The compressed air wasn't natural wind. It was a blade of pressurized atmosphere that carved through everything in its path.
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
The technique slammed into the camp with the force of a landslide. Muzan felt the shockwave hit his chest and drive the air from his lungs. Trees didn't bend—they snapped like dry kindling with their trunks shearing apart in explosive bursts of splinters. Supply crates disintegrated into clouds of wooden shrapnel that became secondary projectiles. The ground itself tore open in deep furrows as the wind pressure carved trenches through the earth.
Naroi was standing over the Senju commander's corpse when the wind hit him. His body lifted off the ground and flew backward through the air like a leaf caught in a storm. He slammed into a massive oak tree with an impact that cracked the trunk and created a crater in the bark. His chest caved inward with a sound like wet wood breaking. He slumped against the tree with blood pouring from his mouth and nose, then slid down to sit at the base with his head lolling forward.
"Naroi!" Amanai's scream was raw and desperate.
"Fire Style: Intelligent Hard Work!"
A second technique followed immediately behind the first. The massive wave of fire rode the wind current and fed on the oxygen-rich air. The flames burned white-hot instead of orange and moved faster than any normal fire jutsu Muzan had ever seen. Trees ignited before the fire touched them and their sap boiled inside the trunks until they exploded outward in showers of burning splinters.
"Mud wall! Now!" Miyako's voice cracked with urgency.
Takeo and Hana, two members of Miyako's squad, slammed their palms to the scorched ground. "Earth Style: Mud Wall!"
A barrier of thick mud erupted between them and the incoming inferno. The wall rose three meters high and two meters thick, but it was useless against the wind-enhanced flames. The fire broke through in seconds and the intense heat baked the mud until it cracked and shattered. The flames engulfed both shinobi before they could move. Their screams were brief and high-pitched, cut short as the superheated air seared their lungs from the inside. Their bodies collapsed as blackened husks that continued to burn with a smell that made Muzan's stomach clench.
Twenty figures dropped from the canopy and landed in a semi-circle around the surviving Uchiha. Their impact cracked the scorched earth and sent up small clouds of ash that drifted through the burning air.
Muzan scrambled to his feet and hauled Sayuri up with him. His eyes locked on the two men standing at the center of the formation.
One was tall with sharp angular features and a jaw that looked carved from stone. He held a war fan in his right hand with the weapon's surface inscribed with intricate seals that glowed faintly with chakra. His armor was dark grey with the Shimura clan symbol emblazoned on the chest plate.
The other was shorter and broad-shouldered with wild spiky hair that stuck out in every direction. A bo staff rested casually on his shoulder and the wood was reinforced with metal bands. His armor was lighter with green accents that marked him as Sarutobi clan.
Kenozo clutched his injured side and his breathing came in wet gasps. "Shimura Kaze and Sarutobi Sasuke."
The blood drained from Amanai's face and his three tomoe Sharingan spun rapidly as if searching for an escape route that didn't exist. "The clan heads? Why are they here?"
Muzan's mind raced through the implications. The intelligence had said the nearest Senju outpost was two hours away. These men had been closer. Much closer. "Someone tipped them off. They were waiting for us."
Sarutobi Sasuke stepped forward and spun his staff in a casual flourish that made the weapon whistle through the air. "Uchiha Takeshi isn't here? What a pity. I came all this way hoping to smash his head in personally."
"He's a strategist, so obviously he won't risk his own neck in the field," Shimura Kaze said. His voice had a whistling quality like wind through a crack in a wall. He raised his war fan and the seals glowed brighter. "We'll have to settle for killing his subordinates instead."
Kaze's fan snapped open with a sharp crack. "Kill them all."
The twenty elite shinobi surged forward as a coordinated unit that moved with the precision of veteran combatants who'd fought together for years.
"Defensive circle!" Amanai roared and his voice barely carried over the sound of rushing footsteps. "Back to back!"
A Shimura reached Muzan first with wind chakra coating his kunai in a visible shimmer of distorted air. The chakra extended the blade's cutting edge by several inches of invisible pressure that could slice through steel like paper.
