The black lightning charged violently into the crowd!
The pitch-black blade flashed and vanished, accompanied immediately by short, gurgling screams and the dull thuds of bodies hitting the blood-soaked mud.
Kiyohara didn't stop moving for a microsecond. He killed, his magnetic field instantly stripped their tactical pouches and scrolls, and he continued his supersonic forward thrust without a pause!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Occasionally, a quick-reacting Mist Chunin would try to intercept his trajectory with water jutsu or explosive tags, but the explosive flames could only catch the dissipating afterimages left by Kiyohara's Body Flicker. Sometimes, the panicked friendly fire even accidentally injured their own comrades in the dense fog.
And the hundred-plus Iron Sand Exploding Tags floating and cruising rapidly around Kiyohara like an asteroid belt made any attempt at close-range physical interception an act of absolute suicide.
Fury flared wildly in Sora Mizurugi's eyes.
He used his Water Body Flicker multiple times to close the distance, attempting a one-hit assassination with a high-speed Iaijutsu slash.
But whenever he drew within striking range, Kiyohara would either instantly shift the magnetic polarity beneath his boots to violently dodge in the opposite direction, or he would deliberately fling a cluster of the camouflaged explosive tags directly into Sora's flight path, forcing the elite assassin to abort his swing and deploy Water Release defensive walls.
'This brat... he's as slippery as a loach!' Sora felt a wave of agonizing frustration. 'Is this guy's mutation Magnet Release, or is he from the Uzumaki Clan?! How the hell does he have so much chakra?!'
Sora clearly held the advantage in raw physical strength and base speed, yet he couldn't pin down the boy's core. He could only watch helplessly as Kiyohara casually slaughtered his weaker subordinates while steadily advancing like a meat grinder toward the Mist command post.
"I absolutely cannot let him get any closer!" Sora's gaze turned sharp. He stopped seeking a one-hit melee kill and switched to mid-range AOE containment.
"Water Release: Senbon Rain!"
Dense, hyper-compressed water needles shot toward Kiyohara from all directions like a torrential, localized monsoon. The area of effect was so vast it was physically impossible to dodge completely.
Kiyohara's body swayed and contorted rapidly, narrowly avoiding the vast majority of the lethal needles, but one razor-sharp water projectile still grazed his left cheek as it flew past!
Ssh!
A shallow, bloody scratch appeared on his cheek, and warm blood slowly seeped down his jawline.
Sora's spirits lifted instantly. Finally!
He had captured a micro-flaw in Kiyohara's high-speed movement!
The opponent's relentless supersonic dodging wasn't without biological cost. That extreme kinetic velocity put a massive, crushing burden on the human nervous system, inevitably causing tiny, cascading delays in neural reaction time!
"Got you!" Sora shouted coldly, his liquid figure blurring again as he prepared to launch a fatal chain of combo attacks. "I've finally figured out your movement patterns!"
"Is that so?"
Kiyohara, with blood sliding down his cheek, suddenly stopped his supersonic dash. He turned his head toward Sora and revealed a terrifyingly calm smile amidst the thick mist.
"In that case, you might as well... take a very close look at your immediate surroundings."
Sora's heart skipped a beat. He instinctively expanded his sensory perception.
His attention had been entirely laser-focused on tracking Kiyohara's lethal speed. Now that he expanded his awareness, his expression suddenly changed drastically!
At some point during the chaotic chase, specifically at the edges of the clearing where they had just been fighting—among the charred trunks, collapsed boulders, and even the fallen Mist corpses...
Dozens of highly conductive copper wires, as thin as hair and shimmering with a faint metallic luster, were extremely covertly entwined!
These wires crisscrossed the entire clearing, forming a massive, nearly invisible three-dimensional spiderweb that covered the entire battlefield.
And all the terminal ends of the wires converged flawlessly toward the exact spot where Kiyohara was currently standing!
'When did he—?!'
Sora suddenly realized the horrifying truth. The boy hadn't just been ruthlessly looting spoils from the dead; he had been meticulously setting up a high-voltage kill box!
"Lightning Release: Lightning Flow Technique!" Kiyohara formed the final seal.
Zzzzt!
High-voltage Lightning chakra instantly erupted from Kiyohara's core, surging violently into the arranged copper wire mesh!
Blinding, dazzling azure electric light raced along the wires, illuminating the dim, foggy clearing like a stadium in an instant!
"Not good!" Sora instinctively surged his chakra to use the Water Body Flicker to escape the area that had suddenly turned into an electrified cage.
