"Is this why you turned yourself into a puppet? To break through the limit of a puppeteer only having ten fingers?"
Shisui Uchiha had originally had no desire to converse with Sasori of the Red Sand, who had cruelly slaughtered his companion.
But when he saw those dozens of puppets, creations that had surpassed the limits of traditional puppeteers in every sense, he still could not stop himself from asking.
"The limits of the human body cannot be surpassed. Weak flesh will eventually decay. But a completed puppet can be preserved forever, becoming eternal art… If it were you, would you not wish to break through those hateful restrictions and become an eternal, perfect existence?"
Sasori controlled the dozens of red-cloaked puppets spread across the sky and ground, arranging them into an encirclement. At the same time, with one hand, he manipulated the Third Kazekage puppet, which possessed flight and battlefield-restriction abilities, calmly spraying his poisonous temptation at Shisui Uchiha.
"I do not think a puppet born for war is qualified to call itself eternal art."
Shisui shook his head. The Sharingan in his eyes spun as he bit his finger and began forming the seals for the Summoning Technique.
"You are wrong. War is eternal and unchanging. Only things that exist by relying on war have no possibility of being eliminated."
Sasori sneered. The regeneration core in his chest beat like a heart, sending the order to attack his puppet army.
In an instant, dozens of puppets whose numbers alone were enough to make one despair descended toward Shisui Uchiha with perfectly unified movements, like a net thrown down from heaven and earth.
Blades, spears, swords, halberds, kunai, and iron sand slammed down upon him with no room to dodge, violently blasting him apart into countless phantom crows.
Crows?
He can do it even from this distance!?
Sasori's heart tightened. He immediately began disrupting the flow of chakra inside his body, attempting to break the genjutsu Shisui Uchiha had placed on him at some unknown point.
But this time was different from before.
The genjutsu activated through the Sharingan was far stronger than the previous one.
Sasori watched as the crows scattering through the sky landed one after another on his body, opening ominous three-tomoe Sharingan toward him. Yet he could not find even the slightest sign of how to break free. His brows tightened. Almost by instinct, he recalled every puppet capable of flight to his side, attempting to use them as a wall to block Shisui Uchiha's follow-up attack.
As the puppets returned, Sasori repeatedly sensed the chakra threads between himself and his puppets being severed. But with his superb puppet technique, he almost instantly reconnected every broken thread and successfully used the puppets' bodies to block the black feathers shooting toward him.
"Fire Release: Explosive Flame Feathers."
The Fire Release that had once blocked his pursuit came again.
The black feathers embedded in the puppets' bodies exploded violently. Even with so many puppets blocking the blast, the shockwave still sent Sasori flying backward and forced him into free fall.
"Damn brat. You think I—"
The impact from the outside broke the genjutsu Sasori had fallen into.
By instinct, he tried to wave his left hand and control the Third Kazekage puppet to catch himself. But at that moment, as he fell face-first through the air, he saw the Third Kazekage puppet's head burning with flames as it flew into the distance.
What he had pulled over to catch himself were three intact red-robed puppets.
Damn it. Without the Third Kazekage puppet, I have no aerial mobility—
In that instant, Sasori understood what Shisui Uchiha had done while he was trapped by genjutsu.
Shisui had severed and swapped the chakra threads connected to the Third Kazekage puppet and the ordinary puppets from the Performance of a Hundred Puppets. Then, using Sasori's instinctive reaction of reconnecting the broken threads, he had shifted the Third Kazekage puppet into the position of a disposable shield.
With almost no effort, he had destroyed the Third Kazekage's Magnet Release and Sasori's aerial mobility.
"Impressive."
Even after witnessing many shinobi with unique skills of their own, Sasori still gave that praise sincerely.
As one of the very best puppeteers in the shinobi world, Sasori, when going all out, needed less than the blink of an eye to reconnect severed chakra threads.
