Kaguya Gaiji's mood turned strange beyond words.
After he had stirred up his clansmen's morale and let out his loudest roar, what he saw from the charging Konoha force was six slightly older shinobi stepping out from the front.
The next instant, all six of their eyes turned red.
They were Uchiha clan shinobi who had activated the Sharingan.
Despicable!
Why weren't Uchiha clan shinobi wearing their clan crest? Our Kaguya clan… forget it, we weren't wearing ours either.
Kaguya Gaiji grew excited.
To fight Uchiha shinobi was the wish of every Kaguya clansman, and he burst into wild laughter.
But after only three laughs, the sound caught in his throat.
Because behind those six Uchiha shinobi in the front row, another thirty-eight pairs of Sharingan opened.
This hundred-man Konoha force was entirely made up of Uchiha clan shinobi!
Could this be a trap specifically prepared for the Kaguya clan?
As one of the rare Kaguya shinobi who actually had a brain, Kaguya Gaiji could not help thinking too much.
But the instinct carried in his blood quickly unified all his thoughts.
Kill the enemy in front of him, and every trap would become meaningless.
He stopped hesitating. He stopped thinking about anything outside the battle.
Three sharp bone spikes thrust out from each of his arms as he charged straight at the leading Uchiha Yoru.
And Uchiha Yoru, with both hands transformed into flame-wreathed fists, met Shikotsumyaku head-on.
At this moment, he naturally wanted to seize the initiative with genjutsu, but to his surprise, he discovered that the Kaguya shinobi before him was actually immune to illusions.
Not just Sharingan genjutsu—even ordinary genjutsu and his suggestion seeds were all useless against this monster covered in jagged bone spikes.
The Kaguya shinobi's chakra was extremely powerful, and it flowed entirely along the skeleton. Ordinary genjutsu simply could not shake chakra like that.
When his Sharingan met the other man's gaze, the information reflected back was incomparably chaotic, but it could still be summed up in a single word—
Madness.
Naturally, his illusion seeds could not take effect either.
No suggestion could influence a madman, because the man's thoughts were already a great heap of obsessions and fixations. Tossing in one more suggestion seed was like adding one tiny, insignificant obsession into the pile. It did absolutely nothing.
Uchiha Yoru could only feel relieved that he had not specialized solely in genjutsu while abandoning everything else.
Now that genjutsu did not work, then it was time to come at him the hard way.
The Sharingan itself was still the strongest support for taijutsu.
And his own body was more than strong enough…
The two leaders crashed into one another like the heads of two trains racing straight at each other.
The collision was earth-shaking.
A thunderous impact erupted, almost like an explosion, and even a white shock ring spread outward from the point where the two men met.
Uchiha Yoru's forehead smashed into the other man's head. His skull split apart on the spot, and one of the bone spikes on the other man's wrist pierced straight through him, leaving a transparent hole.
Kaguya Gaiji didn't fare well either.
His skull won the head-on clash completely, but in the very next instant Uchiha Yoru's flame fist slammed into it hard enough to leave a deep dent, and his mind immediately rang and swam.
He grinned savagely.
This Uchiha shinobi was pretty strong.
But to actually choose not to dodge and instead collide with him head-on—this was simply courting death!
Then a heavy blow smashed into the right side beneath his ribs, making him unable even to speak from the pain.
More importantly, he had no idea where that hit had even come from.
Who had struck him?
It was Uchiha Yoru—the one whose head still seemed to have a transparent hole through it.
In the instant after the collision, both men had attacked the other's head.
Kaguya Gaiji had trusted in the hardness of his bones and paid no attention.
Uchiha Yoru, however, had unexpectedly discovered that when the Kaguya shinobi focused all his attention on him, the madness within his mind actually subsided.
In that critical instant, he had activated genjutsu in time, making his head appear shifted twenty centimeters away in the enemy's sight and thus dodging the fatal strike.
His head had not been pierced through at all.
Only because he had reacted a little too late did the bone spike carve a bloody groove across his forehead.
Having tested the other man's toughness, and also proven his own, Uchiha Yoru no longer chose to clash head-on.
Instead, he activated Omniscient Heart's Eye and began competing with him in taijutsu.
Kaguya Gaiji was somewhat dazed.
Under the effect of the illusion, the Uchiha Yoru in his eyes still had a transparent hole through his skull, with red-and-white mush spilling out while he continued fighting intensely.
Was the head not even a fatal weakness?
Then what about the body?
Shikotsumyaku: Ten Finger Piercing Bullets.
