"Genius." It is a word tossed around casually in conversation, but in the Shinobi World, it carries a very specific, bloody weight.
A ninja is branded a genius not simply because they possess the potential for high-level achievement in the future, but because in a world consumed by perpetual war, only those who mature at an accelerated rate earn the right to survive.
A child who displays exceptional aptitude for the ninja arts from a young age is labeled a genius by their peers. Minato Namikaze, however, had long since stopped caring about the title. Once you step onto the battlefield, the title becomes meaningless. Minato had personally slaughtered countless "geniuses" from enemy villages.
Therefore, no matter how absurdly exaggerated the rumors of Saiki's battlefield exploits seemed, Minato had initially just smiled and taken them with a grain of salt.
At Saiki's current age, Minato had also effortlessly dispatched elite Cloud Jonin squads and rescued Kushina from her kidnappers.
As he grew older, Minato remained incredibly dedicated. Having mastered the Flying Thunder God, he maintained a humble, polite exterior, but deep down, he possessed the absolute, unshakable pride of a true apex predator. To him, being called a "genius" was just the superficial praise of ordinary men!
But right now... staring at the boy who had just cleaved a mountain in half, who was casually strolling out of a melting inferno with his sword drawn, Minato Namikaze was forced to violently re-evaluate his definition of the word "genius."
Gripping his kunai tightly, Minato faced Saiki's casual greeting with a cold, interrogating question. "Saiki. Did you do all of this?"
Seeing Minato's body tense for combat, Saiki mirrored his hostility with a question of his own. "Do what, exactly?"
In response to Saiki's feigned ignorance, Minato took a slow, deep breath to steady his nerves. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. The Root operatives slaughtered at the base of the mountain... and the total destruction of this facility. This was your doing, wasn't it?"
"Oh, you mean that? Yeah, I killed them. And yeah, I blew up the base," Saiki nodded with brutal honesty. He had done the deed, and he absolutely wasn't the type of coward to deny it.
"Why?! They were ninja of the Hidden Leaf!" Minato asked, his voice laced with profound confusion and suppressed anger. Even though Root was infamous for handling the village's darkest, most morally bankrupt operations, they were still loyal soldiers of Konoha. Why had Saiki resorted to such extreme, merciless slaughter?
"Why? Because they were trying to kill me."
Technically, the Root operatives hadn't displayed immediate lethal intent. But since their blackmail involved Tsume Inuzuka, Saiki obviously couldn't reveal the true motive.
However, while Saiki hadn't been entirely truthful about the immediate threat, he wasn't exactly lying, either. Danzo's philosophy was absolute: If you cannot be used by me, you have no right to exist. This was his standard operating procedure for recruitment.
Danzo's final order to the squad had literally been: If recruitment fails, eliminate him. So, from a certain point of view, Saiki was simply acting in self-defense.
Hearing Saiki's justification, Minato was genuinely taken aback. He knew Root operated in the shadows, but he hadn't realized they were ruthless enough to attempt the assassination of a recognized Leaf prodigy on the front lines.
However, Minato wasn't naive enough to blindly accept Saiki's one-sided testimony. He maintained his stern posture and said, "I believe there must be a severe misunderstanding here. But by executing all of them, you have crossed a very dangerous line."
Having successfully eliminated the entire Root squad, Saiki was fairly confident the blackmail material hadn't been transmitted back to Danzo. His previously anxious heart had finally settled. But Minato's bureaucratic response instantly sparked his temper, drawing a cold, mocking laugh from the boy.
"So, what you're saying is... they are allowed to try and murder me, but I'm in the wrong for fighting back?" Saiki's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
Minato met Saiki's glare with a calm, unwavering stare. His voice was heavy with authority. "I do not know the full context of what happened here. It is entirely possible their mission parameters were flawed or illegal. However, Root is a sanctioned division of the Anbu. They represent the will of the Hokage. This situation should have been subdued and handed over to the official Anbu for a formal investigation."
Hearing this textbook, bureaucratic response, Saiki just gave Minato a look of absolute disgust. Another brainwashed company man. No wonder Hiruzen Sarutobi eventually hand-picked him to be the next Hokage.
