"Too naive."
Gripping the Amanokumo sword with both hands, Xuan abruptly materialized on their branch, swinging his blade in a lethal arc.
Clang!
The sharp sound of clashing steel echoed through the forest. The Yomu Jōnin reacted just in time, raising his katana to block the strike. Yomu Kichikawa, equally swift, threw a chakra-infused punch directly at Xuan's heart almost instantaneously.
Unfortunately, it hit nothing but empty air.
With a flash of light, Xuan was already standing on the branch he had occupied moments prior, as if he had never moved an inch.
"How the hell did you just pop up right beside us?! There wasn't a single kunai anywhere near here!" the Hyūga Jōnin screamed, his face twisted in absolute disbelief.
"Idiot. The branch you're standing on right now? I stepped on it during my 'bizarre' escape route," Xuan said, his tone perfectly calm and radiating absolute confidence. "Why do you think I was running in circles? Every single branch, trunk, and rock in this area has been secretly branded with my Jutsu formula. This entire sector of the forest is now my absolute domain. You are nothing more than prey struggling in a spider's web. You have absolutely zero chance of winning."
"Ha... hahaha!" The Hyūga Jōnin suddenly clutched his stomach and burst into uproarious laughter, acting as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world.
"I'm dying of laughter! A snot-nosed brat actually has the sheer arrogance to spout such complete nonsense! You're going to make my teeth fall out from laughing! Even if you truly are the greatest genius the Uchiha have ever produced in their entire history, you're still just a little brat! We are three fully fledged Jōnin! Do you honestly think we're just meat on a chopping block waiting for you to slice us up?!"
By his final sentence, the laughter had vanished, replaced by an explosive roar of fury. Pushing his Byakugan to the absolute limit to lock onto Xuan's chakra, he launched himself forward with terrifying speed.
BANG!
The Hyūga Jōnin's fist obliterated the tree trunk Xuan had been standing on, but the Uchiha boy was already gone.
"Where is he?!" The Hyūga spun rapidly, his 360-degree vision sweeping the entire forest.
"Fire Style: Triple Dragon Flame Bomb!"
Xuan's voice suddenly echoed from the canopy of a towering oak tree in the distance. Three massive, roaring dragons of concentrated fire plummeted from the sky, charging straight toward the three Jōnin.
"You think a mere B-rank Ninjutsu is enough to take us down?!" The Hyūga Jōnin's hands blurred. Gathering a dense sphere of chakra in his palm, he thrust his arm forward. "Eight Trigrams: Empty Palm!"
Simultaneously, the two Yomu brothers completed their own seals. "Wind Style: Blade of Wind!" "Wind Style: Vacuum Serial Waves!"
BOOM! Under the combined assault of the three high-level Jutsu, the fire dragons were violently shattered into harmless sparks.
"Rasengan."
Three distinct voices whispered the exact same word simultaneously.
Three identical copies of Uchiha Xuan materialized out of thin air, perfectly flanking the three Jōnin. Each clone held a rapidly spinning sphere of highly condensed blue chakra, thrusting them mercilessly toward their targets' vitals.
As seasoned veterans, the three Jōnin didn't panic. Reacting with lightning speed, they ruthlessly countered the point-blank ambush, driving their own lethal strikes into the clones' chests.
Poof! Poof! Poof! The three Xuans instantly dissolved into plumes of white smoke.
"It's that damned Shadow Clone Jutsu again!" the Hyūga Jōnin roared, his Byakugan frantically sweeping the perimeter. He immediately spotted Xuan's true body standing on a distant branch. "We need to launch a continuous, coordinated assault! It's the only way to force an opening! As long as you can lock him down long enough for me to touch him, I'll seal his chakra points! Once he can't use Ninjutsu, he's dead meat!"
The two Yomu brothers exchanged a solemn look and nodded slowly. Since they were already chained to the Hyūga clan's sinking ship, they had no choice but to ride it to the bitter end. As for the inevitable Uchiha retaliation... if worse came to worst, they would just have to abandon their ancestral lands and migrate to another country. If they were truly desperate, they could flee into Senju territory and beg for asylum; rumor had it the Senju were incredibly generous to minor clans.
