Oyashiro En took off the diamond-shaped sunglasses.
His pupils had already become a single horizontal stroke, like the character "一."
The whites of his eyes were a deep, dark red—like blood that had congealed.
The Ketsuryūgan.
Kiyohara's Sharingan met that blood-red gaze. His two-tomoe Sharingan rotated slowly within the crimson.
And he could see something.
A strange chakra haze surrounded Oyashiro En—chakra resonating faintly with the blood in the environment.
More precisely… it was manipulating something inside the blood.
Iron.
Kiyohara understood at once.
The Executioner's Blade could repair itself by absorbing the iron in blood—and one of the Ketsuryūgan's abilities was precisely the manipulation of iron elements within blood.
In a way, Oyashiro En himself was like a living, conscious Executioner's Blade.
"Such enviable eyes."
En's voice yanked Kiyohara out of his thoughts—naked greed leaking through every syllable.
"The Sharingan… the Uchiha clan's treasure. I've collected bloodline limits for years, and the one thing I've always wanted most is a complete pair of Sharingan."
He lifted a hand and snapped his fingers lightly.
The six men behind him moved at once.
Two black-clad shinobi surged in from left and right, fast—clearly taijutsu specialists.
The other four hired shinobi stayed back and began forming seals.
Fire, wind, lightning, earth—four chakra natures rose together.
A clean, professional formation.
En really had been crawling through the black market for years. His men might not be top-tier monsters, but their tactical discipline was solid.
The left-side guard arrived first.
His ninjatō was wrapped in wind chakra; the edge screamed as it sliced the air, aiming straight for Kiyohara's throat.
Kiyohara didn't take it head-on—he simply shifted his body.
The blade skimmed his collar; the pressure shear cut several strands of hair.
At nearly the same moment, the right-side guard was on him too.
He didn't use a weapon. Instead, he slammed seals down to the ground:
"Earth Release: Rock Fist!"
The ground bulged. Stone wrapped around his right fist, swelling into a barrel-sized rock hammer that crashed toward Kiyohara.
A renegade from Iwa? Kiyohara's brow rose.
He lifted his left hand, palm forward—
and used the same technique.
"Earth Release: Rock Fist!"
As earth chakra transformed, sandy-yellow rock coated Kiyohara's forearm, forming a stone-like fist.
It was something the "Steel Release Kiyohara" had taught him.
BOOM!
Rock shattered. Gravel sprayed everywhere.
But it was the other man's rock fist that broke.
With enough chakra behind it, Kiyohara's rock fist looked a full size larger.
The black-clad guard grunted; it felt like the bones in his entire arm had cracked. He flew backward and smashed half a mud wall down.
And then the backline ninjutsu arrived.
"Fire Release: Flame Dragon Bullet!"
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
"Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder!"
"Earth Release: Earth Dragon Bullet!"
Four B-rank techniques struck from different angles—
fire, gale-force wind, lightning, an earth dragon—
ROOOOAR!
Where Kiyohara had stood, the ground cratered as if a bomb had detonated. Dust and debris erupted.
"Leaves?"
One shinobi noticed leaves drifting through the smoke.
Kiyohara was already gone—he'd slipped out a split second before the attacks landed.
Elsewhere, Kiyohara raised one hand and began condensing chakra.
It spun and compressed in his palm at high speed.
Blue-white lightning crackled between his fingers with a shrill buzz.
"Lightning Release: Rasengan."
A chakra sphere smaller than a normal Rasengan formed in his hand—its surface ringed by a loop of silvery electric arcs.
Then he threw it.
The spinning Lightning Rasengan tore through the smoke, swallowing and shredding it, revealing Kiyohara's position instantly.
That sphere flew straight toward Oyashiro En.
Its speed wasn't even fast—if anything it drifted oddly.
En frowned and instinctively shifted left.
But before he could finish moving, En suddenly laughed.
The spinning chakra sphere vanished in midair—gone without a trace.
"Did it disperse before it even reached me?"
It was the first time En had seen a shinobi like this.
His men laughed too.
"Can't even control your chakra?" one hired shinobi sneered.
"That's Konoha's level?"
"Sharingan isn't that amazing after all, huh?"
They were still forming seals, still talking trash.
"Looks like you—"
En hadn't even finished his sentence—
when Kiyohara smiled.
Great. You like laughing? I like laughing too.
So laugh a little louder.
The next instant, En's right cheek caved inward.
The Lightning Rasengan hit—its force applied directly to his face.
Skin, fat, muscle were shredded in an instant; spiral grooves carved themselves into the surface like a stamp.
SPLAT!
Half his face exploded—blood and bone fragments spraying outward.
En's head snapped hard to the right. His body launched as if struck by an invisible sledgehammer, flying over twenty meters, smashing through three mud-house walls, and finally skidding to a stop in a field of rubble.
