When Uehara decided to wash his hands and run, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. But the last thing he expected to happen was the sight of thousands, if not millions of ice senbon needles raining down on him from the skies.

Evading them was out of question and if he could, he would’ve long since went deep underground. The only problem with that part was that there was a literal ocean of water under him. It didn’t even help things any further when he saw his father smiling at him while standing atop an iceberg with his arms crossed.

The sky was already dark from the senbon shower but Uehara’s day was even darker. The stone slab he had with him was already showing signs of cracking and the constant hail of of ice senbon needles made it hard to manipulate the existing dust in the air. He could barely bring in enough to patch up the tiny shield that was stopping him from becoming a pin cushion.

Deciding that he couldn’t stay like this any longer, he pumped in as much chakra as he could into his shield so that he could buy time for what he was about to do.

It still pained him that he couldn’t access any his other elements besides earth. Otherwise, he would’ve long since teleported away from the numerous war-crime-level atrocities his father inflicted upon him.

Knowing he barely has more than ten seconds before his shield breaks, he lifted his hand and formed the famous seal of reconciliation gesture.

(AN: At the valley of end, both Hashirama’s and Madara’s statues are forming the seal of reconciliation gesture. The seal is also used in the academy spars. It’s like the gun hand-sign but facing up. The pointing and middle fingers are upright while the ring and pinky fingers are folded. The thumb as well is pressed close to the pointing finger.)

The seal itself was what he chose as the gesture to help focus his chakra. Based on its origins as the hand-sign for Yin-Yang release, he chose it as a way to help himself regain balance and focus.

Moulding his earth chakra, he began absorbing the nature energy around him. Normally, he would’ve taken the time to analyse how it feels but right now, he didn’t have the leisure. So he decided to, in layman’s terms…wing it.

FUSSSHHH

The result was almost instantaneous. With all the other aspects of his chakra besides the earth aspect being suppressed, the nature energy instantly mixed with the earth chakra. Because of how violent the nature energy was pouring in, the changes happened too fast for Uehara to process.

With immediate affect, his skin turned maroon-brown while his hair spiked up a bit and turned a rusty-red. His shriveled physique bulked up considerably, putting him at almost the same muscle mass as when he is in his aura-flowing state technique. The aura he was releasing was copper-brown in colour, faintly resembling dense clusters of dust in appearance.

But that wasn’t the most pressing issue. Standing atop his iceberg a few hundred-metres from his son, Volkarin looked at his son’s pupil-less eyes and he smiled.

[It will make no difference.]

Indeed, Uehara was blind. He was being assaulted with so much power that he couldn’t maintain his sight. It was automatically taken away so that his brain would have more leeway to control or atleast gain a hold over the power without having to also process the input from sight.

With his ability to manipulate the earth now bolstered by his sage transformation, all the dust particles in the vicinity seemed to scramble to aid Uehara in reinforcing the almost broken stone slab that was above him.

While some of the dust reinforced the sand, Uehara increased the density of some of the dust in order to convert it to obsidian. Lifting his hand up, he added it to the stone slab that was now increasing in size.

Seeming to have gotten the rhythm, he repeated the process multiple times over at much higher speeds. In less than half-a-minute, an obsidian slab with a perimeter of four-kilometres was formed above Uehara. The hardened-earth layer formed to buy time for the obsidian to be formed had long since been destroyed.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Waving his hand, the stone slab rose up like a bolt of lightning, forcefully dispersing the clouds responsible for the senbon hailstorm.

Watching the clouds disperse, Volkarin gave a nod of approval.

[The way he’s controlling the earth is exactly like my grandfather.]

Right now, the earth seems to have flipped over. There was a giant slab of obsidian high in the skies while there was an ocean of water on the ground.

Volkarin stared transfixed at the calm demeanour his son was giving off. With so much nature energy in his body, it allowed him to tap into his blood that contains the instincts of his ancestors.

Flexing his neck and allowing it to crack, Volkarin’s eyes turned red with four black lotus petals surrounding the pupils in a cross.

“COME, MY SON!”

Standing atop an obsidian slab with a slightly crunched expression on his face, Uehara leaned forward a bit…before shooting off towards his father.

