ACSP: Chapter 181: You Slaughter My City, I Destroy Your Nation!
"Is this the Shikotsumyaku's Dance of the Seedling Fern?"
Jiang Chen calmly glanced at the surrounding forest of bones. Upon noticing that Asakura had vanished from the surface, his expression instantly became alert.
—Crack!
Right then, a figure suddenly emerged from a bone spike directly beside him.
"As long as the Empire's great cause can be achieved, even sacrifice is a form of glory...!" Asakura roared, raising a jagged bone spear and thrusting it forcefully at Jiang Chen's heart.
"Calling the invasion of others a 'great cause'... it seems the people of your nation really aren't worth a shred of pity in death."
Jiang Chen knew Asakura would definitely try to utilize these bone spikes for a sneak attack, so he had already expanded his senjutsu perception to its absolute limit. Before the bone spear in Asakura's hand could even descend, the ribs of the [Susanoo] on his body had already manifested.
—Thud!
A heavy, dull sound rang out. The supposedly indestructible [Shikotsumyaku Bone Spear] was blocked directly by the ethereal armor of the [Susanoo], unable to advance even a single inch forward.
"Damn it...!"
Realizing the gap in power, Asakura wanted to withdraw his weapon and dive back into the safety of the bone forest. But Jiang Chen had already anticipated his retreat. Before the vice-captain could slip away, a massive [Arm of Susanoo] swept through the air, intercepting him and crushing him firmly in its vice-like grip on the spot.
"Everything comes with a price."
Jiang Chen's gaze was ice as he looked down at the struggling commander. "You mapped the sea route from East Island to Great Xia. I will use that exact path to sail over—and grind your so-called glory into the dust."
"You slaughter one of my cities? I destroy your entire nation."
Expressionless, Jiang Chen manifested the [Arm of Susanoo]. The colossal chakra limb hoisted Asakura into the air, bringing him level with his face.
Asakura spat blood, laughing maniacally. "Hahaha! The Emperor himself presides over our Great Dongdao Empire! You think a single man can destroy us?"
"Noisy."
Jiang Chen didn't argue. His eyes spun into the crimson patterns of the [Sharingan], instantly diving into the commander's mind to forcibly harvest his memories.
Li Yanran and the bystanders watched in dead silence, barely daring to breathe.
A moment later, the genjutsu ended.
Jiang Chen closed his eyes, and the [Arm of Susanoo] squeezed.
Crunch.
Even with the defensive power of the Shikotsumyaku, Asakura was instantly crushed into a mangled ball of gore.
The sickening explosion of flesh made Li Yanran's stomach turn. Sick with nausea, they hurriedly averted their eyes, unable to bear the gruesome sight.
However.
Thinking of the numerous crimes these Dongdao people had committed in Jinghai City.
They ultimately endured the disgust and forced themselves not to look away.
Because they all knew very well.
From the moment these Dongdao people landed on the shores of Great Xia.
The horn of war had already been sounded.
Next.
There would inevitably be a tragic war between Great Xia and East Island.
"Are you guys okay?"
Jiang Chen deactivated his [Susanoo], turned to Li Yanran and the others, and asked.
"We're fine..."
"Jiang Chen, it's thanks to your timely arrival this time; otherwise, we wouldn't have known what to do."
"Yeah, thank you so much for this."
Everyone expressed their gratitude.
It wasn't that they were afraid of death.
It was mainly because these Dongdao Contractors were just like beasts.
Falling into the hands of such people, they could hardly imagine what kind of torture they would endure.
Especially for women with good looks like Li Yanran and Wang Shanshan, it would surely be even worse.
They were lucky this time.
If Shimura Kenta hadn't initially wanted to use their lives to coerce Jiang Chen into surrendering to East Island.
The two of them would likely have been gang-raped long ago.
Xiao Tu suddenly lunged to his feet, the color draining from his face as raw panic broke through his composure. "Jiang Chen, Sister Xiaolin was captured by a Dongdao Contractor before you arrived! I overheard them—they're targeting the Three-Tails sealed inside her. They want to harvest its power. If we don't move right now, we're going to be too late!"
