As Tsunade's chakra was violently siphoned away, a few tiny but glaringly clear wrinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes and on her cheeks. They spiderwebbed across her skin like cracks in parched earth.

"Hehehe… hehehe…"

Kisame let out a heavy, satisfied breath, a guttural sound of pure ecstasy. He could feel the vast, pure, ocean-like chakra being transmitted through Samehada, flooding his senses. The power was so immense, so delicious, that Samehada was so excited he could barely control it.

A fierce smile of victory spread across Kisame's face, his small eyes narrowing into slits from the extreme excitement. "It's over, Lady Tsunade. I'll accept your chakra! And as a return gift…" He licked his lips, revealing his sharp, white, shark-like teeth. "I'll give you a quick death!"

Kisame exerted his strength, trying to drag Tsunade—who was firmly latched onto by Samehada and seemingly drained of all strength—over to him to deliver the fatal blow. However, at the very moment Kisame believed victory was his and that his prey had completely lost the ability to resist, Tsunade, who had been lowering her head, gasping heavily, and looking utterly weak, suddenly raised her face.

Her expression did not show the expected despair or fear. Instead, it held an extremely abrupt, cold smile, tinged with a hint of madness. The corners of Tsunade's mouth curled upward, revealing her snow-white teeth. On a face that now showed the subtle signs of aging from the chakra drain, the smile was jarringly strange, utterly frightening.

The grim smile on Kisame's face froze instantly. An indescribable, icy chill, like a venomous snake, suddenly slithered up his spine.

"Heh…" Tsunade's voice sounded, hoarse and weak, but with a kind of cold sarcasm that saw through everything, that held absolute control of the situation. It clearly penetrated the greedy sucking sound of Samehada and the violent downpour of the rain.

"Enjoying the meal, are you? Monster?"

"What?!" Alarm bells rang wildly in Kisame's heart. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Tsunade's amber eyes, which had seemed a little dim from the chakra depletion, were now surprisingly bright, like burning embers, fixed on Kisame's confused and dawning horror. Her smile widened, taking on a terrifying calmness that was almost cruel in its confidence.

"You plunderers… you never understand a single thing." Tsunade's voice was not loud, but it hit Kisame's heart like a heavy hammer. "What medical ninjas are best at…" She paused slightly, each word sounding as if it were chiseled from a block of ice, "is never about saving lives."

"But…" Her lips opened and closed silently, uttering the final, decisive words:

"!"

The moment the words fell, Tsunade's only free hand—her left—suddenly stabbed into the ground beneath her feet. There was no light at her fingertips, no overflow of chakra, only a resolute will to detonate everything.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The entire canyon—no, the entire world—seemed to go completely insane at that moment. The ground beneath Tsunade's feet didn't just collapse; it was crushed and violently lifted from within, as if by an invisible, titanic hand. With the point where her left hand was inserted as the epicenter, a destructive force was instantly detonated. Follow current novᴇls on NoveI-Fire.ɴet

That was the chakra she had been quietly releasing with every earth-shattering step, with every punch that crushed the ground and bombarded the rock walls. Like laying a series of deadly mines, it had been precisely injected and compressed, buried deep within the canyon's very foundations.

A terrifying chess game.

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