Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

The mysterious girl suddenly murmured in a dreamlike voice: "The third icicle... is a reflection..." The tattoo on her collarbone turned back to indigo blue, but now had several strange patterns made of bloodstains.

Sasuke's Chidori Blade slammed into the stone gate, and lightning crackled across the surface of the rune array.

When his seventh attack failed, he slammed his bloodied fist heavily onto the ice.

The Flying Thunder God Kunai suddenly emitted a buzzing sound, and the bloodstains remaining on the blade were seeping into the stone door along the spiral pattern.

Kai pressed down on the boy's trembling shoulders and noticed that faint six lines had appeared on the back of his neck.

A tremor, like the awakening of an ancient behemoth, echoed from the depths of the ice cave. The mysterious girl suddenly opened her empty eyes wide: she was traversing the narrow gap between life and death. Her bloodstained fingertips traced patterns on the ice, mirroring the runes of the stone gate. As dawn kissed the third icicle... she suddenly coughed violently, dark purple blood splattering onto the icy blue runes.

Sasuke's Sharingan suddenly contracted.

In the reflection on the ice, Naruto's chakra traces were refracted at an odd angle, forming three intersecting paths of light.

Kai tore off his tattered ninja vest, revealing a hideous old wound on his back—clearly a miniature version of the Stone Gate Rune Array.

The Flying Thunder God Kunai suddenly floated up and, under the watchful eyes of the three, slowly pointed to a hanging icicle at the top of the ice cave.

The eighth gate... Kai's mutterings were interrupted by another round of ice avalanches.

Sasuke wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and his three-tomoe jade locked onto the faint golden light within the ice shards.

The mysterious girl's tattoos and the blood-stained ice surface lit up simultaneously, projecting a star-like coordinate grid beneath everyone's feet.

The moment Kai's bandage wrapped around the third icicle, the entire space suddenly tilted ninety degrees.

With a clang, the Flying Thunder God Kunai pierced the inverted stone door, and the bloodstains on its blade stained the surface of the rune array with maple leaf-shaped patterns.

Sasuke was about to unleash his palm lightning, but he discovered that the chakra flow was completely different from before.

The mysterious girl suddenly grabbed his wrist, her icy fingers drawing mirrored runes on his palm: "The living use blood, the dead use..." Before she could finish speaking, she fainted again.

Kai's right leg suddenly twisted unnaturally, and the black curse mark on the old wound writhed like a living thing.

He gritted his teeth and tore off three bandages that were binding the stone gate mechanism. He turned to Sasuke and flashed his signature smile: "Konoha's Azure Beast... When the crimson chakra soared into the sky, the ice shards refracted seven overlapping beams of light and shadow. It won't fall here!"

The moment Sasuke's Chidori Blade pierced the center of the rune array, a humming sound of spacetime distortion shattered all the ice spikes.

The mysterious girl's tattoo suddenly peeled off her skin, forming a galaxy vortex in the air just like the one Naruto was swallowed up.

The blood beads that Kai coughed up floated in the air, outlining the incomplete spacetime coordinates.

When the last rune lit up, Sasuke's Sharingan finally saw clearly—it was an enlarged version of the Uchiha clan crest.

Chapter 376 Unexpectedly, it came in handy at this time.

Ice shards fell softly onto Sasuke's trembling eyelashes.

When he rammed into the stone gate for the third time, his knees slammed heavily against the protruding rock edges, and the lightning in his palms blasted black cracks into the moss-covered surface.

Chakra surged through his meridians like a runaway horse—this was not the chakra flow pattern he was familiar with at all.

Your meridian system is operating in reverse. Gai's bandages wrapped around Sasuke's ankles, dragging him three zhang away from the stone gate, and broken ice shards drew seven bloody lines on his back.

As Sasuke tried to get up, supporting himself with kunai, he noticed that the five fingers of his left hand were unnaturally bent outwards, and the knuckles made a teeth-grinding cracking sound.

The mysterious girl suddenly grabbed his bleeding hand and pressed it against her forehead.

The blue tattoos seemed to come alive, burrowing into Sasuke's flesh along his veins. "Don't move." Her pale lips uttered a frosty warning: "The distortion of spacetime is rewriting your chakra attributes."

