Heavy!
Heavier and heavier!
Each slash from the other side seemed to carry endless force; with every head-on clash, that force was even increasing!
The divine strength he had always been proud of was actually beginning to feel pressure. From being evenly matched at the start, after dozens of exchanges, every time their weapons collided, a clear numb ache traveled through his arms. The web between his thumb and forefinger throbbed faintly, and even the iron staff seemed to grow heavier and heavier.
In contrast, although the youth opposite him had also been forced back several times in those repeated head-on collisions, his eyes were growing brighter and brighter. His momentum did not diminish but instead rose; the power behind his blade increased rather than lessened!
Is this guy a monster!?
Fine beads of sweat seeped out across Sōichirō's forehead, and the tremor in his arms became harder and harder to suppress.
He had never imagined that, in the field of strength he took the greatest pride in, he would be driven to such a point by a young latecomer!
That kind of power simply did not seem like something a human should possess! Every collision felt like shaking a ferocious beast that was awakening!
They exchanged another seven or eight rounds.
Each clash between blade and staff erupted with a heart-pounding roar.
Sweat was already visible on Sōichirō's forehead, and his breathing grew heavy.
He felt as though he was not swinging an iron staff, but pushing against a mountain that kept growing.
The other side's strength seemed inexhaustible. More terrifying still was the increasingly condensed momentum contained within those blade strikes. Every head-on clash sent his blood and chakra surging chaotically; the numb ache in his arms had spread to his shoulders, and the joints of the fingers gripping the iron staff turned white from excessive force, stabbing with pain.
This cannot go on like this!
An alarm rang loudly in Sōichirō's heart. After such prolonged combat, his stamina, chakra, and momentum were being worn down and suppressed bit by bit by that unreasonable brute force.
If he waited until exhaustion to change his move, there would likely be no chance left.
"Haah!"
After another straightforward frontal collision with no tricks at all, Sōichirō borrowed the rebound force and leapt sharply backward, temporarily widening the distance. His chest rose and fell violently as he stared fixedly at Isshin, whose eyes across from him still burned bright as fire.
Without a word, Sōichirō poured the remaining strength and chakra within his body into his arms, and infused it into the dark iron staff that was linked to his mind and spirit.
In the next instant, he moved!
Gathering all his essence, energy, and spirit into a single point, he raised the iron staff high overhead with both hands. Man and staff seemed to merge into one, transforming into a streak of black lightning that tore through the air, following the purest and most direct path.
"Seishin Meichi-ryū Secret Art—Initiation!!!"
This was his trump-card ultimate technique: concentrating all his strength into a single strike that surpassed the limit, meant to smash open any defense with absolute brute force and shatter the opponent's will and body.
Before the staff even fell, the pressure condensed to an extreme had already made the air in the entire dōjō nearly congeal. The onlookers felt as if their hearts were being clenched tight, their breathing stopping short!
Facing this earth-shattering blow that could not be avoided, Isshin's eyes burst with an unprecedented sharp brilliance.
He likewise exhaled and gave a shout, gripping tightly with both hands the longsword already covered in fine cracks. Not dodging and not evading, he once again chose the fiercest head-on confrontation, slashing upward in a reverse cut!
"Come!!"
Clang!!!!!!
This time the collision sound far exceeded anything before—so piercing it almost seemed to stab through the eardrums—followed immediately by a teeth-achingly harsh, glass-shattering "crack"!
Under Sōichirō's all-out "Initiation," the fine-steel longsword in Isshin's hands—having endured multiple heavy blows—finally could not bear the load any longer and snapped cleanly in the middle with a crisp sound!
Half the blade spun as it flew out, and with a "thunk" it sank deep into the far wall.
The iron staff shattered the longsword, its momentum reduced by only thirty percent. It still carried terrifying residual might, slicing through the cold glint of fragments sparked by the broken blade, and slammed straight down toward Isshin's head—now wide open due to his weapon's break!
"Damn it!"
