At the same time, the markings around Kiyohara's eyes deepened.
They became a pattern where orange and red blended together.
And in the center of his Sharingan, a horizontal line seemed to squeeze into existence.
Mount Myoboku Sage Mode!
"Storm Release: Chidori Current."
Crackle!
Lightning several times more intense than before erupted from his body.
Blue-white electricity surged outward from Kiyohara like a waterfall flowing in reverse.
The moment the bone spikes touched the current, they carbonized.
"What? Storm Release?"
Kaguya Ryūno's shocked voice rang out from within the bone forest.
Kiyohara had actually developed the Storm Release bloodline limit?
As a Kirigakure ninja, Ryūno was of course not someone who relied only on the Kaguya clan's bloodline limit, Shikotsumyaku.
He could use ordinary Water Release as well.
Since Kirigakure had the largest number of Water Release users, many of its ninja also knew that neighboring Kumogakure possessed Storm Release.
Some had tried to replicate it, but their results were negligible.
Yet this brat—who belonged to neither Kumogakure nor Kirigakure—had managed to fuse Lightning Release and Water Release chakra together and develop Storm Release?
"Correct answer, but there's no prize."
The corners of Kiyohara's mouth curled slightly.
In his perception, everything had slowed down.
Including the look of shock on Kaguya Ryūno's face, and the hand seals he was trying to form.
Kiyohara dropped back to the ground.
The instant his feet touched down—
Boom!
The earth exploded beneath him.
If there were a scoring system, Kiyohara would have given that landing a perfect score.
The next moment, he vanished and reappeared directly in front of Kaguya Ryūno.
"You—"
Ryūno stared at him in shock.
Then a sword rapidly filled his vision.
That ninja blade, wrapped in both Wind Release and Lightning Release, came slashing down at him.
Too fast.
So fast that Ryūno didn't even have time to raise a defense. All he could do was pour the remainder of his chakra into hardening every bone in his body while rapidly proliferating more bone cells to reinforce them.
The blade flashed.
Crack.
A clean, crisp sound of something breaking.
Ryūno lowered his eyes and saw his upper body separating from his lower half.
A smooth, perfectly even cut had opened across his waist. Spine, organs, muscles—everything had been neatly severed.
His upper body slowly slid off and hit the sand with a thud.
His lower half remained standing, blood gushing from the exposed cross-section.
Everyone's eyes went wide.
Even the Kirigakure ninja watching from afar stood there with their mouths open, staring in disbelief.
Kaguya Ryūno, the prodigy known as Spiral Bone Ryūno, had been cut cleanly in half at the waist.
On the sand, Ryūno's upper body twitched.
He was still alive.
The enormous vitality granted by Shikotsumyaku had kept him from dying instantly even after being bisected.
He struggled to prop himself up with his arms, looked down at the empty space where his lower half should have been, then lifted his head to look at Kiyohara, who stood before him with blood dripping from his blade.
And then, this battle maniac smiled.
It was a satisfied smile, even tinged with madness.
"Ha… hahaha…"
He coughed up bloody foam, but his eyes were brighter than ever.
"Cut in half at the waist… what a… magnificent way to die…"
Kiyohara looked at him quietly and said nothing.
Ryūno shifted his posture with effort, making himself sit a little straighter.
He raised his still-functional right hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
"I can tell… you weren't even using your full strength, were you?"
Kiyohara gave a slight nod.
He could still have stacked Curse Mark State Two on top of this. Right now he was only using State One and Sage Mode.
The distant observing shinobi looked at each other in confusion.
"What is he talking about?"
"This isn't even his full strength?"
Ryūno kept staring at Kiyohara, his eyes full of regret.
"Our Kaguya clan is a clan of warriors… and even so, I still lost to you."
His voice grew fainter and fainter, until it disappeared completely.
Kiyohara shook his head.
If Kaguya Ryūno—or the Kaguya clan as a whole—had lived during the Warring States era, they probably would have thrived.
But the ninja world after the founding of the Five Great Nations was not nothing but war. There were also times of peace.
With a temperament like theirs, sooner or later they would lose patience and destroy themselves.
'I wonder what's happening elsewhere,' Kiyohara thought.
Just then, a golden flash suddenly appeared at the edge of the battlefield.
Minato Namikaze had arrived.
He first surveyed the battlefield, saw Ryūno cut in half at the waist and Katsuyu healing the wounded, and raised an eyebrow. Then he looked at Kiyohara.
