"Alright. That works."
Iwa arranged lodging for them.
It was a standalone courtyard with both front and rear sections—more than enough room for the group.
Kiyohara was assigned a room in the back.
He had just set down his things when the courtyard gate was pushed open.
He looked up and saw a small figure standing there.
Messy blond hair. A dirty gray short robe.
Deidara.
He stood in the doorway with both hands behind his back, chin lifted as he looked at Kiyohara.
"I want you to see my art one more time."
Deidara put one hand on his hip and pointed at Kiyohara.
"Art?"
Kiyohara looked at the little brat who didn't even reach his waist.
"Do you understand what those bombs almost caused earlier?"
"It was just an explosion."
Deidara curled his lip, completely unconcerned.
"It wasn't actually going to hurt anyone. I had it under control."
"You had it under control?"
Kiyohara raised a brow.
"Then why were all the bombs crawling toward the Tsuchikage's building?"
Deidara choked.
A flicker of guilt crossed his little face, but he immediately straightened his chest and replied with forced confidence,
"That's because… because the view is better there!"
Kiyohara laughed.
This kid was stubborn.
Born troublemaker, apparently.
Kiyohara remembered that Deidara had been driven outside the village by the villagers when he was around nine, and Onoki had no choice but to teach him outside the village after that.
Then, after defecting in his teens, Deidara had gone to blow up a temple and ran into members of Akatsuki while admiring the explosion. From that point on, he'd been dragged onto the wrong ship entirely.
"Go ahead."
A Sharingan pattern appeared in Kiyohara's eyes.
Deidara froze.
He stared at Kiyohara's crimson eyes, openly curious.
In Iwagakure, he had never seen eyes that strange before.
After staring for a while, Deidara remembered why he was here.
Art couldn't be neglected.
So he hurriedly said,
"Fine, I'll show you!"
He crouched down and quickly kneaded some clay with both hands.
The lump of white clay shifted shape in his palms, eventually becoming a white spider larger than the one from before.
Deidara set the spider on the ground, stepped back a few paces, and formed hand seals.
"Ha!"
The spider began crawling, heading outside.
When it reached the base of a tree, Deidara moved his finger.
Boom!
The explosion went off.
Rocks flew, the tree was blown apart, and dust filled the air.
Standing not far from the blast point, Deidara tilted his head up to admire the rising smoke.
"Well? Pretty amazing, right?"
He turned back to Kiyohara—only to find the tomoe in Kiyohara's eyes spinning.
Just as Deidara was about to say something, the world suddenly swayed around him.
Then he realized his hands felt heavy.
He looked down—and found that his clay spider was still there.
Meaning he had never thrown it out at all.
"This is… genjutsu."
Deidara immediately realized it. At some point, he'd already fallen into Kiyohara's illusion.
And right now, he was probably still inside it.
That was his conclusion.
In truth, he didn't have much knowledge to back it up. He was just guessing.
"Not bad. Your bombs."
Kiyohara said lightly.
"Well, obviously. That's my C1: Clay Spider."
Deidara sounded very smug.
"It is creative."
As he spoke, Earth Release chakra gathered in Kiyohara's hand.
A lump of clay appeared there.
It was clay made directly through Kiyohara's chakra.
Deidara noticed that Kiyohara had lowered his head and was looking at something in his hand.
That thing…
Deidara blinked.
It was a clay spider.
Exactly the same as the one he had just made.
"You… how did you…"
Before he could finish, Kiyohara set the spider on the ground.
It started crawling.
Kiyohara moved a finger.
Boom!
Another explosion.
Exactly the same as Deidara's.
The difference was that Deidara's earlier explosion had happened inside the illusion, and Kiyohara's had also happened inside the illusion.
At this point, Deidara had already been pulled fully into a genjutsu world Kiyohara controlled.
Deidara stood there with his mouth open, staring at the rock that had just been blown apart, unable to speak for a long moment.
That was supposed to be his own unique forbidden technique—so how did Kiyohara know it too?
"How… how can you use it too?"
he finally asked.
"Is it that hard?"
Kiyohara brushed the clay dust off his hands.
"It's just using genjutsu to imitate Earth Release."
That was a lie.
He had genuinely learned the technique.
At the end of the day, this jutsu was still fundamentally Earth Release.
