Chapter 147: A Joke in the Flames

"Hahahaha~~~"

Those who understood were already laughing wildly, while those who didn't were still utterly bewildered. Meanwhile, An禄山 (An Lushan) was grinding his teeth in furious rage.

"Always like this... always like this..."

"When will you ever take me seriously, my Emperor?!"

His anger made the purple flames even more violent, sweeping across the entire plaza and leaving scorched earth in their wake.

"You're not even a girl, why would I take you seriously?" Baimu sprinted at full speed using Ghost Step, leaving the flames temporarily unable to catch up, a playful smile plastered across his face.

"My Emperor, blinded by female beauty, please die right now!" An Lushan roared, a pillar of purple energy erupting from his mouth. It swept across a towering structure, reducing the entire pagoda to a cascade of debris that crashed down toward the crowd.

"Blinded? Where are the cute girls?" Baimu raised an eyebrow, pressing his sword against its scabbard and drawing forth a ferocious tornado that forcefully blew the shattered pagoda off in another direction.

"Your... Ma... jesty!" An Lushan was practically bursting with rage, gathering another mouthful of purple flames. The energy draw this time caused the lights throughout the entire city to flicker.

"Oh ho, he's genuinely pissed." Baimu felt that this attack would be genuinely difficult to dodge.

"I don't want to waste any time. I'll take this one," Kakuzu stepped forward with a heavy stride and began weaving hand signs with a solemn expression.

"Game's over. My turn too," Baimu stood shoulder to shoulder with Kakuzu, the smile fading from his face.

"Water Style: Water Torrent Barrier!"

Countless water droplets gathered behind Kakuzu, slowly forming a surging, great river that coiled like a giant serpent. Loulan's oasis had finally restored his ability to unleash Water Style techniques.

Baimu lowered his stance, his thumb pressing heavily onto the hilt of his blade. A buzzing cyan glow continuously built up within the scabbard.

"If you ruin my hearts again, a little bit of money won't be enough to fix it," Kakuzu warned in an icy tone.

"I know, it'll take gold," the wind blade in Baimu's hand vibrated at a terrifying speed, his wrist struggling to keep it suppressed.

Yasuo, who had inherited the full mastery of the Way of the Wandering Wind, was far more than just a one-trick pony shouting "Hasaki."

"Super Dragon Vein Flame Technique!" An Lushan's purple flames were the first to spew from his mouth, manifesting as a complete fire dragon that roared as it charged forward.

Kakuzu's Water Torrent Barrier met it head-on like a rushing torrent. At the point of initial contact, the great river hissed and boiled violently as a thick mist filled the skies. Although Water Style countered Fire Style, the gap in their chakra power levels left Kakuzu's ninjutsu slightly outmatched, his technique being steadily scorched away by the fire dragon.

"Wind Breathing... Thirteenth Form..."

Baimu took a deep breath. The sword in his hand felt impossibly heavy; the simple act of drawing it from the scabbard felt extraordinarily arduous, as if he were trying to pull up an entire mountain.

"Tornado Shreds the Short Skirt!!"

Whoosh! A cyan tornado with a diameter of fully ten meters was dragged out by the unsheathed blade. The howling wind carried a powerful suction force that swept up everything in its surroundings—puppet parts, fallen rubble, shattered glass, and the girls' short skirts...

"Ahhhhh..." The girls shrieked, clutching their skirts tightly.

"Wind Style really is a wonderful thing!" Baimu's gaze gradually turned lecherous.

Maki's face turned green with intense jealousy. This ninjutsu with such a bizarre name could blatantly blow up girls' skirts—he wanted to learn it so damn badly!

Kakuzu's Water Torrent Barrier river actively merged with the tornado, transforming into a combined ninjutsu: the Water Dragon Tornado. It charged at the purple fire dragon once more, swallowing it whole. Under the intertwining might of three immensely powerful chakras, the flames steadily dissipated into water vapor that rose into the sky, remarkably forming a once-in-a-millennium cumulonimbus cloud right above the desert.

Finally, the fire dragon was extinguished, and the water dragon tornado dissipated. The nozzle on An Lushan's puppet mouth had turned glowing red, as if it would melt the very next second. After all, it was a man-made creation; although it lacked meridian restrictions and had infinite chakra, it was still limited by its materials. To be able to burn for this long and only turn red meant it could probably be used to build rocket engines.