But at the exact millisecond his body was about to liquefy...
"Detonate," Kiyohara uttered a single, cold word.
He didn't detonate all the floating explosive tags. Instead, on the inside of Sora's own tactical flak jacket, pressed directly against his chest plate, an Iron Sand Exploding Tag that had flawlessly camouflaged itself as a speck of dirt was instantly activated by Kiyohara's pre-set magnetic trigger!
"What?!"
Sora's face contorted in absolute shock. He felt a sudden, blistering heat on his chest as an overwhelming sense of mortal crisis consumed him.
There was absolutely no time to think about when or how this explosive had been magnetically attached to his armor. His elite survival instincts forced him to make the only viable choice.
He threw himself violently backward, his hands desperately tearing and ripping open the Kevlar straps of his chest armor at maximum speed, using all his physical strength to fling the heavy vest toward the empty ground to his side!
BOOM!
The armor exploded in mid-air less than two meters after leaving his hand!
The terrifying, concussive impact slammed brutally against Sora's unprotected chest and face!
"Pfft!"
He sprayed a massive mouthful of arterial blood, his body flying back like a broken sack of meat. He crashed heavily into a large oak tree, snapping the trunk before collapsing into the mud.
His chest cavity was a bloody, blackened mess, and his face was severely lacerated by shrapnel. His imposing aura instantly withered, leaving him clinging to half a breath of life.
"...Cough... you... you cowardly... bastard..."
Sora's vision was entirely blurred with blood. He looked at the figure slowly walking out of the copper wire mesh where the lightning was fading, filled with absolute horror.
The boy wasn't just a suicidal madman; from the very beginning of the chase, Sora had been meticulously guided into a pre-set, mathematical kill zone!
To have magnetically attached a camouflaged explosive tag directly to his body without him even noticing... what kind of horrifying micro-control was that?
Kiyohara walked quickly to Sora's paralyzed body, panting heavily.
The shallow wound on his cheek was still bleeding, and the chakra reserves in his coils had dropped to the absolute danger line again.
The continuous, localized hardening of Steel Release, the supersonic acceleration of Magnet Release, and the long-duration bursts of the Body Flicker consumed biological and mental energy at a terrifying, unsustainable rate.
If not for the ultra-efficient metabolic conversion and biological overclocking brought by the Iwa Spirit's possession, he would have collapsed from cardiac arrest ten minutes ago.
'Fortunately... I still have enough explosive tags,' Kiyohara thought, his breathing ragged.
He glanced at the tactical pouches of the dead Kirigakure ninja scattered around the clearing, feeling a pang of genuine heartache. The lightning trap earlier and the final assassination blow had consumed a significant portion of his stolen inventory. It was a massive financial loss.
He no longer hesitated. He immediately knelt and began ruthlessly searching Sora's dying body and the nearby corpses. He focused entirely on extracting intact explosive tags, high-grade soldier pills, and valuable chakra-metal weapons.
This specific sector of the forest had fallen into an eerie, suffocating silence due to the intense slaughter and the terrifying chain of explosions. The remaining Kirigakure squads scattered in the distant mountain forest seemed to be deeply intimidated, not daring to rush into the kill zone for the time being.
This hesitation gave Kiyohara a precious few dozen seconds to breathe and methodically "clean up the battlefield."
Far in the rear.
Shintoku Yamanaka's voice paused for a long, agonizing moment, his eyes squeezed shut as he waited for Natsu Hyuga to report the visual feed of the chaotic duel.
He finally relayed: "Kiyohara has dismissed the Summoned Beast... he's stopped moving. It looks like he's... eating field rations? No, wait! An incredibly powerful Kirigakure assassin has arrived at his exact coordinates!"
"They've engaged! But... a massive swarm of explosive tags has suddenly floated up around Kiyohara like a shield! Every time the Kirigakure assassin attempts a melee slash, he's blocked by a point-blank detonation! Kiyohara is using live bombs as a physical shield!"
The medical personnel in the rear listened with their hearts pounding in their throats.
"Can Kiyohara... actually hold on against an elite like that?" Rin covered her mouth in terror.
Shintoku didn't answer; his professional interest was deeply piqued by this psychotic young junior. But for further details of the climax, they had to wait for Natsu's Byakugan to process the blinding flashes of light.
Kirigakure Command Post.
"Useless! A bunch of pathetic, useless trash!"
Yama Higashino's furious roar almost drowned out the sound of the distant artillery explosions.
