"Demonic Illusion: Tree Binding Death!"
The instant Kurenai's genjutsu activated, one Sunagakure chūnin's movements lagged by half a beat.
In their vision, thick vines seemed to sprout out of nowhere, wrapping around limbs and locking them in place.
It was only a deception of sight and perception, but in a fight that changed in an instant, half a second of hesitation was more than enough to be fatal.
Kurenai immediately followed up with a rapid shuriken throw.
Clang!
At the last moment, the curved-blade shinobi broke free of the illusion and crossed his twin blades to block the shuriken.
Kiyohara vaulted out from the second-floor window.
He didn't jump into the fight right away—he first watched Genma and Kurenai's movements.
Compared to before, the two of them had clearly improved through the crucible of war.
In the night, the Sharingan in Kiyohara's eyes turned slowly, taking in every detail.
Yūra and the one Suna jōnin who still hadn't moved—a tall, gaunt man with a scarred face—were also staring at Kiyohara.
Their eyes carried both caution and uncertainty.
"Magnet Release Kiyohara…" Yūra rasped, murmuring the nickname.
Every major village studied intelligence on other nations' prodigies. Kiyohara was firmly on those lists.
At first they called him "Magnet Release Kiyohara." Later, another title spread: "Magnetic Storm Funeral."
Because when Kiyohara chose a target, that target usually didn't survive—like he was personally sending them off to the afterlife.
The stronger the shinobi, the more nicknames they accumulated. Over time, the one that fit best tended to stick.
Even Minato had other titles when he first emerged.
The scar-faced Suna jōnin let out a cold laugh and said, "I've heard that Mist shinobi who die by your hand don't even get to leave a whole corpse behind."
Kiyohara looked at them.
On the battlefield below, Genma and Kurenai were locked in combat with the remaining three Suna shinobi.
Senbon struck curved blades in showers of sparks. The puppeteer's wooden puppets charged and crashed outside the orphanage, forcing the two to keep dodging.
While the two caretakers hurried the children into hiding, a few bold kids still peeked out through the windows to watch.
They stared wide-eyed at the fight, their small faces filled with a mix of excitement and awe.
"The ninja are amazing…" murmured a boy of seven or eight.
"That long-haired sister is so cool!" a girl pointed at Kurenai.
The heavyset nun and the bespectacled man panicked, trying to pull the kids back, but curiosity outweighed fear.
Yakushi Nono stepped out of the orphanage.
If these Suna shinobi tried to harm the children, she was prepared to fight too.
"Dean—let me handle it," Kiyohara said, looking at her.
Nono hadn't fought in years. Her skills had likely dulled badly.
In Boruto, Naruto slackened for only a few years and got careless enough to be stabbed through the abdomen by the newly appeared Uchiha Shin—recovering only because of Kurama's chakra.
Besides, Yakushi Nono's true strengths were infiltration and medical work.
Nono fell silent.
It was true—years without combat had dulled her body's reactions, her chakra control, her battle instincts…
Things that used to feel like pure reflex had softened in the calm routine of ordinary life.
"…Be careful," she finally said.
Still, she kept a surgical tool in hand—ready to intervene if things went wrong.
Kiyohara's gaze swept over the children secretly watching.
They had no idea what kind of brutal world they were witnessing.
At the center of the field, Yūra and Jira exchanged a glance.
"Deal with those two first," Jira muttered, nodding toward Genma and Kurenai.
But Yūra shook his head. His puppet arm whirred with faint mechanical clicks.
"No. Intelligence says the real threat is that Uchiha—Kiyohara. We have to team up against him."
"Team up against a brat?" Jira scoffed, but his eyes turned heavy.
He'd seen the report scrolls: the achievements, the bodies—killing a member of the Seven Swordsmen, multiple Mist jōnin, and rumors of a long-range secret technique.
"Don't underestimate him."
Yūra drew a katana coated in lethal poison.
