When Arata Itsuki spoke so arrogantly, Zōshirō didn't get angry.
He knew perfectly well that even a single mistake could mean death at the hands of this lightning-fast young man.
"You're very similar to the White Fang," Zōshirō said calmly. "But your speed is even greater. In the entire shinobi world, only one person I've seen is faster than you."
Arata's curiosity was immediately piqued.
"You mean the Third Raikage?"
Zōshirō nodded.
"That's right. You may be extremely fast… but the Third Raikage's speed is on another level. Against him, I had almost no time to react. All I could do was take the hits."
Arata nodded, unsurprised.
The Third Raikage—known as the strongest Raikage in history—had fought ten thousand enemies alone.
Until Uchiha Madara's solo assault on the Allied Shinobi Forces, that record was arguably the most insane feat in the entire era.
And Hashirama… well, he didn't count. He wasn't human. He was the God of Shinobi.
"Even if I fall short of him," Arata said, "that won't change your fate today. Sakumo is already on his way. You should know that."
Zōshirō did know.
But he hadn't been idly chatting to buy time for Arata—
he had his own plan.
Suddenly, Zōshirō pressed his palms together.
All ten puppets of the Senju Ten-Man Battalion converged around him, forming a perfect defensive sphere with Zōshirō sealed at the center.
Then, all ten puppets opened their mouths.
"Secret Jutsu: Ten-Thousand-Fathom Wind Execution!"
The moment the words left his mouth, each puppet unleashed massive wind swords—
meters long—
erupting outward in all directions.
To an ordinary observer, it would look like Zōshirō was wasting chakra.
Such scattered attacks shouldn't hit anything.
But Arata immediately realized—
this jutsu countered him perfectly.
A 360-degree, zero-blind-spot assault.
There was no path to get close.
And because wind naturally countered lightning, being sliced even once could be fatal.
As for the wind blades' power—there was no need to doubt it.
These were Senju wind techniques.
Even the clans famed for ninjutsu paled beside this heritage.
Within moments, the number of swords surpassed thousands—
then tens of thousands.
And the puppets still didn't stop, spewing wind as if they had infinite chakra.
Arata no longer dared remain still.
He pushed his speed to its limits and began weaving through the storm.
Swish!
He had just dodged when a razor-sharp wind blade tore through the spot he had been standing—
slicing cleanly through solid rock as if it were tofu.
And there were tens of thousands more just like it.
This was Zōshirō's plan:
using the puppets' low chakra consumption to unleash a devastating technique no human shinobi could maintain.
Even if this killed Arata, Zōshirō likely wouldn't survive returning to Land of Wind alive—
But he didn't care.
Eliminating a prodigy as terrifying as Arata would be a great service to Sunagakure.
Arata wanted to escape the jutsu's range, but the moment he looked up, he froze.
The wind swords traveled shockingly far—
even after flying nearly a kilometer, they still had not dissipated.
No doubt about it.
Every single sword could kill him.
He stopped thinking and focused everything on survival.
His Mind Net expanded to its limits, predicting each sword's trajectory a fraction of a second before it struck.
His body blurred—dodging, twisting, slipping between swords that sliced the air like a field of guillotines.
And so, the battlefield became a deadly dance—
Zōshirō frantically pouring chakra into his puppets,
and Arata desperately evading death by a hair's breadth.
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Read advanced chapter ahead of everyone else on my P@treon.
P@treon/GodDragcell