"Looks like I'm late."
"Not too late," Kiyohara said.
"The Third Mizukage is still here."
That boss hadn't been fought yet.
And Kiyohara had a feeling Kirigakure might have brought out a tailed beast as well.
Besides the Three-Tails, they also still had the Six-Tails.
Judging by the timeline, Utakata probably had not yet fallen out with his master and defected from the village.
"Then I'll go scout ahead first."
Minato nodded, and in a flash of gold, he disappeared.
Kiyohara turned and went to clean up the remaining Kirigakure ninja.
About ten minutes later, a massive chakra surge erupted in the distance.
Kiyohara's brows lifted slightly.
So the tailed beast really had shown up.
Kirigakure truly wanted to rip a chunk of flesh off Sunagakure this time.
No wonder that in the original story, Sunagakure had been forced to sacrifice Pakura just to buy breathing room and negotiate a ceasefire.
Even if they won a battle like this, the losses would still be devastating. Sunagakure really had been pushed to the point of grave injury.
He looked up. Far in the distance, a sea of gold dust was churning, and with the eyesight of his Sharingan, Kiyohara could even make out several puppets dressed in white robes.
"Rasa and Chiyo…"
Kiyohara stroked his chin.
Then, without much thought, he casually cut a nearby Kirigakure ninja in half when the man tried to ambush him.
…
On the other side of the battlefield—
The Third Mizukage stood atop a stretch of ground stained red with blood, his aged face utterly expressionless.
Minato had arrived there just moments before.
And so the two of them had clashed.
Capture the ringleader first—this principle worked just as well in ninja warfare.
And Minato's speed was indeed fast enough to make even the Third Mizukage wary.
"Blood Release: Blood Dragon Technique."
The Third Mizukage slowly lifted his right hand and curled his fingers.
Below him, the blood lake churned, and thick blood condensed into a savage crimson dragon. Its head rose high as it lunged toward Minato with jaws made of liquid blood.
Wherever it passed, the air itself filled with a sickening metallic stench.
Minato's hands blurred as he threw over a dozen kunai.
"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!"
The kunai split in midair, becoming a shower of green flashes that pierced through the blood dragon.
The dragon collapsed, turning back into a rain of blood.
Almost the instant it broke apart, Minato vanished.
The next moment, he appeared behind the Third Mizukage, a Rasengan spinning furiously in his palm as he slammed it toward the man's back.
The Third Mizukage didn't turn around.
At that very moment, his body suddenly became as light as paper, slipping past the attack.
Blood Release: Light Blood Technique!
By altering the mass and density of his blood, he gave his body astonishing mobility.
The Rasengan brushed past the edge of his robe and blasted a spiraling crater into the muddy ground below.
"A fine technique,"
the Third Mizukage said, a trace of gravity flashing through his eyes.
Minato's strength had already fully reached Kage level, and in terms of speed, he had surpassed the vast majority of veteran Kage.
The Third Mizukage could not help but feel that this man might truly be Konoha's next Hokage.
If he were Hiruzen Sarutobi, he would have cultivated a shinobi like this as well.
But just as he was preparing to attack again, an alien will suddenly invaded his mind.
It was Uchiha Madara, far away in the Graveyard of the Mountains, manipulating his consciousness through some secret technique.
"Go test Kiyohara's strength,"
Madara's voice said.
At that moment, he was still far away in the Graveyard of the Mountains.
Yet even so, he could still observe the situation here and issue commands.
The Third Mizukage had spent years under Madara's hypnosis and mental tampering. By now, he obeyed Madara without question.
The Third Mizukage gave Minato one look, then suddenly turned and shot off toward Kiyohara's position as a streak of blood-red light.
Minato paused in surprise and was just about to pursue when the roar of the Six-Tails in the distance suddenly intensified.
Alarmed cries rose from Sunagakure's side.
The current One-Tail jinchūriki who had succeeded Bunpuku also seemed to be losing control.
Other than Bunpuku, who had been able to truly understand and coexist with the One-Tail, every other jinchūriki of Shukaku had been hated by the beast.
Those who came after him went berserk sooner or later. None of them could maintain decades of stability like Bunpuku had.
Minato's brow furrowed.
With the Six-Tails already on the field, adding an out-of-control One-Tail to the mix would cause catastrophic destruction.
A berserk tailed beast was far more dangerous than a single Third Mizukage.
