At dusk, deep in the Forest of Death, ancient trees reach for the sky, and dappled light and shadow intertwine with deep darkness.
Within this dense woodland of shifting light and shadow, the shrill whistle of kunai cutting through the air is intertwined with the clangor of thunderous impacts.
Yellow flashes and blue-white lightning streaks raced, chased, and collided at high speed between the overlapping tree trunks!
Branches and leaves were shredded by violent air currents, and before the countless fragments of leaves could even touch the ground, they were swept back into the sky by the next shockwave.
Not far away, on the branch of a giant tree, Kakashi stared with eyes wide open, not daring to relax for even a moment.
Even so, he could only barely catch sight of two blurred afterimages flashing past.
More often than not, he could not even follow the afterimages and could only determine which direction the two had just passed from by listening to the sounds of metal collisions or Ninjutsu explosions coming from dozens of meters away.
The ones exchanging blows were Shinichi Higashino and Minato Namikaze.
This was precisely why Shinichi said he was currently the busiest person in the Shinobi World.
Every day, he was occupied with all kinds of matters, yet amid that busy schedule, he still managed to make time to discuss training methods for Lightning Style Armour with Minato and Kakashi.
After the discussions, Shinichi and Minato naturally sparred in person.
Minato used these battles to refine the Wind Style Nintaijutsu Shinichi had taught him, while Shinichi honed his own Lightning Style Nintaijutsu through fighting Minato.
After each battle, the three would gather again to review and exchange insights.
Kakashi, who possessed exceptional talent in Lightning Style and had observed the entire battle from the sidelines, would offer viewpoints and inspirations.
Minato, with his top-tier neural reflexes and meticulous powers of observation, would analyze and refine their findings based on the fight.
As for Shinichi, he would integrate and optimize the discoveries and insights of both men together with his own realizations, feeding the results back into the next round of training.
Boom!
With a tremendous explosion, Shinichi charged forward like a humanoid war chariot. Wherever he passed, the ground shattered, and stones flew in all directions. Blue-white lightning wrapped around his entire body, making him resemble a lightning meteor streaking through the forest as he rampaged through layers of giant trees with unstoppable momentum!
However, his opponent was Minato Namikaze.
Whoosh!
A three-pronged Flying Thunder God Kunai shot through the air, and Minato's figure abruptly vanished from the position Shinichi was about to crash into and reappeared beside a kunai embedded in another tree trunk ten meters away.
The moment his body appeared, the bark beneath his feet trembled slightly. That was because he had used wind airflow upon landing to cancel out the impact of inertia, and his movements were as light as a feather caught in the wind.
With merely a gentle tap of his toe against the tree trunk, his entire body drifted unpredictably toward another direction.
In an instant, Minato's figure flickered in and out throughout the forest.
At this moment, he seemed like a master chess player, while those specially crafted Flying Thunder God Kunai were the pieces he had laid out.
One after another, they embedded themselves into tree trunks, rock crevices, and the earth.
The choice of every landing point was as precise as the layout of a top-tier chess master.
Minato knew very well that Shinichi's strength was absurdly powerful, so he never confronted him head-on. Relying on the Flying Thunder God Technique, he continuously jumped between the pre-positioned kunai to avoid Shinichi's relentless pursuit.
But Minato was still Minato. He was not someone who only remained on the defensive. From time to time, he seized opportunities to counterattack.
Every move was launched at the precise moment when Shinichi's pursuit was at its fiercest, and it was difficult for him to stop instantly.
Appearing behind or beside him, Minato would strike with impeccable timing and angle, forcing Shinichi to abruptly halt, turn around, and switch to defense.
Thus, the rhythms of the two were completely different. One was like a violent storm, while the other resembled a breeze weaving through the forest.
Two individuals who had both reached the pinnacle of speed were staging an ultimate battle of offense and defense within the forest, one where neither could control the pace and neither was ever truly suppressed.
Time passed slowly and then… At a certain moment, Minato's figure once again appeared in an uncanny position behind and to the side of Shinichi.
This time, countless rapidly rotating streams of green airflow gathered around the Flying Thunder God Kunai in his hand, targeting the weakest point in Shinichi's lightning armor.
Wind Style naturally restrained Lightning Style, and on top of that, Minato's timing and angle were nearly perfect, yet Shinichi's reaction was no slower.
The instant Minato appeared, Shinichi swung backward with a chopping strike.
A hand blade wrapped in blue-white arcs of electricity slashed precisely toward Minato's arm that was holding the kunai.
The angle of this reverse-hand blade was exceptionally tricky, directly cutting through the path Minato had to take in order to attack!
A smile flickered across Minato's lips, and then a vortex of wind suddenly arose beneath his feet.
Leaning backward with effortless grace, it seemed as though his toes had stepped upon an invisible staircase in the air. His entire body drifted silently backward like a feather moving with the wind.
Although Minato had only formally begun learning Wind Style Nintaijutsu two months ago, the flexible and agile fighting style naturally suited him.
By now, he had already mastered it to a fairly impressive level.
However, his attainment in this field was still far inferior to Shinichi's, lacking the natural perfection and smoothness of completely integrating wind into every breath and footstep.
But when combined with the Flying Thunder God Technique, his already unpredictable movement and attack patterns became even more elusive and impossible to anticipate.
Just then...
Buzz!
The lightning radiating from Shinichi's entire body suddenly changed.
The blue-white arcs that had originally crackled across his body abruptly withdrew inward; they no longer flamboyantly flared outward and instead transformed into a deeper, more restrained radiance that shone from within.
The lightning surrounding him was no longer merely armor draped over his body; it seemed to merge into every joint, every muscle fiber, and even every cell throughout his entire body.
At that instant, Shinichi's speed suddenly rose to a completely new level. With a single stomp, he blasted a shallow crater beneath his feet and charged fiercely toward the retreating Minato.
"Lightning Style Armour!?"
Seeing this, Kakashi's eyes trembled as he cried out in shock.
Although the lightning around Shinichi was now far less dazzling than before, that sharp quality emanating from within was precisely the sign that the lightning-nature chakra was being integrated throughout the body, directly affecting the nervous system and muscle cells.
It's the ultimate secret of Lightning Style Nintaijutsu, Lightning Style Armour!