth Kazekage's taijutsu combined with his extraordinary bloodline limit were creating constant lethal openings, and the blood that sprayed and flowed with every exchange followed him like a shadow regardless of where he moved. The moment he materialized without having first spotted an opening through the Sharingan, he would be struck instantly.
The Fourth Kazekage was using his overwhelming Blood Release and extraordinary physical strength in combination with his eye technique to seal off every avenue of breath, never allowing him a moment of stillness.
Kamui could bring him close to any target at will. But Obito did not dare to use it freely, because launching any attack required materializing, and doing so in close proximity to the Kazekage meant immediate exposure to the blood's corrosive poison. A single contact would end him.
So he waited. He understood what Yuji was doing. The relentless pressure was designed to force him to maintain intangibility continuously, and Kamui was a technique with limits. Even the Mangekyo Sharingan could only sustain it for so long before the chakra was exhausted. Once intangibility could no longer be maintained, that would be his death.
But Obito did not panic. Because sustaining this level of relentless high-output combat was burning through the Kazekage's chakra just as rapidly. The constant Blood Release, the taijutsu at full power, the eye technique, all of it together was costing Yuji more than it was costing him.
Several minutes passed. The terrifying battlefield continued, though its intensity had diminished somewhat from its peak.
Yuji stood breathing hard in the middle of the devastated forest, his expression showing visible fatigue.
"No wonder you killed the Third Raikage. You are genuinely something."
Obito's voice came from behind Yuji as the twisted spatial distortion announced his reappearance, his tone cold and unhurried.
Yuji's expression shifted slightly. He swept his arm backward immediately.
Obito stepped lightly aside.
"Your movements have slowed considerably. It seems both your stamina and chakra are nearly spent."
Obito's voice carried open mockery now.
"You stand at the pinnacle of the ninja world, and yet even you, in such a short time, analyzed that the only way to suppress my Kamui was to maintain complete and unrelenting pressure, denying me any moment to materialize, and simply wait for my chakra to run out."
"But unfortunately for you, it seems you underestimated how long I can sustain intangibility. And with your chakra reserves, maintaining this intensity was never something you could keep up indefinitely."
"I do not need to be stronger than you. I only need this one specific ability to kill you."
"You appear to have confused me with the Uchiha clan members back in Konoha. I am nothing like them. Even if your eye technique carries some counter-effect against the Sharingan, it does not mean your eye technique surpasses the Sharingan itself."
Obito's voice dripped with contempt as he looked at Yuji's struggling form.
But the moment those words finished leaving his mouth, the exhausted-looking Yuji vanished from sight without warning.
He reappeared behind Obito in an instant with no spatial logic to explain how, a chakra scalpel already formed and driving forward in a sudden ambush.
But even this unexpected strike, which should have been impossible to anticipate, found no purchase.
Obito's arm swept aside, and his body was nothing but an afterimage. The moment Yuji's arm passed through where his body had been, Obito spun around and the killing intent in his eye became fully visible.
"So that was your killing move. That space-time technique of yours. Did you truly believe I would have no preparation for it?"
"That ability of yours cannot affect someone who is already inside a different dimensional space. Can it."
Wood Release: Cutting Sprout Technique.
With the words still hanging in the air, Obito extended his hand and from his sleeve dozens of sharp wooden branches erupted instantly.
In that same instant they pierced through Yuji's entire body from every direction.
And a single drop of blood simultaneously passed through Obito's mask.
Yuji was sent flying, soaked in blood, the injuries severe.
"Any technique requires chakra to drive it. Without chakra, even the most powerful healing ninjutsu in existence is meaningless."
Obito pressed his damaged mask, staring down at the Fourth Kazekage lying on the ground unable to rise, and felt the tension that had gripped his heart since the start of this fight finally, slowly release.
From the very beginning, this battle had never been equal.
Although both of them possessed space-time ninjutsu, the difference in their mechanisms and effective applications had determined that regardless of how the flow of battle shifted, the one who would always hold the structural advantage was him.
Not the Fourth Kazekage.
He had always been the one in control of this fight.
Yuji had been reactive from the very beginning.
"Wood Release"
Seeing the Fourth Kazekage lying on the ground unable to recover from his wounds, Obito immediately formed hand seals.
He had found his opening and seized it.
With chakra constrained, the Fourth Kazekage's terrifying regenerative healing ninjutsu could not be activated. Obito had been observing and confirming the opponent's condition throughout the entire exchange, waiting for exactly this moment.
The instant Yuji had used his space-time ninjutsu to close the distance and strike, Obito had turned the situation against him, accepting the lethal risk of being struck by the Blood Release to deliver a finishing blow in return. There had only ever been one window to act.
In terms of raw strength, the gap between them was simply too wide.
Several enormous, powerful tree trunks erupted from the earth like green spears, driving through Yuji's body from multiple directions simultaneously, coiling around him, intertwining and pressing down with crushing force.