Kai suddenly ripped open the blood-stained green bodysuit, revealing a black curse mark spreading across his chest.

The edge of the talisman was burning, the smell of burning mixed with his hoarse laughter: "Twenty years ago, when I was on a mission in the Land of Hot Springs, the Fourth Hokage personally placed a sealing technique on me—I never thought it would come in handy now."

The moment Guy formed the Snake Seal, Sasuke's Sharingan clearly saw the old man's remaining chakra threads in the air.

Those threads, which were originally connected to thirty-six vital acupoints on Kai's body, were now burned to ashes by the black curse mark.

The crimson chakra that erupted from Kai formed the shape of a three-headed hound, and the snow on the ground instantly vaporized into white mist.

Eight Gates Formation - Gate of Shock - Modified!

The maple leaf patterns on the stone gate suddenly rotated counterclockwise. The moment Kai's steam-filled fist slammed into the center of the rune array, the sound of shattering glass echoed throughout the space.

Blood seeped from Sasuke's eardrums as he saw the skin on Guy's right arm peeling away piece by piece, revealing the golden bone underneath.

The mysterious girl suddenly broke off the bone whistle hanging around her neck and blew it.

The piercing whistle caused the ice spikes suspended in mid-air to change direction simultaneously, raining down on the gap in the stone gate.

As the eleventh ice spike pierced the crack in the rune array, Sasuke's pupils constricted sharply—the shape of the ice spikes was clearly the missing magatama part of the Uchiha clan crest.

"Use Chidori to cut through your chakra pathways!" The girl's nails dug deep into Sasuke's wrist. "The stone gate is replicating your chakra flow patterns. Only by creating chakra turbulence can..." Her words were interrupted by Guy's roar.

Nine blood-red Rinnegan eyes suddenly opened on the surface of the stone gate, and the force of Kai's punch was reflected back without being touched.

As Sasuke tumbled through the shockwave, breaking three stalactites, his lower back slammed into the altar. At that moment, his Sharingan caught a fleeting chakra node deep within the rune array.

Without hesitation, he plunged the Kusanagi sword into his left shoulder, and lightning chakra flowed into his heart through the wound.

When his vision was swallowed by the crimson, he finally saw the black chakra cluster inside the stone gate—and on the surface of that cluster was none other than Naruto's unconscious face.

Guy's right leg suddenly exploded into a bloody mist, but using the recoil from his spinning kick, he wrapped the blood-stained bandage around Sasuke's ankle. "Kid!" His bloodshot eyes reflected the surging purple light of the rune array as he threw me like a kunai!

The moment Sasuke's Chidori Blade pierced Guy's left shoulder, time seemed to stretch out into a viscous gel.

The Sharingan clearly saw that thirty-six acupoints in Kai's body lit up with golden light at the same time, and those points of light were strung together to form the shape of the Big Dipper.

When the azure beast, wreathed in lightning, crashed into the core of the rune array, densely packed sealing characters suddenly appeared on the surface of the stone gate.

So that's how it is... The mysterious girl knelt on the shattered ice, her finger dipped in Kai's blood to draw an inverted pentagram. This wasn't a spacetime barrier at all, but...

The deafening roar swallowed her words.

When the smoke and dust cleared, the Hokage Rock relief of Konoha Village appeared on the surface of the stone gate.

Just as Sasuke's fingertips were about to touch the headband of Minato Namikaze's statue, the entire stone gate suddenly became as transparent as a mirror.

The reflection in the mirror was not of the ice cave they were in, but of a wasteland burning with black flames—Naruto was suspended in mid-air by eight chains, with a broken kunai stuck in his chest.

Chapter 377 The Light of Annihilation

Sasuke's eardrums were still ringing, but Naruto's roar burned down his spine like a branding iron.

In the blood-red vision, the ice crystals on the altar reflected the distorted figure deep within the stone gate—Naruto's right hand, bound by chains, was disintegrating, and skin fragments drifted towards the black chakra mass like burning scraps of paper.