Hand these men over to the Anbu? Setting aside the massive risk of his relationship with Tsume being leaked, Danzo and Hiruzen practically shared a brain. The Anbu and Root were so deeply intertwined they were essentially the same organization. If Saiki handed them over, those operatives would receive a slap on the wrist and be back to hunting him within a week.
Too disgusted to argue with such a blind loyalist, Saiki turned to head back to the camp.
Whether Minato's sense of justice was overpowering his logic, or he simply assumed Saiki was trying to flee the scene of a crime, he tightened his grip on his kunai and dropped into a low, combat-ready stance.
"Hm? Are you trying to stop me?" Saiki, who had been about to dismiss his Auspicious Cloud, stopped. Seeing Minato prepare for a fight, Saiki's grip tightened on 'Thunderstorm'.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot allow you to simply walk away. Regardless of your reasons, you must return with me to command and provide a full, official explanation."
Looking at Minato's deadly serious expression, Saiki felt a mix of anger and dark amusement. Who the hell do you think you are? Do you actually think I'm some petty criminal trying to make a run for it?
"If you want to stop me, then make your move!" The moment the words left his mouth, Saiki slashed outward with his unsheathed blade. A crescent of pressurized, white water-chakra—looking like a concentrated beam of moonlight—screamed toward Minato.
Although Minato had been the first to display hostile intent, he hadn't expected Saiki to escalate to lethal force so decisively and without a second of hesitation.
However, Minato's reaction speed was legendary. In the fraction of a second before the blade reached him, he hurled a specialized Flying Thunder God kunai directly at Saiki, while simultaneously activating the jutsu to instantly teleport away from his current position, effortlessly dodging the decapitating slash.
The Flying Thunder God's spatial displacement was undeniably broken, but its true lethality depended entirely on the user. It was Minato's freakish, superhuman neural reaction speed, paired perfectly with the jutsu, that earned him the moniker "Yellow Flash."
If anyone else—even another Kage-level powerhouse—attempted to use the Flying Thunder God, they would never achieve Minato's level of fluid, devastating efficiency.
Even the jutsu's creator, the Second Hokage Tobirama Senju, openly admitted that Minato's operational speed surpassed his own.
Minato's god-tier reflexes allowed him to dodge Saiki's strike, instantly calculate the trajectory of the kunai he had just thrown, and prepare to teleport to it to launch a point-blank counter-attack the moment it reached Saiki's face.
And this wasn't even his limit. In the original timeline, he used this exact tactic to systematically annihilate over fifty elite Stone ninja in the blink of an eye. That was how the legend of the Yellow Flash was born.
But Saiki knew exactly how to counter the Flying Thunder God: never let anything marked with the jutsu formula get near you.
After unleashing the initial crescent slash, Saiki smoothly transitioned into a rapid backhand swipe. Before the specialized kunai could even enter his guard, he cleaved it into jagged pieces of scrap metal.
Before stepping out into the open, Minato had already preemptively scattered several marked kunai around the perimeter of the clearing. After vanishing, he materialized beside one of these markers several dozen meters away, his expression turning incredibly grave as he stared at Saiki.
Normally, when facing an incoming projectile, an opponent would either try to dodge it or use their own weapon to block it. Both of those reactions provided the split-second opening Minato needed to teleport in and secure the kill.
But Saiki hadn't dodged or blocked; he had instantly, surgically destroyed the marker itself, as if he knew the fundamental secret behind the Flying Thunder God.
However, Minato wasn't discouraged. Given Saiki's incredibly close relationship with Tsunade, it was entirely plausible that he knew the mechanics of the jutsu, or had perhaps even studied its theory.
Minato was wrong. Because Tsunade's chest was too distracting, Saiki had never actually asked her about the Flying Thunder God. If he had actually studied the jutsu, this fight would already be over.
While Minato wasn't surprised that Saiki understood his technique, the primary reason for his grim expression was Saiki's Kenjutsu.
Whether utilized by samurai or ninja, standard Kenjutsu was generally limited to close-quarters physical strikes. Without channeling chakra, cutting through solid steel was impossible, and projecting a "flying slash" purely through physical strength was a myth.