Silence.
The four hired shinobi who'd been mocking Kiyohara froze with their smiles stuck on their faces.
The two black-clad guards went rigid.
"You didn't seriously think I'd throw something that obvious at you," Kiyohara said flatly.
The Ketsuryūgan was basically a knockoff Sharingan—its own "ocular power," its own genjutsu.
But it lacked the ability to read chakra flow.
If you couldn't see chakra in the air—if light itself was being distorted—you couldn't see what was coming.
Even Ōtsutsuki Momoshiki had eaten a loss to this trick.
In the rubble, Oyashiro En slowly rose.
The right half of his face was gone, exposing stark white bone.
His left eye remained intact—but his right Ketsuryūgan was fully exposed, sitting raw in its socket with no eyelid, making him look even more grotesque.
And then something even stranger happened.
The blood that had splattered outward began to flow back.
One drop, two drops—countless droplets pulled free from the ground, walls, even the air—drawn by an invisible force toward En's wound.
The moment the blood touched the injury, it began to multiply.
New skin, muscle fibers, nerve endings grew at a visible speed.
In a blink, En's right face regenerated about seventy percent.
The surface was still uneven, the color mismatched—but the shape and basic function had returned.
New eyelid tissue slowly slid over the exposed Ketsuryūgan.
"Ketsuryūgan: Blood Restoration."
En's voice carried the irritation of someone who'd just been toyed with.
"You almost disfigured me. Good thing I have the Ketsuryūgan—consume stored blood to repair injuries. Useful, isn't it?"
He rubbed his newly grown cheek. The last trace of amusement vanished from his eyes, replaced by pure rage.
"I've changed my mind," En said.
"I was going to capture you alive and study your bloodline slowly. But now…"
"I'm going to rip your eyes out, drain every drop of your blood, and grind your bones into dust."
"Then I'll transplant your Sharingan into one of my other pets."
He pointed at Kiyohara.
"Kill him."
This time, his men didn't hold back.
The nearest black-clad guard struck first.
His blade was wrapped in violently rotating water chakra—the edge even vibrated at high frequency.
"Water Release: Water Fang Slash!"
One swing carved a trench half a meter deep into the ground, the spiraling water ripping through everything in its path.
Kiyohara didn't dodge.
He lifted his right hand, index and middle fingers together, and calmly pinched the blade.
CLANG!
A crisp sound like metal on metal.
That water-wrapped edge—sharp enough to cut steel—stopped dead between two fingers.
More precisely: it was stopped by the deep black metallic sheen coating Kiyohara's fingertips.
Steel Release!
Combined with Earth Spear, his physical defense had reached a terrifying level.
Catching a blade barehanded wasn't hard for him anymore.
The guard's pupils shrank.
He tried to yank the sword free and retreat—but Kiyohara's fingers were a vise.
"Too slow," Kiyohara whispered.
Then—one punch.
POP.
The man's head burst like a watermelon.
Blood sprayed backward, splattering the second guard's face.
The headless body swayed, then collapsed.
Stillness.
Dead, absolute silence.
The remaining five enemies forgot to attack. They stared at the headless corpse. At Kiyohara's slowly lowering fist. At the blood and brain matter dripping from his knuckles.
Kiyohara flicked his hand, shaking the filth onto the ground.
His upper clothes were already torn from earlier combat, revealing lean, hardened muscle.
Steel Release and Earth Spear were both layered over him now.
Purely by appearance, it was like his whole body was coated in black armor.
"Your blade isn't fast enough," Kiyohara said, "and it's not vicious enough either."
The second black-clad guard finally snapped out of it.
He roared and threw three kunai in each hand—six angles, all aimed at Kiyohara's vitals.
At the same time, he leapt back hard, trying to create distance.
Stupid.
Kiyohara didn't even look at the kunai.
With Steel Release at full power, that level of thrown weapon wouldn't even scratch his skin.
He stepped forward.
Just one step—yet the ground fractured beneath his foot.
A repulsive force kicked back under him, turning him into an afterimage that appeared instantly in front of the guard.
The guard tried to form seals—
Kiyohara's blade was already out.
Not a thrust. Not a chop.
A strange, swaying path—like willow branches in the wind.
Konoha Style Swordsmanship: Willow.
In that instant, the guard's vision warped.
It wasn't one blade anymore.
It was countless blades—hundreds, thousands of knife-shadows blooming around him, each terrifyingly real, each heavy with killing intent.
He couldn't tell which was real.
He didn't need to.
He was already too late.
All the shadows converged into one—
and stabbed into his heart.
Thk.
The blade pierced through his chest and emerged behind him.
The guard looked down at the hilt, eyes wide with disbelief… then sank to his knees and went still.