Get out of the way! A metallic taste rose in Sasuke's throat, and the Chidori in his palm emitted a piercing cry.

The instant the lightning pierced the icy mist, Kai's blood-stained bandages suddenly wrapped around his neck.

Three bandages were used to lock the Jianjing and Tianzong acupoints, forcibly blocking the flow of chakra.

Kai knelt on one knee on the ice, blood spurting from his severed femoral artery condensing into ice crystals in mid-air. Your meridian system can't withstand a fourth impact. The black curse mark on his chest had spread to his jaw, and purple foam constantly spilled from the corner of his mouth as he spoke. The Stone Gate is using our chakra to reconstruct the sealing array; reckless action will only hasten Naruto's death.

Sasuke's kunai suddenly pressed against Guy's throat, and the three tomoe of his Sharingan spun wildly: You don't understand at all! As the boy roared, blood tears suddenly streamed from his left eye.

The fragments of memories swallowed by the stone gate surged in his mind—the mountains of corpses and seas of blood from the Seventh Shinobi World War, the scorched earth of the night the Uchiha clan was massacred, and the foolish smile that Naruto had given him three days ago when he shielded him from the puppet's poison needles.

The rune array beneath the ice suddenly lit up with a blue light.

The mysterious girl grabbed the two by the back of their collars and pulled them back rapidly. Seven ice spikes instantly rose from where they had been standing.

The village chief's hunched figure appeared at the highest point of the altar, black viscous liquid seeping from the three white pupils at the tip of his bone staff.

Thirty-six breaths. The old man's frostbitten fingers traced the engravings on the bone staff. Each time the stone gate absorbed a chakra attribute, one-twelfth of the seal would be released. His single eye suddenly turned to Kai's bleeding right leg. "How many more times can you open the Gate of Shock?"

Kai's maniacal laughter shook the icicles off the cave ceiling.

He ripped off his tattered green bodysuit, revealing a dense array of sealing talismans on his back: "When the Fourth Hokage used the Flying Thunder God Technique to send me out of the Cloud Village's encirclement, he said—bloodied fingers forming the Dog Seal, crimson chakra condensing into a tailed beast's cloak, the Blue Beast of Konoha will never..."

The tremors at the stone gate interrupted the declaration.

Simultaneously, purplish-black blood seeped from all nine Rinnegan eyes, and the vortex at the center of the rune array suddenly expanded tenfold.

Sasuke felt as if his internal organs were being gripped by an invisible hand, and his Sharingan detected 360 chakra threads piercing through his acupoints.

The bone whistle around the mysterious girl's neck floated up automatically, producing a shrill, teeth-grinding tone.

"Grab me!" Guy wrapped Sasuke's waist with bandages and grabbed the girl's wrist with his other hand.

But the gravitational pull generated by the vortex suddenly increased exponentially, and Sasuke watched helplessly as Guy's fingertips narrowed off from his own by three inches—a distance that would become an insurmountable chasm in the next moment.

Amidst the humming sound of distorted spacetime, Sasuke's back slammed heavily onto the scorching sand.

He instinctively rolled three times, his Kusanagi sword slicing through the oncoming black fireball.

As the heatwave lifted the stray hairs from his forehead, he saw Naruto ten steps away, suspended in mid-air by eight chains.

The worst performer!

Sparks from the Kusanagi sword striking the chains illuminated the space.

Sasuke's hand instantly split open, and the lightning chakra, which was conducted along the chains, was completely absorbed.

Naruto suddenly raised his head, and a strange six-pointed star pattern swirled in his azure pupils.

The mysterious girl pressed down on Sasuke's bleeding wrist: Don't touch those chains! Three sand snakes shot out from her sleeve and bit Naruto's ankle. This was a restraint created by Yin-Yang Release; forcibly breaking it would directly affect his internal organs... Before she finished speaking, the sand snakes suddenly burst into flames and turned to ashes, and a charred snake-shaped mark appeared on the girl's right palm.

The scorching heat was suddenly dispelled by a chill.

Sasuke's Sharingan trembled violently as he saw a semi-transparent humanoid silhouette appear behind Naruto.

