The Third Raikage and Ai took their time selecting a suitable location. A desert rocky canyon. They entered first and concealed themselves on both sides, waiting.
What they did not know was that their every movement was being tracked clearly through the other's chakra perception.
Swoosh.
The moment Yuji dropped into the canyon from above, two streams of chakra-infused lightning shot out simultaneously from his left and right.
Both raised their arms like slashing blades, intending to cut the figure in the center clean in half. The terrifying power and speed were designed to allow no reaction time whatsoever.
It seemed to work. His body split in two.
No.
A clone.
Ai's pupils contracted sharply as he stopped. A pair of cold indifferent eyes appeared behind him. And then came the dense rain-like torrent of blood.
Swoosh.
A second later, a fierce blood torrent directly engulfed Ai's figure. However, the blood was like bubbles striking a wall, scattering wildly in every direction, completely unable to penetrate through the Lightning Release Armor.
Ai's large hand emerged from the blood screen. He reached forward, intending to tear apart the Blood Release jutsu before him.
His gaze met that pair of red pupils directly.
A sudden genjutsu froze his movements.
His shadow vanished. At the same moment, Yuji had circled around behind him, a chakra scalpel already formed in his hand, driving toward Ai's back.
Ai felt the danger an instant before contact.
Bang.
But just as his arm rose to respond, a tremendous force sent him flying, crashing directly into the distant mountain face and collapsing into a pile of rubble. His severed arm flew separately through the air.
The Third Raikage had intervened, pulling Ai from certain injury.
"This brat!"
The Third Raikage looked toward the distant dust cloud rising from the mountains. He had not noticed until now that only the clone had fallen into the initial trap.
"Similar to the Leaf Village's Byakugan in its X-ray vision effect. Furthermore, it can deceive and simultaneously interfere with chakra perception."
Drawing on his extensive battlefield experience, the Raikage analyzed the doujutsu's properties immediately. Its capabilities were even more comprehensive than standard doujutsu.
The danger appeared to have passed temporarily with the enemy repelled.
But no one expected what came next.
The severed arm, rather than going inert, continued moving as though still under control. The chakra scalpel had not dissipated. It struck again at Ai's vital point from an extremely unusual angle.
The Raikage instantly shifted position with Ai, dodging the follow-up strike. Looking closely, they discovered a thin extended stream of blood connecting the severed arm to the distant body. A Blood Release channel maintaining remote control.
However, because the control was operating at range with considerable distance involved, the speed and precision of this secondary attack were somewhat reduced. Nevertheless, the unexpected nature of it made it extraordinarily difficult to defend against.
With both the Raikage and Ai's speed, they had barely reacted in time. Against an ordinary opponent, that single blow would have ended the fight permanently.
Swoosh.
While they were still processing this, a dark shadow emerged from the swirling dust and attacked again.
The Third Raikage's eyes went cold. He met the attack head-on instantly. A large area of black lightning exploded in the air and enveloped Yuji, causing paralysis. Even deploying Blood Release to move, he could not match the Raikage's speed at this range.
The Raikage's arm extended in a peculiar posture, his entire body becoming like a single concentrated force. With lightning speed, he drove directly through the hardened blood armor covering Yuji's body, piercing his chest and simultaneously driving him into the rocky mountain behind him.
Boom.
The entire mountain shook with a deafening roar, cracked, and rapidly collapsed inward. The Raikage pulled his blood-soaked arm back and leaped into the air, watching as the young man's body was swallowed by the falling rocks.
This was his signature technique. Jigokuzuki Ippon Nukite. A unique attack movement that instantly drove chakra to its absolute maximum, producing speed and power that reached terrifying levels simultaneously.
A single extended finger capable of piercing through everything. The Strongest Spear.
He had held nothing back. This was his ultimate technique. His strongest attack.
Looking across the entire ninja world, no one who took a direct hit from this technique survived. The inevitable outcome was death. Even an exceptionally strong physical body, even one enhanced by Blood Release, could not survive a blow like this.
"His physical constitution is no less than Lightning Release Armor level. But he absolutely cannot have survived that."
"Let's go."
The Raikage landed, turned, and spoke to Ai.
Ai exhaled a slow breath of stale air. Although he had inherited his father's fighting style and approach, his strength still lagged behind his father's in its peak output.
Judging from the danger he had just been in, if he had faced Yuji alone in a one-on-one engagement, it would have been fatally dangerous for him.
Whoosh.
But just as the two lowered their guard and prepared to leave, the Raikage's expression changed instantly. He tilted his head on pure reflex.
His reaction was not slow. But a streak of blood-red light still grazed his cheek, cutting a clean gash across the skin.
Both of them released their chakra again immediately.
They turned around.
What they saw caused their expressions to shift into something that had no easy name.
Sitting upright in the pile of rubble, his body and internal organs having been completely destroyed moments before, was the young man. His eyes were cold and watching them steadily. He was slowly retracting the attack he had just aimed at the Third Raikage.
"Not dead?" Ai's heart trembled as he stared in genuine disbelief.
Upon closer inspection, the clothes had been torn to shreds, especially across the areas where the Raikage's strike had landed, leaving the body fully exposed beneath. This made it undeniably clear. The Raikage's attack had been a direct hit.
"Healing ninjutsu."
The Raikage understood this in his chest, rubbing the wound on his cheek and narrowing his eyes. He had momentarily lost control while withdrawing his chakra after the strike, and that brief lapse had allowed the enemy to pinpoint his location and graze him.
Even after reactivating the Lightning Release Armor, his speed in that instant had been insufficient to fully evade.
Yuji's eyes were cold as he observed the two of them.
'To deal with these two, I cannot use Blood Release across a large area. The wider the range of the technique, the less concentrated the individual damage becomes.
Their physical defenses, combined with the neutralizing properties of lightning-attribute chakra, are extremely difficult to penetrate at low concentration. To break through their defenses, I need to compress the blood to its absolute limit and pursue point-specific damage.'
He carefully observed the chakra movements throughout the bodies of the Raikage and Ai as he thought this through. If any section of their Lightning Release Armor showed a slowing or sluggishness in chakra flow, that would indicate a location where the armor's effect was weakest.
Every defense had a vulnerability somewhere. The more he studied their movements, the more certain he became that compressed blood driven to its limit could penetrate their defenses. The prerequisite was capturing the right moment, creating an opening that caused the Lightning Release body technique to loosen even briefly.
The Raikage slapped the wound on his own injured face without expression, leaving a burn mark across both cheeks where Yuji's blood had contacted the skin.
They were fully aware that the blood of the Sand Village's Blood Doctor carried potent poison and corrosive properties. However, compared to the immediate threat of his killing techniques, the poison was a secondary concern.
Their bodies were strong enough that the poison would not take immediate effect upon contact. Furthermore, their unique Lightning Release Taijutsu allowed them to utilize lightning-attribute chakra at the cellular level, essentially burning away the poison before it could spread fully through the body.
This brute force method inevitably caused some collateral damage to their own flesh in the process, but it was an acceptable trade.
Similarly, the scar now visible on the Raikage's face made that cost tangible.
"As expected of the Raikage," Yuji said, his voice cold and even. "You are not easy to deal with."
The Third Raikage was silent for a moment.
He looked at Yuji with an extremely serious expression. What occupied his attention was not the Blood Release itself. It was the healing ninjutsu. The ability to recover from injuries of that severity in that amount of time was simply beyond what he had considered possible outside of legend.
This was something that fundamentally changed the calculation of the fight.
Then, without further exchange, he and Ai launched forward simultaneously, both charging directly at Yuji.
...
STONESSSS 💎💎
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