"Eight Trigrams: Mountain-Breaking Strike!"
Cornered against a cliff by an Uchiha Madara shadow clone, Hyūga Ashikaga unleashed everything he had. A pillar of compressed chakra shot forward — bright, violent, fast enough to leave even a Kage-level shinobi struggling to react.
The ground split wide beneath the recoil.
A distant mountain face erupted in stone and dust.
But Madara's voice cut through the shock:
"Good power. Bad aim."
The clone stepped out of the shadows — unruffled, arms folded, not even ten meters away. He had dodged with a lazy shunshin and a substitution technique.
"Such a pity you have only a Byakugan."
Ashikaga exhaled sharply.
There was nowhere left to run.
No Heavenly Rotation.
No escape.
Only close combat remained — if he could strike Madara's tenketsu even once, he might survive a moment longer.
Madara's Sharingan gleamed.
"That look in your eyes… interesting."
"I remember you from the battlefield. Come — entertain me, Hyūga Ashikaga."
Ashikaga vanished.
A ghostly afterimage lingered where he'd stood.
Madara blurred aside, avoiding a strike aimed from behind. Twisting, he accelerated again, appearing behind Ashikaga — Gunbai already descending.
Ashikaga sensed it.
He spun, palms erupting in a flurry.
"Gentle Fist — Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms!"
A rain of lethal palm thrusts flew at Madara.
Madara only laughed.
A single sweep of the Gunbai severed Ashikaga's arm—
—then another swing crushed his skull with sickening finality.
"You were always a candle flame."
The clone dissolved into smoke.
Pig–Deer–Butterfly Cornered
Elsewhere, the Ino–Shika–Chō trio had just barely defeated a Madara clone with a desperate, perfectly synchronized attack.
They barely had time to breathe before soft applause echoed across the ravine.
Madara — the real Madara — approached, Sharingan spinning lazily.
"Pig–Deer–Butterfly… your teamwork is still beautiful to watch."
Nara Luming, panting, forced a strained smile.
"Madara-sama… surely we can negotiate? Whatever you're doing here — we saw nothing. We'll forget it ourselves if we must."
Madara shrugged casually.
"No need. Killing you is simpler."
Luming's blood froze.
He grasped at his final gambit.
"If we die here, Konoha will send stronger forces. Even the current Third Hokage — Uchiha Soren — he has the Mangekyō… and Flying Thunder God."
All of this was public information. Luming threw it like a lifeline.
But Madara only nodded in approval of Soren…
…and then calmly mentioned that he had already killed Uchiha Setsuna and Hyūga Ashikaga.
Three dead.
What were two more?
To Madara, insects were insects.
If they annoyed him, he swatted them.
The trio inhaled sharply.
They knew the truth:
They could not win.
They might not even survive.
Today was cursed.
Who could have predicted Madara lived, hidden in Lightning Country?
Soren Approaches Cloud–Thunder Gorge
"Woof!"
"Hokage-sama, Fang has their scent!"
Near the gorge, Inuzuka Jin's ninken growled sharply.
"Ahead! It's Hyūga Ashikaga's scent — and there's blood!"
"Move!"
Soren shot forward like a bolt.
Through his Tenchō Risshon sensory field, he felt violent chakra flares twenty kilometers away — fading Kage signatures.
Three familiar chakras flickered like dying candles.
And then—
A cold, towering chakra presence.
Dark and suffocating.
Like a pillar of black fire.
Only two beings in the shinobi world held chakra like that:
The Nine-Tails…
—or an Uchiha beyond the limit of ordinary Mangekyō.
Ruling out Mito and Hikari, one impossible name remained:
Uchiha Madara.
(Madara is in the Land of Lightning!?)
(He should've been influencing Kirigakure by now—)
(Forget canon. I've disrupted the timeline too much.)
(Against Madara, I can survive… but not overpower him. Only time–space assassination is viable.)
(Five Kage chakras… but only three remain. The other two are likely dead.)
Soren stopped at a corpse in Hyūga robes — the head crushed, body barely intact.
Inuzuka Fang whimpered, tail tucked, trembling.
Jin's voice was grim.
The rocks.
The terrain.
The wounds.
Almost no battle damage.
Not a fight.
A one-sided execution.
Soren's voice turned cold.
"Your ninken smells him too… doesn't it?"
He handed Jin a fresh Flying Thunder God kunai.
"Clan Leader Inuzuka — gather the bodies. Setsuna's corpse should be nearby."
"Then head straight to Cloud–Thunder Gorge. Don't linger."
"When you find the Cloud base, inject chakra into this kunai."
"If Shikaku, Yuuta, and Chōha still live, I'll teleport in and pull them out."
His final words were merciless:
"If they're dead… then they were too weak. Too unlucky."
Soren vanished in a thunderclap.
Inuzuka Jin exhaled shakily, gratitude pouring into his bones.
If he had followed Setsuna earlier—
He'd be a corpse beneath this cliff as well.
And for the first time in his life, Jin felt something like hope.
Because the unstoppable Shura of the shinobi world — Uchiha Madara —
had just gained a new enemy:
Uchiha Soren.
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