To be honest, the first time Kiyohara saw Deidara using explosive clay, he had been a little surprised.
Because in the original story, Deidara had supposedly taught himself Iwagakure's forbidden technique of mixing chakra into matter, which was what gave him his explosions.
The mouths in his hands were just modifications he'd made to speed up that process.
This technique itself wasn't that big of a deal. Given Deidara's status as the Tsuchikage's student, it had simply been quietly covered up.
It was like Naruto stealing the Shadow Clone technique from the Scroll of Seals—afterwards, nothing really happened to him.
After all, how could taking down a mere Mizuki possibly compensate for the value of the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique?
No matter which village you were in, everything came down to power, background, and connections.
It was the same with Deidara. The real reason he was treated as a rogue ninja later was because he killed people in the village using explosive clay.
"Earth Release?"
Deidara frowned.
"It's not Earth Release. It's Explosion Release. It's my art!"
"Explosion Release?"
Kiyohara walked up to him and crouched down.
If you really insisted, calling it Explosion Release wasn't entirely wrong. It was extremely similar to Explosion Release, and even the chakra nature involved was very close.
"Do you know what Earth Release actually is?"
"Earth Release jutsu means using Earth Release, obviously."
Deidara replied like it was common sense.
"The foundation of Earth Release is injecting chakra into soil or stone and changing its shape or properties."
Kiyohara raised a hand, and a lump of white clay appeared in his palm.
This clay, too, was something simulated within genjutsu.
This kind of technique was different from ordinary ninjutsu. It needed a physical medium.
In other words, if you wanted it to explode, there had to be a carrier.
And the medium Deidara usually used was clay.
But the clay itself wasn't the real point.
The real point was the forbidden technique.
The clay slowly changed shape in Kiyohara's palm, eventually becoming a spider even more refined than Deidara's.
"Your clay bombs are the same at their core. You inject chakra into clay, change its properties, and make it unstable."
He paused.
"That's the same principle as Earth Release."
Deidara's eyes widened.
This guy really knew his stuff. He'd seen right through the principle. Could it be that people outside the village used techniques like this all the time?
Deidara couldn't make sense of it, so he could only assume that there were other people outside who knew the same technique. After all, it was a forbidden art passed down since the Warring States era.
Then he looked at the spider.
From the outside, it really did look very similar to his own art.
But also… not quite the same.
His clay spiders always came out crooked and lopsided. This one looked so precise it could have been alive.
Then the spider exploded with a pop, releasing a cloud of green smoke.
"How… how did you make it look so good?"
Deidara couldn't help asking.
He instinctively glossed over the technique itself.
After all, he had already figured out this was an illusionary world. He assumed Kiyohara had just used genjutsu to make it prettier.
"That's a chakra control issue."
Kiyohara said.
"Your chakra control is too crude, so naturally what you make comes out crude."
Deidara scrunched up his face, unconvinced—but he couldn't actually argue.
Because Kiyohara's really did look better.
"Then… what was that green explosion just now?"
he asked again.
"Poison."
Kiyohara replied.
"Poison?"
"Of course. Just mix poison into the clay."
Deidara's eyes went huge.
What earth-shattering brilliance.
How had he never thought of mixing poison into the explosion?
The only issue was how to make sure the poison didn't get destroyed by the heat.
How could it spread with the blast instead?
If that part could be solved, the power of explosive clay would rise to an entirely new level.
As Deidara looked at Kiyohara, he felt like Kiyohara understood "instant explosion" even better than he did.
And with additions like that, the blast would be even more like fireworks.
It would have even more aesthetic value.
So art could work like this too?
Then what had he even been doing all these years?
"There are actually a lot more directions you could take it."
Kiyohara said, dangling the bait.
He had his own plans in saying all this.
"L-like what?"
Deidara asked, fascinated.
"Can you show me every jutsu you know first?"
Kiyohara looked at him.
This little brat clearly didn't know much about the Sharingan yet.
"Sure."
Deidara nodded.
"Oh, but you have to promise me one thing too."
Kiyohara continued.
"What thing?"
"If you want to work on art again in the future, come find me."
Kiyohara extended the offer.
If Iwa didn't want this talent, he could take him instead.
There was still room to improve Kiyohara's Gold Dust method, after all.
The most obvious improvement would be to just find a real gold mine and extract the ore directly.
