บท 754: Chapter 748 : The Impact of Fujin's Existence!
Before the God of Death could extract Hiruzen's entire soul, a blade of wind appeared out of thin air and sliced through Hiruzen's soul! For the very first time, the smile on the face of the God of Death disappeared! His eyes widened as around 20% of Hiruzen's soul returned to his body.
He immediately extended his arm towards Hiruzen's body, but before he could reach his body, the God of Death began disappearing! The Reaper Death Seal jutsu had ended. Hiruzen fell to the ground with a smile on his face!
Shock appeared on Jiraiya's face as he wondered, 'What in the world was that? Could only a part of the soul be used as a sacrifice for this jutsu? Regardless, this is good news. The only question is, can Sensei live with so little of his soul remaining?'
However, there was one person even more shocked than Jiraiya. And, that person was none other than Fujin. He looked at Hiruzen with a stunned expression and exclaimed internally, 'What the hell??? That's my fucking Wind Domain!!! When did this old fox copy it?'
The Wind blade that sliced Hiruzen's soul wasn't from Fujin or any other ninja. It was used by none other than Hiruzen!
After Minato's death, Hiruzen had studied the Reaper Death Seal in great detail! He reached such a stage that no other ninja in history, including the Uzumaki ninja who created this seal, knew as much about it as Hiruzen did. It was during this study, Hiruzen realized that once the enemy's soul had been sealed, there was a chance that the caster could continue living by cutting his own soul and deactivating the jutsu.
However, there were several issues. The very first was that the God of Death's blade couldn't be used for that purpose. And, normal attacks couldn't cut through the soul perfectly and could end up destroying the soul entirely.
Hence, Hiruzen worked on creating a jutsu that could cut through the soul perfectly. It wasn't very difficult to do due to his expertise in manipulating Yin chakra. He created a jutsu that looked very similar to the Blade of Wind but had very little Wind chakra and far more Yin chakra which was the most effective against souls.
That led him to the second issue, which was to time the jutsu to cut through his soul at the perfect time. In order for this to work, he would need to wait until the God of Death sealed the soul of his enemy and only then cut his soul.
However, the God of Death took both souls at almost the same time. There was an extremely small window of opportunity to cut his soul and still live after using the Reaper Death Seal. If he created the jutsu early and waited, the God of Death could become suspicious and take his soul before the enemy's soul. On the other hand, if he waited until the God of Death sealed the enemy's soul, it would be too late. Trying to make a move hastily would only result in the caster's death.
For over a decade, Hiruzen couldn't solve this issue. He had pretty much given up on it. Fortunately, he gained the solution to his problem when he saw Fujin using the Wind Domain! It perfectly resolved the timing problem.
Hence, it could be said that Hiruzen's survival was an impact of Fujin transmigrating to the Naruto world. Without Fujin, Hiruzen would have never seen the Wind Domain and wouldn't have any chance of survival after using the Reaper Death Seal. Even though Fujin was shocked to see Hiruzen copying his technique, he was relieved to see the future possibly changing.
When Hiruzen was debating whether to seal Orochimaru or not, he had two choices. The first was to wait for Fujin and Jiraiya and have them injure Orochimaru and consume his chakra. That way, he could seal his soul entirely. However, Hiruzen had very little chakra left. Even if Orochimaru ran out of chakra, his willpower alone would require every bit of Hiruzen's chakra to seal him.
That meant that he wouldn't have any chakra left to save himself. He would have still done it had Orochimaru's death been absolute. However, knowing that he could still be revived, Hiruzen decided to ensure his own safety. If he lived, he could once again counter the Edo Tensei jutsu in the future and the next Hokage wouldn't need to sacrifice his or her life to stop Orochimaru again.
Hence, Hiruzen released most of his chakra into the air, which transformed into Winds consisting of a high amount of Yin Chakra. The God of Death didn't pay any attention to it since it mixed with the air while Orochimaru's attention was more on the God of Death.