When it was done, Obito dropped to one knee on the ground.
His mask remained damaged as it had been, but the wound that the blood drop had passed through had restored itself entirely. He had activated Izanagi a step ahead of that moment.
From the beginning of their battle to its conclusion, the time elapsed had not been long. But Obito's vision was already beginning to grow dim at the edges as Izanagi's side effects began manifesting.
He sensed something in the distance. The Third Raikage's chakra fluctuation had gone silent.
That confirmed it. The Fourth Kazekage had truly been eliminated.
He needed Black Zetsu to carry him away from here and return to the base first.
"Black Zetsu..."
Obito called out in a hoarse voice.
Then his expression changed completely.
Before he could react, a rush of wind and a sensation of vertigo crashed into him from nowhere.
When his senses came back to him and he looked up, he found himself suspended in the air, held in someone's grip.
He could feel his own body.
His life force felt normal.
But what was deeply wrong was this: he was nothing but a head. His head had been separated from his body and was being held in someone's hand.
The one who had completed this spatial exchange in the span of a single breath was Yuji, who should have been dead.
And the Yuji standing there now was something altogether different from the one who had been lying on the ground. Dark pattern markings had appeared across his forehead and face, and the chakra that had seemed spent and exhausted moments ago now surged outward like a tide. The pressure it released was enough to cause the surrounding mud and stones to slowly begin floating from the earth.
"This is..."
Obito felt as though he had been plunged into frozen water.
The S-rank Healing Sealing Technique. The Yin Seal.
"Watching you look so pleased with yourself for this long, I genuinely feel embarrassed to be the one to shatter it," Yuji said, shaking the head held in his hand lightly, and smiled.
"From beginning to end, I was simply performing alongside you. You knew nothing of my actual capabilities, while I understood exactly how much you were worth. As long as you used Izanagi, without your chakra sustaining Kamui, you were no different from a broken tool."
Yuji's eyes went cold.
"If I had not been wary of that old man Madara, I would have ended you long before now. Did you truly believe you survived this long because of your own strength?"
The words left Obito unable to find any ground to stand on. The other party appeared to have thoroughly researched his Mangekyo Sharingan long before this encounter, including the full mechanics of the Uchiha clan's eye techniques.
"You. Who exactly are you?"
Obito said it in genuine shock.
The sudden reversal was something his mind had no preparation for and could not accept.
"When you meet Madara on the other side, tell him this from me," Yuji said, not bothering to give the question a real answer. "The ninja world does not need him crawling back out to cause chaos. He is dead. He should wait quietly where the dead belong."
"No!"
"No, no!"
Obito screamed.
But before the second cry had finished leaving him, his head was enveloped in a surge of blood and dissolved away completely in moments.
Yuji simultaneously heard the system notification chime.
He paid it no attention and instead activated the Ope Ope no Mi's ability immediately, appearing before Obito's headless body in an instant.
He raised one hand. A tide of blood surged up from beneath his feet and swept toward Black Zetsu, which had been attempting to approach and claim Obito's remains.
"Using White Zetsu as a buffer to slow the Blood Release's damage and corrosion, buying time to escape?"
Yuji expanded his perception and watched the direction Black Zetsu disappeared into, his voice quiet and contemplative.
Black Zetsu was fundamentally a mass of consciousness, a product of Yin-Yang Release rather than biological life. It did not share human physiological structure. It held a degree of resistance to both physical and ninjutsu damage. It also possessed its own regenerative quality. As long as it was not completely and utterly destroyed, even a fragment left behind could restore itself given sufficient time.
That was what made it so difficult to kill.
The best method was sealing. But it was not unkillable. It simply required specific methods and approaches to destroy it thoroughly enough that nothing could regenerate.
In the original story's Fourth Great Ninja War, Black Zetsu had once acknowledged in its own words that it could be killed, though it was extremely difficult.
Yuji used his spatial ability to lock down Black Zetsu's position.
"Room."
With the Yin Seal released and the massive stored chakra now fully available to him, he expanded the Room's domain in an instant. His eyes locked onto Black Zetsu's direction. He raised one finger, lifted a nearby stone, and flicked it outward.
A second later, the coordinates shifted.
A large mass of black substance appeared in his palm without warning.
He closed his hand around it.
Black Zetsu still attempted to struggle. Its body moved like liquid, beginning to seep up along Yuji's arm, trying to attach itself to his consciousness and influence his will and actions from within.
But with the Yin Seal active, Yuji's chakra and mental energy were at something close to their absolute peak. His will was not easily shaken under these conditions.
A red talisman paper had appeared in his other hand. In its center was written a single character.
Seal.
He pressed the talisman against Black Zetsu's surface.
As the sealing technique activated, several chakra chains shot outward and began contracting inward, binding tighter with each passing second.
The talisman bound Black Zetsu completely.