As he rushed Kiyohara, he flicked his other hand—five chakra threads so thin they were nearly invisible snapped toward Kiyohara's limbs and throat.
One of the applications of the "Black Secret Technique": once those threads wrapped you, the puppeteer could seize control of your movements.
Kiyohara's eyes sharpened—and instead of retreating, he surged forward.
"Magnet Release: Sand-Iron Slug."
He whispered, wrist flicking.
His gourd vibrated. Sand-iron flowed out.
A spindle-shaped slug condensed, electric arcs dancing across its surface.
The magnetic surge stirred the air, blowing Kiyohara's black hair like a mass of dark flame.
Screee—
The air-splitting shriek was almost painful, a pale shockwave rippling through the night.
For an instant, the darkness brightened, and everyone saw Kiyohara's calm face.
The sand-iron slug shot out far faster than any kunai or shuriken.
But the target wasn't Yūra.
It was Jira behind him.
"What?!" Jira's face twisted in shock—he hadn't expected Kiyohara to strike him first.
He hastily formed seals.
"Wind Release: Gale Palm!"
A violent blast roared from his palm, trying to deflect the slug's trajectory.
But the magnetically compressed slug was far heavier than normal tools. The wind only nudged it a few centimeters—
Splat!
Blood burst.
The slug punched straight through Jira's right shoulder, blowing out a chunk of flesh behind him and burying itself deep in the rock face!
The impact lifted him off his feet and slammed him into a tree.
"AAARGH!"
Jira screamed, his right shoulder nearly torn apart, the crack of shattered bone unmistakable.
He collapsed, blood pooling rapidly beneath him.
He was dying—breathing in more than he could breathe out.
One hit—one Sunagakure jōnin crippled.
The entire field fell into a brief, stunned silence.
Even Genma and Kurenai froze, and their opponents hesitated mid-motion.
Yūra's puppet arm hung rigid in midair. Under his mask, his face went pale.
He knew Kiyohara was strong.
He hadn't imagined "one move and a seasoned jōnin is done."
From behind the window, the children erupted into hushed cheering.
"He's incredible! That big brother is incredible!"
"He beat the bad guy in one shot!"
"I want to be a ninja like that someday!"
Their innocent voices rang far too clearly in the night.
The heavyset nun hurriedly clamped hands over a couple of mouths, terrified the noise would draw attention.
Yakushi Nono adjusted her glasses; surprise flickered in her blue eyes behind the lenses.
Kiyohara calmly lowered his hand.
Even without much charging time, the power was like this.
He raised his hand again—another slug formed and launched.
Splat!
Blood sprayed.
Every time Kiyohara lifted his hand, someone died.
Against a supersonic sand-iron slug, Yūra barely managed to dodge.
"This brat… he's worse than the reports said," Yūra's face darkened.
This mission was failing.
"Black Secret Technique…!"
Yūra unleashed it.
Within Sunagakure, puppet arts split into many schools. "Black Secret Technique" was one of them.
Higher still were arts like the "White Secret Technique."
"Machine One Shot!"
With Yūra's shout, the puppet arm burst outward, flinging more than a dozen blades.
Each blade split mid-flight into dozens of wafer-thin slices, forming a net of blades.
Every piece was poisoned—one graze was enough to kill a shinobi within three seconds.
At the same time, the remaining Suna shinobi left two or three to keep Genma and Kurenai tied down, while the rest drove puppets in from both sides to pincer Kiyohara.
Wooden puppets opened their mouths, revealing rows of needle launchers packed inside.
"Die!" a Suna shinobi snarled—and the puppets fired poison needles like torrential rain.
A three-sided kill box.
Poison blades, poison needles, chakra threads—
"KIYOHARA!" Kurenai cried.
Genma tried to break through to help, but the curved-blade shinobi locked him down.
Kiyohara's expression didn't change.
Zzzzz—
A shrill electric howl ripped across the night.
Blinding lightning exploded from beneath Kiyohara's feet.
