Hey guys, here is the new chapter hope you will liked and read thru everything.
If we hit 100 PW I post a extra chapter.
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The cheers still celebrating Daiku's decisive victory over Sasuke Uchiha took several minutes to subside, gradually fading away as the field ninjas cleared everything for the next battle.
The combat arena had been left cracked in multiple areas, showing deep burn marks and stone debris that Sunagakure's maintenance crew rushed to level using basic Earth Style jutsu.
In the ceremonial box, the atmosphere maintained a palpable tension. Ōnoki continued with a furrowed brow and rigidly crossed arms, silently chewing on Deidara's defeat. However, in his yellow, wrinkled eyes shone a cold spark of expectation. Daigo, for his part, remained seated with composure on the Kazekage's throne, maintaining a serene gaze while adjusting the sleeves of his ceremonial robes. He knew exactly who would step onto the sand next.
The Jonin supervisor walked with a firm stride to the center of the ring, stopping on the central slab. He raised his right arm, demanding the crowd's attention before announcing the fourth and final match of the first elimination round.
"Silence!" the instructor's voice, amplified with chakra, echoed clearly in every corner of the venue.
"We will begin the fourth match of the first phase! Representing Iwagakure, Kurotsuchi! Against Sunae of Sunagakure! Will both participants please enter the ring!"
From the north tunnel, Kurotsuchi emerged at a brisk pace. Her red and black tactical uniform gleamed under the searing desert sun. With a confident, defiant smirk on her face, she adjusted her forearm guards as she walked with an ease bordering on arrogance. She didn't come merely to win a match; she came with a direct mandate from her grandfather to restore the Stone's pride after Deidara's fall.
From the south tunnel advanced Sunae. The young Sand kunoichi wore her lightweight combat attire, designed to maximize limb mobility. Her posture was erect, athletic, and feline. Daughter of Daigo and sister to Kimimaro and Daiku, Sunae carried on her shoulders the triple heritage of defensive rigor, her father's discipline, and the terrifying Scorch Style nature of her mother.
Both competitors stopped ten meters apart in the center of the battlefield. The warm breeze raised a thin curtain of dust between them.
Kurotsuchi tilted her head slightly, looking Sunae up and down as she crossed her arms with an amused grin.
"My, aren't you popular in your village," Kurotsuchi began in a clear, mocking voice, letting her words echo between them. "I must admit your brother left quite a mess in the previous match. But make no mistake, little Sand girl. I'm not like Deidara; I'm not going to float in the air waiting for you to try and burn me. I'm going to smash you straight into the ground."
Sunae was unfazed. She kept her fists clenched at her waist, adopting a basic hand-to-hand stance with her legs firmly planted on the ground. Her pink eyes reflected absolute calm, devoid of any hint of doubt or provocation.
"You can try whenever you like," Sunae replied with a firm, contained voice. "On the battlefield, words don't support anyone. Let's see if the Stone's rock is as hard as you boast."
The Jonin supervisor looked back and forth between them, checking both kunoichis' tactical readiness. Without a second's hesitation, he raised his hand and brought it down sharply.
"Begin!"
The judge vanished instantly using the Body Flicker Technique, taking position atop the perimeter wall.
Before the order had even finished echoing, Kurotsuchi was the first to take the initiative. With a reaction speed honed in Iwagakure's tough regiments, she pressed her palms together and bent her knees, channeling a massive amount of Earth Style chakra into the ground.
"Earth Style: Stone Fist Technique!"
A dense, heavy layer of reinforced rock molded instantly over her right arm, covering from her knuckles to her elbow like a massive, sharp gauntlet. Without losing a single millisecond, Kurotsuchi propelled herself forward, shattering the stone under her sandals as she launched into a direct frontal charge toward Sunae.
Sunae didn't retreat a single millimeter. Instead of evading the strike, her breathing changed rhythm in a fraction of a second. She exhaled a small puff of hot air and channeled her Scorch Style chakra to the surface of her skin.
FZZZZT!
A stream of searing heat enveloped Sunae's forearms and fists, generating a glowing, bright orange thermal aura that distorted the air around her hands. The technique not only raised the temperature of her limbs to levels capable of melting basic metals, but it also acted as a dense thermal shield reinforcing the impact of her blows.
CLANG!
The clash between Kurotsuchi's rock-covered fist and Sunae's Scorch Style-coated forearm triggered a sonic pop that kicked up a circular shockwave across the arena floor. Incandescent stone sparks flew in every direction.