Drawing upon his Wind-natured chakra, Yomu Kichikawa channeled the element into his legs. Utilizing the tree trunks for explosive leverage, his physical speed skyrocketed to its absolute limit, nearly rivaling the Body Flicker Technique purely through raw kinetic force. Gripping his gleaming katana, he shot straight toward Xuan.
Xuan raised the Amanokumo sword, his Sharingan effortlessly tracking Kichikawa's trajectory. After casually parrying a few lightning-fast strikes, he triggered the Flying Raijin and vanished.
"Three o'clock! Fifty meters!" The Hyūga Jōnin roared the exact moment Xuan reappeared.
The younger Yomu brother instantly triggered the Body Flicker, arriving with a lethal downward cleave. Xuan deflected the blade and vanished again.
"Five o'clock! Eighty meters!"
Xuan frowned slightly as he materialized. "Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" BOOM! The branch he had just landed on was instantly pulverized by Kichikawa's massive gale, forcing him to teleport yet again.
The Hyūga Jōnin bounded through the trees, desperately trying to corner Xuan. His Byakugan remained locked onto the entire battlefield. Every single time Xuan reappeared, he would instantly shout out the coordinates, and the two Yomu brothers would relentlessly attack the position with blistering speed.
Golden flashes of light flickered erratically through the dark forest, constantly pursued by the three Jōnin. The sharp, rhythmic clang of clashing steel echoed relentlessly into the night.
"Not a bad combination," Xuan praised lightly. He teleported to dodge another lethal slash, materialized right beside the Hyūga Jōnin to deliver a shallow cut, and vanished again before a counterattack could land.
To an outside observer, Xuan appeared to be completely suppressed, frantically teleporting in a chaotic, desperate panic just to survive the relentless, coordinated assault.
In reality, everything was going exactly according to plan.
Using the combination of the Flying Raijin and the Rasengan to assassinate a single Jōnin was relatively simple. However, the synergy of a well-coordinated shinobi squad meant their combined threat level was far greater than the sum of its parts. Three veteran Jōnin covering each other's blind spots wasn't a simple mathematical addition.
Even so, having laced this entire sector of the forest with his Jutsu formula, Xuan was absolutely confident he could slowly bleed them dry and secure the final victory.
The problem was that the slow, methodical approach took too much time.
He hadn't forgotten that Madara was currently being hunted by an Elite Jōnin. Given Madara's current strength, if he was actually caught, the situation would become incredibly grim. Therefore, Xuan needed to end this 1v3 battle as quickly as humanly possible.
Naturally, he could just use the Flying Raijin to instantly teleport to whatever marked kunai Madara was carrying and help him fight. However, the thought of abandoning the 6,000 System points standing right in front of him left a very bitter taste in his mouth.
He only possessed one Jutsu capable of instantly annihilating three Jōnin simultaneously. Everything he had done up until this moment—the chaotic teleporting, the feints, the clones—was meticulously orchestrated to set up this exact strike.
Thinking of this, his hand brushed lightly against his left eye.
The golden flashes continued to dart through the trees. The three Jōnin pursued him relentlessly, unable to land a decisive blow.
That should be enough, Xuan calculated silently. Now, I just need to group them all together.
Suddenly, Xuan materialized on a branch and stood completely still. His three-tomoe Sharingan spun slowly.
The three Jōnin were moving at blistering speeds. Seeing the boy finally stop running, they didn't hesitate for a microsecond. They violently converged on his position simultaneously.
Squelch!
Two katanas pierced cleanly through his chest from the sides, while the Hyūga Jōnin slammed a devastating Gentle Fist palm strike directly into his sternum, sending highly destructive chakra surging into his internal network.
"Now."
The three tomoe in Xuan's eyes suddenly blurred into a furious spin.
Caw! Caw! Caw!
To the absolute horror of the three Jōnin, the 'Xuan' they had just impaled dissolved into a massive flock of black crows. The birds scattered into the night sky, instantly reforming into Xuan's true body on a branch a short distance away.
Before the three Jōnin could even process the Demonic Illusion: Crow Mirage, they tried to pull back and pursue him—only to realize they couldn't move a single muscle.
Glancing down, they discovered they were tightly bound together by dozens of nearly invisible chakra wires.
Standing in the distance, Xuan violently yanked his hands backward. The hidden network of chakra threads he had been secretly weaving during his chaotic teleportation instantly snapped taut, completely immobilizing the three Jōnin in a tangled, inescapable knot.
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