At the instant before the iron staff touched the other's hair, Yagyū Sōichirō's heart sank sharply.
He wanted to teach this blockheaded brat a lesson, but he never intended to take his life—yet once this "Initiation" was unleashed, with full force even he himself found it difficult to rein it in completely at the final moment!
Right at this critical instant, when there was not even time to cry out—
A sudden change occurred!
Only, the tall youth's body in the field seemed as if a pause switch had been pressed, entering an extremely brief, almost imperceptible moment of stagnation.
A strange luster abruptly swept over his entire body. It was a heavy, condensed metallic texture—like ancient bronze or dark gold tempered through countless hammerings—flashing and vanishing in an instant!
Clang!!!
The iron staff struck solidly against Isshin's crown!
Yet what rang out was no longer the dull thud of flesh being struck, but a resounding metallic boom that shook the heart—like a great bell crashing into a bronze pillar, or a sledgehammer smashing down on a hundred-times-forged steel anvil!
Sōichirō only felt an irresistible, overwhelming recoil force, taking the other's head as its point of origin and surging back along the iron staff like an avalanche!
That force—so fierce, so violent—was even greater than his just-now desperate, all-or-nothing "Initiation"!
"What?!"
He could not hold on at all. In an instant, his five fingers were jolted numb, and that dark iron staff that had accompanied him through years of battle flew out of his grasp for the first time, turning into a black shadow.
With a "boom," it shot high into the air and disappeared from sight. Only after a long while did it crash back down heavily, embedding itself deep into the ground and trembling without cease.
As for Sōichirō himself, it was as if he had been struck head-on by an invisible siege hammer. His burly body was sent flying backward uncontrollably.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He smashed through two wooden pillars supporting the side corridor in succession, then slid for more than ten meters amid a mess of shattered stone and billowing dust, until his back slammed heavily against the wall at the end of the dōjō. Only then did he barely come to a stop.
"Cough… cough, cough!" He dropped to one knee, unable to stop himself from coughing up a mouthful of spit tinged with a rusty taste. His arms hung limp, trembling incessantly, almost impossible to lift.
He abruptly raised his head and stared fixedly at the youth in the center of the field—who was slowly withdrawing his stance and, aside from holding only half a broken blade in his hand, seemed completely unharmed. His eyes were filled with incredulous shock.
"Th-this… what kind of technique is this?" Sōichirō panted, his voice hoarse. "Ninjutsu? Or some kind of Kekkei Genkai?"
Isshin stood where he was. The strange metallic luster on his body had long since faded, returning to normal skin tone.
He glanced at the broken blade in his hand and casually tossed it to the ground, where it made a light clanging sound. Facing Sōichirō's shocked question, he shook his head and said calmly: "It is neither ninjutsu nor a Kekkei Genkai, but a secret art of my Ashina style."
This Isshin Clone, whose body had fused with the bloodline genes of the Monkey King, inherited the Monkey clan's immense strength and steel sinews and iron bones. However, he did not inherit the Monkey clan's peculiar trait of weaponizing their bodies.
Yet when the human bloodline and the Monkey bloodline fused at a deeper level, a certain benign mutation arose, giving birth to a unique ability:
His body could undergo metallization in an instant, his entire form taking on a dark, muted bronze-gold sheen, as though cast in bronze and forged in iron. Like the Monkey clan's weaponized body—the "Adamantine Staff"—it raised the hardness and toughness of his own body to an inconceivable level.
At the same time, any powerful impact he received could be rebounded in the form of an even more violent shockwave, its recoil force surpassing the original attack.
What was wondrous was that the shorter this "metallized" state lasted, and the more precisely and timely it was triggered, the greater the defensive strength and rebound force it produced.
Like the "perfect guard" and "parry" in an action game, the optimal timing was to release it at the very instant the enemy's attack was about to land.
"This technique is called…" Isshin met Sōichirō's stunned gaze and slowly declared: "Adamant Guard!"
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