Kurotsuchi opened her eyes in surprise as she felt the tremendous solidity of the block. The rock mass of her gauntlet failed to crush the Sand kunoichi's arm; instead, the mineral's surface began cracking and glowing red-hot from the extreme thermal radiation of the Scorch Style.
"Not bad!" Kurotsuchi exclaimed, gritting her teeth as she used her left leg to throw a spinning kick toward her rival's head.
Sunae ducked her torso with feline agility, letting Kurotsuchi's leg cut through the air above her. Capitalizing on the opening in the Stone ninja's guard, Sunae executed a direct uppercut to Kurotsuchi's chin. The strike's speed was so immense that the heat aura surrounding her fist left an orange trail in the air.
Kurotsuchi managed to snap her head back in the final millisecond. Although Sunae's fist didn't connect cleanly with her chin, the thermal radiation wave from the Scorch Style scorched the skin of her cheek and singed several strands of hair, forcing the Iwa kunoichi to execute three backflips to reset the distance.
Touching down fifteen meters away, Kurotsuchi placed a hand on her reddened cheek, feeling the sharp sting of the burn. The mocking smirk vanished completely from her face, replaced by a cold, calculating gaze.
'That heat is no joke...' Kurotsuchi analyzed internally, shaking her right hand to discard the remnants of the stone gauntlet that had been rendered brittle by the thermal shock. 'If I try to engage in a prolonged exchange of pure Taijutsu against that heat aura, it'll cook my skin before I can land a clean blow. I need to control the distance and limit her mobility.'
Kurotsuchi rapidly wove a fluid sequence of three hand seals and pressed both palms against the reinforced stone of the ring.
"Earth Style: Mud River!"
The stone and sand terrain Sunae stood on transformed instantly into a fluid torrent of thick, shifting mud that began dragging her at high speed toward the colosseum's back wall, completely destabilizing her footing and threatening to bury her.
Sunae reacted with flawless composure. Instead of fighting the mud stream, she concentrated a burst of chakra into the soles of her feet and executed a clean vertical jump. However, Kurotsuchi had anticipated the aerial escape maneuver.
Without breaking her seal sequence, Kurotsuchi opened her mouth and spat a massive stream of a viscous, searing, bright orange substance that crossed paths in midair with Sunae's jump trajectory.
"Lava Style: Quicklime Congeal Technique!"
The mass of glowing lime and volcanic mud covered the air like a burning net. Finding herself mid-jump without ground support, Sunae realized she couldn't dodge the technique's massive coverage.
Sunae clenched her fists at her sides and thrust both arms forward in a sharp motion.
"Scorch Style: Pressure Heat Bullets!"
From the tips of her fists, four concentrated bullets of pure heat erupted like artillery shells. The Scorch Style bullets struck the glowing lime mass dead center in mid-flight.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The thermal detonations pulverized the Lava Style mass, evaporating the moisture of Kurotsuchi's chemical mixture and turning it into a harmless curtain of dry dust that dispersed in the breeze. Sunae utilized the expansion wave of her own explosions to execute an axial flip, landing gracefully on the edge of the area unaffected by the mud river.
From the VIP box, the Fourth Raikage observed the exchange with a nod of approval.
"That girl wields Scorch Style drastically differently from her brother," A remarked aloud, addressing the Kage table. "The Uchiha boy faced a concentrated sword style, but the girl applies the heat directly to the impact mechanics of her limbs. Every one of her strikes carries the weight of a thermal explosion."
"Well, Pakura trained her well, A," Daigo chimed in serenely, keeping his eyes fixed on his daughter. "Sunae has developed an organic integration between temperature control and movement speed. However, Kurotsuchi hasn't displayed the Stone's full arsenal yet."
In the arena, Kurotsuchi didn't wait for the dust from the detonation to settle. Taking advantage of the ash screen temporarily blocking Sunae's direct line of sight, she executed a complex series of hand seals, channeling a massive amount of Fire and Earth chakra into her lungs.
"Lava Style: Molten Sphere Technique!"
Kurotsuchi spat three giant volcanic boulders coated in liquid lava that cut through the air along diverging trajectories, designed to flank Sunae from three angles simultaneously. The temperature of the projectiles was so high that the stone floor nearby began glassing over from heat radiation.
Sunae detected the approaching volcanic rocks thanks to the thermal vibration in the air. She knew her Scorch Style bullets wouldn't be enough to neutralize the solid mass of three lava boulders simultaneously without consuming an excessive amount of chakra.
It was time to raise the tempo.
Sunae closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. She filled her lungs with a deep, rhythmic inhalation, activating Sunagakure's physical enhancement secret.