Hundreds of obsidian hands from the giant slab in the sky descended with him as well like lightning. Volkarin didn’t disappoint as well. Letting a tornado of water cover him from the waist down, he rose up to meet his son, matching the hundreds of obsidian hands coming towards him with hundreds of water drills to ascend with him.

…

Island of Aokigahara, Japan

“Agh…nee-san?”

The red-head called out after sensing the familiar chakra of her sister in all but blood. Slowly rising up from the bed, a hand went to her head instinctively due to a mild headache she was feeling.

Then, it hit her. The memories started popping up, the repeated torture sessions clouding her mind, the pain of feeling her body crumble under the potent ki and…

“Sakura!”

Sakura’s face was forcefully grabbed and turned towards Chizuki’s.

“Calm down! We’re safe!”

Apparently, the thought didn’t quite get through because Sakura was now visibly trembling while her head darted in every direction examining an escape route. Chizuki had to forcefully strain her hands to keep Sakura from looking around in an erratic fashion.

“Sakura! Listen to me! We made it out! We’re alive! Master saved us!”

It was then that Sakura’s eyes regained some clarity.

“Aoki-sama s-saved us?”

It was then that the waterworks began. Knowing that she wasn’t in that basement anymore allowed her to release the tears she had so defiantly not allowed herself to release during the entire time she was imprisoned.

Chizuki brought Sakura into a hug, allowing the girl to cry into her chest. Gently scratching the back of her Sakura’s hair, Chizuki couldn’t help but sigh.

[...I should’ve known that it would’ve been too much for her.]

Truthfully speaking, Sakura hadn’t been exposed to as many atrocities as Uehara and her. While Chizuki could shrug off the experience, Sakura couldn’t. Chizuki was no stranger to torture before meeting her master.

As a spy that was prepared for an arranged marriage into the Fujiwara clan, she had to undergo some amount of shinobi training. To avoid causing the more discerning eye to suspect anything, she had been trained into the more subtler arts like poison, stealth, infiltration and intelligence gathering. If she had trained in any martial arts or conditioned her body, an experienced eye would be able to notice how her body was stronger than normal, thus placing suspicion on her.

Regardless, her training had forced her to be injected with milder doses of poisons to build up resistance and, she’s had literal screws twisted into her body in the worst case that she gets caught and is tortured for intelligence. Even mental torture was used. Being subjected to constant genjutsu allowed her to build up a resistance to most illusion techniques.

This was how why most torture techniques didn’t work on her. But the same couldn’t be said for Sakura. Although training with Uehara is harsh in its own right, a bone broken instantly and without knowing is much better than a bone slowly being broken and knowing. Even then, Uehara always made sure to lower their pain sensitivity for their spars.

But the struggles Sakura went through in that hellhole were way more than what she could handle. Even now, Chizuki believes that if Sakura had not opened the second path, the trauma may have very well caused her to kill herself.

Chizuki didn’t speak any further and allowed the redhead to cry onto her chest. The gods only knew how much she needed this release. Even with the second path granting her nearly a millennium of life-experience, she was still a teenage girl at heart.

Cupping the young maiden’s face, Chizuki spoke.

“Listen to me Sakura. We made it out of there alright? We’re fine. Everything’s fine now.”

However, Sakura didn’t reply at all. She was truly shaken at heart. The tears didn’t stop coming. Her hands were trembling erratically and Chizuki was doing her best to calm Sakura down. Unfortunately, the trauma ran too deep.

Sakura started hyperventilating.

“I…I-I’m-”

At that moment, Shikibu entered the room with her four tails out. Coming behind Sakura, she gently wrapped her and Chizuki in her tails.

“Ssssshhhh. Calm down little munchkin. Grandma is here for you.”

Different from her usual sultry voice, her words came out in a soothing tone, like the notes of a zither. Surprisingly, Sakura calmed down and no sooner than a minute later, she passed out.

Chizuki was about to let go when Shikibu held her hand.

“Stay with her. The person she needs the most right now is the person who suffered with her, who understands her pain.”

Chizuki didn’t even debate the decision, having come to the conclusion that it made sense. Slowly lying down with Sakura on the bed, she watched Shikibu walk out of the room…towards the other room where an unconscious Uehara was.

“...”

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[THIS BITCH!!!]