Chapter 257: Finale
Large tracts of land were scorched black, and beneath the broken, cracked surface, streams of lava shimmered faintly. The destruction stretched far wider than Tengan Shinsei. The earth looked as if it had been flipped inside out. Tree roots—twisted and tangled—were exposed to the sky, while mushroom clouds blanketed the sunlight above. At the center of the nuclear explosion, it was hell on earth.
Zixu and Orochimaru had vanished in the blast. It seemed they had perished together.
Due to Neji and his team's limited time for development—and given that the mineral resources in the Naruto world differed from those in the real world—the most lethal forms of nuclear radiation hadn't fully manifested. Even so, the devastation was overwhelming.
From beneath the rubble, a pitch-black earthworm slithered out, twisting its body unnaturally.
Karin and Hatsuizumi rushed to the center of the blast zone almost immediately. Although the radiation wasn't strong enough to be unmanageable, the thunderstorm and violent winds made progress difficult.
At first, the cyclone was small. But the chaotic air currents nearby quickly fed its growth. The dark thunderstorm surged toward a magma pool several hundred kilometers away, like a colossal dragon drawn to drink.
Hatsuizumi felt the pull—the immense suction from the storm. No, storm was no longer the right word. It had transformed into something else entirely: a towering, blazing tree of fire sprawled across the volcanic landscape.
The nuclear mushroom cloud above was being sucked into this firestorm. Every particle of dust was consumed. And just as Whirlpool Country had begun to recover from the last disaster, it now faced an even greater threat.
There was no time to hesitate. Neji gave the order immediately.
"Move! Pick up the shield generators—we're holding this together!"
Despite the sheer size of Whirlpool Country, the civilians, empowered by their tech, still had the strength to change the tide.