At this moment, Kiyohara did not know that two Uchiha had set their sights on him.
He only knew that Kurenai was peeking at his body from time to time.
Kiyohara ignored her gaze and focused entirely on his Taijutsu training.
His spiritual energy (Yin Release) had skyrocketed after inheriting the Radical Spirit's legacy. If his physical energy (Yang Release) lagged too far behind, the imbalance would cause severe cellular strain. That was why Kiyohara had been consistently grueling through bodyweight training.
The afterglow of the setting sun spilled across the training ground, stretching Kiyohara's shadow long across the dirt.
He was shirtless. Sweat beaded down his long, straight, and well-defined back muscles, leaving winding trails of water on his pale skin.
Using Magnet Release, he had compressed the collected iron sand from his thermos into dense, incredibly heavy weighted bands, attaching them directly to his arms, shoulders, and lower back.
He was doing slow, agonizing push-ups. His muscles trembled under the extreme tension, and the veins on his arms were clearly visible.
With every repetition, the burning soreness in his chest and triceps intensified, and his speed ground slower and slower.
He had reached the limit of his physical body.
Kiyohara collapsed his arms, resting his forehead against the dirt, panting heavily.
Because he had no dedicated Taijutsu master to instruct him, he could only perform brutal, foundational physical conditioning.
Many ninja who specialized in Taijutsu took chemical supplements to enhance recovery. It was a standard cycle: grueling training, medication, recovery, repeat.
Of course, that was the authorized, medical path.
There were also black-market performance-enhancing drugs circulating among civilians—steroids designed to forcibly synthesize muscle mass. But the biological price was severe: without the body needing to naturally secrete testosterone, a man's "assets" would progressively shrink.
'For the sake of my future happiness, I will absolutely never touch that garbage,' Kiyohara thought firmly. He didn't just want to be a traditional ninja; he wanted to be a traditional, all-natural fitness enthusiast.
After catching his breath, Kiyohara stood up, re-engaging the heavy iron sand bands to his arms.
'Iron sand is too common, and carrying enough of it is heavy,' he thought regretfully. 'If I could sense and manipulate Gold Dust or other precious metals... sigh. That would be the true way to get rich in this world.'
Unfortunately, his specific Magnet Release mutation couldn't control Gold Dust. Perhaps he needed to find a way to observe Rasa in combat to learn the technique.
A few yards away, Kurenai sat under the shade of an oak tree, pretending to practice Genjutsu hand signs. She felt entirely uneasy.
Her gaze kept drifting unconsciously toward Kiyohara's shirtless, sweat-drenched torso. Seeing his firm, explosive muscles bulging under the strain of the iron sand, her cheeks inexplicably burned.
She forced herself to stare at her hands, but with little success.
'This guy... exercising like this out in the open is entirely too distracting,' she muttered under her breath.
Just then, a silver-haired boy wearing a mask walked into the clearing.
Kakashi glanced at Kiyohara with his dead-fish eyes, noting that Kiyohara's physical conditioning had improved significantly.
Noticing Kakashi staring at him, Kiyohara wiped his brow. *'Why does excessive fitness training only ever attract the attention of the same sex?'* he thought dryly.
"Kakashi, what are you doing out here?" Kiyohara asked.
"Someone is looking for you," Kakashi replied indifferently, hands stuffed in his pockets.
Kiyohara paused, dispersing the magnetic field. The heavy iron sand immediately fell off his arms and slithered back into the thermos at his waist. He picked up his shirt and pulled it over his head. "Who?"
"An Uchiha named Tetsuho. And an unknown younger kid," Kakashi was characteristically concise.
"Uchiha Tetsuho?" Kiyohara raised an eyebrow. What did the guy who lost to him in the Chunin Exams want? Revenge?
Infighting in a war camp carried the penalty of treason. Surely Tetsuho wasn't that stupid. It couldn't be that the Sharingan was already pressuring his brain, making him act entirely on emotion.
"Let's go see what he wants," Kiyohara said, adjusting his flak jacket. Kurenai immediately abandoned her fake hand signs and followed them back to the camp perimeter.
When they arrived, Kiyohara raised an eyebrow at the younger boy standing beside Tetsuho.