Through specialized transmission ninjutsu and the blurred visual feed from the residual mist, he had just watched helplessly as his elite subordinate, Sora Mizurugi, was heavily wounded and left near-dead by that Konoha brat using such insidious, cowardly methods!
The tactical chaos on the flank, instead of being suppressed by Sora, was violently intensifying!
"That Kiyohara kid... must die! Execute him at all costs!"
Killing intent boiled in Yama's eyes, his facial scar twisting hideously.
"Mobilize all nearby reserve squads and surround his sector! He has to be at the absolute end of his chakra reserves by now!"
Zabuza silently watched the distant smoke rising from the forest, his brow furrowed deeply beneath his bandages.
The brutal combat experience, tactical ruthlessness, and endless stream of psychological methods Kiyohara displayed made Zabuza permanently set aside his initial contempt.
This was by no means the cowardly hyena that only harvested the weak, as Commander Yama claimed. This was a cunning, hyper-lethal lone wolf wearing sheep's clothing.
Center of the main beachhead battlefield.
The other flanks had gradually turned into a total Konoha rout, and the vast majority of the infantry had successfully withdrawn inland.
Now, those remaining on the beach were either elite ANBU skilled in the Body Flicker or veteran commanders performing desperate rearguard actions.
The epicenter of the conflict was undoubtedly where Jiraiya and Orochimaru were battling the Six-Tails.
"Oh?"
Jiraiya spat out a massive, scorching Toad Oil Bullet, seamlessly combining with Orochimaru's binding ninjutsu to temporarily restrict the rampaging slug. During the brief pause, Jiraiya took a moment to glance toward the eastern flank.
The constant, blinding flashes of explosions and the violent, spiking fluctuations of magnetic chakra there could be clearly sensed even from this massive distance.
"Among Konoha's new crop of saplings this year... it seems a rather sharp, prickly thorn has grown," Jiraiya raised a thick eyebrow, his tone carrying a hint of genuine appreciation. "He's certainly making quite a bloody stir over there."
Orochimaru's golden, vertical pupils also swept over the distant treeline. His long, pale tongue slid out to lick the corner of his mouth as he let out a low, raspy chuckle. He didn't respond to Jiraiya, but the dark, scientific interest burning in his eyes grew even stronger.
Edge of the flank battlefield, near the Konoha retreat path.
Kiyohara stuffed the last scavenged tactical pouch into his significantly bulging Sealing Scroll and took a deep, ragged breath.
After a brief, agonizing rest and dry-swallowing a few more military soldier pills, his chakra had barely recovered to ten percent of its maximum capacity. The devastating exhaustion of biologically overdrawing his cells surged back into his muscles like a tidal wave.
The spirit of the Iwa ninja inside his mind sent a sharp, physiological warning; this metabolically overclocked state absolutely could not be maintained for another minute without risking organ failure.
'It's time to retreat... but before I evacuate, there's one last tactical step,' Kiyohara thought, his eyes cold.
He turned his gaze toward the Mist command post that was still prominent on his sensory radar.
He intended to release a massive, long-range wind jutsu, then load it with his remaining explosive tags to bombard their command structure from a distance before finally falling back.
Just as he was about to weave the seals, a very faint, nearly silent sound of displaced air came from the canopy behind him. A small, dark figure landed flawlessly on the branch above.
"Who?" Kiyohara instantly became alert. His remaining iron sand tags floated aggressively toward the canopy.
"Don't attack! It's friendly!"
A crisp, slightly hurried female voice rang out from the shadows.
The newcomer wore a blank porcelain animal mask, with long purple hair tied into a neat, practical ponytail behind her head. She wore a perfectly tailored ANBU uniform and carried a slightly longer, specialized ninja sword strapped horizontally across her lower back.
Although the mask completely obscured her face, Kiyohara instantly recognized her from her voice and distinct build: Yūgao Uzuki.
During the bloody retreat from the Whirlpool Ruins months ago, Kiyohara had saved her life from an Iwa squad.
Yūgao was a bit younger than Kiyohara, but because of her outstanding kenjutsu talent, she had already been recruited into the ANBU training division. (The minimum rank requirement for ANBU recruitment was Chunin).
To be honest, Kiyohara didn't know what the tactical point of the ANBU's internal secrecy protocols actually was.
Just like when Kakashi joined the ANBU—with his gravity-defying white hair and the permanently exposed Sharingan, how many people in the village could he possibly be mistaken for?
....
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