Chapter 79: Truly Stealing the Tower

“Power Dash!” “Phantom Ghost Step!”
Bai Mu curled himself into a massive, smooth stone sphere, rolling swiftly toward the watchtower—after all, this was a game about pushing towers.
“Stop him! Stop him!” Shikaku Nara no longer cared why the stone giant had turned into a battering ram; he would never allow such a behemoth to approach the watchtower.
“Thirty million, have you forgotten who you’re fighting? Fire Release: Head Carving!” Kakuzu spat a blaze of fire, blocking Shikaku Nara’s shadow technique.
“Hold on… just a moment longer…” Inoichi Yamanaka formed a peculiar sign with his hands, waiting for Bai Mu’s movement to be hindered before unleashing Mind Chaos.
“Were you the one who put the man to sleep on the battlefield just now?” A steam-powered heavy punch landed at Inoichi Yamanaka’s feet. If not for the swift Body Flicker Technique, he might have been turned to mush under the iron fist.
“Hurry! Hurry! Move faster!” Sweat beaded on the brow of the person changing the explosive arrow bolts atop the watchtower.
Within a thousand meters, Bai Mu rolled right up to Konoha’s final defensive line. Nearly a hundred Konoha shinobi stood beneath the tower, cheeks puffed, ready to unleash their jutsu in a head-on assault against the stone giant.
Bai Mu broke out of the Power Dash, deftly catching his stone club, and activated “EX: Counterstorm,” spinning the club like a propeller. Infusing it with wind chakra, he conjured a storm, advancing against the barrage of jutsu.
“Fire the arrows!”
“Unleash the jutsu!”
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…
Arrow bolts trailed explosive tags, shrieking like harbingers of death through the air.
Brilliant, multicolored jutsu streaked toward him—fireballs, water jets, wind blades, lightning whips—
Boom!
All crashed into the spinning stone club in Bai Mu’s hands. The arrows were deflected instantly, and the jutsu battered the club’s curtain; only a fraction of their force seeped through the gaps, hardly threatening him.
The EX Counterstorm reduced jutsu damage by fifty percent, and with the Banshee Veil and Resistance Boots adding to his jutsu resistance, these background shinobi might as well have been scratching an itch.
Pushing through the storm for another hundred meters, Bai Mu stopped as the five-second duration expired, resting on his stone club and twisting his arm, cramped and aching.
“He’s finally stopped… Is he out of strength?” The Hyuga captain atop the tower sighed in relief as the stone giant halted in place.
Bai Mu raised a thumb, squinting with one eye to aim at Konoha’s defensive line below the tower.

“Is he… giving us a thumbs-up again?” The Hyuga captain glanced at those beside him.
“No, I’m finding the optimal casting distance,” Bai Mu muttered to himself.
The next moment!
“Unstoppable Force!”
“Yasuo, get ready!”
Like thunder shattering the sky, the hundred-meter-tall stone giant squatted and exploded forth with terrifying speed, barreling into Konoha’s defensive line beneath the tower. With earth-shattering force, he crashed down, scattering the Konoha shinobi like blossoms in a storm.
“What… retreat, retreat!” Panic erupted within the watchtower.
Bai Mu, as tall as the hundred-meter watchtower, leaned in to peer at the terrified, chaotic group of shinobi inside. He grinned. “Feel the fear of being dominated by a giant!”
“Lin Daiyu uprooting the willow!”
Bai Mu bent his back, shoulders pressed to the tower, and with all his might, his stone arms strained—he intended to pull the entire watchtower out!
“Damn it, stop him! The reconnaissance shinobi are still up there!” The surviving Konoha shinobi converged, attacking Bai Mu’s feet with their weapons and jutsu.
“If you want a pedicure, perhaps Konoha’s finest technician should handle it?” Bai Mu stomped heavily.
“Earthquake Tremor!”
Boom—the entire ground quaked. The attackers lost their footing, their attack speed plummeting.
“Ahhhhh… Get up!”
Bai Mu poured out his chakra, draining A Fei to a dried radish, Kakuzu’s hearts shriveling. At last—a crack split the earth, and the watchtower was uprooted!
“Brother Yellow Earth, I’m heading home first! Keep fighting, hahahaha…”
Bai Mu shook the watchtower like a champagne bottle, sending the Hyuga shinobi inside into a tumult, dizzy and battered.
The True Tower Steal.
“This…”
The 3V3 trio watched, dumbfounded, as Bai Mu plucked the disc from atop the watchtower, rolling it toward the Land of Grass’s border like a tire. Their attacks halted in unison.
Their bewildered expressions captured the absurdity: one side dismantling the tower, the other defending it, when suddenly a stone giant leaps in, grabs the tower, and runs…
“Shall we keep fighting?” Yellow Earth looked at Shikaku Nara.

“No… We’re done, aren’t we?” With the tower pushed away like a wheel, what’s left to fight for?
“Then let’s withdraw…” Yellow Earth waved his hand to collect the bodies—many had fallen in this battle.
“Er… yeah.” Shikaku Nara signaled his troops to retreat as well.
“The captain has no sense of thrift at all. Such a thick concrete pipe, and he just tosses it aside.”
Kakuzu squatted beside the abandoned tower, hammering at the cement, extracting rebar to sell for cash.
…
Bai Mu rolled the tower’s disc all the way back to the capital of the Land of Grass. His body was utterly spent, drained of chakra.
The giant stone figure collapsed before the city walls, and the Hyuga shinobi inside were nothing but mush—spun thirty thousand times in a water tornado, then thirty thousand more in a washing machine, and upon landing, fell unconscious.
Bai Mu fell to the ground, A Fei detached from him like a thin, dried radish. The earth-toned mask dropped, and the heart inside had ceased to beat.
“Feels like I’ve borne responsibilities beyond my age… Piloting a Gundam… so exhausting…”
Half-conscious, Bai Mu saw two groups quarreling, each claiming the batch of Konoha prisoners from the tower. The Iwagakure claimed they had found them at the city gate, while Bai Mu’s men refused to relinquish them, sparking a fierce argument.
“Damn… can any of you spare a thought for me…”
Bai Mu lay weakly on the ground, unnoticed by anyone.
Only when Yellow Earth and his troops returned victorious, with Kakuzu and Yellow Earth mediating, was the ownership of the tower settled: prisoners to Bai Mu, chakra crossbows to Iwagakure, and supplies split evenly—after all, without Yellow Earth and Han’s help, Bai Mu could never have taken the tower alone.
With supplies and prisoners divided, someone finally noticed the man lying on the ground.
“Captain! Why are you sleeping here!”
“Looks like chakra exhaustion—quick, get him to the hospital.”
Bai Mu feebly raised a middle finger, his final gesture of defiance.
“Don’t let Yakushi Ryo force-feed me anything unspeakable…”
…