"Die!"
"Lightning Release: Thunder Lion Wild Roar!"
In the forest, the bald man wearing a blue-and-white fitted flak vest erupted with arcs of blue lightning from both hands. In the blink of an eye, his twin blades were hurled forward.
As the blades spun through the air, blue lightning began to gather above their edges. Moments later, the lightning seemed to be drawn together, forming something that looked vaguely like a lion—but resembled even more a wild dog with invisible wings jammed into its body.
Baixing calmly shifted his body to the side, effortlessly dodging the Lightning Release attack from this so-called "Thunder Lion" of Kumogakure.
"That's it?"
Baixing's face was full of disdain.
The black-haired man standing beside the bald one sneered coldly.
"As expected of the captain—he's the strongest!"
The moment Vee spoke, Baixing's expression changed slightly.
He realized he'd been a bit careless.
Although he hadn't turned around to look, judging from the bald man's right hand still held in a sword-pointing gesture—
If his guess was right, this wild dog could home in?!
Sure enough, the blue lightning lion tore through several branches and shot into the air, rising halfway before abruptly twisting around. At the same time, it connected with the faint blue electric glow at A-Ye Yi's fingertip—barely visible to the naked eye.
"This," A-Ye Yi roared, "is the true finishing move—Lightning Release: Lion Flash!"
He slammed his right hand onto the ground and immediately retreated with Vee at top speed. In the next instant, a lightning arc etched into the ground like a compass needle, linking up with the blue lion still suspended in midair.
"Just as I thought."
Whoosh!
This time, the lightning moved at least ten times faster than before—like a surface-to-air missile plunging straight down to the spot where A-Ye Yi's hand had been moments earlier.
A straight line of deep-blue light sliced through the forest and slammed into the leaf-covered ground.
The two Cloud ninja, who had been watching Baixing closely, clearly saw that he hadn't even had time to react before the lightning pierced straight through his body—
BOOM!!!
On the ground, the wild dog—no, the Lion Flash—carved out a crater several people wide. There was no need to elaborate on the complexity of this technique. For a Lightning Release Baixing had never seen before, he judged it to be S-rank in difficulty, but as for power and effect…
At best, it was A-rank in power, and no more than B-rank in practical application.
This was how jōnin fought—clean, decisive, no holding back. One move meant certain death.
If Baixing's identity hadn't been "genin,"
If the intel sent by someone hadn't stated that Baixing was poor at ninjutsu and hadn't even mastered the Three Basic Techniques—
Then in those two or three seconds, A-Ye Yi, as a jōnin, would already have realized something was wrong, turned his gaze back to Baixing, checked the corpse, and stayed alert—
—Instead of standing there admiring the full execution of his self-created A-rank nin-taijutsu, completely missing the black-haired youth who had already used the Substitution Technique, followed by Earth Release, and slipped underground.
"Time to go capture the Uchiha ninja."
After watching the entire landing sequence of his A-rank technique, A-Ye Yi felt thoroughly satisfied. He lifted his gaze toward the tree where Baixing had been—
"Not good!"
"What is it, Captain?"
Vee looked up, only to see that the Baixing on the tree had turned into a substitution log, with a charred hole burned through its center.
"Creating such a complicated Lightning Release with sound and visual interference for targeting—no idea what kind of idiot would think this was a good idea."
Baixing's upper body emerged from the ground beneath the two Cloud ninja. Starting from his right hand, an invisible ROOM space expanded instantly, forming a pale-blue, translucent spherical barrier covering 180 degrees.
"What kind of jutsu is this?! Could it be… a kekkei genkai?!"
A-Ye Yi roared, trying to struggle—but by then, Baixing's body was already almost completely above ground.
He gripped his blade and gave it a light swing.
"ROOM: Slaughterhouse."
Ignoring all distance, the ROOM space directly sliced both A-Ye Yi and Vee cleanly in half. The speed was so absurd that the two activated Substitution Technique almost simultaneously with the moment their bodies were cut.
Within the ROOM, Baixing could perceive everything enveloped by the pale-blue barrier. Watching the two attempt to substitute, he simply observed—
Substitution wasn't a space-time technique. You still needed legs.
After finishing their hand seals, the two suddenly realized they were still standing in the same spot.
They froze.
"Did you notice?"
Baixing's voice sounded behind them, low and demonic.
"Don't worry~ it won't hurt~ the doctor will give you a free operation~"
"N–No… what did you do to us?!"
Still unaware that his upper and lower body had already been separated, A-Ye Yi shouted in panic.
"Captain! Let's kill him!"
Vee roared, trying to twist his body—but his legs didn't move at all. Kunai clenched in hand, he screamed again.
"Vee?"
"What is it, Captain?"
Vee turned his head, only to see sheer terror plastered across the bald man's face.
"Y–Y–Y–You—"
"Alright."
Baixing lightly swung his blade again—apparently without moving at all.
"Just lost your lower bodies. Plenty of life left ahead of you."
In an instant, both men's arms were severed. With a dull thud, they dropped to the ground.
Only then did Vee finally realize what had happened. He looked down at himself and let out a hysterical scream:
"Impossible! This is impossible! You're not a genin at all! We fell into a trap!"
A-Ye Yi considered himself well-traveled, but he had never seen such a horrifying ability.
"My comrades… will avenge me."
Instinctively, he tried to use a summoning technique to send out their final intel—
Then he looked down and saw both arms already lying on the ground.