Muzan dodged and felt the wind blade carve a line across his shoulder. The cut opened deep enough to expose muscle, but it healed within two seconds as his demon blood knitted the tissue back together. He retaliated with three shuriken thrown in a spread pattern, but the Shimura exhaled sharply and a burst of wind deflected all three projectiles into the trees where they embedded in bark.
"Fire Style: Flame Bullet!"
A Sarutobi shinobi flanked Muzan from the right and spewed a continuous stream of flame from his mouth like a flamethrower.
Muzan grabbed the nearest corpse—one of the dead Senju from the initial assault—and used it as a shield. The body caught fire immediately and the flesh sizzled and blackened as fat rendered and dripped. The smell was overwhelming and made bile rise in Muzan's throat. While the Sarutobi maintained his technique and kept breathing fire, Muzan kicked backward at the Shimura without looking. His heel connected with the man's knee and the joint bent sideways with a wet pop as ligaments tore.
The Shimura grunted and stumbled forward. Muzan dropped the burning corpse and spun with his kunai already in motion. The blade punched through the man's throat and severed his windpipe. Blood sprayed in arterial pulses that painted Muzan's face hot and wet.
To his left, the slaughter continued with brutal efficiency.
Akari, the last survivor from Kenozo's squad, was fighting a Sarutobi who moved with inhuman speed. She blocked a punch aimed at her head, but the impact shattered her forearm and bone jutted through skin in jagged white fragments. She screamed and her arm dropped uselessly to her side. A Shimura shinobi appeared behind her with his wind-enhanced kunai already swinging. The extended cutting edge decapitated her cleanly and her head rolled across the scorched ground with her eyes still wide in shock. Her body remained standing for two seconds before it collapsed.
"Akari!" Kenozo's roar was grief and rage mixed together until they were indistinguishable.
He charged directly at Shimura Kaze with his hands already blurring through seals. "Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu!"
Three dragon-shaped fireballs erupted from Kenozo's mouth and roared toward the Shimura clan head. Each one was large enough to engulf a house and they carved trenches through the ground as they flew with such intense heat that the earth itself turned to glass in their wake.
Kaze didn't move from his position. He planted his feet and inhaled deeply until his chest expanded to twice its normal size. "Wind Style: Vacuum Sphere."
He exhaled and spat multiple bullets of compressed air that punched straight through the fire dragons and dispersed the flames into harmless embers. The vacuum spheres continued toward Kenozo and moved faster than arrows with enough force behind them to punch through armor.
The old man twisted mid-air and his body moved with the flexibility of someone half his age. He dodged two spheres that passed within inches of his torso, but the third punched a hole clean through his shoulder and sprayed blood in a wide arc behind him. Kenozo hit the ground hard and rolled to absorb the impact, leaving a trail of blood across the dirt.
Kaze was already standing over him when he stopped rolling. The clan head had crossed the distance in the blink of an eye with a short sword drawn and wind chakra coating the blade until it hummed. Steel clashed against Kenozo's kunai and sparks flew from the impact. The Shimura leader was faster and each of his strikes was aided by air currents that pushed his blade forward while creating resistance against Kenozo's counters.
Their weapons met again and the wind-enhanced blade shattered Kenozo's kunai like glass. The old man barely jerked his head back as the sword tip carved a line across his cheek deep enough to expose teeth through the wound.
On the opposite side of the battlefield, Amanai was losing his fight against Sarutobi Sasuke.
Sasuke didn't bother with complex ninjutsu or elaborate techniques. He used overwhelming physical force backed by decades of combat experience. His bo staff swung horizontally in a strike that displaced the air with an audible whoosh. Amanai raised his katana to block with both hands gripping the weapon.
The impact sent vibrations through Amanai's entire skeleton and made his teeth rattle. The katana cracked down the center with a sound like breaking ice. Both of Amanai's arms went numb from wrist to shoulder and he nearly dropped the damaged weapon.
"Weak!" Sasuke shouted. He planted the staff's end into the ground and used it as leverage to kick Amanai in the chest with both feet.
Amanai flew backward and crashed through the burning remains of a lean-to shelter. Wood splintered around him and burning embers scattered across his armor. He scrambled to his feet and coughed blood that splattered across his chin. His ribs felt cracked and each breath sent sharp pain through his chest. "Genjutsu: Sharingan!"
He locked eyes with Sasuke and his three tomoe spun rapidly as he poured chakra into the illusion.
