Meanwhile, inside the wooden house formed by the Four-Pillar House Technique, Fu blinked and stared at Shinichi.
"Help you train...?" she asked, tilting her head in confusion. "What should I do?"
Shinichi didn't answer. He stepped closer, his eyes dropping to her stomach. Then he reached out.
Fu watched his hand approach, still confused. She didn't dodge.
Shinichi pressed his palm against her belly. Beneath the girl's warmth, he could feel it...violent, surging chakra boiling deep inside her core.
Fu stiffened.
"W-wait... wait..." she stammered, finally sensing that something was wrong. "What are you do...?"
Before she could finish, a concentrated burst of chakra erupted from Shinichi's palm.
"Release."
The single word struck Fu like a thunderclap.
Fwoosh!
Dark red chakra exploded from her abdomen.
"Aargh!" Fu cried out sharply, her body arching backward.
The dense chakra engulfed her instantly, forming a bubbling cloak. Her eyes lost focus, the irises swallowed by a violent crimson glare.
One, two, three... dark red chakra tails whipped wildly behind her, cracking through the air.
Four, five, six!
All six tails unfurled, rapidly taking the shape of three pairs of wings.
But the transformation didn't stop...
A seventh tail slowly emerged from the base of her spine, thicker and longer than the rest, its surface plated with coarse, carapace-like armor.
Squelch!
Fu's body began to swell.
The corrosive chakra was no longer just a cloak. It proliferated, solidified, building new flesh and blood.
Hard carapace surfaced from her skin and spread rapidly, enveloping her entire form.
Her limbs elongated and warped, twisting into a monstrous, insectoid silhouette.
A sinister crimson light blazed from the compound eyes on both sides of her head.
Roar!
A deafening screech tore from the beast's mouthparts. The sheer sound waves shook the wooden house to its foundations.
Boom!
The entire structure exploded. Broken beams, splinters, and sawdust blasted outward like a shrapnel storm, a thick cloud of dust shooting into the sky.
When the smoke cleared, a towering behemoth stood in the clearing by the riverbank. It had a massive insectoid body covered in heavy armor, with six thick legs sunken deep into the earth.
Three pairs of dark red wings vibrated rapidly on its back, while a huge seventh tail whipped wildly through the air.
Its crimson eyes locked onto the surroundings as its mandibles clicked open and shut, releasing a low, dangerous hum.
It was the Seven-Tails, Chomei. A complete tailed beast transformation.
Shinichi, who had already retreated to a safe distance, looked up. The enormous form of Chomei reflected in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth curled into a smirk.
"Finally," Shinichi murmured. "It begins."
This would be his second experiment in using Wood Release to absorb tailed beast chakra.
He clapped his hands together. The moment his fingers interlaced, a tremendous surge of chakra poured from his body and channeled directly into the earth.
"Wood Release: Advent of a World of Flowering Trees!"
Rumble!
The ground quaked violently. The earth beneath Chomei burst open as over a dozen giant, trunk-thick vines broke through the soil and immediately coiled toward the beast.
The wooden tendrils struck with incredible speed, tightly wrapping around Chomei's armored abdomen.
Several more branches lunged straight for the vibrating wings on its back, pinning them down to prevent it from taking flight.
Having just broken free of the sealing formula, Chomei's consciousness was still clouded by the lingering frenzy of the jinchuriki's rampage.
But the moment it saw the giant vines erupting from the earth, the crimson glow in its eyes froze.
This familiar sensation... this exact ninjutsu...
Shock pierced through the Seven-Tails' haze. Its compound eyes shifted rapidly, locking onto the Wood Release source far below.
But when it saw Shinichi's youthful face instead of the terrifying man from its nightmares, the panic gripping its core eased.
"Human!" Chomei's voice boomed. "Was it you who freed me? Why attack me now?!"
Shinichi looked up, meeting the beast's gaze. He released his clasped hands, raised his right arm, and made a sharp grasping motion in the air.
The giant vines binding Chomei violently tightened.
Creak! Crack!
The heavy carapace groaned under the immense crushing pressure.
"Chomei, your power is immense," Shinichi said, his expression dead serious, his eyes burning with ambition. "And I need it. So, hand it over!"