Without the slightest warning, right in the middle of close-quarters exchange, Kaguya Gaiji suddenly unleashed the bloodline secret technique, both hands pointing at Uchiha Yoru as he fired off a wild barrage.
This time, Uchiha Yoru truly failed to evade in time.
He took four finger-bones squarely, blood spraying into the air, but in exchange he also smashed a brutal punch into the other man's abdomen, leaving behind a deep fist imprint faintly glowing red.
[That was the second punch.]
At this moment, flesh buds had already begun sprouting along the groove on Uchiha Yoru's forehead, tangling together as the wound started to close.
Reflected through the illusion, the sight in Kaguya Gaiji's eyes became something else entirely—
The transparent hole in Uchiha Yoru's head was shrinking, while countless flesh buds wriggled and grew like worms. The huge hole was actually healing.
That horrifying image made even the mad Kaguya's scalp go numb, and he could not help sucking in a cold breath.
He was only a mad shinobi.
Was the monster in front of him actually some kind of monster for real?
The pain in his abdomen drove him deeper into rage, and he forcibly suppressed the fear rising in his heart, roaring, "Even if you're a monster, I, Kaguya Gaiji, will kill you even if it costs me my life!"
But though his mouth was shouting about staking his life, the movements that followed became extraordinarily soft—like willow fluff drifting with the wind—lightly evading Uchiha Yoru's successive attacks.
Shikotsumyaku: Dance of the Willow.
Not only did it dissolve the enemy's attacks with soft, fluid movement, but with those same silky motions, aided by the bone spikes all over his body, it sliced toward the enemy's flesh.
This was an extremely advanced form of ninja taijutsu.
But because of the visual misalignment caused by the genjutsu, everything had been reversed.
The more refined the taijutsu, the more completely it became a suicidal offering.
Kaguya Gaiji's evasions turned into willingly stepping into the path of the blows, and every bone-spike slash became nothing more than tracing the outline of a body.
After a whole flurry of movement, he had failed to strike the enemy even once, and instead took three more heavy punches in succession, leaving three deep fist marks in his flesh.
[That makes five. Four more to go.]
Kaguya Gaiji truly went mad.
He had activated a secret ninja-taijutsu technique, yet not only had it failed to relieve the pressure on him, it had made the situation even worse.
He now understood that he had indeed fallen under genjutsu.
It was unbelievable.
With the madness and cohesion of Shikotsumyaku, he had still been caught in illusion. The Sharingan truly lived up to its fearsome reputation.
For the first time, Kaguya Gaiji felt the threat of death.
When a shinobi was controlled by genjutsu, and the enemy controlling him possessed even the simplest means of killing, then the controlled shinobi's death was all but inevitable.
It was time to truly stake his life.
He made the decision in an instant.
The fan-like bone spikes on his back began to grow, then split apart like roots, becoming flexible chains of bone, and from every segment of those chains four new spikes jutted sideways.
Shikotsumyaku: Dance of Thorns.
Kaguya Gaiji threw himself to the ground. Sharp spikes grew from his hands and feet and stabbed deep into the earth, anchoring his body in place. Behind him, forty-eight chains of bone spread outward in all directions.
On every segment of every bone chain, the spikes grew crazily, extending and fusing together the moment they touched.
In the blink of an eye, with Kaguya Gaiji at the center, a giant web spread over the battlefield.
Uchiha Yoru seized the instant when the enemy had to stay prone and could not move, driving two punches into his left ribs and leaving two more deep marks.
[Only two left.]
But after that he could no longer get close.
The web of bone surged upward, extending and segmenting continuously, and from every new joint four more spikes burst forth.
A gigantic cage of bone was growing upward. Anyone trapped inside would be slaughtered by the endlessly extending spikes.
The bone cage covered an enormous area.
Not only had Uchiha Yoru been enclosed, but so too were the other Kaguya shinobi, the five section leaders, and even more shinobi from both sides.
And Kaguya Gaiji made no distinction at all.
He intended to kill everyone caught inside, no matter who they were.
After all, Kaguya clan shinobi all had the subdermal bone membrane. His own thorn-bones would not be enough to pierce the bone membranes of his clansmen.
And if some weak-blooded clansman failed to block his thorn-bones, then that only meant the fool deserved to die.
Section leader Uchiha Ayumi suddenly screamed.
He had just been hit by a desperate, suicidal sneak attack from his opponent, and in the attempt to dodge that reckless pounce, his right foot was caught between the cage-like bone spikes.
