Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

A turbulent flow of chakra carrying fragments of the Tailed Beast Ball erupted from his back, but was broken into tiny specks of light the instant it touched the barrier.

The nine chakra tails lashed uncontrollably against the inner wall of the barrier, and the shockwaves they generated slammed the three of them heavily against the edge of the barrier.

Thirty-seven seconds. The old man suddenly spoke, his cloudy eyes turning to the girl who was forming hand seals, six seconds slower than the vortex clansman thirty years ago. He flicked away the sand stuck to his sleeve with his finger, a seemingly ordinary action that reversed the gravity within the entire barrier.

Sasuke's Kusanagi sword slipped from his hand and plunged into the sand above his head, while Naruto froze in mid-air like an insect pinned to amber.

The girl's pupils contracted sharply.

She recognized the curve of the other person's little finger when they formed the hand seals—it was the starting stance of a forbidden puppet technique that had been lost in Sunagakure for thirty years.

Before she could wipe the blood from the corner of her lips, she slapped the last three talismans onto the back of Naruto's neck: using natural energy to counteract the attack!

Sasuke's right eye suddenly gushed out scalding liquid.

In the distorted vision of the kaleidoscope, he saw something resembling tree roots coiled inside the old man's body.

Those gnarled roots pierced through the earth's veins and the sky, and whenever the barrier was impacted, new roots would grow from the void.

It wasn't chakra... He struggled to adjust his breathing, and the mournful cry of the Kusanagi sword gradually synchronized with his heartbeat. This thing itself was some kind of barrier!

Naruto's chakra cloak suddenly solidified into a crystalline form.

The sage chakra activated by the talisman gathered into spiral patterns on his forehead, and the growth rate of his bone horns suddenly accelerated.

The nine tails simultaneously slammed into the same spot on the barrier, and the flying chakra fragments condensed into countless miniature tailed beast balls in mid-air.

The old man's wrinkled eyes finally began to show fine lines.

The moment the first miniature Tailed Beast Ball touched the surface of the barrier, all twelve Truth-Seeking Balls simultaneously emitted a clear, bell-like sound.

The explosive wave, powerful enough to tear space apart, was kneaded into a sphere by some invisible force, eventually collapsing into a black hole the size of a fingernail.

Sasuke's Sharingan caught a fraction of a second of an anomaly—the ring on the old man's right ring finger flashed with a ghostly light the instant the black hole formed.

This discovery chilled him to the bone, and fragments of stone tablets buried deep within the Uchiha clan's territory suddenly surfaced in his memory.

"Don't use ninjutsu to attack!" His hoarse warning was drowned out by the roar of chakra.

The Rasenshuriken that Naruto had been preparing in his palm had already been released, and the high-speed spinning wind blade plowed through the inner wall of the barrier, leaving dazzling sparks.

The talisman thrown by the girl spontaneously combusted the moment it touched the energy turbulence, and the unique mark of the Sand Village Puppet Master emerged from the ashes.

The old man's sigh seemed to come from the depths of the earth.

He slowly spread his five fingers, and twelve twisted vortexes suddenly appeared on the inner wall of the barrier.

All of Naruto's attacks were swallowed by the vortex, and Sasuke's Sharingan saw that the energy was flowing into the old man's body along the chakra threads.

When the last vortex disappeared, the old man floating in the center of the barrier suddenly looked younger.

His graying sideburns turned jet black, and his hunched back straightened by half an inch, which in turn amplified the oppressive feeling around him.

The girl's ninja tool pouch suddenly exploded, and twelve kunai engraved with sealing runes automatically arranged themselves into a ring.

The time had come. The old man raised his hand and caught a falling kunai; the rusty blade reflected the gleam in his eyes.

A rustling sound, similar to the sound of trees growing, rose from the depths of the earth, and amber-colored viscous liquid began to seep from the inner wall of the barrier.

Sasuke's Kusanagi sword suddenly emitted a shrill tremor, and blood was seeping from the magatama pattern on the hilt.

Naruto suddenly fell from mid-air.

The white bone horn that had grown from his forehead had covered the entire top of his head, and the tailed beast chakra cloak had turned an ominous purplish-black.

The nine tails pounded the ground uncontrollably, each impact causing the chakra threads on the barrier's surface to multiply several times over.

The girl's talisman finally burned out.

She stared at the hourglass-shaped mark that appeared in her palm, then suddenly ripped off the necklace from her neck and pressed it into the sand.

The moment the silver chain inlaid with the spirit pearl sank into the sand, the entire barrier suddenly emitted a crisp sound like shattering glass—however, the expected breakthrough did not appear; instead, more chakra threads gushed out from the cracks.

Blood tears streamed from Sasuke's right eye.

In his final moments before going completely blind, he saw a canopy of trees appear behind the old man, each leaf reflecting the dying man's face.