Kiyohara pulled the sword free, flicked the blood away, and turned to the four hired shinobi.
They broke.
Faced with something beyond comprehension, survival instinct crushed everything else.
"Run!"
Someone yelled, and all four spun and sprinted in four directions.
Kiyohara raised his left hand, fingers spread.
Magnet Release chakra surged from his palm.
"Magnet Release: Sand-Iron Drizzle."
His fingers clenched.
Sand-iron became a storm, shooting out faster than sound.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Four dull impacts rang out almost simultaneously.
The four men collapsed.
But just as they were about to die, their bodies began to twitch.
Black-red blood poured out—yet instead of spilling, it crawled along the skin like it was alive, spreading and sealing.
In moments, each corpse was wrapped in a thick, writhing blood membrane, as if something inside was swelling rapidly.
En's mouth curled into a cruel smile.
"Let me show you the Chinoike clan's true art."
"The human… bomb."
The moment he finished speaking, one blood-wrapped corpse snapped up from the ground.
Its movements were stiff and twisted—like a puppet on invisible strings.
At the same time, the blood glow at the chest wound flared bright.
Through the Sharingan, Kiyohara saw it clearly:
The chakra that had belonged to the dead shinobi was being forcibly "ignited" by an external chakra—like an unstable bomb shoved inside a body.
"So that's how it works…" Kiyohara lifted an eyebrow.
He understood the mechanism instantly.
This was a vicious technique combining genjutsu, blood control, and chakra manipulation.
First, at the moment of injury, the Ketsuryūgan implants a special chakra into the wound via its illusion ability.
Once activated, it forcibly drains the target's remaining blood and chakra, mixes it with Ketsuryūgan chakra, and creates a massive self-detonation in an extremely short time.
Judging by power, it was about the equivalent of five explosive tags.
Worse—this was only one body.
With enough "materials," you could stack explosions on top of explosions.
Now Kiyohara understood why Anbu Kiyohara's squad had fallen within thirty seconds.
In the original records, only two real counters existed:
1. A Sharingan-level genjutsu user overriding it and resetting the target's state—or an illusionist whose genjutsu skill was at least on par with the Sharingan.
2. The Hyūga's Byakugan seeing chakra flow and Gentle Fist injecting chakra into precise tenketsu points to erase Ketsuryūgan chakra directly.
But the Hyūga rarely joined Anbu.
And only Itachi from the Uchiha had joined—so Anbu Kiyohara's squad clearly hadn't included him.
Against something this sneaky, unless you avoid injury entirely or have a hard counter, once you're tagged it becomes a chain reaction.
In the time it took for that thought to flash—
BOOOOM!
The explosion detonated right beside Kiyohara.
A second later, the shockwave and blood mist finally cleared.
Kiyohara stood where he was.
His upper clothing—already shredded—was now nothing but hanging strips.
Beneath it, his muscular frame was fully exposed.
Steel Release plus Earth Spear coated his skin in deep, dark gray.
After the blast and blood wash, there were only a few shallow white marks.
Blast scars—no broken skin.
"This is your 'art'?" Kiyohara said.
"Turning your own men into bombs… wow. Creative."
For the first time, En's face sank fully.
The vertical slit pupil in his Ketsuryūgan shrank to a needle point, blood-vessel-like patterns writhing wildly—betraying how shaken he was.
Impossible…
He knew better than anyone how strong "human bomb" was.
Ordinary shinobi died to a single explosive tag.
But this Uchiha brat… tanked it with defense alone?
"Truly… astonishing," En said, clapping slowly. The sound echoed loudly in the silent ruins.
"The Sharingan's perception, Magnet Release control, that monstrous strength and defense… what are you?"
"Sorry," Kiyohara replied calmly. "My teacher is Tsunade. Being strong is pretty normal. That's all."
"That's all?"
En laughed again, louder and louder until it became manic.
"Hahaha… that's all? You have two bloodline limits and you can use them perfectly—and you call that 'that's all'?"
"Tsunade wasn't even this good at your age."
The madness in En's Ketsuryūgan nearly overflowed.
"I've collected bloodlines for years. I've seen countless 'geniuses.' But they either only master one bloodline…"
"Or they have multiple and can't use them together…"
"Or they don't conflict but none are truly refined…"
"But you— you're different."
His voice dropped, seductive, coaxing.
"Join me. We can work together. I can help you develop all your potential. Help you collect more bloodline limits."
Kiyohara didn't answer.
En couldn't even transplant bloodline limits properly.
He was just selling a fantasy.
And in his old life, Kiyohara had learned not to swallow a boss's empty promises.
Besides—Kiyohara already had a better path.
He only needed to inherit different futures.
Without the Ketsuryūgan, Oyashiro En was… nothing special.