Those madly growing bones reacted to the scent of blood like man-eating flowers, rushing even more savagely toward Uchiha Ayumi, trying to grind him alive.
Another section leader, Uchiha Hiroto, rushed over in an attempt to save him.
But though he swung his ninja blade again and again with all his strength, he could do no more than shave off small chips of bone. He could not stop the growth at all.
The Kaguya shinobi who had tried to pounce on Ayumi was himself engulfed by the frenziedly growing bones, but with the protection of his bone membrane, he was not only still alive, he even laughed wildly.
"You're all dead! This is Gaiji's strongest Dance of Thorns! Inside this thorn-bone cage, everyone dies except Shikotsumyaku users!"
The situation had already become extremely critical.
Uchiha Yoru tried several times in succession, but he simply could not reach the enemy hidden behind layers upon layers of bone. He could not land the final two fist imprints.
Dense beads of sweat finally appeared on his forehead.
For the first time, he was tempted to lift the veil on his natural-energy trump cards. Whether Earth Spirit or Lightning Spirit, both felt capable of dealing with this bone monster.
But whichever one he used would require time to kill the enemy.
And neither could save Uchiha Ayumi in time.
As anxiety surged inside him, Uchiha Yoru looked at the endlessly growing bones before him and suddenly thought of something.
These bones were also part of the Kaguya's body. Kaguya Kimimaro could even move back and forth through his own bones.
If that was the case, then if the final two punches landed on these bones instead, could he still complete the nine fist marks and trigger the golden-white incinerating flame?
There was no more time to think.
Uchiha Yoru heard Uchiha Ayumi's screams and Uchiha Hiroto shouting desperately, "Yoru-brother, save him!"
And it was not only Hiroto.
There were more than ten Uchiha younger brothers still trapped within the thorn-bone cage, struggling desperately to survive.
Uchiha Yoru stopped hesitating and hammered two savage punches into one especially thick bone joint as wide as a human waist, leaving two shallow but gold-glowing fist marks.
He had already decided that if nothing happened next, he would use natural energy to dig everyone out and save as many of the trapped boys as possible.
But in the very next instant, the golden light on the fist marks flared brightly.
It had actually worked.
Those marks linked successfully with the fist imprints already on the enemy's body, and the technique was fully activated.
Very quickly, golden-white flames began jetting out through the seams of the bone joints.
In the blink of an eye the flames spread through the entire thorn-bone cage. The smell of roasting marrow surged into the sky, then gradually turned into the foul stench of burning protein.
The growth of the spikes naturally stopped.
But the screams only grew louder.
Every shinobi trapped inside the cage now felt the bones around them turning into columns of fire.
And each of them immediately understood what fate awaited them next.
They were like prisoners bound to branding pillars. As the temperature rose, their bodies would gradually ignite and in the end be burned down into charred husks.
Though bone was not a good conductor of heat and the temperature rise was not yet fast enough to kill them outright, fear still drove everyone to cry out in despair.
Human fear of flame ran deeper than the fear of blades. It was carved directly into the soul.
At this point, Kaguya Gaiji was already dead, but the vast expanse of bones he had forced into being would still take a long time to burn away.
Uchiha Yoru seized the chance and began rescuing his own men, racing against time to dig the trapped Uchiha out of the thorn-bone cage.
Thankfully, after the golden fire burned through the marrow, the strength of these Shikotsumyaku bones dropped sharply. Otherwise rescue would have taken even longer.
But even so, it still was not fast enough.
By the time the golden-white flames had burned all the way through the bones, Uchiha Yoru and the other four section leaders had dragged out fourteen Uchiha.
Of those, six had already stopped breathing.
Outside the thorn-bone cage, the remaining Uchiha shinobi, relying on their greater number of Sharingan users, their four-man squad structure, and the tacit cooperation between squads, managed to use a small number of shinobi to tie down a large number of enemies, while concentrating superior force to quickly grind the opposition down.
The battle had already been decisively won.
Yet the Kirigakure shinobi proved themselves worthy of coming from one of the Five Great Villages. Their savage combat style, and their habit of turning every fight into a suicidal mutual-destruction attempt, was still difficult for these young Uchiha to adapt to.
Three Uchiha were seized by enemies already prepared to die and perished amid the roar of explosive tags.
The entire battle had moved at terrifying speed.
From the moment Kaguya Gaiji left the village to the instant his corpse was fully engulfed in golden flames, only 6 minutes and 17 seconds had passed.
In truth, shinobi battles were always this fast.
