Over the past few months, Konoha and Sunagakure had already fought seven or eight battles of various sizes.
After the last large-scale engagement, both sides needed a brief period to regroup.
At the same time, both sides knew perfectly well that this war was nowhere near over.
It was just halftime.
Just as Konoha had begun rotating in fresh troops for live combat training, Suna was doing the same. And both sides were deliberately laying traps across this battlefield, trying to eliminate the enemy's fighting strength as early and as efficiently as possible—especially these newly deployed rookies from their respective villages.
That was exactly what this Suna squad was here to do.
At this moment, through their line of sight, they saw a three-man team rapidly approaching. The one charging the fastest was a kid with messy black spiky hair, goggles, and a kunai in hand. He was so focused on scanning the surroundings that he wasn't watching his footing at all.
Right there beneath him, hidden under a layer of leaves, was an almost perfectly camouflaged explosive tag trap—just waiting to be triggered.
The Suna ninja were already prepared to enjoy the sight of flesh flying everywhere.
But just as they were about to watch the show, one of the white-haired boys from behind suddenly accelerated and kicked Obito hard in the side.
"Idiot, watch your feet!"
"Yuu? What the hell are you—ow!"
Hearing the rush of wind, Obito instinctively glanced aside, only to feel a huge force slam into his waist and send him flying diagonally off course. He crashed messily into the bushes nearby, eating a mouthful of dirt and grass.
And then, from behind him, a kunai flew out of Kakashi's hand and landed right in the leaf litter where Obito had been about to step—
BOOM—!!!
The explosive tag trap went off early.
A deafening blast, along with a pillar of fire, exploded right where he'd been standing moments earlier. The scorching shockwave rolled outward, carrying dirt and碎石 with it, pelting Obito head-on and making every hair on his body stand up.
Meanwhile, as he kicked Obito away, Mikami Yuu used the recoil to throw himself sideways, barely escaping the core of the explosion, then rolled with the landing to bleed off the force. At the same time, he shouted for Rin to watch her footing and swept his gaze around the area like a hawk.
Minato was still hanging back, apparently intending to see how they handled it before stepping in if things went bad.
But Yuu had no intention of lying down and waiting to be saved.
With a quick scan, he'd already picked out several unnatural flashes of reflected light dozens of meters away, along with subtle disturbances in the movement of branches and leaves. So he ran his hands across his tool pouch and flung out several kunai and shuriken tied to transparent wire!
Shhk—! Shhk—! Shhk—!
The kunai slammed into several crucial support points on the trunk of a giant tree with precise force!
Then Yuu yanked the wires taut, took a deep breath, charged for two seconds, and exhaled:
"Fire Style: Dragon Fire Jutsu!"
Fwoosh—!!!
A condensed lance of orange-red flame, almost solid in form, erupted from his mouth! Guided by the path of those wires, it shrieked straight into the trunk of the giant tree!
BOOM—!
Like a hot knife through butter, the flaming spear punched through the trunk with almost no resistance. The massive tree shuddered violently with a groan that made teeth ache, then the upper half tilted and came crashing down, kicking up a huge cloud of dust.
The two Suna ninja hiding in its dense branches were instantly exposed and forced to jump down in a panic!
One of them immediately rushed Yuu with a blade.
The other slammed both hands to the ground the instant he landed and shouted, "Earth Style: Earth Spears!"
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Sharp pillars of earth burst out of the ground!
"Rin, you and Obito take this one!"
Yuu threw out that line, then instantly used Substitution, trading places with one of the shuriken he'd thrown earlier. He appeared beside the Suna ninja who had just used the earth jutsu, drew the short blade from his back in one smooth motion, and brought it down in a gleaming slash!
"So fast—!!"
The earth-style user's pupils shrank. He clearly had no idea how Yuu had gotten there. In a rush, he could only twist his body aside while fumbling for a kunai from his pouch and trying to use Body Flicker to pull back.
But in that instant—
Slash!
Yuu's blade cut across the ninja's chest, spraying blood. At the same time, fine black-and-red patterns lit up along the polished edge of the sword—it was Kushina's Double Binding Formula Seal, activated by Yuu's chakra. The same patterns flared across the earth-style ninja's chest.
A strange blockage immediately formed inside his body, making his chakra flow stutter. The Body Flicker he'd been about to use stalled for the tiniest fraction of a second.
But even if it was only a fraction of a second—
for a close-range fighter, that was the distance between life and death.
The next moment, Yuu's arm moved again, and a second flash of blade-light ripped through the air, followed by a jet of blood spraying upward!
The earth-style ninja stared at Yuu's sword in disbelief, staggered back two steps, then lifted a hand to his neck. He looked down at the blood on his palm in shock before collapsing backward.
"Yamazaki!"
A sharp voice rang out, full of urgency and rage.
Yuu turned toward it and saw a grotesque humanoid puppet rushing at him, poison-coated blades springing from its joints with a frantic clattering of gears and mechanisms. The puppeteer stood more than ten meters away, hidden behind a tree in the shadows.
"So this is Suna's puppet technique…"
It was Yuu's first time seeing it used in real combat, and he couldn't help being a little curious.
He decided to test it.
He swung his blade to block the puppet's charge, then used Hatake Swordsmanship to exchange a few moves with it and get a feel for its power and speed.
Clang! Clang-clang!
His short blade slammed against the puppet's knives, throwing off showers of sparks.
Even though the Suna puppeteer was just a teenager, the puppet's raw strength was incredible. Its four blade-bearing arms swung with terrifying force, and its frame was built like a fortress. For a moment, it actually looked like it could trade blows evenly with Yuu.
Of course—
to do that, the puppeteer had to move all ten fingers frantically, his chakra threads dancing in dizzying patterns. Sweat was already beading on his forehead. Clearly, controlling the puppet at that level was a heavy burden even for him.
On the other side, Rin and Obito had engaged the swordsman.
Kakashi had taken on the other one.
After twenty or thirty exchanges, Yuu had a pretty good sense of the puppet's upper limit, and he couldn't be bothered to keep playing house with it anymore.
He took a breath and activated Heartblade Domain.