An old man with white hair slowly walked out of the void, with twelve Truth-Seeking Jewels arranged in the shape of the Rinnegan behind him.

What delicious hatred. The old man's cracked fingers brushed over the kunai stuck in Naruto's chest, dark red blood beads hovering in his palm and condensing into tomoe. The chakra of Indra and Ashura, plus the spacetime power of the dragon vein... His gray-white Rinnegan swept over the two who were waiting in ambush, and a compassionate smile appeared on his lips. Enough for his mother to enjoy a thousand-year feast.

Naruto suddenly let out an inhuman roar, and all the chains binding him broke.

Black lines spread from the wound on his chest, covering his entire body in the blink of an eye.

Sasuke's Kusanagi sword let out a mournful cry, and he could clearly feel the pulse coming from the blade—which was exactly the same as Naruto's chakra frequency at that moment.

The mysterious girl suddenly tore open her left sleeve, revealing a blue talisman covering her entire arm.

She bit her tongue and sprayed the blood mist onto the talisman, instantly causing twelve sand pillars to rise from the ground, forming a trapping array. Thirty seconds! She grabbed Sasuke and retreated rapidly, using her eye technique to sever his connection to the earth's ley lines!

The old man gently stomped his foot, and all the sand pillars collapsed into quicksand vortexes.

He caught the shuriken Sasuke shot at him, his decaying fingertips flicking a series of clear sounds across the blade: Too slow. Suddenly, the rusty blade reflected Sasuke's face, blood streaming from his seven orifices. Compared to the reincarnation of Indra, you're not even thirty percent of him...

The exploding Tailed Beast Ball shattered the second half of the sentence.

Naruto's floating figure emerged from the smoke and dust, his nine chakra tails flailing wildly behind him, and black slime dripping from the white bone horn that sprouted from his forehead.

The old man's smile finally became genuine. He raised his hand and pressed it against Naruto's forehead, and the twelve Truth-Seeking Balls simultaneously burst forth with world-destroying light.

Blood seeped from Sasuke's Mangekyou Sharingan as he saw two chakra clusters inside Naruto's body devouring each other.

Just as the old man's fingertips were about to touch the white bone horn, he did not hesitate to plunge the Kusanagi sword into his left eye.

Chapter 378 The Time Has Arrived

The hurricane unleashed by the chakra torrent overturned the sand and gravel within a radius of ten miles.

Naruto's crimson-gold chakra cloak kept peeling off and reforming, and the sticky fluid dripping from his white bone horn corroded honeycomb-like pits the moment it touched the ground.

His body, floating in mid-air, was slightly arched, like a ferocious beast ready to pounce on its prey at any moment.

Kurama's chakra was running rampant. Sasuke covered his bleeding left eye, and beads of blood seeped from between his fingers, winding down the patterns on the Kusanagi sword.

The stinging sensation from the Mangekyou Sharingan was more intense than he had imagined. He could clearly see two intertwined chakra within Naruto's body—the azure light belonging to the Jinchūriki was being devoured by some kind of dark substance.

The mysterious girl suddenly grabbed him by the back of his collar and pulled him backward.

The pitch-black barrier formed by the twelve Truth-Seeking Jewels grazed their heels and slammed into the ground, causing the once-hard rock to collapse like a melting candle.

The blue talisman on her bare right arm was fading, and the cuffs of her sleeves, torn by the wind and sand, revealed a dense array of old scars.

The old man's withered face flickered in and out of focus under the light of the world-destroying radiance.

He maintained the posture of raising his hand to press against Naruto's forehead, his age-spotted palm only three inches away from the white bone horn.

A kind of timeless pressure seeped from this decaying body, and the sand floating in the air began to rise upwards against gravity.

"Don't try to capture his movements visually!" the girl suddenly shouted.

Her blood-stained index finger traced twisted runes on the sand, and a buzzing sound, like the chirping of insects, instantly drowned out the howling wind.

Sasuke's right eye's kaleidoscope pattern suddenly shrank to the size of a needle tip—ten thousand chakra threads appeared on the previously empty barrier surface, each connected to the old man's withered fingertip.

Naruto suddenly let out a beast-like roar.