"Seven Heavens Breathing: First Phase!"
Sunae's blood flow accelerated drastically, and a tide of compressed air erupted from her pores, surging her muscle strength and reaction speed to superhuman levels.
SWOOSH!
Sunae moved. Her speed surged so violently that to most spectators in the stands, she appeared to vanish on the spot. The first lava sphere crashed into the ground where she had been standing a millisecond prior, bursting into a shower of molten rock.
Sunae reappeared to the left of the second sphere. With her speed boosted by the First Phase, she delivered a Scorch Style-infused ascending kick straight to the base of the lava rock. The combined impact of superhuman physical force and steam heat redirected the volcanic projectile's trajectory, sending it crashing into the colosseum's perimeter wall.
Kurotsuchi opened her eyes in disbelief at the sudden burst of speed.
'What kind of taijutsu technique is that!?' the Iwa kunoichi wondered, trying to trace the movement with her eyes. 'She's way too strong and fast!'
Sunae gave her no time to process the shift. She closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, reappearing directly in Kurotsuchi's blind spot. Concentrating the Scorch Style aura around her right fist until it shone as brightly as a miniature sun, she threw a direct punch at the Stone ninja's flank.
Kurotsuchi, displaying the finest defensive instincts of Iwagakure, didn't attempt to dodge. Instead, she hardened her entire body in a fraction of a second through an instant application of high-level defensive ninjutsu.
"Earth Style: Hardening Technique!"
Her skin took on a grayish hue resembling reinforced granite.
Sunae's glowing fist collided head-on with Kurotsuchi's side. The sound of the clash echoed like a steel sledgehammer striking a massive anvil. Kurotsuchi's hardened stone barrier absorbed the initial physical impact, but the thermal radiation from the Scorch Style began cracking the mineral armor at the point of contact, transferring a searing heatwave directly into the Stone ninja's internal organs.
"Gugh!" Kurotsuchi let out a groan of pain as the shockwave and heat penetrated her stone defense.
Despite the pain, Kurotsuchi proved why she was one of her generation's standout kunoichis. Enduring the punishment, she capitalized on Sunae's fist still touching her side to trap the Kazekage's daughter's arm with her left hand, pinning her in place.
"Got you!" Kurotsuchi shouted with a sweaty face and bloodied teeth.
With her right hand free, Kurotsuchi accumulated a massive amount of volcanic mud in her palm and slammed it directly against Sunae's abdomen point-blank.
"Lava Style: Corrosive Blast!"
BOOOOOOM!
A point-blank explosion of magma and steam engulfed both competitors. The blast's force broke their hold, sending Kurotsuchi rolling across the ground for over ten meters before she managed to dig her knees into the earth, breathing with extreme difficulty while clutching her injured side.
Sunae was blown backward by the shockwave, skidding across the hard sand as a dense cloud of black smoke rose from her tactical tunic.
The audience in the Great Colosseum fell deathly silent, watching the impact zone with bated breath.
When the smoke began to clear, Sunae remained standing. Her tactical clothing showed severe burn marks and corrosion from Kurotsuchi's magma, and thin trails of blood ran down her forehead and forearms. Yet, her stance hadn't buckled.
Deep within Sunae's chakra pathway system, Chōmei's presence began to stir slightly. The Seven-Tails' dense, warm, and rejuvenating chakra threatened to surge to the surface to heal its jinchūriki's wounds and crush her opponent.
Sunae felt the tide of the Tailed Beast's chakra trying to emerge in her chest. She closed her eyes firmly, exhaled a breath of scalding air, and inwardly suppressed the external energy flow, consciously refusing to use Chōmei's power.
'No...' Sunae told herself in the quiet of her mind, letting the Seven-Tails know. 'This is my fight. I've trained under Mom and Dad's style, and I won't disappoint them. I will win this match with my own strength, with my own control.'
Sunae opened her eyes. The resolve in her gaze was so razor-sharp that Kurotsuchi, seeing her stand tall without showing signs of weakness, felt a pang of genuine tactical fear.
Sunae bent her knees slightly. She brought her right hand toward her chest and once again shifted her inhalation frequency, elevating the Seven Heavens Breathing pattern to another level.
"Seven Heavens Breathing: Second Phase!"
The Scorch Style chakra surrounding Sunae's body ceased simply emanating as steam and compressed drastically around her skin, forming a thin, incandescent orange layer of ultra-concentrated thermal armor. The heat radiating from her figure was so intense that the sand under her sandals began glassing over instantly, turning into small plates of shiny glass.
