"Lord Kazekage, let us begin."
Within Sunagakure's secret training ground, Unohana Retsu and Shiraishi stood facing each other from opposite sides.
At this moment, Unohana Retsu slowly drew her Zanpakuto, her sharp gaze locking onto Shiraishi.
"I will be troubling you, Sister Unohana."
At his current stage, the only way for Shiraishi to truly elevate his strength and refine his capabilities was to engage in genuine life-and-death slaughters against Unohana Retsu, honing his power through countless brushes with death.
Her killing intent boiling over, Unohana Retsu held her Zanpakuto as her figure blurred, sweeping forward like a ghost. Shiraishi remained completely motionless, gathering a razor-sharp sword intent onto the Heavenly Dao Divine Sword in his hand to block Unohana's very first strike.
This was Shiraishi utilizing the Sword Dance skill card to manifest an air-vortex technique, which could cleverly neutralize a portion of physical offensives.
"An interesting technique. But unfortunately, it didn't stop me from cutting you."
At some unknown point, Unohana Retsu altered the attacking angle of her Zanpakuto. It abruptly tore a wound across Shiraishi's body, causing fresh blood to spray outward.
Shiraishi activated Inorganic Reincarnation, and the wound on his body rapidly mended bit by bit: "Your speed and power, Sister Unohana, have increased considerably compared to when you first awoke."
Hearing this, Unohana Retsu narrowed her eyes: "Although my spiritual pressure recovers very slowly, my combat condition is continuously restoring itself toward its prime."
Back during the conflict against the Wandenreich, Unohana Retsu's final training session with Kenpachi Zaraki had consumed a colossal, staggering amount of spiritual pressure. Though her soul's condition had been repaired upon arriving in this world, she was still far from a complete state.
To fully restore herself to her absolute peak performance, she would still require several years of rest and recuperation. Yet, even in her current state, her active combat effectiveness was already vastly superior compared to when she first encountered Shiraishi.
With a sudden burst of her Shunpo, Unohana Retsu initiated her second wave of offensive maneuvers.
Her blade paths and angles remained consistent with her past styles—relentless and continuous, with all sorts of shifting, lethal strikes emerging one after another. As Shiraishi defended himself, the deeper he fought, the more alarmed he became.
Although the Sword was firmly gripped in his hand, Shiraishi found himself utterly incapable of unleashing much of his original combat prowess under Unohana Retsu's suffocating, proactive onslaught.
In a duel of pure physical swordsmanship and taijutsu, Unohana Retsu possessed the mastery of the Yachiru style.
Her sheer depth of experience far surpassed his own; a single casual variation in her stance integrated the blended styles of six or seven different schools, yet her overarching sequence of moves shifted with seamless, unvarying fluidity.
In less than a few minutes, Shiraishi's body was riddled with a large volume of slash wounds. However, relying on the specialized effects of Inorganic Reincarnation, his physical injuries continuously recovered, drawing soft murmurs of admiration from Unohana Retsu.
At this point, Unohana Retsu slowly stepped forward, the blade-light unleashed from her Zanpakuto cleaving through the distance to strike straight at Shiraishi.
The concentrated force atop the blade-light seemed to siphon away all surrounding luminosity, causing the blade itself to grow increasingly bright and pure, while leaving Shiraishi's immediate perimeter increasingly black and dim—brewing all sorts of concealed dangers within the profound darkness.
Unohana Retsu's brutal training regimen was, in factual reality, designed solely to elevate Shiraishi's instinctual combat perception.
Over these past years, as Shiraishi's power grew greater and greater, the number of genuine, life-and-death brutal struggles he encountered had become fewer and fewer. Relatively speaking, his physical form had grown duller—this dullness specifically referred to a loss of razor-sharp intuition.
Therefore, Unohana Retsu's blade-light would use the most absolute method of entering enlightenment through slaughter, forcing Shiraishi's combat state to restore itself bit by bit.
"Perhaps in this world, your strength has long stood atop the absolute peak. However, across the myriad worlds, the powerful are countless. Losing that instinctual scent for survival in battle will cause you to suffer immense losses in future conflicts, and might even cost you your life."