Hiruzen waited until the right moment and made a move right after the fragment of Orochimaru's soul had been sealed and ended the jutsu right after. Of course, even if he was alive for the moment, the damage to his soul was truly devastating. He fell unconscious as soon as his soul was sliced!
In a secret base in the Land of Grass, Jugo exclaimed in panic, "Kimimaro! What happened to you? Did your illness flare up again?"
Juzo was talking to Kimimaro when Kimimaro suddenly collapsed to his knees. Even though he didn't scream, the pain was visible on his face. He placed his hand on his curse seal and thought, 'This pain… Orochimaru-sama…'
"Old man! Give me my arms!" Orochimaru screamed in rage. However, Hiruzen had already lost consciousness.
"Orochimaru-sama!" Tayuya, Kidomaru and Sakon shouted as they flickered towards him. Orochimaru glanced at them and noticed Fujin and Jiraiya right behind them. He shouted, "Kill Hiruzen!"
Tayuya, Kidomaru and Sakon were surprised by the order. But, they didn't dare to disobey his command. Despite his injuries, Enma got up and said resolutely, "You'll have to go through me!"
However, his feeble appearance wasn't enough to intimidate them. What worried them more was the ones chasing after them. Due to having used most of their chakra to sustain the barrier, all of them were on their last leg. And, they were well aware that even if they were at their full strength, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
Sakon muttered, "This will be our last attack!"
Ukon chuckled and said, "Taking the life of the Third Hokage and his powerful summon, that's not a bad way to go!"
'Multi-leg Hurricane jutsu'
Tayuya thought, 'To think that I'll die in this shitty place! Who'd have thought that this old geezer still held such fearsome power!'
'Demon Flute: Trio Requiem'
Kidomaru thought, 'I never imagined that Orochimaru-sama could lose… Konoha, we completely underestimated them. Even if Kimimaro and the Fourth Kazekage had participated, I don't think the result would have been any different. Directly attacking Konoha was a grave error!'
'Spider Bow: Fierce Rip jutsu'
'Wild Lion's Mane jutsu'
'Wind Release: Vacuum Cluster Bullets jutsu'
Seeing the remaining members of the Sound Four launching attacks at Enma and Hiruzen, Fujin and Jiraiya immediately acted. Despite having a lead over Fujin and Jiraiya, their attacks paled in terms of speed.
Fujin's Vacuum Bullets pierced through the arrows shot by Kidomaru, destroying and diverting all of them. Moments later, they rampaged through the Doki summoned by Tayuya, killing every single one of them.
Finally, the Vacuum Bullets entered the hurricane surrounding Sakon and Ukon. Normal Air Bullets and even Vacuum Bullets would have been diverted due to the winds of the hurricane. However, that didn't happen with Fujin's attack. Before either of them could realize it, several holes opened up in their weird body! Another member of the Sound Four fell in Konoha!
While Fujin directly countered their attacks, Jiraiya's hair extended towards Hiruzen and Enma, protecting both of them. With Jiraiya defending Hiruzen, Fujin focused entirely on the offense. Winds appeared from his Wind Cloak and several Wind Blades moved towards Tayuya and Kidomaru.
With nothing to hide behind, Tayuya was defenseless. She immediately tried to summon another Doki to hide behind but failed to do so. She cursed, "Shit! I don't have any chak…"
Wind blades cut straight through her throat, beheading her on the spot. Dozens of Wind Blades also hit Kidomaru, but he protected himself by secreting sticky spider gold from his pores. Unfortunately, even that didn't buy him much time as a Vacuum Bullet pierced straight through the third eye on his forehead. Fujin didn't even glance at him and instead used his Vacuum Gatling jutsu on Orochimaru!
Orochimaru's expression was grim. He had already been on the receiving end of that jutsu once. In his current state, he had no chance of dodging the jutsu. Jiraiya noticed it as well and wondered, 'Is this it for Orochimaru?'