Kurotsuchi struggled to her feet. She grit her jaw as blood trickled from her cheek and her injured side sent unbearable surges of pain through her body. She knew she had only one chance left to decide the match before Sunae's speed completely wore her down.
"Don't think you're going to defeat me that easily!" Kurotsuchi roared in defensive rage.
Kurotsuchi poured all her remaining chakra into an earth jutsu, striking the ground with both hands in desperate force.
"Earth Style: Earth Dragon Rampart!"
A colossal wall of reinforced stone and volcanic rock over fifteen meters high and three meters thick erupted from the ground between them, rising like an impenetrable fortress designed to halt any frontal assault and buy time.
Sunae didn't alter her trajectory or bypass the structure. She charged straight toward the stone rampart at a speed that left a crimson trail of steam in the air.
'Everything in a single strike,' Sunae thought, concentrating all her Scorch Style chakra and Seven Heavens Breathing strength into her right fist, shaping it not as a simple heat bullet, but as a max-pressure, concentrated thermal drill.
"Scorch Style: Seven Heavens Penetrating Impact!"
Sunae arrived before the massive stone rampart and unleashed her right fist against the center of the structure.
CRACK... BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The impact was devastating. The combination of the Scorch Style's extreme heat—which dissolved the rock's molecular cohesion at the point of contact—and the Breathing technique's amplified physical force caused Kurotsuchi's fifteen-meter wall to not merely crack, but explode entirely from within. Thousands of incandescent stone fragments shot out in every direction like grenade shrapnel.
Kurotsuchi, who was right behind the wall preparing a final lava jutsu, watched in shock as the entire rampart collapsed toward her. Before she could react or weave a single hand seal, Sunae's figure shattered through the curtain of destroyed rock and red steam like a comet.
Sunae's glowing fist stopped a mere half-centimeter from Kurotsuchi's forehead.
The shockwave of hot wind and contained pressure behind the strike blasted through the Stone kunoichi, blowing her backward by the sheer force of the compressed air.
Kurotsuchi slammed hard onto the arena floor, rolling several meters before coming to a stop flat on her back—completely disarmed, her skin scorched by the near-impact heat, and exhausted from massive chakra depletion.
She tried to lift her left hand to continue fighting, but her muscles failed her. Her eyes closed slowly as fatigue and pain overtook her body, falling completely unconscious on the vitrified sand.
Sunae remained standing in the center of the ring, keeping her right fist extended for a second before relaxing her posture. She exhaled a long gust of scalding steam, feeling the Scorch Style aura gradually dissipate from her skin and her Seven Heavens Breathing return to its resting rhythm. Her breathing was deep and heavy, but her eyes remained steady and calm.
The Jonin supervisor jumped down immediately from the perimeter wall, landing beside Kurotsuchi. He quickly checked her pulse and the state of her wounds before standing up and pointing decisively toward the Kazekage's daughter.
"Participant Kurotsuchi of Iwagakure is unable to continue!" the referee proclaimed loudly, his announcement booming across the colosseum. "The winner of the fourth match of the first elimination round is... Sunae of Sunagakure!"
The entire Great Colosseum seemed to hold its breath for a fraction of a second before erupting into a thunderous roar of celebration.
The crowd's cheers echoed impressively, chanting Sunae's name while the Sand supporters waved banners and flags in every section of the stands. With this outcome, Sunagakure cemented a flawless performance in the first round of the tournament.
Medical ninjas from both Iwagakure and Sunagakure quickly rushed onto the field with a stretcher to provide emergency aid to Kurotsuchi and transport her to the stadium's central infirmary.
In the VIP box, the reaction was immediate.
Ōnoki clenched his fists behind his back so tightly that the wooden railing nearby creaked softly under his pressure. Seeing his two top prospects, Deidara and Kurotsuchi, eliminated in the first round by Daigo's students and children dealt a bitter political and military blow to Iwagakure's pride. However, like the seasoned Kage he was, he kept his mouth shut, settling for a grunt of contained frustration while staring down at the field.
Daigo stood up slowly from his seat. He looked down, fixing his eyes on Sunae, who was looking up toward the official box. Daigo offered her a subtle nod, accompanied by a smile of genuine pride and approval that communicated more than any public speech.
Sunae answered her father's gesture with a firm, respectful military bow. Then, adjusting her forearm guards, she turned around and began walking with a calm stride toward the competitors' tunnel, leaving behind a battlefield transformed by the power of her Scorch Style and securing her spot among the top four of the Great Chūnin Tournament.