"Those eyes. Damn it, are you kidding me? I'm stronger than him. My ability is perfect. It's art that loses to no one!" Clearly, Deidara was looking at Uchiha Sasuke, but what flashed through his mind was the time Uchiha Itachi had overwhelmed him. "I'm stronger. There's no way I'll lose."
"That kind of… that kind of…" As Deidara spoke, he directly swallowed the clay. Then he began forming hand signs and said, "This is my trump card. Next, I'm going to kill you. Tobi, run."
Immediately afterward, Deidara spat out the clay he had swallowed. The clay, processed by his stomach acid, transformed into an enormous humanoid giant.
"I originally prepared this jutsu to kill Itachi, hm!"
Deidara collapsed weakly onto the Clay Bird.
Even Uchiha Itachi himself was speechless at those words. He had no idea when he had offended this teammate so deeply that Deidara had even prepared such an Ultimate Weapon to deal with him.
It was true that when he had forced Deidara to join the Akatsuki Organization, he had used some methods, some abilities, but who had not gone through the same thing?
It should not have been a grudge that deep.
The others were also a little speechless. Looking at the frenzied Deidara in the diary, they wondered what kind of bitter hatred could possibly exist between the two of them. In the end, was it only because Itachi had been a little violent when recruiting him?
No. Only Deidara himself knew. It was because Uchiha Itachi's existence had nearly shaken his path of art and made him doubt his own art. That was an absolutely unforgivable sin.
As for Uchiha Sasuke, he watched the massive clay Deidara, towering like a small mountain, walk toward him step by step. His mind went blank.
I don't know what's going on either. He just started shouting about art and explosions and charged over.
Of course, Sasuke was not that stupid now. Naturally, he knew that thing could probably explode too, and the consequences of that explosion were simply terrifying beyond imagination. With that size, that scale, it would likely be enough to flatten the entire forest.
"Is this thing a bomb too? If it is, damn it. If that explodes…" Uchiha Sasuke immediately realized something was wrong and fled madly deeper into the forest.
"Why are you running? You think you can escape this C4 Karura?"
At this moment, Deidara was extremely arrogant as he spoke.
No matter how Uchiha Sasuke ran, it was useless. The range he could escape was not wide enough.
Suddenly, at that moment, the Karura directly exploded. It was just that there was no enormous explosion like Uchiha Sasuke had imagined.
Just as he thought it was a dud, he abruptly realized something was wrong. Deidara's expression was utterly deranged.
"No. No, wait. This is…"
Uchiha Sasuke immediately sensed that something was off. Around him, many small animals directly disintegrated. They did not explode. It was more like they turned to ash.
"Art is an explosion. Sublimation!"
Deidara controlled the extremely tiny Clay Bombs and made them begin exploding.
Even Uchiha Sasuke directly turned to ash.
Everyone froze. The way C4 Karura exploded was completely different from what they had imagined. Almost inexplicably, Uchiha Sasuke had turned to ash just like those small animals.
"Mm-hmm. This is the finest masterpiece."
Uchiha Itachi's heart tightened. If he had not known that Uchiha Sasuke would not die here and would still fight him later, he might already have been unable to stop himself from drawing a blade and cutting down that bastard Deidara.
If Deidara wanted to kill him, then he could come straight at him. What right did he have to attack Itachi's little brother?
At this moment, Tobi, who had finally escaped outside the blast range, gave everyone the answer they did not know.
"Ultra-small nano-scale bombs, C4 Karura. Through the storm produced when the giant Deidara bursts apart, countless tiny bombs invisible to the naked eye are scattered into the atmosphere. Any living creature that inhales them will have bombs placed throughout its body. In the end, countless small-scale explosions spread from within at the cellular level, completely destroying the creature.
"Hmph. What a terrifying jutsu."
"I really have to thank Itachi. I won. I won, my art!" Deidara said, almost mad with excitement.
At this moment, Uchiha Itachi's expression was cold as he read the diary. No one could see what he was thinking, but the way his fingers clenched tightly around the pen exposed the thoughts in his heart.
On his blank paper, he had recorded a string of names, C1, C2, C3, C4. Each one corresponded to a completely different bomb.
Clearly, Deidara had angered Uchiha Itachi.
Originally, he had never thought Deidara hated him to this degree. He himself had thought his relationship with Deidara was still acceptable.
He had not expected the other party to develop the C4 Karura bomb just to kill him. With someone like that watching him day and night, who could sleep peacefully?
He had to find a way to deal with it!
Yet right then, above Deidara, a pair of Sharingan appeared, like the sun and moon shining together, terrifying and eerie beyond words.