The mournful cry of the Kusanagi sword overlapped with the sound of a kunai piercing the air on a snowy night in his memory, making him suddenly understand the true meaning of the phrase "all things return to one" on the stone tablet.

The starlight outside the barrier began to distort.

The old man walked through the void toward the immobile Naruto, the black substance gathering at his fingertips transforming into ancient cuneiform script.

Sasuke's broken kunai handle pierced his palm, and the pain allowed him to temporarily break through the chakra blockage—however, just as he was about to unleash Amenotejikara, he discovered that his shadow was being nailed to the sand by some kind of force.

The Nine-Tails' roar suddenly turned into a whimper.

Naruto's purplish-black chakra cloak was fading, and a scarlet crack appeared where the white bone horn on his forehead had grown.

The girl's trembling fingers touched some kind of cold metal object beneath the sand, and beads of blood that had not yet congealed seeped into the earth's veins through her fingers—this was the third time she had touched the same type of puppet joint in this desperate situation.

Chapter 379 A Higher-Level Space-Time Seal

The air inside the barrier began to condense into a gel-like substance.

Naruto's attempt to raise his arm became unusually slow, and the chakra crystals condensed on his skin emitted a teeth-grinding grinding sound.

Sasuke's Sharingan suddenly caught the unusual movement of the sand beneath the old man's feet—the blood-soaked grains of sand were forming a tree-like pattern along a specific trajectory.

Earth Vein Resonance! The mysterious girl suddenly bit her tongue, and the blood mist she spat out condensed into three Sand Hidden Sealing Talismans in the air.

Her bloodied left hand pressed against the corroded wound on Naruto's back, "Use your Sage Chakra to blast your Tanzhong acupoint!"

The Nine-Tailed Fox's ferocious roar suddenly turned into a deep, resonant sound.

The two intertwined chakra within Naruto's body briefly reached a balance under the harmonization of Sage Mode energy, and the spiral pattern on his forehead emitted a dazzling golden light.

Sasuke's Kusanagi sword suddenly flew back into his hand on its own, and the chakra threads wrapped around the sword resonated with the barrier controlled by the old man.

Cracks first appeared on the old man's face, which had regained its luster.

As Naruto's fist, imbued with natural energy, slammed into the barrier, Sasuke's Mangekyou Sharingan simultaneously detected the gaps in the operation of the twelve Truth-Seeking Balls.

The trajectory of the Kusanagi sword passed precisely through the intersection of the three chakra vortexes, and the sword's edge and Naruto's fist wind formed a perfect energy resonance point on the barrier surface.

A crisp cracking sound came from deep underground.

The sealing talisman thrown by the mysterious girl suddenly embedded itself in the center of the tree-like pattern formed by the sand, and the roots flowing with chakra began to twitch violently.

The ring on the old man's right ring finger shattered instantly, and a ghostly blue flame surged upwards along the broken chakra threads.

Now! Sasuke's bloody tears from his left eye traced an arc in the air.

His Amenotejikara was finally activated before the shadow was completely pinned down. The moment he and Naruto switched positions, the Rasengan, imbued with Sage Chakra, slammed heavily into the old man's chest.

The shrieking sound generated by the spatial distortion caused all three of them to bleed from their eardrums simultaneously.

The barrier fragments transformed into a shower of light that fell from the sky, and the old man's youthful body began to show bark-like cracks.

Naruto suddenly grabbed Sasuke's shoulder armor and used it to propel himself into the air. The giant shuriken formed by his nine tails completely shattered the Truth-Seeking Ball that had not yet been reassembled.

The mysterious girl's shoes sank into the suddenly liquefied sand.

She pulled out the puppet silk hidden on her side, and the circular array of twelve sealing kunai suddenly changed direction.

As the last kunai pierced the old man's nape, the unique sealing technique of Sunagakure finally manifested on the surface of his gradually petrifying skin.

"You actually..." The old man's words were interrupted by the roar of the surging earth veins.

His body began to decompose into countless luminous particles, with only the remaining chakra in his right hand condensing into a spirit pearl.

However, the moment the spirit pearl landed, layers upon layers of sealing arrays suddenly appeared on the sand within a radius of a hundred meters.

Naruto staggered and fell to his knees on the scorching sand.

Pale golden liquid seeped from the crack in the white bone horn on his forehead, and his upper body, covered in burns, was revealed after the Nine-Tails' chakra cloak was removed.

Sasuke used the Kusanagi sword to support his body. His Mangekyou Sharingan had returned to its normal form, and the blood scabs on his eyelashes kept falling off with his panting.

Don't touch that! The mysterious girl flicked out a puppet thread that wrapped around Naruto's wrist.

The blue runes on her bare right arm had completely disappeared, replaced by black patterns similar to the sealing array on the ground, and the sand around the spirit orb was reorganizing the sealing formula.