"Zhang Xiaolin?"
Jiang Chen's brow furrowed, a cold edge cutting into his expression.
When he had first scanned the survivors and saw Li Yanran's group being dragged out without Xiaolin, he had internally assumed the grim reality of war—that she had already been killed in the initial onslaught. He hadn't anticipated that the invaders were tracking the specific signature of the Tailed Beast within her.
"Xiao Tu is right, Sister Xiaolin is in extreme danger!" Wang Shanshan interjected frantically, her hands trembling as tears of anxiety pooled in her eyes. "I remember reading the archives about Jinchuriki Contractors. If the Tailed Beast's chakra is forcibly extracted from the host's soul, the recoil kills the Contractor instantly! There's no surviving it!"
Understanding the stakes, Li Yanran didn't waste a single breath on words. Her fingers instantly blurred into a sequence of hand seals, channeling her remaining energy to unleash her [Perception Technique]. Invisible ripples of sensory chakra erupted outward from her position, desperately combing through the ruins for any familiar spiritual frequency.
But the feedback was completely blank.
Not a single flicker of Zhang Xiaolin's unique Chakra signature registered within her net.
The absolute lack of a signal pointed to only two grim conclusions: either Zhang Xiaolin's life force had already been extinguished, or the enemy had already transported her far beyond the maximum radius of her sensory grid.
"Let me take a shot," Yuan Danqing grunted, stepping forward as he triggered his [Beast Mimicry Technique]. His pupils slit into predatory lines as he tried to catch a scent.
But the environment was actively fighting them. Jinghai City had been transformed into a literal slaughterhouse; the air was thick, suffocating, and choked with the heavy stench of burning gunpowder, charred concrete, and rivers of fresh blood. The overwhelming sensory pollution completely blinded his enhanced nasal passages, rendering his tracking abilities totally useless.
"Stand back. Let me try."
Seeing the collective panic as the group hit a total dead end, Jiang Chen stepped into the center of the clearing. He closed his eyes, drawing a deep, deliberate breath as he gathered the ambient energy of the world around him. He sank effortlessly into his [Sage Mode], the iconic pigment forming around his eyes as a massive wave of natural energy surged outward, violently expanding his mental map of the terrain.
While it was true that the raw sensory reach of standard Sage Mode couldn't match the absolute, pinpoint structural definition of the Uzumaki clan's legendary [Mind's Eye of the Kagura], its sheer operational range was still immense.
Jinghai City, when stripped down to its geography, was ultimately just a small, condensed county town. As long as Zhang Xiaolin's heart was still beating within these borders, she couldn't hide from the nature energy currently blanketing the grid.
And sure enough.
Just after Jiang Chen unleashed his full sensory capabilities.
A familiar Tailed Beast Chakra signature soon appeared within his sensory range.
"I've found Zhang Xiaolin..."
Meanwhile.
Inside a relatively secluded residential building in Jinghai City.
At this moment.
A girl covered in injuries was lying quietly on a table.
Her body, hands, and feet were all locked down by thick iron chains.
And in front of the girl.
A white-haired man was holding a hand seal, continuously pulling a crimson, turtle-shaped Chakra construct from her stomach.
This person was none other than Inoue Gessui, who had previously killed Matsushita Jugo!
And the girl lying on the table was none other than Zhang Xiaolin.
"Damn it, this [Tailed Beast Extraction Seal] is so difficult to use..."
"It's been so long, and I still haven't succeeded."
Inoue Gessui was fully focused on casting the technique, wanting to speed up the process of extracting the Three-Tails from within Zhang Xiaolin.
The skill he was currently using was none other than the [Tailed Beast Extraction Seal] used by Uchiha Obito back when he betrayed his master and killed his kin.
He had originally purchased this skill at an exchange in East Island.
Although this technique could not be used in combat.
Nor could it increase his own strength.
It could, however, extract the Tailed Beast from within a Jinchuriki.
It was precisely because of this that he had been overjoyed upon learning that Zhang Xiaolin was a Jinchuriki.
