Clang—!
Nagato awkwardly blocked the attack from the massive sword, Samehada, using a kunai. Several sharp spikes exploded from the blade, piercing into his arm.
Samehada, which was nearly starving, went wild at the sight of chakra, greedily sucking it in.
Nagato initially wanted to endure the pain in his injured arm and use a jutsu in coordination with his companions to severely injure the enemy before him. However, the sudden and rapid drain of his chakra, as if a dam had burst, shocked him!
Through the perception of his Rinnegan, he saw that Konan and Yahiko had already arrived to support him. Summoning his strength, he forcefully pushed against Samehada, attempting to create some distance.
Yet, the Kiri ninja before him completely ignored the attacks from Yahiko and Konan behind him. Samehada in his hands shifted from a sweeping strike to a stabbing motion! The eerie sword suddenly opened its maw, drooling as if preparing to swallow him whole!
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh!
Konan's paper shuriken, embedded with explosive tags, shot into Kei's liquefied body. Yahiko, wielding a kunai infused with Wind Release chakra, pierced through a gap in his right shoulder blade, splashing water everywhere.
"Yahiko, back off! Nagato, use Lightning Release!" Konan shouted urgently upon realizing that even now, Yahiko's attacks were focused on disabling the enemy rather than killing him.
Boom—!
A repulsive force from Nagato's Rinnegan erupted from Samehada.
Sensing danger, he barely had time to react with a technique, relying solely on the Rinnegan's power to blast away the drooling blade.
Kei, using [Zero-Frame Start], reacted at an incredible speed. Before the repulsion force could fully take effect, his upper body twisted unnaturally by 180 degrees in his liquefied state.
Yahiko, who was retreating, suddenly felt his face change in shock. Before he could react, the Kiri ninja in front of him actually used Nagato's repulsion force to accelerate his attack!
In a flash, the enemy's fist was already smashing into his face!
Boom—!
"Yahiko!"
With Konan and Nagato's alarmed cries, Yahiko was sent flying sideways, crashing hard into a steel wall.
The force behind that punch was so overwhelming that he lost consciousness instantly!
Boom—!
The repulsion force behind him sent Kei and Samehada hurtling through the air.
Konan was just about to ignite the explosive tags within her paper shuriken when, she saw the Kiri ninja's legs suddenly bulge in size! With a powerful stomp on the steel floor, he forcefully twisted his body mid-air and, in the blink of an eye, rushed straight toward her.
"Konan!"
Nagato shouted in urgency, trying to activate Banshō Ten'in to pull Konan to his side before the enemy could land an attack. But his reaction speed was far slower than the enemy's movements!
Kei swung Samehada horizontally, using it to block the gravitational pull of Banshō Ten'in. Samehada, starved to madness, didn't care that it had just been repelled by Nagato earlier, instead, it rode along the pull of Banshō Ten'in and once again lunged toward him!
Bang!
With another heavy impact—
Nagato barely leaped to avoid the oncoming Samehada. But as he looked up, he saw Konan's body collapse to the ground.
The Kiri ninja, like a tiger pouncing into a flock of sheep, charged into the Akatsuki members, relying solely on taijutsu, he crushed everyone, sending them crashing against the surrounding walls.
"Kyūsuke! Daibutsu! Kie!"
Nagato, eyes wide with fury, formed hand seals, prepared to push his body to the limit and unleash the full power of the Rinnegan.
But before he could act, the Kiri ninja had already placed his palm on Konan's head.
Sweeping his gaze across his heavily wounded and unconscious comrades, though none seemed fatally injured, Nagato forcefully suppressed his panic and anxiety as he spoke.
"You… what exactly do you want?"
"You guess."
Whoosh—Boom!
A gust of fierce wind swept from behind Nagato's head, before he could even react, everything went black. His body staggered forward, taking one unsteady step before collapsing straight to the ground.
"This strength… is still a little lacking."
Kei's shadow clone caught Nagato's unconscious body.
Samehada, apart from having a sealing contract preventing Kiri from summoning it back, also bore several Flying Thunder God marks.
Nagato had been so focused on the enemy before him and his injured companions that he had completely ignored the weapon that had just been knocked behind him. In the end, he was still too young—his combat experience was far too lacking.
Just as his shadow clone was about to start extracting Nagato's eyes, the main body's voice suddenly rang out.
"Stop!"
Kei glanced at Nagato's status interface and mentally cursed Black Zetsu with an array of colorful expletives.