Sasuke grinned and immediately disrupted his chakra flow. The disruption snapped him out of the genjutsu before it could take hold and he spat onto the ground. "Experience, boy! Genjutsu means nothing at my level when I can break it with simple chakra disruption."
Sasuke inhaled and his chest expanded to an impossible size that made his ribcage visibly stretch. "Fire Style: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet!"
The blast was blinding white instead of orange. A massive fireball shaped like a dragon's head erupted from Sasuke's mouth and was easily twenty feet in diameter. It consumed everything in its path and trees exploded into splinters from the heat alone before the flames touched them.
Amanai dove sideways and rolled behind a boulder. The technique vaporized the rock in seconds and superheated fragments peppered Amanai's back. The shrapnel melted through his armor plating and burned into his flesh. The radiant heat singed his eyebrows completely off and left his exposed skin red and blistering with fluid already forming beneath the surface.
"Muzan!" Toshiro's scream cut through the chaos.
Muzan spun and saw two Sarutobi closing in on Sayuri from different angles. She was frozen in place and overwhelmed by the sheer pressure of their chakra. Her single tomoe spun uselessly because she didn't know how to use it for anything except basic perception.
Muzan didn't think or plan. He threw a smoke bomb between the two attackers and grey smoke exploded outward in a thick cloud that obscured vision.
He dove into the cloud and moved by sound and instinct rather than sight. Inside the smoke, he didn't fight like a trained ninja with proper form and technique. He fought like a predator and used a fraction of his demonic strength while making it look like desperate combat.
His hand shot out and grabbed the first Sarutobi's ankle mid-stride. He squeezed and crushed bone and ligament until they ground together. The man's scream was high-pitched as he fell. Before the Sarutobi hit the ground, Muzan's kunai found the gap in his armor under the armpit where the plates didn't overlap. The blade punched through to the heart and the screaming stopped.
The second Sarutobi swung blindly with a tanto and the blade cut through the smoke in wide arcs. Muzan ducked under the strike and swept the man's legs out from under him with a low kick. Before the Sarutobi could hit the ground, Muzan was on top of him with his full weight pinning the man down. He drove his kunai into the man's eye socket and angled the blade upward into the brain. The body spasmed once with limbs jerking in random directions, then went still.
The smoke began to clear as it dispersed from the ambient wind created by ongoing jutsu throughout the battlefield.
"Behind you!" Sayuri shrieked.
Muzan turned and saw a Shimura shinobi forming seals with his hands moving faster than Muzan could track the individual positions. "Wind Style: Vacuum Palm!"
The invisible concussion blast hit Muzan square in the chest before he could move. Three ribs cracked instantly with sharp pains that radiated through his torso. The force launched him ten feet backward and he skidded through the dirt and ash with his back plowing a furrow in the ground. His ribs healed within seconds as bone knitted back together, but he felt a tinge of hunger gnawing at his stomach. His chakra reserves were dropping and he'd need to feed soon to replenish them.
He looked up and assessed the battlefield with a tactical eye that tried to find any advantage.
The camp had become a graveyard filled with more dead than living. Takeo's body hung suspended three feet in the air and impaled on multiple earth spikes that had erupted from the ground beneath him. Blood dripped steadily from his wounds and formed a growing pool underneath. Hana was a charred husk that was barely recognizable as human with her features melted away. Akari's headless body lay in a spreading pool of blood that soaked into the scorched earth. Naroi was slumped against the shattered oak tree with his lifeless eyes staring at nothing and his chest caved inward.
Only six Uchiha remained alive out of the fifteen who'd started this mission.
Miyako was fighting three enemies simultaneously with her three tomoe Sharingan tracking everything in her field of vision. Her hair was loose with half of it burned away and her scalp showed red burns beneath. She moved with desperate precision and blocked or dodged attacks that came from multiple angles, but she was bleeding from a dozen cuts that painted her armor dark red. Blood ran down her face from a gash across her scalp that exposed white bone. A Shimura shinobi swung a wind-enhanced blade and she dodged left, but the extended cutting pressure caught her thigh and opened the muscle deep enough to show bone. She stumbled and her leg nearly gave out. She barely deflected a fatal blow with a kunai that shattered on impact and left her holding just the handle.