Lightning chakra surged wildly through the meridians in his legs.
"Lightning Release… Lightning Feet," Kiyohara said evenly.
Crackle!
Arcs danced around his soles.
This was the result of his recent work—using lightning chakra to stimulate the leg cells, activating them for extreme speed.
With chakra reserves several times a normal jōnin, absurdly strong chakra control, lightning affinity, and guidance from Uchiha Kiyohara, he'd created the technique in its earliest form.
Roughly C-rank in difficulty.
The "Kiyohara" standing there blurred and drifted away on the wind.
An afterimage.
The real Kiyohara had already moved.
Lightning stimulation in the legs, plus magnetic repulsion underfoot—stacked together, the burst speed jumped beyond what the naked eye could track.
Yūra saw only a smear—
BOOM!
A thunderous impact.
Kiyohara appeared beside Yūra's puppet arm, his right leg swinging like a heavy hammer.
A lightning-wrapped kick smashed into the arm's joint.
Crack—crack—crack!
Metal snapped in a chain of brittle pops.
Yūra's carefully built puppet shattered like rotten wood.
Blades flew. Mechanisms scattered. A poison reservoir ruptured, splattering violet toxin across the ground.
"No—" Yūra didn't even finish the word.
Kiyohara's second kick was already on its way—aimed at his chest.
Thud!
Yūra flew like a kite with its string cut, slamming into and collapsing a thick tree.
His chest caved in; blood gushed from his mouth and nose.
He stared at Kiyohara's boots.
Tiny arcs still danced on them, fading away.
On the ground where Kiyohara had launched, a scorched footprint smoked at the edges.
"W…why…" Yūra forced out, barely audible. "My blades… the poison…"
Kiyohara glanced down at his right leg.
There were a few shallow cuts in his pant leg—but his skin beneath was untouched.
The hardened skin had blocked the poisoned blades completely.
"Your poison can't get through my defense," Kiyohara said flatly.
He poured water from his canteen and washed clean before walking up to Yūra.
Yūra tried to move.
Kiyohara's boot pressed onto his throat.
Pressure.
Crack.
The sound of a snapped cervical spine.
Yūra's pupils unfocused. His breathing thinned—then faltered.
The rest of the fight ended without suspense.
With Yūra and Jira down, the remaining chūnin fell quickly under Genma and Kurenai's coordinated assault.
The curved-blade shinobi took senbon through the heart.
Another was caught in Kurenai's genjutsu and finished with shuriken.
The battle was over.
Children peeked out again from behind windows.
"Get back inside!" the heavyset nun shouted.
Only then, intimidated by her, did the kids reluctantly retreat.
Kurenai walked up to Kiyohara, hesitating as if she wanted to say something.
Her eyes flicked to the fading lightning traces around his feet, then to the shattered puppet arm.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Kiyohara shook his head and turned to Genma. "Handle the bodies. Check for intel."
"Understood," Genma nodded, the senbon at his lips spinning once.
Kiyohara didn't respond—he simply moved to inspect the scene.
Plop.
Several "scorpions" dropped off the bodies and scuttled away.
Their shells looked like wood, with small mechanical joints along their limbs.
Whip—whip!
Kiyohara snapped shuriken out, pinning them to the ground—gears spilling out of their broken frames.
Then he began looting, pulling on sand-iron gloves first.
Suna shinobi might hide toxins on their gear.
He found quite a haul.
There were notes from the puppeteer—poison formulas, antidotes, and more.
And one technique: "Black Secret Technique: Arm"—a method for concealing more weapons inside an arm.
Kiyohara had no intention of modifying his own body, but as knowledge for understanding and countering Suna puppeteers, it was useful.
…
Twenty kilometers from the orphanage, inside a hidden cave.
Dim lamplight wavered in the gloom.
The air reeked of preservatives and blood.
Puppet parts, human remains, and organ specimens floating in formalin littered the floor.