[A/N: Jeez, I never had my balls questioned so many times in span of two weeks, lol. Well, now you know why I made that author's note in 704. I knew right then that these last few chapters would be super controversial, especially with the stuff related to fate, Edo Tensei and Hiruzen's death (ps: He's still very injured. No promises on whether he makes it through or not).
I'm genuinely grateful that nearly everyone on pat reon gave me the benefit of the doubt and decided to wait until the arc was done. The comment section on Web novel, as expected, was brutal, especially on those couple of days.
As someone who has read a lot, I can understand that emotions can run high, but please do give the author some time if he/she asks for it. Extremely demotivating otherwise. Was considering taking some time off Web novel for sake of my mental well being, but the vast number of readers who decided to trust me kinda ensured that I didn't need that. So, thanks guys :)
I guess there still might be some who didn't like how this particular fight ended. Unfortunately, I can't satisfy everyone, but I hope you guys enjoyed the suspense and the twists :)
Anyway, I guess I owe some explanations. When I said I'll be taking some liberties with canon content, I was referring to the Reaper Death Seal and Edo Tensei. I've explained the changes to the Reaper Death Seal in this chapter.
As for the Edo Tensei jutsu, the data was very little. One of the questions I had to think about a lot was - why did Orochimaru revive just the 3 Hokage? Why didn't he revive more to win the war? While the obvious answer is the plot, I couldn't use that 😅
Hence, initially, I had decided to nerf Edo Tensei jutsu, so that Orochimaru could do only what he did in the canon. However, I had the idea to do the reverse later on and I felt that this would fit the story a lot better. Not only would it counter the fact that Fujin is extremely strong and Konoha is very prepared, but it also gave me an opportunity to do justice to Hiruzen's prowess.
I know some of you said that Orochimaru didn't summon more because he couldn't, but that isn't mentioned anywhere in the original story. The only part that was later added was that Hashirama and Tobirama were much weaker than their peak (which was a restriction I followed). Yeah, you can easily spin the story to say that Orochimaru's limit is 3 Edo Tensei, and that wouldn't be wrong either, but I decided to go the other way.
Another thing I should address is the 'Wind Calamity' title for Fujin. I know many of you were expecting it in this battle, but there's still some time for it. I won't say when it'll happen, but I can promise you this - When it does happen, the battle will be more epic than Fujin's battles in this volume. That scene was something I thought of even before I wrote the first chapter and have thought of it for much longer than I thought of Fujin Vs Orochimaru!
Anyway, all said and done, one of my main focuses while writing a story was inconsistency and keeping plot holes to the minimum (or best if there were none). Unfortunately, we have our first inconsistency in the story.
According to my initial plans, Hiruzen was supposed to die in this fight like in the original story. However, as I kept writing, I felt that the story would be far better if I did otherwise. I did think about it for several months before making this decision. So, I've to kick myself for needlessly adding that statement in chapter 108 (though it could still be true if Hiruzen dies).
Anyway, this would affect some of my other plans. The epic ending I had planned for Danzo can't happen if Hiruzen lives. So, I may have to think of a new epic ending for him (and have been getting quite a few good ideas in the comments). My plot for Shippuden would need major changes too (though I'd have to make drastic changes even if Hiruzen had died here. Fujin has grown too strong and his impact has been felt throughout the world). So, I may need to take a longish break if I can't think of all the changes in time.
Luckily, I do have the events until the timeskip planned out very well. Have a good structure and several major events (though one could be extremely controversial) and battles planned out during the timeskip. So, I'll have quite some time to think about Shippuden (and hopefully, we won't need any long breaks after the timeskip).
And, this goes without saying, but ideas from you guys are always welcomed. Those who read the comments should have noticed that I do use several of the ideas that you guys give me to make the story even better than what I can do alone :)
Anyway, I have talked quite a lot, lol. Enjoy your day, guys :) Have a nice day and stay safe and healthy!]
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