"Don't think it's over just yet! A thousand cuts will only make His Majesty die in even greater agony!" An Lushan's puppet body, entirely covered in razor-sharp blades, began to spin at terrifying speed. The wildly revolving blades acted like a tunnel boring machine, instantly driving him deep underground.

Feeling the slight tremor of the earth beneath his feet, nobody knew where this blade-centipede would burst out from, forcing everyone to heighten their perception and remain vigilant against attacks from below.

Just when everyone thought the attack would target Baimu, a gaping maw lined with jagged fangs burst out from the ground, snapping directly toward Karin. There was a reason for this: that Z-shaped time drive had to be destroyed at all costs. If that happened, no one would ever be able to travel back to this era again—unless they were as lucky as he was.

It was like falling into a meat grinder; the high-speed rotating blades could shred anything, and even a block of solid steel would be reduced to a pile of iron ash upon contact.

"Hey! Your daughter just got swallowed!" Yura gave Baimu a nudge, who was still acting entirely unbothered.

"Tsk, of all people to swallow, he had to swallow my Karin. He's begging to chip his teeth." Baimu hugged his scabbard and chuckled, looking as if he were merely watching a show.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch...

Inside the puppet, it sounded as though someone had jammed dozens of blocks of granite into a meat grinder, producing a relentless chorus of shattering blades.

"You idiot! This is the only outfit I brought! Rising Dragon Fist!" The Uzumaki clan possessed immense life force and had always been masters of monstrous physical strength. Karin unleashed a punch fueled by furious rage, shattering the puppet's upper jaw and sending the entire An Lushan puppet hurtling up into the sky.

To the utter astonishment of everyone present, the blades inside that tattered, gaping maw were broken beyond a single usable scrap. Karin leaped out, clutching her slightly tattered clothes, yet not a single scratch could be found on her fair skin.

Just how tough was this girl?! She actually managed to shatter iron fangs!

Facing such a gigantic creature sent flying high into the air, I ask you—what man could possibly resist such temptation?

"Face the wind!"

"Wind's Consummation Tempest Slash!!!"

Baimu's fierce eyes snapped wide open as he flashed to An Lushan's side with lightning speed. The longsword in his hand extended into a forty-meter-long cyan blade arc, slashing viciously across the puppet's torso. In his wind-consummated state, his focus reached absolute perfection. The wind-attribute chakra coating the blade amplified its destructive power to an extreme degree—commonly known as armor-penetrating.

Clang, clang, clang, clang...

A flurry of blade light danced through the air, as if a rain of cherry blossoms were falling across the heavens and earth. The blade of the gale sliced through the steel-crafted puppet like tofu, effortlessly peeling it apart piece by piece, layer by layer.

Until An Lushan's true form was finally revealed—a gnashing, bearded old vassal, heavily kneeling on the ground in bitter tears.

"Why... why... why did I still lose..."

"People are not born equal, nor is strength. Your puppet jutsu is quite impressive, and you can be considered a talent. If you drove a tunnel boring machine to mine for twenty-four hours a day, you probably could have brought a moment of greatness to Loulan, right?" Baimu touched his chin, suddenly thinking of something as his brain tangled once more in temporal chaos.

If he didn't kill An Lushan now, would Baizu become An Lushan Number Two in the future? Would that mean an endless spawning nest of An Lushans?

"I cannot lose... I am the Dragon Vein, I am Loulan, we are one, I cannot lose...!!!"

Boom! Boom!!

The entire earth trembled anew, and the horizon itself was forcefully elevated by over a dozen meters, exposing the true puppet factory deeply hidden underground.

Countless fully automated puppet assembly lines rose up, with semi-finished and finished products densely packed together like larvae in a beehive, making it impossible to imagine how an underground project of this scale could have been completed in just a few short years.

"I'm warning you, if you dare court death again, don't blame me." Baimu rested the edge of his blade against An Lushan's neck.

"Emperor... I told you... I am Loulan, and Loulan is me... Hahahaha... I will not die, and I will not lose." An Lushan laughed maniacally, proactively driving his own neck straight into the blade. His neck was severed with a dull crunch—he was nothing more than a puppet double after all.

"You've got to be kidding me, another one? Damn it..."

Baimu stared at the puppet soldiers continuously launching into the air. They blotted out the sky, practically obscuring the entire night sky. Was the Loulan arc in Naruto's era really this difficult? This had to be Abyss difficulty!