The boy carried a short sword strapped horizontally across his back. His nose was slightly broader than average, and his dark eyes were impossibly calm and gentle for an Uchiha.
Kiyohara recognized him instantly.
He was one of the two biggest traitors to the Uchiha Clan in canon history: Uchiha Shisui.
His talent was as heaven-defying as Itachi's. Both were the absolute pinnacle of prodigies achieving fame at an absurdly young age. He was younger than almost anyone on the battlefield, yet his kill record was already terrifying. During this war, he would earn the moniker that terrified nations: Shisui of the Body Flicker.
But perhaps because all of his stat points had been dumped into raw combat talent, Shisui's political intelligence was naive to the point of being tragic.
'After awakening the most broken Mangekyō Sharingan ability in existence—Kotoamatsukami—he only told Itachi,' Kiyohara recalled the canon lore bitterly. 'Then, he went alone to meet Danzo Shimura, openly revealing his trump card. Danzo immediately ambushed him and gouged out his right eye.'
And then, instead of using his remaining eye to cast Kotoamatsukami on Danzo and fix the political crisis... Shisui simply gave his left eye to Itachi, jumped off a cliff, and committed suicide.
'At a time when his clan was facing internal civil war and external liquidation, instead of using his god-tier power to save his family, he chose to jump into a river,' Kiyohara thought, shaking his head internally.
"Something up?" Kiyohara asked directly.
Tetsuho looked at Kiyohara. The humiliating memory of his previous defeat surfaced, making his face twitch. But glancing down at Shisui, he straightened his back.
"Kiyohara, this is my clansman, Uchiha Shisui," Tetsuho announced. "I want to ask you to spar with him. A friendly spar. Stopping at the point of injury."
He emphasized the last part specifically, ensuring no one could claim he was instigating a lethal duel.
"I generally don't like fighting and killing. It's meaningless," Kiyohara smiled blandly.
Tetsuho was stunned. He had read the casualty reports from the Whirlpool ruins. Kiyohara had slaughtered Mist ninja like a demon. Why was he suddenly claiming to be a pacifist? And during their Chunin Exam ring match, he was fierce as hell!
"Sorry, my schedule is quite tight," Kiyohara said lazily. "I want to use my limited time to make infinite contributions to the Village."
He turned, making a move to walk away.
Seeing this, Tetsuho reacted instantly.
'Damn it! What tight schedule?!' Tetsuho realized the truth. 'This inherently evil bastard is just asking for a bribe! He won't get out of bed without profit!'
"Wait!" Tetsuho shouted.
He thought of his own failure. Then he thought of Shisui, whose Phantom Body Flicker Technique was already so fast that even Tetsuho's mature Sharingan struggled to track him. Kiyohara, a boy without ocular powers, would be helpless against it.
He couldn't just let Kiyohara walk away. He needed to see this arrogant commoner humbled.
"Take this as a wager," Tetsuho said. A flash of intense physical pain crossed his face, but he solemnly drew three uniquely shaped, cold-gleaming shuriken from his pouch. The four-cornered blades were etched with incredibly fine, distinct patterns. "If Shisui loses, I will give you my custom shuriken."
Kiyohara stopped walking.
"These are special shuriken meticulously forged by the Ninja Cat Clan" Tetsuho said proudly. "Whether it is the metal alloy, the aerodynamic balance, or the sheer sharpness... they are top-notch."
"Forged by the Ninja Cats?" Kiyohara turned around; he was genuinely interested now.
He had just been complaining about needing specialized, aerodynamic projectiles for his Object Manipulation Jutsu, and Tetsuho had casually offered him the best blades in the world.
The Uchiha Clan had a blood-pact with the Ninja Cats. The weapons forged in the feline armory were legendary, rare, high-quality items exclusively dealt to the Uchiha.
"Fine. I agree," Kiyohara said, looking at Shisui's calm eyes. "Comrades sparring is the only way to find room for improvement, isn't it?"
"Of course," Tetsuho gripped the shuriken tightly.
'This greedy bastard really was just holding out for a bribe,' Tetsuho sneered internally. 'Hmph. He is underestimating Shisui because of his age.'
Tetsuho couldn't wait to see exactly how badly Kiyohara was going to crash and burn.
Both sides agreed to meet at the open training ground by the river after nightfall.
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