Chapter 14: Nobunaga
"Don't you run, you bastard!"
Uvogin's impotent, furious roar didn't faze Ronin in the slightest.
Hidden within the spreading mist, Ronin immediately cast the Transformation Jutsu.
In a puff of smoke, the handsome, pale-blonde teenager vanished. In his place stood a pot-bellied, balding middle-aged man.
He mimicked the panicked gait of the civilians fleeing through the fog.
Ronin knew his Zetsu wasn't refined enough to completely erase his presence from experts. A skilled Nen user would still sense him.
Therefore, the Transformation Jutsu was the superior choice.
By mimicking a civilian, he not only changed his appearance but also allowed a slight amount of aura to leak out naturally, blending in with the terrified crowd.
The situation was simple.
Unless the Phantom Troupe members decided to massacre everyone at the airport indiscriminately, finding him would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
And even if they did start slaughtering people, the thick fog gave him cover to use the Headhunter Jutsu and escape underground.
From the moment he spotted Shalnark's puppet, Ronin had already secured the winning position.
As he neared the entrance to the terminal hall, the mist began to thin. Through the haze, he spotted a familiar figure guarding the doors.
Tall, lean build. Traditional ronin attire. A katana hanging at his waist.
His dead-fish eyes scanned every person rushing toward the entrance, looking for something specific.
Nobunaga Hazama.
Uvogin's best friend and partner.
Ronin kept his act up, blending perfectly with the panicked stampede.
But before he could even get close, he saw Nobunaga's hand blur.
Schwing.
Several people running past Nobunaga were instantly bisected at the waist. Their upper bodies slid off their legs, blood spraying onto the glass doors.
The Phantom Troupe... truly a bunch of lawless maniacs.
There were at least forty or fifty people fleeing toward the exit. Nobunaga didn't even blink as he began to slaughter them just to weed out a spy.
This was the behavior of a sociopathic animal.
The blood and the screams of the dying amplified the panic instantly.
Suddenly, Ronin felt a gaze lock onto him. It felt like being targeted by a predator.
Did my expression slip? Or was my "panic" just slightly different from the rest? Sharp bastard!
Ronin didn't wait to find out. His hands flew into seals. He inhaled deeply.
Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!
A massive sphere of flame erupted from the "middle-aged man's" mouth, roaring toward the swordsman.
At the same time, Ronin's Sharingan caught the reflection of Nobunaga charging straight through the inferno.
Slash.
The giant fireball was sliced cleanly in half down the middle. Nobunaga didn't even slow down. His blade was already resheathed before the flames parted.
But as he burst through the fire, Nobunaga found empty air. Ronin was gone.
Nobunaga didn't panic. He focused his aura into his legs and stomped violently on the ground.
BOOM!
The shockwave cracked the tarmac. A few meters away, a figure was forced out of the earth, stumbling as the ground buckled around him.
Nobunaga smirked coldly. He vanished, reappearing instantly in front of the stumbling figure.
Iai Draw.
The blade flashed.
But instead of the resistance of flesh and bone, the blade met liquid.
Splash!
The "Ronin" exploded into a mass of water.
A clone?
Before Nobunaga could process the trap, his instincts screamed. He twisted sideways.
Several coins, thrown with lethal velocity, whizzed past where his head had been.
Clang! Clang!
With a few rapid parries, Nobunaga sliced the coins in half mid-air.
Through the thinning mist, he caught a glimpse of a shadow disappearing into the terminal hall.
Nobunaga raised an eyebrow and gave chase immediately.
But when he burst into the hall, he found chaos. Dozens of armed police officers were flooding in, while hundreds of civilians were stampeding out.
Ronin was gone.
Nobunaga scanned the crowd, unsure if the boy had blended in again or was hiding in the shadows waiting to strike.
But after that brief exchange, Nobunaga felt a grudging respect. The kid's abilities were versatile and tricky. He wasn't to be underestimated.
Nobunaga resheathed his katana, his thumb resting on the guard. He seriously considered killing everyone in the hall just to flush the rat out.
Before he could draw his blade, a blonde young man appeared behind him.
"Let it go, Nobu," said Shalnark, who had been hiding nearby, hoping to ambush Ronin himself.
Shalnark had rushed toward Ronin's last known location the moment the mist appeared, but he was too late. He didn't know how Ronin had spotted the puppet cop, but the boy's escape skills were elite.
"He's a professional escape artist," Shalnark noted.
Nobunaga's dead eyes drooped further. He glanced unhappily at the exit. "How's Uvo?"
"He'll live. Let's go," Shalnark said, turning to leave the terminal.
Outside, the mist had almost fully dissipated.
The tarmac was littered with bodies—some shot by the controlled cop, many more cut in half by Nobunaga.
Uvogin was already standing up. He marched toward them, his face a mask of rage and killing intent.
But seeing the empty terminal entrance, even Uvogin knew the chase was over. He didn't bother running after a ghost.
Police sirens were getting louder. Without a word, the three Spiders turned and vanished into the night, leaving the carnage behind.
Ronin was already deep within the crowd, moving away from the airport.
His face was pale, and one of his arms hung at an unnatural angle.
It was broken.
Nobunaga's stomp had been effective. When Ronin used the Headhunter Jutsu to dive underground, the shockwave from Nobunaga's Nen-infused stomp crushed the earth around him, snapping the bone in his arm.
Ronin knew that surfacing would make him an instant target.
So, the moment he burst from the ground, he cast Water Style: Water Clone Jutsu.
This was a C-Rank technique, creating a clone with physical substance, far superior to the illusionary E-Rank Clone Jutsu.
The mist boosted the clone's effectiveness. Using the water clone as a shield, the real Ronin used Henge (Transformation) again and slipped away toward the hall.
Nobunaga was incredibly fast. The water clone didn't even have time to react before it was destroyed.
But Ronin had anticipated that. When the clone burst, he threw the coins from his pocket like shuriken to buy a split second of distraction.
That split second allowed him to reach the crowd in the hall.
He had been terrified that Nobunaga would simply massacre everyone inside.
But when he saw Shalnark intervene, Ronin finally let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
Merging with the exiting crowd, he walked out of the airport, gulping down the fresh air.
I survived.
He hailed a taxi and got the hell out of there.
His first stop was a shady back-alley clinic to set his broken arm and treat the flesh wound on his abdomen. Afterward, he used the Transformation Jutsu again to check into a cheap hotel.
He planned to lay low.
He doubted the Phantom Troupe would stay in Yanshui City just to hunt him down. They had bigger fish to fry.
Besides, he needed time to heal.