Yet within that brief instant, Shisui Uchiha had still successfully swapped the chakra threads between the Third Kazekage puppet and the puppets of the Performance of a Hundred Puppets, deceiving him and destroying the most important aerial maneuvering ability Sasori had in this battle.
There was naturally no shortage of credit belonging to that pair of three-tomoe Sharingan.
But the truly troublesome part was the boy's sharp battle instinct, and his bold style of immediately acting the moment he thought of a plan.
Boom—
Sasori and the three puppets that caught him crashed into the ground together, raising a cloud of dust nearly two people tall.
Naturally, Shisui Uchiha would not give up the chance to press his advantage.
Having calculated Sasori's fall trajectory long ago, he seized the timing and hurled the samurai blade he had just retrieved toward the target location.
The high-speed spinning samurai blade easily severed Sasori's left arm, destroying the last part of his body capable of precise operation.
Then Shisui Uchiha shook his wings. Black feathers shot out, cutting through the chakra threads of every puppet in the Performance of a Hundred Puppets in midair. Then they exploded violently on the puppets that had lost control, completely cutting off Sasori's final chance to counterattack.
"You have already lost, Sasori of the Red Sand."
Shisui Uchiha looked down from above at Sasori as he slowly stood from among the broken remains of his puppet body. His voice was calm as he stated the fact of his victory.
"A puppeteer who has lost all his puppets cannot defeat me, no matter how outstanding he is."
"I still have one puppet. Did you not see it, Shisui Uchiha?"
Sasori tilted his head. His face still carried that emotionless, indifferent expression.
The mechanism in his abdomen slowly turned, driving the steel cable inside to twitch weakly a few times. At the same time, from the damaged part of his back, a spiral blade extended with stutters and cracks, as if he still intended to continue fighting.
"Do you want me to completely dismantle your body and leave only that lump of flesh used to produce chakra!? Something like that… can something like that still be called you!?"
Seeing Sasori treat his own body with such complete disregard, Shisui Uchiha, who had already broadened his horizons quite a bit by staying near a mad scientist like Orochimaru, still could not help feeling a chill crawl through his entire body.
He pointed from afar at the "heart" on Sasori's chest, the part that still looked like living tissue and had the character for "Sasori" written on it, and shouted sharply.
"Of course it can," Sasori answered as if it were only natural. "That regeneration core can generate my chakra. It has inherited all my memories and skills. As long as I change to another puppet body, 'I' can once again walk the world under the name Sasori of the Red Sand… Why would it not count as me?"
"Madman. Are you not afraid I will destroy your heart!?"
"You have not yet obtained information about 'Root' from me. You have not learned from my mouth the true purpose behind this assassination incident. You have not interrogated me for all the puppet techniques in my possession… Why would you destroy my heart?"
Sasori asked back with great interest.
"You are a member of the Uchiha clan, yet you did not lose your reason in rage after seeing the puppet I displayed in battle from the Yuki clan. Then naturally, your reason will stop your impulse to completely kill me. It may even make you think of ways to protect my safety… The fact that I can still talk to you right now is the best proof, is it not?"
Shisui Uchiha clenched his teeth.
But he still appeared behind Sasori with a Body Flicker and drove the samurai blade that had severed Sasori's left arm hard into the ground beneath his feet.
With the dull sound of flesh being pierced, a White Zetsu that had just poked its head out from the soil was stabbed straight through the skull.
Without making even the slightest sound, it died under Shisui Uchiha's Sharingan and the sensory perception granted by the Cursed Seal of Heaven.
Then Shisui Uchiha backhanded a punch into the chest of Sasori's broken body and gripped his "heart" tightly.
"The Fourth will make you explain everything properly."
Shisui Uchiha suppressed his anger and said.
"Then we will meet again, whether because of the 'Root' that has already appeared, or because of the Zetsu you just killed."
Sasori of the Red Sand expressionlessly felt the strange sensation of his regeneration core being forcibly pulled out of his body by Shisui Uchiha.
Then he answered calmly.
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