Even when channeling chakra, unleashing a ranged energy slash usually required weaving hand signs to format the Ninjutsu before funneling it through the blade.
In the original timeline, the only individuals capable of launching mountain-cleaving ranged slashes without hand signs were the Uchiha, who used the Mangekyo Sharingan to physically manifest and stabilize their chakra into the colossal form of the Susanoo.
Those capable of projecting lethal chakra slashes relying purely on their own masterful chakra control were incredibly rare—Mifune and Hayate Gekko being among the very few.
And now, Saiki stood among that elite handful. Furthermore, Saiki's mastery over his blade far surpassed even Mifune's. With his absolute, molecular-level control over Nature and Shape Transformation, Saiki could effortlessly condense a lethally pressurized aura around his sword; a single, casual swing produced a flying shockwave capable of slicing through solid boulders.
This meant Minato's standard tactic of throwing kunai to force close-quarters engagements was entirely neutralized.
Unless... he could throw enough kunai simultaneously to overwhelm Saiki's ability to cut them all down. Formulating the plan instantly, Minato scooped up a kunai from the ground. Aiming high above Saiki's head, he hurled the blade while his hands blurred through a rapid sequence of signs.
"Shuriken: Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
High in the air, the single kunai instantly multiplied into a massive, expanding cloud of steel, raining down upon Saiki like a lethal, iron downpour.
With Saiki's reaction speed and Kenjutsu, he easily could have interrupted Minato's hand signs with a flying slash or simply deflected the initial kunai before it multiplied. But he didn't.
Despite only exchanging a single blow, it was clear Saiki wasn't fighting aggressively. If he had been, despite the speed of the Flying Thunder God, Saiki would have already closed the distance and engaged in a brutal melee.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
The massive kunai storm descended. Saiki made absolutely no move to counter-attack or even raise his sword to defend himself. He simply stood there, letting the iron rain fall, a reaction that left Minato momentarily stunned.
But a second later, Minato understood why.
The moment the kunai approached the small, pristine white cloud hovering above Saiki's head, they were violently repelled by an invisible force. The misty rain falling from the cloud formed an absolute, 360-degree barrier around Saiki. The razor-sharp, chakra-enhanced kunai failed to penetrate the divine curtain by even a single millimeter.
While Minato was deeply intrigued by this miraculous, impenetrable defensive jutsu, he didn't have time to dwell on it. His primary objective had been achieved: the battlefield was now littered with his marked kunai.
What Minato didn't know was that Saiki had allowed the barrage specifically to set up his own test.
"Rise! Bind!"
Saiki formed a one-handed sword seal, pointing two fingers upward. The Auspicious Cloud instantly shot higher into the air and rapidly expanded, its canopy stretching wide enough to encompass the entire battlefield Minato had just seeded with markers. The misty rain falling from the cloud grew significantly denser.
The Auspicious Cloud, forged from the cultivation of Pre-natal Qi, possessed the divine authority to manipulate Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind. If it couldn't, it wouldn't possess the property of "absolute immunity to all Dharmic arts." Right now, Saiki wanted to test a specific theory: could the cloud physically lock down spatial coordinates?
Ever since realizing he might have to fight Minato, Saiki had been pondering how to counter him—and, by extension, how to eventually deal with the far more broken spatial mechanics of Obito Uchiha's Kamui. Was he supposed to rely on brute force to warp space like Might Guy's Night Guy, hoping to score a lucky hit?
Saiki had already tested his theory on standard sealing scrolls. Under the suppressive weight of the Auspicious Cloud's rain, extracting items from a spatial storage seal became incredibly difficult and sluggish.
Although Minato didn't understand what Saiki was attempting, seeing that the strange, glowing rain didn't seem to harm Saiki, he decisively initiated his Flying Thunder God sequence. And then, the true "performance" began.
Previously, slipping through the spatial folds of the Flying Thunder God felt as effortless as a fish darting through clear water. Now, however, the moment Minato activated the jutsu, it felt as though he had plunged into a vat of thick, freezing molasses.
The moment he finally managed to drag himself through the spatial distortion and materialize on the other side, before his brain could even process his surroundings, Saiki's blade was already waiting for him.