Only then did Deidara notice that at some point, Uchiha Sasuke had transformed into his second-stage form and leaped high into the sky. He had actually arrived above Deidara's Giant Clay Bird, and a single Chidori directly pierced through Deidara's heart.
"Looks like you're out of Chakra," Uchiha Sasuke said with a cold smile. "Your movements are too slow."
"Those eyes…"
Deidara immediately realized where the problem was.
"Ordinary eyes can't see them, but my Sharingan can distinguish them through the color of Chakra. Those tiny bombs infused with Chakra are as clear to me as smoke. And I also noticed that the place you stayed at was exactly the height the tiny bombs couldn't cover.
"Once I could see the bombs, avoiding them was easy…"
Uchiha Sasuke spoke at once.
"The scene I saw of you dying to C4 was…"
Deidara finally realized something was wrong.
"That was my Genjutsu."
Uchiha Sasuke spoke coldly.
"Uchiha Genjutsu, huh? Sure enough, it's troublesome. The Uchiha brothers are both very skilled in Genjutsu."
Tsunade looked at the contents of the diary and shook her head.
In fact, the Senju Clan possessed a vast number of methods to break Genjutsu. It could be said they had developed a full system for countering Genjutsu, more than any other family in the world.
Why?
Because the Uchiha Clan had forced them to. Their Genjutsu was simply too strong. As long as they awakened the Sharingan, even if their natural talent in Genjutsu was only average, they could rapidly reach a level of Genjutsu that many people needed long-term specialized training to achieve.
For the Senju Clan, trying to compete with the Uchiha Clan in Genjutsu meant having no chance of winning. It was also an extremely brainless thing to do.
Because of that, the Senju Clan developed a series of methods specifically targeting the Uchiha Clan's Genjutsu.
The Uchiha Clan's Genjutsu was top-tier in the Shinobi World. If they could even break Uchiha Genjutsu, then dealing with other Genjutsu naturally became effortless.
It was precisely because they had been matched against the Uchiha year after year that the Senju Clan could be said to have trained up an extremely strong resistance. They had almost never suffered major losses from Genjutsu.
This was not good news for anyone fighting either the Senju Clan or the Uchiha Clan, because it meant that among a ninja's three basic fields, the field belonging to Genjutsu was already completely useless.
The remaining Ninjutsu and Taijutsu were also their specialties. They were practically nightmare-like existences.
There was no chance of victory at all.
By the time Tsunade was born, Konoha had already been founded, and the Uchiha Clan had gone from enemies to comrades, so she had never had the chance to fight members of the Uchiha Clan. However, she had heard plenty from the old veterans in her family who had survived the Warring States era.
The most troublesome thing was undoubtedly the Uchiha Clan's Sharingan. It was the source of all the problems.
Back then, she had not understood. Now, she did. They were the clan that inherited the Sage's Eyes, while the Senju were the clan that inherited the Sage's Body.
By that logic, the two clans should have been close relatives in ancient times, maybe even one family.
Both could be traced back to the Sage of Six Paths, Otsutsuki Hagoromo. They just did not know what reason had caused the two sides to turn against each other and fight until now.
But after more than a thousand years of slaughter, that matter had long since become a tangled mess that could not be cut cleanly or sorted out. The exact reason from back then no longer mattered.
Besides, now the only Senju Clan member left in public was Tsunade herself, and the Uchiha Clan had only a tiny handful of members left too. With both clans reduced to such pitiful numbers, what was the point of obsessing over the cause of those old grudges?
"So it really was like that."
Hatake Kakashi was not surprised. As someone who also possessed the Sharingan, he was very clear about some of the Sharingan's traits.
Nano-scale bombs might fool others, but they absolutely could not fool the Sharingan.
Or rather, as long as something had Chakra attached to it, it could not be hidden from the Sharingan at all. The Sharingan could see the gathering of Chakra.
As if the Sharingan were that inconvenient.
Just now, Hatake Kakashi had already suspected whether this move would work against Uchiha Sasuke. Looking at it now, sure enough.
"Of course. Of course it was." Deidara gave a low chuckle.
"I avoided your vital points. Tell me where Itachi is."
Uchiha Sasuke still had not realized just how much the Deidara before him hated Uchiha Itachi. He was completely focused on asking where Uchiha Itachi was.
At this moment, Namikaze Minato seemed to understand a little why Kaede Kitahara roasted Uchiha Sasuke for having low intelligence. In fact, from many details, it was already possible to see Deidara's dissatisfaction with Uchiha Itachi.
It was just that Uchiha Sasuke clearly had not noticed this. Otherwise, the two sides might not have needed to fight this battle at all. Deidara might even have personally led the way for him.