Earth Release: Headhunter Jutsu.
This was a technique that utilized Earth Release to submerge underground for surprise attacks. However, after Luo Ning discovered he could complete the technique by simplifying the hand seals, he developed it into a method for hiding beneath the surface.
The speed with which Uvogin found him didn't exceed Luo Ning's expectations. What did surprise him, while hiding underground, was the phone call Uvogin made. Hearing the words coming from Uvogin's mouth while submerged in the earth, an ill premonition took hold of his mind.
In that instant, Luo Ning made his decision.
The ground beneath Uvogin's feet suddenly cracked open. An arm burst out from the soil, lunging straight for Uvogin's leg. Judging by the momentum, it looked as though he intended to drag Uvogin down into the depths of the earth.
But before Luo Ning's pale, slender hand could seize his ankle, Uvogin had already looked down. A cruel sneer curled on his lips as his foot, clad in a bearskin boot, lifted instantly to evade the grab. In the same motion, he prepared to stomp down with devastating force.
Yet, when Uvogin's foot slammed down, there was no sensation of hitting a solid object. Instead, with a deafening boom, his foot struck the bare earth. The immense power behind the stomp exploded, turning the cracked ground into an even deeper crater.
Simultaneously, the 'Luo Ning' who had been stepped on by Uvogin burst into a cloud of white smoke.
A barrage of questions flooded Uvogin's mind as he stared at the smoke, but these doubts vanished in less than half a second. At the exact moment the white smoke erupted, another figure appeared abruptly at his side, launching a surprise attack aimed directly at his head.
Bang!
Luo Ning's left leg whipped out like a lash, striking the side of Uvogin's head. More accurately, it struck Uvogin's right hand—the one holding the cell phone.
This kick, carrying all of Luo Ning's explosive strength, managed to tilt Uvogin's head slightly. More importantly, however, was the fact that the phone held in Uvogin's grip was crushed by Uvogin himself as a reflexive reaction to the impact.
Luo Ning had long known that with his current strength, it would be difficult to deal real damage to Uvogin. He hadn't expected, however, that his full-power kick would only succeed in making Uvogin angrier without causing any injury at all. To put it another way, the insult of the kick was likely greater than the actual physical damage.
Luo Ning's heart was shaken, but his hands did not slow. Even as the attack landed, he was already forming a new set of hand seals.
A split second later, Uvogin's fury-laden fist smashed into Luo Ning's body.
To Uvogin's shock, history repeated itself. The 'Luo Ning' he hit transformed instantly into a withered log!
The real Luo Ning had already vanished. At the same time, Uvogin noticed that with Luo Ning's disappearance, a thin layer of mist was rapidly spreading through the area. The mist was thickening at an alarming rate.
'What's going on?'
By the time Uvogin tossed aside the crushed remains of the phone, his face had turned completely dark. A moment later, he yanked up the eyeless head hanging from his waist. His words sounded like they were spat from the mouth of a demon. "What? Are you planning to run? Don't you want to see your father's head? He was begging me to spare you right before he died!"
At that moment, Luo Ning was hidden in a tree less than twenty meters away from Uvogin. His chest was heaving violently, and his hands were held before him in the Ram seal.
This was the final seal for the Water Release: Hidden Mist Jutsu. Since it was a technique famously used by Zabuza Momochi, Luo Ning had memorized the cool, calculated movements of how the man vanished into the fog. The Hidden Mist Jutsu was also a D-Rank technique, which happened to fall within the scope of what Luo Ning was currently capable of performing.
However, as he maintained the jutsu, he realized he had to continuously consume chakra to make the surrounding mist thick enough to hide him from sight.
Luo Ning felt his heart pounding fiercely. He was just an ordinary office worker. Before today, he had no idea he could remain so calm while fighting for his life. But he knew that it was precisely this calm that allowed him to stay alive until now.
Uvogin following the tracks he left in the forest was not outside his expectations. In fact, after escaping from right under Uvogin's nose earlier, he had been thinking about how the man would catch up. He didn't have much wilderness survival experience, but his predecessor did. Specifically, his predecessor had quite a lot of experience being hunted. Thus, ideas on how to erase his tracks and hide his presence in a forest came naturally as his memories merged.
He had prepared his camouflage the moment he chose to use the Earth Release: Headhunter Jutsu, another D-Rank technique, to hide.
What he never expected was for Uvogin to make a phone call and ask for his exact location. When he heard Uvogin's booming voice from underground, a theory formed: he had been marked.
He immediately had an idea of who had marked him. It had to be Kortopi.
In his memories, there was more than one person in the Phantom Troupe who could place a marker on him. However, he had previously used the Sharingan to observe himself. He hadn't detected anyone else's Nen on his body, which was enough to rule out Machi.
Machi's ability involved transforming Nen into threads and attaching them to a target. As long as the opponent failed to notice the thread, she could follow it to find them. Even if Machi had used 'In' to hide her Nen threads, Luo Ning didn't believe he would fail to find them after focusing Nen in his eyes with 'Gyo' and double-checking repeatedly with the Sharingan.
That being the case, there was only one person in the Phantom Troupe who could leave a mark so inconspicuously: Kortopi, who could determine the location of a replica by touching the original.
Kortopi's replicated objects were real items that existed for twenty-four hours. Thinking of this, Luo Ning couldn't be sure which item on his person was the replica Kortopi had created.
Therefore, his best course of action was clear: prevent Uvogin from contacting Kortopi temporarily, then use that brief window to find the replica on his body or simply discard all his belongings.
This was why Luo Ning's target from the very beginning was the cell phone in Uvogin's hand.
When he burst from the ground, he had used the Clone Jutsu. Taking advantage of the gap created when Uvogin destroyed the clone, he launched his physical attack. Everything had gone smoothly. Perhaps Uvogin never imagined that a tiny ant like him would dare to jump out and counterattack.
However, Luo Ning was no longer looking at escape as his only option.
When he had gotten close to Uvogin, he had sensed something that exerted a massive attraction over him. It was at Uvogin's waist—a blood-stained cloth bag hanging next to his father's head.
Recalling the hollowed-out sockets where his father's eyes should have been, it wasn't hard to guess what was inside that bag. The Scarlet Eyes.