In fact, that was how Rasa did it.
His chakra reserves weren't anywhere near Kiyohara's, but he had a stable mining team. That made the technique a genuine pillar of Sunagakure's finances.
Kiyohara was already planning to recruit Deidara as his own "demolitions department."
That would dramatically speed up ore extraction, and Deidara could also use clay to make clay clones to help transport it.
Deidara paused, then nodded.
"Alright. I promise!"
Then he began demonstrating all the explosive-clay-based techniques he knew.
Kiyohara alternated between using the Byakugan and Sharingan to copy them one by one.
Of course, from Deidara's perspective, Kiyohara's appearance never changed. The genjutsu chakra was affecting what he saw as normal reality.
Kiyohara's ocular power was already deep enough now that he could layer in far more detail.
He felt like his current eye power was already approaching Mangekyo Sharingan territory.
And he was still only at three tomoe. If he awakened the Mangekyo, it would probably jump even further.
So learning Deidara's forbidden technique was extremely easy for him.
Kiyohara couldn't say he could immediately learn every secret art out there, but these kinds of chakra-injection-based techniques came naturally to him.
Through his own vision, he could clearly see how chakra was being injected into the clay—using the Sharingan to study the fine details of the chakra flow, and the Byakugan to examine the fine details of the clay itself.
At moments Deidara wasn't paying attention, Kiyohara quietly shifted back into the real world. Only during the "explosions" did he switch Deidara back into the genjutsu world.
So from Deidara's perspective, he was just repeatedly injecting chakra, forming seals, and repeating the process.
Once Deidara finished his demonstrations, he demanded that it was Kiyohara's turn now.
Kiyohara smiled.
He had it all now.
A massive haul.
And honestly, all Kiyohara could say about it was that the Tsuchikage's dumb little student was absurdly generous.
Then Kiyohara raised his right hand, and chakra condensed in his palm again.
This time, even more clay poured out.
The white clay slowly piled up and shifted in front of him until it eventually formed…
A puppet.
It was about an arm's length tall, with fully formed limbs and flexible joints.
Deidara's eyes widened.
"Th-this is…"
"Clay puppet."
Kiyohara controlled the puppet and made it take a few steps in front of him.
"The spiders and birds you were making before were just simple animal forms."
"But if you shape the clay into a puppet, you can achieve much more complex control."
He paused, then twitched a finger.
The puppet suddenly moved.
It walked a few laps around the courtyard, then raised an arm and threw a punch.
Deidara stared at it, completely captivated.
"So you can do that too…"
he muttered.
"Of course."
Kiyohara retracted the puppet and dispersed the chakra.
"And you can pour even more chakra into a puppet."
"If you make it self-destruct, it'll be far more powerful than an ordinary clay bomb."
Deidara's eyes lit up even more.
"It can self-destruct too?"
"It can."
Kiyohara nodded.
"But it's also harder to control. You need much finer chakra manipulation, because now you're dealing with multiple separate components."
The look in Deidara's eyes was becoming more and more intense.
Every idea Kiyohara was offering sounded brilliant to him—completely different from anything he had ever thought of before.
This guy was definitely a genius.
Someone who truly understood art.
No—not just that. No one understood art better than he did.
At that moment, Deidara felt as if he had finally found a kindred spirit.
No one in Iwagakure had ever made him feel that way before.
"You… what's your name?"
Deidara finally asked.
"Kiyohara."
Kiyohara gave his name.
"And you?"
"Deidara."
Deidara tilted his head up to look at him.
"Kiyohara… can you teach me?"
Kiyohara looked at him.
"Of course."
He snapped his fingers.
The scene returned to the real world.
For an ordinary Uchiha, that kind of genjutsu detail would consume a lot of ocular power. For Kiyohara, it was practically nothing.
The illusion worlds Uchiha Madara could create would have been even more real.
Madara had once restored his own youth and freedom of movement inside a genjutsu world and used that short span of time to teach Obito most of his skills.
Deidara looked around in every direction. It felt almost identical to the illusionary world from before.
He was even more shocked now, and he privately concluded that Kiyohara's genjutsu was terrifyingly good.
"These are just some personal notes of mine."
Kiyohara took out part of the puppet and poison techniques he had previously obtained from Sasori.
Of course, he had renamed "Red Secret Technique" to "Origin Secret Technique."