The Seven-Tails paused, surprised. "...You actually know my name?"
Its voice echoed with astonishment.
Since the era of the Sage of Six Paths, the number of humans who knew the true names of the tailed beasts could be counted on one hand. Especially a beast like Chomei, who rarely revealed such things to mortals!
But before it could process this revelation, the battlefield shifted. Countless large flower buds suddenly bloomed across the surface of the thick vines coiling around its body.
Fwoosh!
A thick mist of pale yellow pollen spewed from the blooming petals, instantly enveloping Chomei's head.
"This pollen...!"
Chomei recognized the danger immediately.
Reacting with lightning speed, the beast held its breath and surged its internal chakra, forcibly expelling the trace amounts of narcotic dust it had already inhaled.
Peering through the dense, fluttering pollen, it glared down at Shinichi. Its booming voice turned ice-cold...
"Cunning human! I don't know how you learned my name, but I can feel it... you hold no reverence for the tailed beasts! Only a naked desire to plunder!"
The behemoth struggled violently. Its three pairs of bound wings beat frantically, whipping up a fierce gale that blew away the immediate cloud of pollen.
"I will not sit back and await death, nor will I be so easily captured again!"
Chomei's massive mouthparts snapped open.
"Secret Technique: Scale Powder Hiding!"
A massive cloud of iridescent, shimmering scales spewed from its maw.
This was no ordinary dust... it was designed to completely obscure an enemy's vision and severely disrupt, or even entirely sever, their chakra perception.
Instantly, the glowing scales filled the air above the riverbank, perfectly cloaking Chomei's enormous body. The beast intended to use the smokescreen to break free of the vines and take flight
"Trying to use this to escape?" Shinichi's voice pierced the curtain of scales. He had instantly seen through the Seven-Tails' plan.
"It's useless. Before me, you have nowhere to run."
He clasped his hands together once more, his chakra erupting like a tidal wave.
The earth roared louder than before as a new behemoth tore out of the ground, lifting Shinichi high into the sky.
The wooden construct rose section by section, its dense, timber muscles bulging with terrifying power.
When it stood fully upright, the titan was actually a head taller than Chomei, casting a massive, oppressive shadow over the trapped beast.
Coiled tightly around the giant's torso was a ferocious Wood Dragon, its snarling head lowered, glaring menacingly into the thick scale powder mist.
"Wood Release: Wood Human Technique!"
The Wood Human raised its massive foot and took a heavy step forward.
Boom!
The impact sent tremors for miles.
The giant then drew back its clenched right fist and delivered a devastating punch straight toward the scale powder cloud, aimed perfectly at the Seven-Tails, still pinned in place by the flowering vines!
Inside the cloud, Chomei froze. Its compound eyes stared in absolute, unadulterated horror at the towering wooden giant.
That familiar silhouette. That oppressive aura of life energy that could make even a tailed beast suffocate...
'No... impossible...!'
In the depths of its consciousness, fragmented memories from decades ago violently resurfaced, bringing with them a tidal wave of primal fear.
It was sixty years ago, during the era when the hidden villages were first established. Chomei and the other tailed beasts had roamed freely across the world, unchallenged, until... he appeared.
He had worn red armor, standing calmly atop a Wood Human that rivaled mountains. With a single glance, he had made beings regarded as living natural disasters tremble in terror.
Hashirama Senju.
The man who, relying solely on his own monstrous strength, had beaten and distributed the tailed beasts like they were mere stray pups.
The flashback vanished in an instant. Chomei roared furiously at Shinichi.
"At your age... how can you possibly use the Wood Human Technique?!"
The tailed beast's voice hitched with terror. It couldn't understand... it refused to accept reality.
Even after witnessing the Wood Release vines, Chomei had still harbored the innate pride and contempt of a tailed beast.
It had reasoned that even if this human boy possessed Hashirama Senju's bloodline, his youth meant his chakra reserves and output had to be limited.
After all, Chomei was a tailed beast! An incarnation of the world's calamitous power! It wasn't just going to roll over and surrender in terror the moment it saw a few wooden beams.
But it had fundamentally miscalculated. The boy standing before it possessed a monstrous strength that nearly perfectly replicated that man's overwhelming power!
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