The salamander's toxic gas merged with Yuji's Blood Poison mist the moment they made contact, and in an instant the entire battlefield was blanketed beneath a churning sea of lethal vapor.
The Blood Poison's dispersal range, however, was considerably wider than the salamander's toxic cloud alone.
"Ah!"
"Careful, run!"
Some of the Hidden Rain soldiers had been wearing poison-resistant masks, believing they could withstand the Blood Poison's assault. They had underestimated it badly. Because Yuji's Blood Release did not simply carry poison. It carried corrosive properties as well. Even the faintest contact with exposed skin was enough to trigger poisoning. The eyes were equally vulnerable.
The Hidden Rain forces that had been converging in formation were enveloped by the blood mist almost immediately, and screams and groans erupted across their ranks in rapid succession. In terms of raw lethality, the Blood Poison appeared to surpass even the salamander's venom.
"Fire Release: Blazing Formation!"
Hanzo formed seals and barked the order.
The terrain here had already been prepared in advance as a trap for Akatsuki. Naturally, ambush measures had been laid throughout the ground beforehand.
Boom.
A second later, the earth beneath Yuji's group erupted with countless bursts of flame as the buried explosive tags detonated simultaneously.
"His toxic mist weakens as the blood concentration disperses. It also appears to be affected by fire and smoke."
After deploying that technique, Hanzo swept his gaze across the battlefield and identified a specific vulnerability in the Blood Release. He immediately called out to his forces.
"Everyone use Water Release or Fire Release to counter the blood mist. Once his blood has been diluted and spread across a wider area, its effective power becomes limited."
The order gave the Hidden Rain fighters something to work with and several of them began to respond.
But before the Hidden Rain elites could advance, something changed without warning.
A surging golden tide rose into the air, shifted its shape, and launched itself directly into the densely packed Hidden Rain formations.
Hanzo narrowed his eye.
This was not the Land of Wind. And yet Rasa had summoned this volume of gold dust regardless.
In moments, vast numbers of Hidden Rain soldiers found their bodies covered or contaminated by the clinging gold particles.
"Gold Dust Release: Grand Burial!"
Rasa's voice rang out across the battlefield.
A golden waterfall crashed and swept through the formations, burying countless Hidden Rain soldiers beneath the earth.
Hanzo's chest tightened.
These three Sand Village Kage-level fighters were terrifying specifically because their combat methods on the battlefield carried something approaching dominance at the area-of-effect level. Each of them was built to suppress and eliminate at scale.
Hanzo half-concealed himself beneath his summoned salamander gave a sharp command. It immediately submerged beneath the ground and vanished, then erupted upward again close to Yuji's group in an instant, opening its enormous jaws to swallow all three of them whole.
Bang.
A flash of lightning cracked through the air. A puppet figure erupted with terrifying lightning-attribute chakra, carrying the weight of something immovable, and drove its fist directly into the top of the salamander's head. The summoned creature was hammered immediately into a deep crater in the earth.
Sasori had deployed two puppets simultaneously.
And beyond the gold dust filling the air, a dark iron sand had also appeared, flowing like slow smoke before condensing into countless sharp spears in an instant and launching toward the Hidden Rain forces and toward Hanzo's position on the high ground.
Hanzo recognized this immediately. He had crossed blades with this ability before.
The previous Sand Village Kazekage's bloodline limit.
And the puppet that had destroyed his summoned beast had been the Third Raikage.
Hanzo's eye cut through the mist and saw Sasori controlling two of the most fearsome puppets in existence simultaneously.
What kind of monsters had the Sand Village produced?
Before Hanzo could fully process what he was seeing, his instincts screamed at him.
A figure appeared directly in front of his face without any warning whatsoever.
A palm strike drove forward.
Boom.
The force of that single palm shattered the earth across a radius of dozens of meters in every direction, as though the ground had turned to fine powder.
The Hyuga clan's Gentle Fist.
The one who had struck was Yuji.
With the Yin Seal fully released and the stored chakra flooding through him, even a single casual technique deployed under that level of high-intensity chakra output carried utterly terrifying destructive force.
In almost the same instant, Hanzo's body shattered into a spray of water that scattered across the air.