Deidara carefully accepted the scroll Kiyohara handed him.
"But for now, you need to head back. If you stay out any later, your teacher's going to come looking for you."
Deidara froze, then remembered Onoki's dark face.
He shrank his neck a little, but quickly puffed his chest out again.
"So what? Worst case, I get yelled at."
Kiyohara laughed.
The brat really was stubborn.
"Go on."
He turned and walked toward the courtyard gate.
Deidara followed behind him, but after a few steps, he suddenly stopped.
"Kiyohara."
"Yeah?"
"You really do understand art."
Kiyohara turned back.
"And no one understands art better than you."
Kiyohara smiled.
"Go on back."
He waved, then disappeared beyond the courtyard gate.
Deidara turned and hurried off too, already itching to start experimenting again.
…
He ran the whole way back, his head full of what he had just seen.
Green explosions. Beautiful clay birds. Puppets that could walk…
Those images spun around and around in his mind until it almost itched.
He flipped through the scroll as he walked.
"Deidara!"
A voice called out from ahead.
Deidara looked up and saw a figure barely taller than himself standing at the mouth of the alley.
It was a round, sturdy-looking boy in a gray short robe much like Deidara's, wearing a simple, honest smile.
Akatsuchi.
"Where'd you go?"
Akatsuchi ran over.
"Master Onoki's been looking for you everywhere."
"What for?"
Deidara curled his lip.
"It was just a few explosions. I didn't even hit anybody."
"It's not that."
Akatsuchi shook his head.
"Master said you offended Konoha's guests today, so he told me to keep an eye on you and make sure you don't cause more trouble."
Deidara blinked.
"Konoha's guests?"
"The people who came today, obviously."
Akatsuchi said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Master Onoki said they're here to negotiate. It's important."
Deidara froze.
Konoha's guests…
Kiyohara was one of Konoha's guests?
He suddenly remembered the forehead protector on Kiyohara's head.
The Konoha symbol.
So that was why he was here. Deidara had been wondering how a Konoha shinobi could just walk around the village openly like that.
"Deidara?"
Seeing him zone out, Akatsuchi waved a hand in front of his face.
Onoki had already explained all of this earlier. Deidara had just been the only one not listening.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing."
Deidara came back to himself and kept walking.
After a few more steps, he stopped again.
"Akatsuchi."
"Yeah?"
"Did you know clay bombs can be turned into puppets?"
Akatsuchi blinked.
"Puppets? What kind of puppets?"
"You make a moving person out of clay. It can walk, it can fight, and it can self-destruct."
Deidara gestured excitedly.
Akatsuchi scratched his head.
"A moving person… made of clay?"
"Yeah."
Deidara nodded.
"And you can even use different poisons to make the explosion different colors. Like green."
That was something Deidara had just realized.
Poison didn't have to be only green, after all.
As he skimmed through the scroll, he saw methods for making puppets—and also methods for preparing different toxins.
"Deidara… did you have some weird dream or something?"
Akatsuchi thought he was acting strange.
"It wasn't a dream!"
Deidara snapped.
"Kiyohara did it! I saw it with my own eyes!"
"Kiyohara?"
Akatsuchi frowned.
"Who's that?"
"One of the Konoha guests from today."
Deidara said, as if that should have been obvious.
"He understands art. Better than anyone."
Akatsuchi looked at him strangely.
"Deidara… don't tell me someone hit you with genjutsu?"
"Genjutsu?"
Deidara froze.
Genjutsu?
Then he suddenly remembered that moment.
Those crimson eyes…
Those three tomoe…
"Oh, I already saw through that."
Deidara waved it off.
Kiyohara's genjutsu really was impressive. It had even been able to reproduce his Explosion Release.
Even though Kiyohara had said his Explosion Release was really just Earth Release, Deidara still preferred calling it Explosion Release.
"Are you okay?"
Akatsuchi was starting to think Deidara had finally gone off the deep end.
Deidara looked up at Akatsuchi's earnest, simple face.
"I'm fine."
He kept walking.
"Akatsuchi, what do you think would happen if one day I made a clay puppet that could walk, fight, and self-destruct?"
Akatsuchi thought about it.
"That sounds… really strong, I guess?"
"Right?!"
Deidara exclaimed.
~~~
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