"I'm truly jealous of the Uchiha," En said, staring at Kiyohara with undisguised greed.
They were both ocular clans. They had both served the Land of Lightning's lord.
The Chinoike clan chief's daughter had even married into the lord's household as a concubine.
She'd been gentle and capable, beautiful—and that perfection invited the main wife's envy.
Then the lord fell ill and died not long after taking her in.
Where there are many women—especially in royalty—there's always palace politics.
"It's because that woman married in that this happened!"
So the main wife started spreading rumors, blaming everything on the concubine—claiming the Chinoike clan had deceived the lord, even murdered him.
The ignorant masses listened.
They decided her bloodline itself was an omen.
Then the Uchiha accepted the commission from the Land of Lightning: expel and watch over the Chinoike clan.
"Narrow contact breeds conflict," En continued.
"Tiny frictions pile up into hatred… until people kill each other."
"Why did the Uchiha earn trust? Why are you so united?"
That was what En couldn't accept.
"That's just your perspective," Kiyohara said, feeling the "unity" line was almost a sick joke.
The Uchiha were "united," sure.
But if the original timeline held, in a few years the Uchiha would be erased from the village registry.
One man—far worse than En—would slaughter them all.
Itachi left his little brother Sasuke behind.
En left his daughter Chino behind.
"You've wasted enough of my time," Kiyohara said—and moved.
He didn't have time to listen to En's personal philosophy.
He wanted to finish the wish and claim the inheritance.
Still… the Ketsuryūgan might be worth studying.
Kiyohara stared at En's horizontal-slit eye.
He wanted to see how the Ketsuryūgan's ocular chakra compared to the Sharingan's.
En shut up immediately.
Against ordinary opponents, he'd keep talking—taunting, preaching.
Against Kiyohara?
He didn't have that luxury.
Because if he slipped for even a second…
he might die.
"Ketsuryūgan: Blood Pond!"
En formed seals.
The ground began to tremble.
Blood that had soaked into the earth… blood still liquid inside corpses… droplets scattered everywhere—
all of it flowed toward En's feet.
Glug… glug…
In moments, blood seeped up from the ground, poured down walls, even condensed from the air.
It pooled in nearby depressions—forming puddles, then a wide, deep blood pond.
Blood mixed with water. Weapons and ninja tools clattered to the floor as the ground slicked over.
Kiyohara stepped back to avoid being splashed.
In the center of the pond, En rose slowly.
His feet sank in the blood as it climbed his legs, like a suit of blood armor forming around him.
Even stranger—
the blood pond began to boil and bubble, reeking of rust and raw gore.
Kiyohara could feel it: iron was being extracted.
"You know what the Chinoike clan's strongest point is?" En spread his arms, the pond surging with him.
"Not illusions. Not blood control."
The pond abruptly rose into a massive blood vortex.
"It's using the iron inside blood— and here…"
He laughed, voice turning sharp.
"…there's so much blood. So much iron."
"I should thank you—for killing so many people!"
Eight pillars of blood exploded upward.
Each twisted and reshaped midair, becoming eight ferocious blood dragons—each as thick as a water barrel, formed from blood and iron.
"Ketsuryūgan: Blood Dragon Technique!"
All eight lunged for Kiyohara at once.
Each one hit like a shinobi casting Water Dragon at full power.
Eight at once was like eight shinobi attacking together.
"Fire Release: Great Dragon Flame Technique!"
Kiyohara used a Uchiha fire technique he'd inherited from another "Kiyohara."
At first, a caster could only release one flame dragon.
A master needed only the Tiger seal to trigger it—and could release multiple.
Now, three massive fire dragons erupted from Kiyohara's mouth and slammed into the blood dragons.
Fire met blood with violent hissing steam—blood dragons bursting apart under the flame.
En was forced to pour out more blood to replenish them.
And the blood pond's volume was already cut down by more than half right at the start.
En's face twisted.
If the blood ran out, his techniques collapsed.
Why are this guy's Uchiha techniques stronger than normal?
How much chakra does he even have?
"Lightning Release: Rasengan!"
Kiyohara tossed another chakra sphere.
BOOM!
One blood dragon's head shattered.
The remaining dragons surged again.
Kiyohara kept moving, weaving and evading.
"Another me," Kiyohara called.
Anbu Kiyohara had been watching the entire fight.
"I'm borrowing your power. Give me the curse mark."
He didn't want to drag this out.
Even without the curse mark, he'd win.
But it would take longer.
Now he wanted to end En quickly—complete the wish.
Anbu Kiyohara didn't hesitate.
His spirit flowed into Kiyohara's body, taking a share of control.
"Curse mark power is essentially natural energy. It's harder to handle," Anbu Kiyohara said. "I'll stabilize it for you first."
Kiyohara nodded.
~~~
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