Tap.
Right then, Jiraiya suddenly jumped down from the broken wall.
"Kai—if you're done playing… we should probably withdraw."
He scanned the surroundings and spoke in a low voice.
"I've got a bad feeling."
The rain around them was calming, but his heartbeat was speeding up.
That sensation of being watched…
was getting stronger.
Hearing that, Kai wiped the blood at the corner of his eye and grinned.
"No. Not yet."
"The leek isn't fully harvested."
Obito still had another mouthwatering trait on him—
First Hokage cells.
"Leek…?"
Obito had just finished wiping the grease off his face when he heard that word.
His veins nearly boiled.
So this brat was treating him like—
a chunk of fat meat?
"Fat meat? Heh… HEH!!"
Obito laughed.
He laughed from sheer rage.
"Even the Yellow Flash was played in the palm of my hand—who do you think you are?!"
Ever since he'd been dug out from under that boulder and brought back to life…
no one had looked down on him like this.
As his laughter sharpened, his Mangekyō spun wildly.
Kamui—intangibility!
His body blurred, like a reflection trembling on water.
Physical attacks: useless.
He was betting Kai couldn't do anything about it.
Kai smiled when he saw it.
Intangibility?
Sure—he couldn't hit intangibility.
But—
he knew the time limit.
Kai activated the trait—Phantom Body Flicker.
Zzzzt—!
In an instant, twelve Kais appeared out of nowhere.
Standing on air.
Surrounding Obito from every angle.
Like gods passing judgment from above—lofty, untouchable.
Then the twelve Kais raised their hands at the same time.
And struck downward.
Air Cannon!
A brutal palm strike fused from Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm and Cloud-Style taijutsu—slamming down through empty air.
BOOM!!
The air itself roared like it had been punched into a cannon blast.
Its pressure was no weaker than a shell.
Woom—
But when the strike passed through Obito—
it met no resistance at all.
Like he wasn't even there.
BANG!!
The palm hit the ground instead.
A crater three meters long and a meter deep exploded open in the mud.
"…Hah."
Obito let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
"Good… good. Intangibility didn't fail."
Even he didn't notice it—
but in front of Kai, he'd already lost the calm he used to wear like armor.
Not far away, Kisame watched and finally exhaled too.
"He's back… the invincible Madara-sama is back!"
From the moment he arrived, seeing Obito toyed with by Kai had been worse than being toyed with himself.
That feeling—
was like faith collapsing.
But now…
everything was returning to where it "should" be.
"Space-time ninjutsu… making the body intangible, so any attack passes through?"
Jiraiya raised an eyebrow.
"I feel like I've seen something like this in some record…"
Some dossier, some archive—he'd read a similar report before.
But he couldn't recall it clearly.
"…Whatever. When we get back, I'm flipping through the archives again."
"And that kid—he's using something like the Hyūga's Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm, isn't he?"
"Uchiha and Hyūga…"
"Have they been cooperating for a long time?"
With questions piling up, Jiraiya's notebook filled rapidly.
…
BOOM!!
Another heavy air cannon slammed down.
Woom—
It passed through Obito again, hitting only mud and rainwater.
No threat at all.
"Heh… hehehe… HAHAHA!"
Obito's grin widened, higher and higher—
until he threw his head back and let out a shrill, piercing howl.
"How are you going to fight?!"
"What can you possibly do?!"
"All ninjutsu, all taijutsu—nothing can touch me! What now?!"
What now?
Use your hands.
If he still wouldn't come out, that meant one thing:
the frequency wasn't high enough… and the time wasn't long enough.
Kai lowered his gaze, giving the man below a look like he was watching something pitiful.
Then he raised a hand again.
And struck.
At extreme speed, twelve figures began pounding nonstop.
Angles sharp and weird. Speed ridiculous.
And—
every hit carried terrifying force.
Each one, at least A-rank in power.
In one minute, over a hundred strikes rained down.
The ground collapsed into a crater with Obito at its center—fifty meters wide.
Obito maintained intangibility the entire time, lips curled in contempt.
Yes.
This was the feeling.
High above, mocking all beings from a place they couldn't reach.
It was back.
He looked up at Kai and sneered.
"Useless. Even if you've got endless chakra—if you can't hit me, it means nothing!"
BOOM—BOOM—!!
Two minutes.
Hundreds of air cannons.
The crater expanded to nearly a hundred meters.
At its center, Obito's smile looked even more confident.
"Hit me. Keep going!"
"This kind of chakra-wasting stupidity—let's see how many you can throw!"
BOOMBOOMBOOM—!!
Three minutes.
Over a thousand blasts.
Rainwater flowed backward, pouring into the crater until it became a lake.
A lake a hundred meters wide and ten meters deep.
At the center, Obito stared at the water beneath his feet—
and the smile on his mouth began to stiffen.
He swallowed.
Only then did he realize his throat had gone dry.
He licked his lips, voice softening.
"It's useless. Even if you punch through the earth itself… you still can't touch me."
"How about this?"
"Let's shake hands and call it even."
"Join me. Let's create a beautiful world together."
A beautiful world—
The moment he said it, Kisame's eyes lit up again.
This—
this was the man he followed!
He didn't notice the truth:
that stiff smile on Obito's face.
BOOM!
CRACK!
Four minutes in, the strike density eased slightly—
but the surrounding land was practically flattened.
The lake's surface area didn't change much…
because the depth had become unfathomable.
Rainwater kept pouring in from all directions.
"How is there still chakra?!"
"Even Kisame can't swing that many palms in a row—!"
Obito was finally panicking.
No one understood his technique better than him.
If this kept going, the moment intangibility dropped—
he'd be slapped into paste.
The others were wide-eyed too.
"…He's the tailed beast, isn't he?"
Kisame's emotions yo-yoed so hard he couldn't even think about "Madara-sama" anymore.
All he could see was Kai.
Compared to that boy, Kisame felt like a rookie.
But his chakra was already monstrous.
So what was this Uchiha kid?
Is he made of water or what?!
Nearby, Jiraiya's pen had fallen somewhere long ago.
He stood frozen, staring at Kai with a stiff face.
But in his eyes, something other than "intel" was rising rapidly.
"With that chakra capacity… across the whole shinobi world…"
"Only the Uzumaki clan should be capable of that."
"But this kid is an Uchiha…"
"So what secret is buried in this?"
Thud.
As if a thought struck him, Jiraiya pulled out another small notebook and carefully opened it, writing down a few words with trembling seriousness:
Best friend… husband… child…
"…When did Kai gain this much chakra?"
"I really can't understand how he refined so much of it…"
Itachi narrowed his eyes slightly—simple admiration, nothing more.
This was his little brother.
Uchiha Kai.
No one expected it.
Two sides that should've been clearly opposed…
were being held in a strange balance—because of Kai alone.
Nearing five minutes, Obito finally snapped—and asked, furious and confused:
"Why do you look like you understood the weakness of my technique with just one glance?!"
He was certain Kai had seen through the weakness of intangibility from the start—that was why he'd launched a mad barrage from the very beginning!
Kai lifted a finger and wagged it.
"One glance?"
He'd watched 720 episodes.
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