"He's heading for Kiyohara…"
In the end, Minato trusted Kiyohara's strength. Even if he couldn't win, Kiyohara's flying ability should still let him escape.
Minato flung out Flying Thunder God kunai and flashed rapidly toward the location of the tailed beasts.
…
"Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique!"
When the Third Mizukage reached Kiyohara's area, he wasted no time and immediately formed seals.
Massive chakra surged from his body, and the dry desert ground was instantly flooded by seawater summoned from nowhere.
Within only a few breaths, everything within several hundred meters had become a lake.
Then the Third Mizukage bit his finger and let his blood drip into the water.
The properties of Blood Release activated, and the entire lake visibly turned a dark red.
The blood lake roiled.
"Kiyohara, be careful!"
Kurenai cried out.
The Third Mizukage waved a hand, and a crescent-shaped blade made of highly compressed blood plasma tore through the air, so fast that it seemed to reach Kiyohara the instant it was launched.
The three tomoe in Kiyohara's Sharingan spun frantically.
At the instant the blood blade closed in, he wrapped one arm around Kurenai's waist, chakra bursting from his feet as the two of them shot into the sky.
The blood blade swept past beneath them, cutting a huge boulder submerged in the blood lake cleanly in two, its cut surface smooth as a mirror.
"Go fall back and regroup with Kakashi,"
Kiyohara said as he set Kurenai down on a patch of high ground untouched by the blood water.
"I'll handle this."
"But—"
Kurenai started to protest, but when she met those crimson Sharingan eyes, the words died in her throat.
She bit her lip, then finally nodded.
"Just… be careful."
She knew that staying here would only make her a burden.
Kiyohara watched her disappear behind a stretch of jagged rocks. Only then did he turn back and drop once more onto the surface of the blood lake.
Dark red liquid rippled outward beneath his feet, the thick stench of blood crashing into him.
The Third Mizukage stood at the center of the blood lake, his murky gaze resting on the long straight blade at Kiyohara's waist.
"The Executioner's Blade… reforged?"
he asked suddenly.
"Yes,"
Kiyohara admitted openly, fingers brushing the scabbard.
"The Seven Ninja Swordsmen were too weak to deserve a blade like that. It's better in my hands. At least I won't disgrace the quality of its materials."
A flash of anger passed through the Third Mizukage's eyes.
Arrogant.
This little Uchiha brat was arrogant to the extreme.
"You will pay for that arrogance."
The Third Mizukage formed seals again, his chakra erupting once more.
"Water Release: Water Vortex Technique!"
The blood lake surged violently, and a gigantic waterspout rose into the air.
Dark red blood mixed into the spinning water, and wherever it passed, the ground was torn open into deep trenches. Rocks caught within it were ground to powder in an instant.
Kiyohara formed seals.
"Storm Release: Thunder Cloud Inner Wave."
The sky suddenly darkened.
Heavy black storm clouds gathered out of nowhere, lightning racing through them with dull thunder rolling.
The next moment, dozens of azure bolts came crashing down—not in straight lines, but twisting and coiling through the sky like serpents of lightning, striking the waterspout.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Lightning collided with water, exploding into a curtain of mist.
The waterspout shuddered violently under the repeated strikes, then finally collapsed, turning once more into a rain of blood.
The Third Mizukage's pupils contracted slightly.
Storm Release.
"The fusion of water and lightning chakra natures…"
he muttered to himself.
That was a completely new piece of intelligence.
At the very least, none of the previous reports had ever recorded that Kiyohara could use Storm Release.
"In my younger days, I once tried to develop this bloodline limit myself. In the end, I was always one step short. To think you actually succeeded."
At that moment, he finally understood why that person valued this boy so highly.
This level of talent was genuinely terrifying.
Most people would be a major force with even one bloodline limit. But this brat Kiyohara already possessed three at such a young age.
Kiyohara did not give him time to keep marveling.
The Third Mizukage suddenly leapt fifty meters into the air, his chest swelling enormously.
"Water Release: Exploding Water Colliding Wave!"
A massive torrent large enough to form a lake erupted from his mouth, descending like an overturned river from the heavens toward Kiyohara below.
The attack covered such a huge area that evasion was impossible.
Kiyohara tilted his head up, the three tomoe of his Sharingan reflecting the overwhelming flood pouring down from above.
He drew in a deep breath, gathering senjutsu chakra in his chest and throat while in Sage Mode.