He had just used the system to scan the names and identities of everyone present, but because there were too many people, he hadn't carefully examined each individual's details.
Now that his focus was on Nagato, he immediately noticed something was off.
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[Name: Uzumaki Nagato]
[Career: Ninja]
[Traits: Blood of the Ancestors (Purple), Pseudo Rinnegan (Purple), Complete Yang Release (Blue), Kagura's Mind Eye (Blue), Intelligent (Green), Puppet Mastery (Green), Dependence (White), Blind Obedience (Gray)]
[Blood of the Ancestors (Purple):
A pure-blooded descendant of the Uzumaki clan. After being stimulated by the Yin-Yang Release power of the Rinnegan, his body has undergone gradual mutation, greatly enhancing his affinity with Water, Earth, Fire, Wind, Lightning, and Yang Release. His vitality and chakra reserves have significantly increased.]
[Pseudo Rinnegan (Purple):
Using the power of the Six Paths Yin-Yang Release and the Samsara of Heavenly Life Technique as its foundation, fused with the power of the God Tree, this pseudo Rinnegan is forcibly created from a three-tomoe Sharingan. It possesses a vast amount of Rinnegan energy and can use part of the Six Paths power. Once its energy is depleted, the eye is destroyed.]
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Black Zetsu... You really went all out on this one.
Kei took a deep breath. Out of caution, he instructed his shadow clone to examine the bodies of the Akatsuki members.
Did Black Zetsu suspect that he knew Madara had awakened the Rinnegan and transplanted it into Nagato? Logically, that shouldn't be possible. But then again, that bastard had been scheming for nearly a thousand years.
With Madara's sudden death, there was no telling what he might have done.
Yet, intentionally orchestrating Tobi's attack on the Konoha ninjas in Ame, ensuring Konoha would take notice of the newly emerging Akatsuki, and leaving behind this fake Rinnegan…
Was this all just to mislead him? Or was there another reason…?
Hmm? Main body, there's a Transcription Seal! The shadow clone let out a soft exclamation and quickly stepped back from Nagato.
Kei frowned slightly and motioned for the examination to continue.
After a thorough inspection, the results were clear: Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan all had Transcription Seals placed on them.
The other Akatsuki members, however, showed no abnormalities.
In the original story, Madara had once used a Transcription Seal to store Izanagi in his right eye, delaying its activation.
Itachi had also used this technique—implanting Amaterasu into Sasuke's eye and leaving Kotoamatsukami inside Naruto.
There was no telling what conditions would trigger these Transcription Seals. And more importantly, there was no way to know what jutsu had been sealed within them.
Unless they were removed, even something as simple as brainwashing the three of them and bringing them back to Konoha was risky.
After all, if the seals contained something like Summoning: Demonic Statue of the Outer Path or Super Shinra Tensei, and the activation conditions were met right after they arrived in Konoha, then, the Third Great Ninja War wouldn't even have a chance to start before Konoha got blown to hell!
As for simply killing the three of them…
Plplplpl~~~
Just as Kei was contemplating his next move, Samehada—driven to madness by hunger—began wriggling toward Nagato like a giant caterpillar. Its long, foot-long tongue licked at Nagato's head, while its once-menacing spikes softened into fur-like bristles that pressed against his body.
A massive amount of chakra surged from Nagato's body.
The unconscious boy began trembling uncontrollably due to extreme chakra loss.
Whoosh—Boom!
The sound of a signal flare bursting echoed from above Kei's head.
Whoosh—
With a spatial distortion, his second shadow clone, which had been stationed outside as a sentry, appeared beside Samehada with a grim expression. The clone tossed a ninja—who was clearly under genjutsu—at Kei's feet.
"A White Zetsu?"
Kei glanced at the interface of the figure before him, then tossed a sealing scroll to the clone.
As the sharp alarms rang throughout Ame, he pulled out a blood storage tube, smearing a bit on his fingertips.
A vast chakra mist surged into the room, and soon, a giant clam, far larger than the one used by Gengetsu, appeared before them.
His shadow clone immediately threw Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan's bodies into the clam's open shell.
"Don't let them die for now."
After giving orders to the summoned beast, Kei dismissed the summoning, sending it back to the habitat of the Giant Clam clan.
Sensing multiple figures rapidly closing in outside the building, he grabbed Samehada from the ground.
He still didn't know what Black Zetsu was planning, but since he was already here, he sure as hell wasn't leaving empty-handed!
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100 Advance chapters!
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