He had even gone so far as to kill his former comrade and partner.
Because there were not many skills capable of extracting a Tailed Beast from a Jinchuriki.
And since he possessed this rare, dark skill, how could he not seize the opportunity to exploit it to its absolute limits? To let such a forbidden art go to waste would be an unforgivable sin in a world governed by raw power.
However, reality had dealt him a far more frustrating hand than he had anticipated.
The structural difficulty of casting this forbidden [Tailed Beast Extraction Seal] was simply too high, demanding an agonizingly precise level of chakra control that pushed his limits to the brink. He had gone to extreme lengths, risking everything to negotiate and wrench Zhang Xiaolin away from the clutches of Shimura Kenta earlier. At the time, he had arrogantly expected the process to be a swift, seamless siphon—believing he could strip the Tailed Beast's cataclysmic power from her frail body within minutes.
He hadn't expected that after working tirelessly for what felt like hours, burning through his own reserves, he would only have managed to tear half of the Three-Tails out of her.
"The chakra fluctuations outside are turning chaotic... something must have gone horribly wrong," Inoue Gessui muttered to himself, his chest heaving as sweat poured down his face. The muffled echoes of distant explosions rattled the foundation of his hideout.
"It seems I have no choice. I must force the extraction and speed things up, regardless of the strain."
His eyes gleamed with a fanatic, desperate hunger. "As long as I can fully assimilate the primordial power of the Three-Tails and combine it with my Hozuki clan's unique Hydrification constitution, my combat potential will skyrocket. Even if my raw strength doesn't quite reach the pinnacle of the Super-Kage Level, I will easily possess the leverage to contend with, and even slaughter, those powerful Kage-level Contractors! I absolutely cannot miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to soar to greatness..."
Inoue Gessui abruptly withdrew his gaze from the cracked window, turning his full, undivided focus back to the altar. He bit his thumb, smearing blood across his palms as he violently increased the output of his chakra, forcing the extraction arrays to glow with a blinding, toxic light.
The sheer mechanics of extracting a Tailed Beast from a modern Contractor was exponentially more complex than ripping it directly from a native world Jinchuriki.
Because Zhang Xiaolin wasn't the original vessel. To successfully harvest the beast, Inoue Gessui had to first unravel the spiritual tether extracting the Three-Tails from Zhang Xiaolin's contracted template character—Rin Nohara.
Simply put, he wasn't just breaking one seal; he was forced to siphon the Tailed Beast's volatile power through a dual-layered metaphysical conduit. He was pulling the chakra through the spiritual bodies of two distinct Jinchuriki simultaneously: the phantom imprint of Rin Nohara, and the physical vessel of Zhang Xiaolin.
Of course, if the catastrophic power dwelling within Zhang Xiaolin hadn't been anchored through a contracted character template, the extraction process would have been a trivial matter.
But the legendary power of a Tailed Beast was a mythical anomaly to begin with, a prize that most Contractors could only dream of seeing in their lifetimes. Now that he had finally cornered one in the flesh, Inoue Gessui didn't have the luxury to complain about technical difficulties. He didn't have the time to be picky either—not with the scent of death drawing closer outside.
"——Ahhhhh!"
The moment Inoue Gessui poured the absolute maximum of his chakra into the forbidden technique, the glowing crimson seal on the floor flared with blinding intensity. The physical arrays shrieked under the sudden surge of energy, and a massive torrent of dense, toxic red chakra was violently yanked out of Zhang Xiaolin's core. It was torn from her soul with the subtlety of a rusted hook, ripping through the spiritual defenses of her Rin Nohara template.
The sheer agony of having her life force and the beast's primordial power peeled away simultaneously was beyond human endurance.
Zhang Xiaolin's body instantly went rigid on the altar. Her spine arched violently, her fingers clawing frantically at the stone floor until her nails tore and bled. The psychological shock and physical torment tore a desperate, blood-curdling scream from her throat—a raw sound of pure agony that echoed off the damp walls of the hidden chamber, vibrating with the volatile, maddening resonance of the Three-Tails itself.