Unohana Retsu's Zanpakuto slashed down once more. Fresh blood abruptly erupted across Shiraishi's back, the brilliant crimson splashing over the ground, indicating that Unohana Retsu was currently fighting with absolute seriousness.
Taking a light step forward, Unohana Retsu's figure flew out elegantly amidst her swirling, dancing Zanpakuto, circling her opponent at high speed. Within a mere millisecond, she left behind countless indistinguishable afterimages.
As countless streaks of blade-light shot out, they projected a deep, terrifying sensation—descending upon Shiraishi like a torrential downpour.
"Sister Unohana, you are truly trying to take my life here..."
Shiraishi could only feel Unohana Retsu's combat style growing more and more savage, the immense pressure weighing heavier on him the longer the battle dragged on.
However, during the process of evading, Shiraishi gradually reclaimed a shred of his old sensation. This steadily recovered combat intuition caused his eyes to turn sharper, allowing him to directly dodge one of Unohana Retsu's incoming slashes.
"Right now, I am indeed fighting with the absolute intent to kill you."
Though he had seemingly dodged it successfully, Unohana Retsu had in fact deployed a specialized ice-mirror genjutsu. Amidst her successive blade strikes, one of the slashes was actually an illusory mirage—allowing her true blade to pierce clean through Shiraishi's arm.
However, Shiraishi reacted instantly, swinging the Heavenly Dao Divine Sword to unleash a powerful vortex of airflow, forcing Unohana Retsu to leap back.
"Thank you..."
Several months later, after Uchiha Kaede and Hoshigaki Kisame successfully formed their tactical duo, the two were preparing to leave the Land of Rain to execute a mercenary assignment. However, they unexpectedly crossed paths with Orochimaru along their route.
"It's Orochimaru..."
Staring intently into Orochimaru's eyes, Uchiha Kaede let out a cold laugh, his heart well aware of exactly what this venomous serpent was planning.
Now he's turning his attention toward me...
"Kisame, step away for a moment."
Hoshigaki Kisame wanted to say something, but catching the dark, profound glint in Uchiha Kaede's eyes and the blatant greed plastered over Orochimaru's face, he gripped Samehada and took the initiative to depart ahead of them.
"Heh, you choose to stay behind all by yourself?"
Orochimaru's voice was saturated with a chilling, bizarre tone. Having inherited the legacy of the Ryuchi Cave, his soul's condition was far more complete compared to his historical counterpart during this same period, granting him a vastly superior resistance against genjutsu.
In the past, the Uchiha clan's Sharingan held an absolute counter-effect against him. Now, however, he did not harbor the slightest fear toward the Mangekyo Sharingan before him—after all, Uchiha Kaede was not historically renowned for his genjutsu prowess.
Therefore, the moment Orochimaru saw Hoshigaki Kisame walk into the distance, he launched an immediate strike, his massive spiritual focus instantly enveloping Uchiha Kaede's form.
Having gone through that brutal clash at the Hidden Leaf Village, the amount of ocular power Uchiha Kaede had burned through was absolutely colossal. Consequently, his current state was bound to be exceptionally weakened.
Orochimaru's greed for a flawless Uchiha bloodline trait was insatiable. Although Uchiha Itachi remained his primary target of consideration, the current political climate within the Hidden Leaf made it highly unsuitable for him to make a move—which was why he redirected his designs onto Uchiha Kaede.
Countless venomous serpents surged out from all directions, attempting to swallow Uchiha Kaede whole. Yet, in that exact instant, a terrifying, bone-chilling cold diffused outward from Uchiha Kaede's body.
Orochimaru had attempted to use genjutsu to establish absolute control over Uchiha Kaede, completely failing to anticipate that the opponent would directly unleash an extremely frigid cold flame—landing Orochimaru straight into his own miscalculation.
The sinister, silver flame burned brightly atop Uchiha Kaede's hand. As the Mangekyo Sharingan within both of his eyes slowly activated, he reacted in the exact same manner that Uchiha Itachi historically had when dealing with Orochimaru—his kunai instantly slicing down one of Orochimaru's arms.
"Orochimaru, in front of these eyes, you are absolutely nothing."
Amidst his cold, detached words, Uchiha Kaede stared at the frantically fleeing Orochimaru, a trace of frost lingering within his gaze.
Orochimaru is becoming increasingly difficult to keep under control...
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