"Regroup!" Kenozo shouted. He disengaged from Kaze with a desperate Body Flicker technique that left him stumbling when he reappeared. He grabbed Miyako by the collar and hauled her back toward the center of their formation.
Amanai scrambled over with his broken katana dragging in the dirt behind him. His right arm hung uselessly at his side with the shoulder dislocated and the joint sitting at an unnatural angle.
Muzan grabbed Sayuri and Toshiro by their arms and shoved them toward the older Uchiha. "Move now!"
They formed a tight circle in the center of the devastated camp with their backs pressed together. Flames surrounded them on all sides and corpses littered the ground. The heat was intense enough that breathing hurt.
Fifteen enemies still stood in a loose perimeter that cut off every escape route. They moved with the confidence of predators who knew their prey was cornered.
Sarutobi Sasuke rested his staff on the ground and the impact cracked the earth and created a small crater. Shimura Kaze cleaned his blade with a cloth in slow deliberate strokes while looking completely bored by the carnage around him.
"Surrender is not an option," Kaze said softly.
Sasuke snorted and his voice was rough with contempt. "You dare attack the Senju in their own territory? You'll pay for your arrogance with your lives."
Amanai stood shakily with blood dripping from his chin and pooling at his feet. His three tomoe Sharingan spun, but the rotation looked sluggish and the red seemed dimmer than before. "Miyako, Toshiro, take Sayuri. If we create an opening, you run and don't look back."
"No," Miyako said. Her voice was cold and flat as she checked her remaining equipment. Three kunai were left in her pouch. Two explosive tags remained. "There's no running from this. They'll hunt us down within a hundred meters."
The Sarutobi and Shimura began closing the circle and advanced slowly with weapons ready. The heat from the burning forest pressed in from all sides and smoke choked the air until every breath tasted like ash.
Kenozo laughed suddenly and the sound was bitter and hollow like wind through a cave. "My sons are waiting for me anyway. I'll see them soon."
Miyako's Sharingan spun more rapidly as she calculated attack vectors and survival probabilities. "If we're dying here, we take as many of these bastards with us as we can."
Amanai nodded slowly and reached into his pouch with his good hand. He pulled out three explosive tags and held them ready. "Muzan, when I give the signal to—"
"No," Muzan cut him off. His mind was working through the tactical situation with cold logic. "Miyako, Toshiro, and Sayuri need to leave. Someone has to report back that we were ambushed. Command needs to know there's a leak in our intelligence network."
Amanai's eyes widened as the implication hit him. "You're right. If they knew we were coming, they know our other operations too."
Miyako stepped forward and her voice was sharp. "Muzan is weaker than me in combat ability. He shouldn't be one of the ones staying behind."
Muzan shook his head and met her eyes directly. "It's precisely because I'm weaker that I can't lead Toshiro and Sayuri back safely through enemy territory. If you lead them, there's a much higher chance they'll survive the retreat."
Miyako clenched her jaw and her Sharingan spun as she tried to find a flaw in his logic. She couldn't deny the truth of it.
Toshiro stared at Muzan with an expression that mixed surprise with something deeper. He was the one who'd first spotted Muzan in the forest that day and brought him to the Uchiha camp. Their friendship hadn't started strong and Toshiro had been suspicious of this stranger with the fake Sharingan, but over the past month Muzan had become someone Toshiro genuinely acknowledged as a comrade.
"Muzan," Toshiro said slowly. His voice was rough with emotion he was trying to suppress.
Muzan clasped his shoulder and managed a slight smile despite the situation. "Toshiro, that day you said you'd regret failing to share your comrades' burden when they needed you most. Today I feel the same way. So let me do this, or else I'll forever regret it."
Tears welled in Toshiro's eyes, but he quickly wiped them away with the back of his hand and nodded firmly. "I understand."
Sayuri's face was wet with tears that cut tracks through the ash and blood covering her cheeks.
Muzan looked at her and his expression softened slightly. "Sayuri, we didn't share much time together in this squad, but I'm happy you were one of my comrades. This battlefield isn't meant for you yet."
Sayuri wiped the tears from her face and her voice came out as barely a whisper. "I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to help."
"You survived," Muzan said. "That's what matters. Now make sure that survival counts for something."