Chapter 208: The Thinner, the Sharper
"Hmm… Why did he stop?"
Just as Kazekaze's face was clouded with despair, Li Yao suddenly halted. The boy also stopped, his eyes flashing with suspicion.
Could it be… the opponent ran out of chakra first?
As that thought crossed his mind, a glimmer of hope ignited in the boy's eyes. He wanted to turn the tide and kill Li Yao.
But then, he met Li Yao's gaze—one of intense longing, like someone gazing at a peerless beauty—and that fiery hope instantly froze into bone-chilling dread.
Whoosh!
Without hesitation, he turned and ran, completely ignoring his two companions.
It was this same decisiveness that had kept him alive during the brutal Second Great Ninja War, and the very thing that helped him escape from Konoha's Sakumo years ago.
But…
Thud!
Kazekaze suddenly fell flat on his face, as if something had tripped him, and didn't move again.
Clearly, this time, he didn't have the luck he'd had when escaping Sakumo .
Li Yao walked over and picked up the boy, whose control over his body had just been stripped away using the Sensory Deprivation Technique. The test was complete—his Wind Release talent was indeed worthy of being used to create a Wind Clone.
"Bastard! Let go of Lord Kazekaze!"
The two Suna chunin, seeing this, immediately charged toward Li Yao without a trace of fear in their eyes—proof of their loyalty.
Kazekaze had collapsed too quickly, and they hadn't yet realized that he had already abandoned them.
"Take care of them," Li Yao said to Koyuki as he took to the sky, carrying the Suna youth with him.
"Understood."
Seeing Li Yao ascend in front of the two Suna ninja, using a jutsu that didn't match his Akatsuki identity, Koyuki instantly understood what "take care of them" really meant.
"Genjutsu: Naraku Yuzu !"
"Paper Release: Paper Bomb Jutsu!"
Using genjutsu combined with exploding paper jutsu, Koyuki finished off the two Suna ninja cleanly, paying no heed to Yahiko's "no killing" doctrine.
Although she had enjoyed her time in Akatsuki these past two years and respected Yahiko's ideals, she was no longer a naive little girl.
She knew exactly why she and "Uncle" had joined Yahiko in the first place.
Sooner or later, they would leave Akatsuki.
After today… it seemed that time had come.
Koyuki thought to herself.
High in the sky, ten thousand meters up.
Atop the clay bird, the Wind Clone had already been completed. Li Yao didn't rush down. In his hand, a mass of Wind Release chakra he had copied condensed into threads—gathering into a bundle of flowing wind.
"The thinner, the sharper."
This was a unique trait of Wind Release chakra transformation. Kazekaze's Wind techniques had clearly taken this property to an extreme.
The wind Kazekaze produced was so thin it could slice through cells at a microscopic level.
Ordinary blades, no matter how sharp, couldn't truly cut cells. Compared to the size of a cell, even the sharpest tip was like a hammer—crushing or tearing, not slicing.
But Kazekaze's Wind Release chakra could cut at the microscopic level.
"That's actually similar to the effect of Naruto's Wind Style Rasenshuriken later on."
Li Yao suddenly recalled.
Naruto's Rasenshuriken condensed Wind chakra into countless micro-needles that penetrated and destroyed cells at a microscopic level.
However, unlike Naruto who developed just one powerful Rasenshuriken, Kazekaze had developed an entire arsenal of Wind Release techniques based on this principle.
Flowing Wind Armor was his masterpiece—like the Lightning Armor of Kumogakure, it offered speed, offense, and defense in one. Its dodge mechanic, akin to the Navy Six Style's "Paper Drawing," was so refined that even Li Yao's current taijutsu couldn't break through it.
"How odd… with someone this powerful, why wasn't he ever mentioned in the original?"
"Not just him—Ōnoki's daughter too."
Li Yao felt curious. He casually dispelled the Wind chakra in his hand and instead used the Steel Release chakra he'd copied from Huito to form a bright steel sphere.
The last time they met, Huito couldn't use Steel Release. Now she had mastered this powerful kekkei genkai.
Steel Release… Li Yao remembered it appearing in the anime or maybe a movie, but he couldn't recall exactly who used it. Definitely not Huito. And it didn't directly create steel—it merely hardened the user's body to steel-like levels, serving as a purely defensive kekkei genkai.
To be honest, that type of Steel Release probably wasn't even as tough as the Earth Spear jutsu Li Yao had taken from Kakuzu.
At most, because Steel Release came from Earth and Lightning, it might not be as easily countered by Lightning Release.
But in terms of practical use, it was certainly inferior to Huito's Steel Release that could directly generate steel for offensive techniques.
This kekkei genkai, when paired with the Magnet Release of the Third Kazekage, could produce results far beyond their individual strengths.
Even without Magnet Release, Steel Release alone was already formidable. A user like Huito should have had a high chance of surviving the Third Great Ninja War.
And yet… she wasn't mentioned in the original series at all.
Did she die around this time?
No matter. No point overthinking it.
Li Yao shook his head and, with a thought, disintegrated the steel ball in his hand using Dust Release.
Though White Zetsu and Madara surely knew about his ability to copy other people's kekkei genkai, Li Yao still didn't want White Zetsu to learn that he had mastered Steel Release so easily.
So it was better to destroy the evidence.
"From now on, focus your Wind chakra nature transformation in the direction of thinner, sharper slashes. Forget everything else."
Li Yao instructed.
"Understood," replied the Wind Clone with a grin.
Bam!
Li Yao suddenly punched the Wind Clone in the chest, severely injuring it. Since the other companions had all died, it only made sense that the clone would be injured too.
It felt… oddly surreal.
The Wind Clone was Li Yao himself. Punching himself like this—it was a first.
Thud!
Li Yao landed and casually tossed the "unconscious" Wind Clone aside, then called Koyuki to leave.
"You're just going to leave him there?" Koyuki frowned, glancing back at the fainted Suna youth.
"No need," Li Yao replied, shaking his head without further explanation.
Koyuki didn't press the issue, but she did wonder—Uncle had disobeyed Yahiko's command and killed two Suna shinobi, yet let that Suna boy live. Yahiko would surely find out.
"Uncle… are you planning to leave Yahiko's group?" she finally asked.
Meanwhile, underground, White Zetsu was observing closely. He too was curious—why had Li Yao let that Suna brat go? Was he really planning to leave Nagato's side?
"Relax. I'm not leaving," Li Yao said with a smile—this line was meant for White Zetsu.
Could it be that Li Yao had placed the boy under genjutsu to prevent him from exposing the killings?
White Zetsu wondered.
In any case, as long as Li Yao stayed near Nagato, all was fine.
White Zetsu kept following him.
Koyuki asked, "Are we heading back now or looking for Yahiko and the others?"
Li Yao smiled, "Of course we're going to find Yahiko."
He hadn't forgotten that his mission was to protect the Rinnegan in Nagato.
Who knew what kind of people Konoha had sent? What if it looked like a genin, but was actually a Kage-level monster disguised as a forever-genin and somehow destroyed Nagato's Rinnegan?
Better to keep watch.
White Zetsu agreed. So he didn't stop Li Yao from heading back to Yahiko.
Now that Obito had someone he deeply loved and formed bonds with, White Zetsu didn't watch Li Yao as strictly as before.
As for the Konoha shinobi causing trouble for Akatsuki this time—White Zetsu wouldn't mind at all if Li Yao killed them all.
(END CHAPTER)
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