Chapter 44: Can I Reverse-Engineer Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack?
So strong!
Shikotsumyaku—it really is Shikotsumyaku. How exactly did he obtain that bloodline limit?
This level of power has already surpassed the realm of ordinary jonin!
At the summit, inside the precarious earthen fort, in addition to the Konoha shinobi originally stationed there, another person now perched on the wall watching the bloody slaughter on the gentle slope below. This person was none other than Yamanaka Kaito.
He'd come to reinforce them as a medical ninja. Plus, there happened to be a Yamanaka clan member in the fort. Though the two weren't particularly close, they recognized each other and could confirm each other's identities, so Kaito had smoothly entered the fort.
However, no one in the fort needed his medical ninjutsu treatment, so he observed alongside everyone else as Hyuga Ritsu and Uchiha Shisui fought the mass of Mist shinobi below.
Yamanaka Kaito had started with calm scrutiny, but now felt as if facing a formidable enemy. His earlier thought of taking Ritsu down with a sneak attack had been completely extinguished, his heart filled only with shock.
A thought involuntarily surfaced in his mind: How could someone be this powerful?
He could see clearly—Uchiha Shisui was locked in one-on-one combat with the Hozuki clan prodigy Hozuki Mangetsu, offering no assistance whatsoever to Hyuga Ritsu.
Ritsu was facing the encirclement of over forty Mist shinobi entirely on his own. Among them were nearly ten jonin, and the rest were all battle-hardened, experienced chunin. Yet he'd turned the tables, beating the Mist forces into continuous retreat. In just one minute, he'd killed twenty Mist shinobi and severely wounded three more.
Fewer than twenty remained with any fighting capability.
And these dozen or so probably weren't Ritsu's match at all. If Suikazan Fuguki didn't intervene, these people would likely be slaughtered by Ritsu in minutes.
At that moment, a voice came from beside him.
"Shouldn't we go down and help them?" The speaker was the inarticulate, honest jonin captain.
Hearing him speak, the others exchanged glances.
"No!"
Yamanaka Kaito decisively spoke up.
His words immediately drew everyone's attention. He didn't panic, calmly saying, "What help do you think you could provide down there? Do you really have the ability to assist them? To put it bluntly, going down there now would only drag them down—you'd be doing more harm than good."
"Real help means staying here and not moving recklessly. You need to trust the forward camp's decision. Since they only sent those two to reinforce, they naturally judged them capable of handling the situation!"
He spoke entirely from the angle of benefiting the village, without mixing in the slightest personal interest.
After all, the orders Aburame Torune had given him were simply to observe carefully and collect intelligence.
Beyond that, all his actions must necessarily start from the village's interests. This was also the original intention behind him and others like him joining the Root organization. They were roots hidden deep in darkness. They abandoned glory and stopped at nothing, all to eliminate obstacles that would hinder the village's prosperity from the shadows!
The remnant soldiers defending the Stone Drum Mountain line before him weren't obstacles hindering the village's prosperity. So Yamanaka Kaito still hoped they could survive, rather than throw away their lives through wrong decisions.
Everyone exchanged glances. They'd been convinced by Yamanaka Kaito.
Or rather, they weren't fools either. They understood that with their level of strength, going down would be delivering themselves as fodder. It's just that sitting and watching felt somewhat wrong. But with Kaito putting it this way, everyone could comfortably observe the slaughter below—they thought Yamanaka Kaito had come together with Ritsu and the others.
In the next second, the situation below changed again.
Suikazan Fuguki finally couldn't hold back and made his move. And when he struck, it was spectacular—a single Water Style: Exploding Water Colliding Wave expelled enough water to form a lake. The surging water rushed forth like a mountain flood, wild and unrestrained. The forest on the mountain met misfortune, a large swath swept away by the torrent.
Such a scene made those at the summit secretly grateful they'd heeded Yamanaka Kaito's advice. Otherwise, this single technique would have them running for their lives in exhaustion, becoming burdens to Hyuga Ritsu and Uchiha Shisui.
After all, even Ritsu and Shisui could only rapidly retreat when facing such an impressive large-scale attack technique, not daring to meet its edge directly.
"Large-scale offensive jutsu—"
Ritsu retreated, moving up along the mountain slope, avoiding the vast surging waves charging toward him. In his heart, he pondered how his most obvious weakness was indeed lacking methods to launch large-scale attacks or counter them.
This wasn't just his personal weakness—more accurately, it was a common affliction of the Hyuga clan. The Byakugan bloodline limit itself possessed no offensive capabilities, and the Gentle Fist style the Hyuga clan inherited had no large-scale attack techniques either.
"The Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm should be a super-degraded version of the Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack, right? I wonder if I could reverse-engineer the Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack..."
Such an absurd thought flashed through Ritsu's mind.
In an instant, he buried this currently impractical fantasy deep in his mind. He stopped his retreating mountain climb and glanced at the water level that had risen to its peak before beginning to drop rapidly. Twisting around, he raised his hand and delivered an Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm, striking hard into the puddle behind him and shattering the water shark that had just emerged to pieces.
Not far away, Suikazan Fuguki standing on the water's surface raised an eyebrow. His secretly laid Raining Four Sharks hadn't even had a chance to display its strength before being preemptively destroyed. The Byakugan's perceptive power was truly formidable.
"Then let's clash head-on!"
After a brief attempt that proved unsuccessful, Suikazan Fuguki decisively abandoned any clever schemes. The success rate of tricks before the Hyuga clan's Byakugan was too low. The best solution was still to overwhelm with force—completely crushing this Hyuga brat from the front!
His hands began forming seals at a speed that created afterimages.
Then—
"Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
The rippling water surface suddenly churned violently. A water dragon with prominent horns and complete claws emerged, charging toward Ritsu with momentum to destroy mountains and forests.
Can't dodge!
Ritsu clearly recognized this fact.
He saw the massive chakra gathering and releasing within Suikazan Fuguki's body, but this technique's attack speed was truly fast, and its range sufficiently large.
Unless one practiced the Body Flicker Technique to Uchiha Shisui's level, or mastered a space-time technique like the Flying Thunder God that ignored distance, there was no dodging Suikazan Fuguki's strike.
"Eight Trigrams Palms: Rotation!"
Ritsu once again deployed the Hyuga clan's absolute defense.
The water dragon collided with the high-speed rotating chakra barrier, immediately shattering the massive dragon to pieces. Streams of water splashed in all directions, as if a sudden rainstorm had struck this localized area.
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