Shit.
It's over.
"Is that so?"
Baixing smiled like a demon, the pale-blue space pressing tightly against the ground.
"They won't get the chance. And no one will know what happened here."
"In this space, time, space, all matter—even your lives—are under my control."
"Including your voices."
It wasn't even dark yet. The sky was just overcast, the wind cold against their faces. Eyes vacant, the two Cloud ninja shook their heads desperately, trying to escape the demon slowly approaching them.
"Relax. Until I finish my experiments, you won't die."
With their limbs severed and no neural connection, the two Cloud ninja could only lie there like victims of the ancient punishment known as human swine, blankly enduring all kinds of experiments conducted by a boy who looked cold and handsome—but was now dark and terrifying.
"Didn't I give it back to you? Why aren't you moving?"
Vee stared at his right arm—now grotesquely attached to A-Ye Yi's left leg, which was missing its toes. His vision went black.
Even A-Ye Yi, a jōnin, couldn't hold out for long. Though the procedures were painless, the sheer psychological horror was unbearable.
In the end, he descended into madness, muttering over and over:
"Kill me… kill me…"
"How boring."
Having lost interest, Baixing separated his experimental pieces one by one, dispelled the ROOM, and stabbed both men through the heart.
"With mental fortitude like that, don't be a ninja in your next life."
After that, he even stomped their heads into pulp—ensuring no intelligence unit could recover information about his true strength.
If there were no teammates around, I could've played a bit longer.
—
Elsewhere, Ritsu hid in the grass, launching several sneak attacks in succession—but all of them were spotted by Uchiha Mikoto and failed completely.
"Damn it! You didn't say anything about the Sharingan! What the hell is our spy even doing?!"
Ritsu grit his teeth, furious. But at this point, there was no retreat. He had to capture someone as a hostage—only then could he force that Uchiha girl, who was supposedly a genin but fought at near chūnin level, to lower her guard.
On the surface, Mikoto still looked calm. But in reality, she had seized an opening earlier to use another C-rank Fire Release—Phoenix Flower Jutsu—trying to hit the Cloud ninja. Due to a misjudgment, it missed and only burned away a patch of grass held together by wire.
Her chakra was almost completely depleted.
Being able to cast two C-rank Fire Release techniques in succession, along with multiple chakra-enhanced strikes combined with weapons and taijutsu, was already exhausting beyond belief.
Not to mention Might Dai, who had exchanged blows several times with the blond Cloud ninja—his chakra was completely empty.
Yakushi Nono wasn't much better. She had about half her chakra left—only because she'd conserved it by using a C-rank defensive jutsu optimized for faster casting.
"Hah… this guy really knows how to hide."
"Mikoto, don't let your guard down. He could pop out at any time."
Just as Mikoto and Nono stood back-to-back, keeping some distance while scanning their surroundings in a full 180 degrees to protect the carriage in the center—
Bang!
A sudden sound from the grass made both girls, the client's group, and the exhausted Might Dai jump in shock.
A moment later, rustling sounds came from the bushes. Nono widened her eyes, gripping her kunai tightly. Mikoto didn't turn around at all, her gaze locked firmly ahead.
"These guys are so poor! Only three thousand ryō on them—how do they even dare come out and make a living?!"
Mikoto and Nono instantly performed a full-on anime-style faceplant.
"That useless jerk…"
"Trash-tier sensei…"
The danger along the road was completely resolved.
The horses, however, had been badly startled and could only move slowly. Even so, before nightfall, they finally reached the port city near the coast of the Land of Iron—
Tieling Fortress.
...
Night fell. Thick clouds blotted out the moon.
A moment later, a gap opened in the clouds, letting pale moonlight spill into a silent, gloomy forest.
"Three Cloud ninja—at least chūnin level. All heads gone. Two bodies completely mutilated. One killed instantly…"
"And the carriage tracks on the ground lead toward the Land of Iron's port city—Tieling Fortress—the one with ships bound for the Land of Hot Water."
"I shouldn't have followed the wrong trail, but…"
A man with his face hidden beneath black cloth, green eyes glinting beneath it, his voice hoarse, inspected the devastated battlefield.
Mikoto had been too drained to use Fire Release again. Baixing, claiming he was utterly exhausted and completely out of chakra, had left the three bodies in the forest—perhaps to be eaten by beasts and destroy the evidence.
At the same time, Baixing had claimed that the enemy squad was likely all chūnin, and that he'd gotten lucky, barely defeating the two with taijutsu alone.
When he emerged from the bushes, his clothes were torn to shreds—but Yakushi Nono, who still had some energy left, noticed immediately:
Baixing didn't have a single wound on him.
Reason?
Baixing was afraid his blade would get tetanus.
What no one expected was that this battlefield would be discovered shortly afterward by someone hoping to earn a 30,000 ryō black-market bounty—
Kakuzu.
"Thirty thousand…"
"Thirty thousand to make me deal with a jōnin-level team?"
"Hehehe…"
Kakuzu turned and left without looking back.
Along the way, the intel he'd gathered said the merchant had hired a pure genin, four-man team as protection.
Now it seemed obvious—
What a joke.
There was no such thing as a pure genin team.
This was clearly another one of Konoha's tricks.
◇ I'll be dropping one bonus chapters for every 10 reviews. comment
◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ You can read 60 chapter ahead on P@treon if you're interested: patreon.com/CanonBreaker