Chapter 458: Instant Flash
The torrential downpour seemed to freeze in mid-air.
Two streaks of blinding white light clashed frantically across the churned, muddy expanse of the battlefield. Kakashi dragged in ragged breaths, his lungs burning as if he were inhaling dry ash instead of damp air. With every desperate swing of his short blade, the torn muscles in his arms screamed in protest. The webbing between his fingers had split open long ago. Warm blood slid down the hilt, mixing with the icy rainwater before dripping into the mud.
He could not afford to stop.
His father, Sakumo Hatake, was wielding the most lethal blade of the previous era, systematically forcing his son past every conceivable physical limit. Sakumo let out a sharp, cold shout. The chakra-infused blade in his hand blurred, transforming into the arc of a crescent moon as it slashed directly toward Kakashi's throat.
Steel shrieked against steel. Sparks illuminated the gloom as they locked into a ferocious, high-speed exchange. With every parry, every desperate deflection, Kakashi's intrinsic understanding of Hatake Kenjutsu deepened. Following another bone-jarring collision that sent him sliding backward through the mud, a sudden, piercing clarity flashed through his mind.
All the countless, repetitive swings of his youth, merged with the brutal, firsthand teachings Sakumo was delivering right now, finally coalesced into a singular truth.
'True kenjutsu is compressing one's entire essence, energy, and spirit into the exact fraction of a second the blade is swung.'
It was not merely a tool for slaughtering the enemy. It was meant for cutting through.
Cutting through what?
Cutting through hesitation. Cutting through the paralyzing grip of fear. And, most, cutting through the ghost of his past self—the Kakashi who had used the Sharingan as a crutch to compensate for his own faltering blade.
In that fleeting heartbeat, Kakashi's visible eye sharpened into a blade of its own. Staring directly into the lethal, descending arc of Sakumo's strike, he did not retreat. He stepped forward.
That single, defiant step shattered the invisible shackles wrapped around his heart.
The violent Lightning Release chakra within his coils ceased its wild, chaotic eruption. Instead, it flowed with absolute obedience into the fractured short blade in his grip. He restrained it. He compressed it. He forced the volatile lightning down until the edge of the steel took on an eerie, hyper-dense dark white glow.
"Hatake Style Secret Technique..." Kakashi murmured, his voice barely carrying over the storm.
His arm blurred. The blade moved at an impossible angle, entirely defying physical inertia. It was a counterattack that struck first despite being launched second. The strike carried no sound. It was absolute, silent speed.
"Instant Flash."
The falling rain seemed to hang suspended in the air.
The two figures crossed paths in a singular, blinding intersection of light, coming to a halt back-to-back.
Clink.
The top half of Sakumo Hatake's short blade spun through the air, snapping cleanly in two before embedding itself in the mud. A deep, jagged crack slowly materialized across Sakumo's Edo Tensei body.
Sakumo lowered his gaze, studying the fatal fissure running across his chest. The silence stretched between them, heavy and deep. Then, the edges of his eyes crinkled. A faint, genuinely warm smile graced his cracked features.
"Is this... your own blade?"
He turned slowly, looking over his shoulder at his son. Kakashi had collapsed into a half-kneel, his chest heaving violently as he gasped for air. He propped his weight against his knees, his entire body trembling from the sheer physical backlash. That single, extraordinary strike had completely drained his essence, energy, and spirit.
Yet, gritting his teeth, Kakashi forced his exhausted muscles to obey. He struggled to his feet, turned around, and met his father's eyes with unwavering resolve.
"This is the Hatake Kenjutsu that belongs to Kakashi Hatake!"
Reaching up with a bloodstained hand, Kakashi pulled down his mask, exposing a face carved from pure, unyielding determination.
The reanimated light in Sakumo's eyes began to soften, dimming as paper-like flakes of ash began to peel away from his form.
"It seems you have finally found your own path." The White Fang closed his eyes, his smile deepening. "A ghost of the old era like me should make his exit. Well done, Kakashi. You are... stronger than me."
Sensing the battle's conclusion, the nearby Sealing Team immediately rushed forward, unfurling their scrolls to bind the crumbling Edo Tensei vessel.
Kakashi remained standing in the downpour, letting the freezing rain wash the blood and grime from his exposed face. With a slow, deliberate motion, he sheathed his fractured blade.
"Goodbye, Father," he murmured into the storm.
...
Elsewhere on the chaotic battlefield, the air hummed with a different kind of lethal tension.
Dan Kato's hands blurred through a rapid sequence of seals. An eerie, pale blue chakra halo flared to life, enveloping his entire body. It was the obvious precursor to his most terrifying jutsu—the sign that his soul was preparing to tear itself free from its physical vessel.
"Jiraiya! Hurry!" Dan roared, his voice straining against the absolute compulsion of the Edo Tensei. "Use the Four Violet Flames Formation to trap me! My body is being completely controlled!"
His hands locked into the final seal against his will.
"Once the Spirit Transformation Technique activates, my spirit will ignore all physical defenses! It will directly penetrate your forces and strangle their souls from within!"