Sasuke used the tip of his sword to pick up a pebble and throw it at the spirit orb.

The instant the pebble entered the vicinity of the Spirit Pearl by three meters, seven chains formed from chakra suddenly shot out from the ground.

The runes floating on the surface of these chains flickered, simultaneously displaying the sealing characteristics of different schools of thought from the five great nations.

Naruto slammed his clenched fist into the sand.

Blood beads seeping from the unhealed wound on the back of his hand suddenly floated in mid-air after coming into contact with the faint light emitted by the spirit orb, forming an eerie blood mist barrier.

The puppet scroll at the girl's waist suddenly unfolded automatically, revealing a star map on its yellowed surface that perfectly corresponded to the sealing array on the ground.

This is not a trap... Sasuke's pupils suddenly contracted.

He noticed that the pattern formed by the intertwined chains perfectly matched a fragment of the Uchiha clan's stone tablet, indicating a higher-level spacetime seal.

The hot desert winds suddenly stopped.

The light emitted by the spirit pearl refracted into seven illusions under the midday sun, each illusion revealing the face of the old man at different stages of his life.

The mysterious girl suddenly coughed violently. The necklace fragment she had pressed into the sand was resonating with the spirit pearl, emitting a muffled sound like a heartbeat.

Naruto, supporting his heavily injured body, stood up, his azure pupils reflecting the ever-changing sealing array.

He reached out and wiped away the bloodstains obscuring his vision, discovering that all the sand grains within three meters of the spirit pearl had turned into translucent crystals.

Chapter 380 Forbidden Awakening

A sense of oppression, surpassing even the chakra of the tailed beasts, was slowly awakening from the depths of the earth's veins. Even the low growl of the Nine-Tails in his consciousness space became unusually suppressed.

Sasuke's sword tip suddenly began to tremble on its own.

As he intently observed the spiritual light reflected from the sword, he suddenly noticed that each ray of light contained a blurry human-shaped shadow.

The struggling postures of these shadows reminded him of the Uchiha spirits trapped in the Tsukuyomi space, and cold sweat instantly seeped from his sword-wielding palm.

The mysterious girl suddenly tore off the sleeve of her right arm.

Her pale skin was covered with black patterns that flowed in sync with the sealing array on the ground. When the patterns spread to her collarbone, the kunai controlled by the puppet threads suddenly turned their blades and pointed them at Naruto.

"Get out of the Spirit Pearl's range by ten meters!" She practically screamed as she threw out those words, her fingers flying as she severed all the puppet threads.

However, it was too late. The still hot wind suddenly transformed into sharp blades and swept over, and the crystalline sand around the Spirit Pearl began to grow chakra roots similar to those the old man had used before.

The dust kicked up by Naruto's leap formed a brief barrier in front of him.

When he opened his eyes again, he discovered that the newly grown chakra roots were actually woven from countless miniature sealing talismans.

Nine-Tails roared a warning in his consciousness space, and some ancient memory fragments originating from the Sage of Six Paths suddenly flashed in his mind.

Sasuke's Sharingan bled again.

In his blurred vision, each sealing talisman presented a different fragment of time and space—there was the puppet workshop of Sunagakure, the lightning barrier of Kumogakure, and even the Naga Shrine of Konoha that had not yet been built.

These fragments of spacetime are frantically devouring the surrounding natural energy through the medium of the spirit orbs.

The mysterious girl suddenly slammed the puppet scroll into the sand.

The moment the star chart on the scroll overlapped with the sealing array on the ground, the spirit orb suddenly projected a three-dimensional array that covered the entire desert.

Naruto saw the red dots flashing at the edge of the array rapidly approaching their location; it was a chakra fluctuation even more terrifying than the Tailed Beast Ball.

The gravel made a soft, crackling sound on the soles of the boots.

Naruto reached out to stop Sasuke, who was trying to investigate. The Sage Mode markings on Sasuke's forehead had not completely faded and were now flickering with the light of the Spirit Orb.

The crystallized sand began to spread outwards, causing even the air to appear unnaturally distorted wherever it went.

This is not the end at all... Sasuke wiped the blood crust from his lips, and the Kusanagi sword carved a trench in the ground to block the flow of energy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mysterious girl drawing a reverse sealing array with her blood. The winding blood lines evaporated into black mist the moment they touched the crystalline sand.

The spirit pearl suddenly rose to a height of three meters above the ground.

The chains that bound it began to multiply in a way that defied the laws of physics, with each new chain ending in cuneiform script similar to that used by the old man.

Naruto felt the ninja headband in his arms getting hot. When he looked down, he found that the Konoha symbol on the headband was resonating with the light of the Spirit Orb.

The desert horizon began to distort.

Naruto gripped his headband tightly and took two steps back, as the Nine-Tails' chakra automatically formed a protective layer under his instinctive warning.