They were all creatures of overwhelming offense and weak defense. In a head-on clash, a single moment of carelessness was enough to decide life and death.
At this moment, deeper inside Kubota Village, the Kaguya shinobi still trapped among the traps and explosions were staggering about in confusion, still without a clue, and had not yet realized that their leader had already been killed.
Uchiha Yoru had no time to count the losses.
He looked once at Uchiha Ayumi—his face ashen, both feet lost.
He looked once at Uchiha Hiroto—covered in blood yet still able to move freely.
He looked once at the younger brothers who had already stopped breathing.
After one heavy sigh, he gave the order:
"The battle isn't over yet. We'll finish off the remaining enemy inside the village."
"Yes!"
The surviving Uchiha of the Tiger Unit quickly counted off their numbers.
Seventy-eight shinobi reorganized themselves into four and a half sections and followed Uchiha Yoru charging back into the village.
Using their familiarity with the village and with the traps, they spread out at section scale and carried out a systematic extermination of the remaining Kaguya shinobi.
During the process, when no one was watching, Uchiha Yoru quietly dug several fingertip bones out of his own abdomen, and only then did those wounds begin to heal rapidly.
But that rate of regeneration was only a little better than basic medical ninjutsu. It was nowhere near enough to be called an immortal body.
Otherwise he really would have dared to fight some Kaguya shinobi head-on from the start.
With the advantages of many against few, organized against disorganized, and complete familiarity with the terrain, the Tiger Unit threw itself into slaughtering the Kaguya shinobi still inside the village.
Yet even after the final Kaguya shinobi was killed, and several dozen vassal shinobi of the Kaguya clan fled, the cleanup still took a full hour and a half.
The aftermath of the battle destroyed eighty percent of Kubota Village's buildings.
The Tiger Unit's support position was almost reduced to flat ground, and more than a few boys began to worry about whether they would still be able to hold through the next engagement.
Uchiha Yoru, however, was not worried in the slightest.
He even smiled and said, "The greatest value of the buildings that sheltered us was that they blocked the enemy's vision, preventing them from fully grasping our situation and buying us the opportunity to split them up and eliminate them piece by piece."
"And ruins can do the same thing. They can still block vision, still divide the enemy. We can continue maneuvering with the enemy through this wide field of rubble."
"After all, this place hasn't truly been flattened into bare earth yet."
"Right now, the most important thing we need to do is handle our casualties—especially our wounded. They need to be sent back toward the Land of Fire immediately, so they can receive the best medical treatment possible."
"Yes, we understand!"
In this battle, the Uchiha clan's Tiger Unit paid the price of 9 shinobi killed in action, and in exchange eliminated more than five hundred Kirigakure shinobi, including the formidable bloodline-limit Shikotsumyaku users.
Aside from the dead, fourteen more shinobi were severely injured and had to be evacuated as soon as possible.
Among those wounded, section leader Uchiha Ayumi was in the worst condition.
Not only had he lost both legs, he had also lost his left arm.
He could no longer continue as a shinobi.
Overwhelmed by pain and grief, Uchiha Ayumi cried loudly.
At some point without anyone noticing, his Sharingan had advanced into the two-tomoe stage.
But with retirement now an irreversible fact, that breakthrough only made him feel even more miserable.
Apart from Uchiha Ayumi, four other Uchiha members also awakened two-tomoe Sharingan. All of them advanced after witnessing the deaths of their closest friends and mentally breaking down.
For any ordinary member of the Uchiha clan, even if grief still remained in their hearts, they would still have shown great excitement and pride over their newly advanced eyes.
But inside the Tiger Unit, the concept Uchiha Yoru had drilled into them was this:
Any such uncontrolled advancement would inevitably bring huge defects to the mind.
In the worst case, the mind would twist, and the person would cease to be himself, becoming nothing more than a slave controlled by the Sharingan.
Uchiha Yoru gathered together the younger brothers who had awakened the two-tomoe Sharingan and solemnly informed them:
Although their power had increased tremendously because of their advancement, until they underwent strict examination and their minds could be confirmed stable, they would not be allowed to serve as squad leaders or section leaders.
As a result, not only could they not step in to replace the dead or wounded squad leaders and section leaders, but one of them—who had already been a squad leader before awakening his two tomoe—was also stripped of his position for the time being and returned to the role of an ordinary member.
There was no helping it.
Inside the Tiger Unit, the duty of a commander was first and foremost command.
What they controlled was not only their own life, but the lives of the men under them.
There was no room for carelessness.
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