"Hmm. Worthy of a demigod. Your reactions are still very fast," Yuji said, tasting the observation with quiet appreciation.
Hanzo had used a Water Clone technique to avoid a killing blow.
And beyond simple evasion, Hanzo had identified the Blood Release's specific vulnerability in that same instant.
This was the Land of Rain. It was currently raining. Even when Yuji combined the Blood Release with Water Release techniques to enhance his output, the ambient moisture would dilute the blood mist's effective concentration to a meaningful degree. The duration of the blood mist's potency was also limited and would degrade quickly under these conditions.
By contrast, the salamander's toxic cloud had a recharge interval of roughly every five minutes, and its venom carried a unique property that made it resistant to water-based interference. It would continue fermenting and spreading across the battlefield throughout the engagement.
This was precisely what made Hanzo genuinely dangerous.
Compared side by side, the Blood Poison was more lethal in direct contact, but it operated within a limited effective window and was subject to environmental and technique-based interference in ways Hanzo's venom was not.
But for Yuji, buying even a moment of time was enough.
The words had barely left his lips before Hanzo appeared behind him, swinging a chain scythe in a slashing arc.
In pure taijutsu terms, Hanzo was without question an elite fighter of the highest order.
"Chain Scythe Sword Art: Second Slash!"
The cold edge cut through the air. The crystallized blood armor covering Yuji's body shattered and broke apart on impact. A wound opened across his arm, then closed again in the same instant.
"Hmm?"
Hanzo passed through the exchange and his pupil contracted.
A thread of steel, finer than a hair, had wrapped itself around his weapon during the exchange. As Yuji pulled, the weapon was wrenched from Hanzo's grip.
Hanzo moved to resist, but in the same instant his entire body was enveloped by a dense spray of blood projectiles. Blood threads pierced through from below.
Hanzo pushed his water body-flicker technique to its absolute limit, pushing past the danger with everything he had. He barely cleared it. But his weapon was already in Yuji's hands.
The moment his body landed on a new position, two blood-red serpents came screaming toward him from both directions simultaneously, already sealing off every angle of escape.
He watched the blood dragons close in on him, about to tear him apart, when the earth suddenly exploded beneath him. The wounded salamander had burrowed back and resurfaced, responding to Hanzo's silent command, its massive jaws opening wide to swallow him, using its own body as a shield to absorb the strike in his place.
From a distance, Yuji watched this and simply moved a single finger.
A moment later, the salamander's jaws snapped shut and found nothing inside. The two blood dragons crashed into it from both sides and drove it into the earth with a shriek of pain.
And Hanzo himself appeared directly in front of Yuji's face at a speed that even Hanzo had not fully processed, standing there in the open.
A spatial coordinate exchange.
Hanzo registered what had happened a beat too late. He tore his mask away. One hand formed seals. At point-blank range he opened his mouth and launched a technique combining his own venom with Water Release, aimed directly at Yuji's face.
But his speed was clearly a step behind.
The Ope Ope no Mi's ability activated before Hanzo could react.
A mass of water cannon burst forward.
Yuji tilted his head and let it pass.
And in that same instant, a blood blade swept down and separated Hanzo's head from his body in a single arc, sending it spinning upward into the air.
"A demigod of the ninja world?"
"Your head. I will take it."
Those were the last words that reached Hanzo in the instant of his death.
Yuji reached up and caught Hanzo's head.
He turned his gaze toward the Konoha forces still standing on the high ground, who had not dared to make any reckless move and had apparently been there purely to cover Danzo's escape.
The moment they saw Yuji look toward them, the Konoha commander felt as though he had been dropped into a frozen pit.
Dead?
How?
This was Salamander Hanzo.
How had it happened this quickly?
What they had just witnessed carried a weight of impact that defied easy expression. Part of them simply refused to believe it.
From the moment the battle had ignited to this moment, no more than a few minutes had passed.
"Move!"
But there was no time to stand and process it. The Konoha commander gritted his teeth and barked the order.
In an instant he led his forces charging directly toward Yuji.
"Ah."
Yuji smiled.
Then from the high ground, a surging Blood Tide erupted upward and swept outward, washing the mass of Konoha ninja off the elevated terrain and carrying them away.
...
STONES 💎
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