A red-haired boy sat on a stone stool, holding a fine carving tool, engraving a forearm.
Flesh had been peeled aside to reveal bone already converted into mechanisms.
Sasori worked like an artist, focused—no trace of emotion for the horror of what he was doing.
Then he stopped.
The carving tool froze in midair. Sasori's brow creased.
He set the arm down and closed his eyes.
Yūra's squad… wiped out.
Through the puppet-scorpions planted on them, Sasori received the signal.
Fragments of lingering imagery replayed in his mind.
Sasori opened his eyes again.
The yellow lamplight cut his delicate face into half-light, half-shadow.
A slow curve pulled at his lips.
It wasn't a smile—more like an artist's hunger upon finding a perfect new material.
"Kiyohara…" Sasori whispered, his voice echoing in the empty cave.
"Magnet Release… Sharingan…"
His gaze slid to a scroll in the corner.
His most important treasure—sealed inside it was the Third Kazekage puppet.
"I already have the Sand-Iron Magnet Release… but…"
Sasori stood and approached the workbench at the center.
A thick notebook lay open, packed with data: body-modification metrics, puppet improvements, and his theories of "eternal art."
Dozens of completed and half-finished human puppets stood neatly arranged nearby—each wearing the face they'd had in life, eyes hollow, skin dulled by preservation.
His collection. His art.
But it still wasn't enough.
Sasori wanted more.
"A Sharingan specimen… maybe you'll be my first," he murmured.
And he was curious: if someone with the Sharingan also had Magnet Release, would it change? Would it differ from the Third Kazekage's Magnet Release?
Sasori took out another scroll.
Unrolled, it contained over a hundred puppet-scorpions.
Each was no bigger than a fingernail—and each could gather information.
"Go," he whispered.
"Go take a good look… at my future masterpiece."
The puppet-scorpions seemed to come alive, rustling down from the bench and disappearing into the cave's shadows.
They would cross twenty kilometers of forest, slip around the orphanage, and become Sasori's eyes.
Sunagakure's puppet arts could turn a slain enemy into a "human puppet."
And if the enemy had a bloodline limit in life, Sasori's special methods could preserve it in the puppet.
…
The next day.
Kiyohara woke early and immediately caught the scent of food.
It was Kurenai.
She handed him an onigiri.
"Is this breakfast?" Kiyohara asked, surprised.
"Of course." Kurenai blinked.
She'd made it herself.
In their spare time the past few days, she'd borrowed the orphanage kitchen.
"Thanks," Kiyohara nodded.
He could tell it was different from the onigiri sold in nearby towns—so he guessed Kurenai had made it.
"Today it's Genma's rotation to guard the orphanage. Let's check the shelter area," Kiyohara said.
"Okay." Kurenai nodded.
After last night, more Konoha shinobi had been reassigned nearby.
Their mission was to guard this place for half a month.
Once that period ended, they'd leave and return to Kikyōyama for other assignments.
So Kiyohara wanted to use this time to learn more medical ninjutsu.
Yakushi Nono had noticed Kiyohara's crimson eyes—she'd only learned last night that he had the Sharingan.
Of course she knew what the Sharingan could do.
But as repayment for the donation—and for Kiyohara's help last night—she didn't hold it against him.
After leaving the shinobi world, she'd become far less attached to many old grudges.
"If you can't keep up, I can slow down," Yakushi Nono turned back and offered Kiyohara a gentle smile.
"No need," Kiyohara shook his head.
He glanced at the patient's face—on the verge of wanting to scream "???"—and refused.
Even with only a one-tomoe Sharingan, Kiyohara could learn.
Because he wasn't the only one learning.
Uchiha Kiyohara was learning too.
Uchiha Kiyohara didn't know medical ninjutsu—but he could memorize the chakra-flow patterns through the meridian system and then describe them to Kiyohara later.
After all, the dynamic vision of a three-tomoe Sharingan was on a completely different level.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 120 Chapters Ahead of Others!