Before the final syllable even left his lips, his head snapped back. A translucent, ghostly blue apparition violently tore itself out of Dan's chest. The spirit body possessed startling, terrifying speed. It left a trailing afterimage in the damp air, lunging straight toward the vulnerable rear lines of the Konoha camp.
If that phantom were allowed to breach their ranks, the resulting massacre would be catastrophic.
"Don't even think about it!" Jiraiya bellowed, slamming his foot into the mud. "Now! Cast the Four Violet Flames Formation!"
Four elite Konoha Anbu, who had been lying in wait beneath the camouflage of the rain, sprang into action the instant the command rang out. They darted to the north, south, east, and west, anchoring the cardinal points. Their hands moved in perfect, drilled synchronization.
"Ninja Art: Four Violet Flames Formation!"
Four blinding pillars of purple fire erupted from the earth, soaring violently into the storm-darkened sky. The blazing columns rapidly expanded, their edges bleeding out into solid curtains of violet light that connected high in the air. In a matter of seconds, a massive, enclosed rectangular barrier materialized. It slammed shut, firmly trapping both Dan's physical vessel and his fleeing spirit body inside its scorching walls.
The ghostly blue apparition slammed headlong into the purple curtain. The barrier hissed, flaring with intense heat as it forcibly repelled the ethereal attack, bouncing the spirit backward.
Floating unsteadily in the center of the trap, the distorted, agonizingly stretched features of Dan's spirit body softened. He let out a long, ethereal exhale, his ghostly face washing over with deep relief.
Hovering in mid-air, he looked through the shimmering violet flames at the white-haired Toad Sage standing outside.
"Nicely done, Jiraiya," Dan's echoing, disembodied voice phased through the barrier. "I didn't expect your reactions to still be this sharp after all these years."
Jiraiya stood motionless in the downpour, staring at his former comrade-in-arms. A heavy, complicated sorrow weighed down his chest.
"Well, I'm not exactly the dead-last idiot from back then anymore." Jiraiya swiped a heavy hand over his face, clearing away the freezing rain. A forced, bitter smile barely tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Dan, you bastard... even in death, you don't let people rest easy."
"Sorry." Dan offered a rueful, apologetic smile. "I never expected to be dragged back from the Pure Land by such a vile technique."
A heavy silence descended over them, save for the crackling of the violet flames and the relentless drumming of the rain. The two veterans simply looked at each other through the barrier, separated by the boundary of life and death.
After a long, agonizing minute, Dan's spirit body wavered. He looked down, hesitating. But the lingering attachment of his soul proved too strong. He finally voiced the single question buried in the deepest, most guarded corner of his heart.
"Is she... doing well?"
No name was spoken. None was needed. Jiraiya knew exactly who he was asking about.
The Toad Sage took a slow, deep breath. The image of Tsunade—proud, fierce, and finally free of her crippling grief—surfaced in his mind.
"She's doing very well," Jiraiya answered, his voice steady. "Better than ever before, actually. She returned to the village. She didn't take up the mantle of Hokage, but... she's living authentically now. She's living for herself."
Jiraiya paused. A flicker of complex emotion—a mix of lingering nostalgia and quiet acceptance—passed through his dark eyes.
"And... there's a very strong man standing by her side now."
Dan froze. The ghostly blue chakra of his spirit body flickered in pure shock. But as Jiraiya's words truly registered, the lingering tension that had anchored his soul for decades completely unspooled. His ethereal form relaxed, and an incredibly gentle, peaceful smile graced his features.
"Is that so..." Dan murmured to himself, his voice fading into the crackling flames. "That's good, then. That's very good."
...
In another brutal corner of the battlefield, the very air warped and distorted under the oppressive weight of extreme heat.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
The twin roars shattered the rhythm of the storm. Before the falling rain could even touch the mud, it was instantly flash-boiled into thick, blinding clouds of white steam.
Two colossal spheres of roaring flames, each easily exceeding ten meters in diameter, violently collided in mid-air. It was a cataclysmic clash of pure destruction—fire consuming fire, blistering heatwaves pressing relentlessly against opposing heatwaves. The resulting shockwave from the localized explosion blasted outward, instantly vaporizing the surrounding water and incinerating the mud, carving out a perfectly dry, scorched vacuum zone in the middle of the deluge.
Bathed in the hellish orange glow of the colliding fireballs, Fugaku Uchiha stood as immovable as a mountain. His fingers remained locked in the final tiger seal, his lungs acting as a furnace as he continuously expelled vast torrents of highly compressed chakra from his mouth. His eyes—burning with the complex, blood-red pinwheels of the Mangekyo Sharingan—stared fixedly through the inferno at the figure standing opposite him.
Directly across the scorched earth, Itachi Uchiha mirrored his father's stance, flawlessly maintaining his own devastating output of the Great Fireball.
Yet, the dynamics of the clash were shifting. Itachi possessed an Edo Tensei body, granting him a theoretically infinite well of chakra. But in terms of pure, unadulterated Fire Release mastery and the sheer, violent explosiveness of his chakra nature, Fugaku was steadily pushing the flames forward. Against all logic, the father was actually gaining the upper hand over the son.
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