"Sage Art: Fire Release: Microwave Flame Bullet."
Kiyohara spat out a blazing white fireball.
The instant it appeared, the air around it warped violently from the heat.
The fireball shot upward and collided with the descending flood.
The moment they touched, the horrifying heat instantly vaporized the oncoming water into a pillar of steam.
Like a red-hot iron bar plunged into ice and snow, the fireball tore straight through the waterfall, melting a massive hole into it.
Steam surged upward, forming a white column dozens of meters wide that shot into the sky, even churning the high clouds above.
Across the battlefield, whether Konoha, Sunagakure, or Kirigakure shinobi, everyone felt the disturbance at once.
The gale nearly blew nearby shinobi off their feet, and the scalding vapor hit their faces with blistering heat.
"Wh-what is that?"
one Sunagakure chunin asked, voice trembling.
"Kiyohara…"
Kurenai stood on a distant ridge, her hands unconsciously clasped in front of her chest.
Kakashi said quietly,
"Don't worry, Kurenai. A guy like Kiyohara… isn't going to lose that easily."
Nearby, Might Guy kicked a Kirigakure ninja flying and green steam burst from his body.
The Fifth Gate of the Eight Gates—Gate of Limit, open!
"That's right! Kiyohara's youth will never end here! Aaaah!"
Blood boiling, Guy immediately charged back into the Kirigakure shinobi.
If there was anyone particularly eager to fight Kirigakure, Might Guy definitely counted.
After all, to him, they were his father's killers.
As time passed, the steam slowly dispersed.
Kiyohara and the Third Mizukage now faced each other from more than a hundred meters apart, the blood lake between them still surging with intermittent waves.
Kiyohara felt that the Third Mizukage's Blood Release had some similarities to the Ketsuryugan.
It simply lacked the enhanced genjutsu properties.
And the power with which he used it far exceeded anything En Oyashiro had ever shown.
The Third Mizukage's breathing had become slightly more labored.
The fire technique from just now had far exceeded his expectations. It had not only completely neutralized Exploding Water Colliding Wave, but even the backlash of the returning steam had made the blood in his body churn violently.
This Uchiha brat… had to be dealt with as fast as possible.
In an instant, the Third Mizukage shot toward Kiyohara.
His movement kicked up twin wakes across the surface of the blood lake.
At the same time, he clenched his right hand in the air, and blood plasma rose from the lake and condensed into a crimson long blade in his grip.
Drops of blood ran continuously down the weapon.
Clang!
Kiyohara raised his sword and blocked.
He could feel that, in the midst of crossing blades with someone this strong, his eye power was rising little by little.
He was one step closer to that entirely new realm.
Then chakra burst from beneath his feet, blasting a hollow into the blood lake.
Using the recoil, Kiyohara sprang upward, twisting his body midair and slashing downward with his blade reversed in his grip.
The blade light aimed straight for the back of the Third Mizukage's neck.
'So fast!'
Alarm bells rang through the Third Mizukage's mind.
But he was still a veteran of countless battles, and he did not panic.
The blood lake beside him surged, and two giant hands of blood burst up from the water, one on each side, grabbing toward Kiyohara in midair.
At the same time, the Mizukage himself twisted and swept his blood-red blade horizontally at Kiyohara's waist.
A three-pronged attack.
But Kiyohara moved even faster, cutting through both blood hands in an instant.
And the Third Mizukage's crimson blade had already reached his waist.
Steel Release: Harden!
Earth Release: Earth Spear!
The skin along Kiyohara's side instantly turned a dark metallic black.
The blood blade left only a pale mark across it and failed to break through.
The Third Mizukage's pupils constricted sharply.
And Kiyohara's counterattack was already there.
"Storm Release: Thunder Cloud Inner Wave."
This time, the black storm clouds did not form high overhead.
Instead, they condensed just above the surface of the blood lake itself.
Crackle!
Dozens of Storm Release bolts burst out from the cloud layer and shot straight at the Third Mizukage!
"Blood Release: Blood Body Technique!"
the Third Mizukage barked.
Blood from the lake surged onto his body, condensing into a thick set of crimson armor over his skin.
The Storm Release lightning struck the blood armor.
Szzzt!
The armor did block the direct impact of the lightning.
But Storm Release fused water and lightning together, giving the lightning the penetrating nature of a liquid.
The electrical light slipped through the seams of the blood armor and instantly pierced straight inside.
~~~~
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