This particular seal had been crafted by drawing on the sealing techniques passed down through the ninja temple lineage, the same tradition that had produced the Ichibi's containment methods. Yuji had sought it out deliberately and learned it carefully. All for this exact moment.
"Uchiha Obito was nothing but a small fish," Yuji said, his voice carrying a quiet amusement that did not reach his eyes. "You are the one who truly matters."
He let the silence hang for a moment.
"Is that not right, child of Kaguya."
The corner of his mouth curved upward.
"There is no point in struggling. I have questions for you first."
His entire reason for infiltrating Akatsuki had been leading toward this day. The reason he had not moved directly against the Land of Rain earlier was precisely to avoid startling the snake before he could trap it, which would have caused Madara and Black Zetsu to abandon their existing plans and change course entirely.
"Who are you?"
Black Zetsu's voice trembled, asking the same question Obito had asked with the same disbelief underneath it.
Black Zetsu had lived for over a thousand years. It had watched the ninja world develop into what it was today with its own eyes. It had manipulated the conflict between Indra and Ashura's reincarnations across generation after generation, quietly steering the fate of the entire ninja world from the shadows. And yet it had never once encountered this person. Never heard of him. Never seen him in any record or any era.
How old was this Fourth Kazekage, truly?
The other party even knew about Kaguya. That implied something that felt almost too impossible to accept.
Was this person like Black Zetsu itself? A relic that had survived for over a thousand years?
Was the Sage of Six Paths playing some kind of trick?
But how could that be possible?
"Obito is dead," Yuji said, answering something Black Zetsu had not asked while ignoring the question it had. "Without him, you cannot control Akatsuki. You cannot collect the Tailed Beasts. The Ten-Tails without its full chakra is nothing but an empty husk. Madara is gone. No matter how you look at it, resurrecting Kaguya has become completely unrealistic."
He smiled with a strange and unhurried quality.
"So. Would you like to consider cooperating with me instead?"
Black Zetsu went still.
It could not begin to understand how its secrets had been exposed. And as it turned the question over, a single possibility rose to the surface of its ancient mind.
"You. Are you the same as Kaguya?"
The words came out with a quality of unreality to them.
Yuji only smiled and said nothing.
After all, when Kaguya had descended upon this world in the distant past, she had not come alone.
If this was not that possibility, then this Fourth Kazekage was a mystery that Black Zetsu's thousand years of existence simply could not account for.
"What do you want?"
Black Zetsu's voice carried open fear now.
Whatever Yuji's origins were, one thing was clear to Black Zetsu in this moment. Its fate was held entirely in the other man's hands.
"First, take me to where you and Madara have been staying," Yuji said, his voice cold and precise. "And bring Madara's body."
Black Zetsu's eyes shifted with visible alarm.
"I am not negotiating with you," Yuji said. "I am giving you an order."
A long silence.
"Understood," Black Zetsu said.
"Good." Yuji's tone shifted into something almost contemplative. "Cooperate properly, and stop placing your hopes in two dead men. Look toward me instead. Who knows, if I happen to be in a generous mood, I might even allow Kaguya to walk under the sky of this world once more."
Black Zetsu's entire being trembled.
"You can truly help me resurrect my mother?"
"I am a reasonable person," Yuji said simply.
He released the sealing talisman and let Black Zetsu drop to the ground.
"Do not think about running. You already know it would be meaningless."
"Your plan has been destroyed. The only one who can offer you anything now is me."
"And do not waste time thinking about using Madara's old methods to deceive me. My patience has its limits, and I suspect you have already noticed that."
Black Zetsu said nothing.
"From today forward, you and the White Zetsu bodies follow me."
Yuji sealed Obito's corpse into a scroll as he spoke.
"Yes," Black Zetsu replied.
It merged back into a White Zetsu body, restoring the familiar appearance of the creature the Akatsuki members knew. It nodded once.
On the surface it appeared completely compliant.
But what it was truly thinking beneath that surface, no one could say.
Yuji did not particularly care.
Even if Black Zetsu was only submitting because circumstances had forced it to, bowing its head temporarily while harboring other calculations in the depths of its ancient mind, that was fine. The threat that Madara and Black Zetsu had represented was one he had always known he would need to eliminate. His only constraint had been Madara himself. With Madara now dead, everything else fell into place naturally.
The timing had been exactly right.
For now, the priority was keeping Black Zetsu within his direct line of sight, ensuring that its continued existence would not interfere with the Sand Village's next movements. The plan going forward would also require making use of what Black Zetsu could offer. He intended to extract every ounce of value from it first.
As for what Black Zetsu might attempt afterward, whether it would try to make small moves behind his back, that was a problem for a later time. Disobedience would simply mean elimination.
With its plan already shattered, Black Zetsu stirring up another wave of chaos would not be as easy as it once had been.
But Yuji also understood something clearly. Given Black Zetsu's fundamental nature, expecting it to submit with genuine sincerity was never going to be possible.