The examiner's fist, accompanied by the sound of wind, smashed toward Uesugi Toru's face under everyone's gaze.
To the outside world, everything happened in the blink of an eye. But with the coordination of Uesugi Toru and his Bio-computer, every movement of Ebisu was decomposed into thousands of frames of slow motion.
[Attack arrival countdown: 0.01 seconds.]
[Substitution Jutsu: Modified, execute!]
"Swish."
There was neither the loud noise of traditional Substitution Jutsu nor any rising dust.
A millisecond before Ebisu's fist touched the tip of Uesugi Toru's nose, Uesugi Toru's figure flickered out of thin air, eerily, like a phantom with a bad signal.
High-speed movement creates airflow and leaves afterimages. But Uesugi Toru's disappearance was silent, more like a frame of film being erroneously removed.
Ebisu's fist, imbued with the strength and speed of a Chunin, passed through the phantom without any resistance and struck heavily into empty space.
The massive force caused him to stumble, nearly losing his footing.
He turned his head sharply, his pupils shrinking suddenly.
Uesugi Toru was standing quietly three meters behind him, still in the same posture, as if he had been standing there from the very beginning and had never moved.
...
...
The entire examination ground was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
The parents who were just marveling at Sasuke's Great Fireball were now all wide-mouthed, their expressions frozen.
What happened?
How did he... disappear? And then reappear behind?
Is it Substitution Jutsu?
No. Substitution Jutsu should have a log and smoke. But just now, there was nothing.
Uzumaki Naruto, whose eyes were originally closed, was startled awake by Sakura's gasp beside him. He only saw Ebisu's miss and Uesugi Toru standing behind him.
"Wow! What an amazing Substitution Jutsu!" He didn't understand the intricacies; he just felt that this usually unremarkable classmate had actually dodged the teacher's attack.
But the other candidates in the field all had their expressions change.
As Ninja trainees, they saw more clearly than the average parent. That moment just now was not any kind of Substitution Jutsu they had learned.
Uchiha Sasuke's fist tightened unconsciously inside his sleeve. His Sharingan wasn't active yet, but his genius-level dynamic vision captured a fragment of the truth.
It was an incomprehensible simplicity. It didn't seem like Uesugi Toru had activated a Ninjutsu, but rather like space itself had transported him over.
"This..." The other examiner, Gekkō Hayate, whose sickly face always looked frail, showed a shocked expression for the first time, even forgetting to cough.
On the watchtower, Kurenai Yuhi stood up abruptly.
Her gaze, which she had intended to move away, was now locked onto Uesugi Toru as if drawn by a magnet.
As a Jonin specializing in Genjutsu, she had a perception of Chakra flow and spiritual energy fluctuations far beyond ordinary people.
At that moment just now, she clearly sensed that Uesugi Toru's Chakra produced a very faint but high and stable fluctuation. That fluctuation was like a precise scalpel, making a precise cut in space before instantly settling.
Not a single bit of excess energy leaked out.
Is this really the Chakra control a twelve-year-old child can achieve?
No, let alone a twelve-year-old child, even she herself, or most of the Jonin she knew, could not be so clean and efficient when activating Substitution Jutsu.
This was no longer in the realm of technique, but a dimensional strike against the very concept of Ninjutsu!
In the field, Ebisu's face turned pale and then flushed.
As an elite Chunin and Konohamaru's tutor, he was very confident in his strength. Although he didn't use lethal force in that punch, he used seventy percent of his speed and power, enough to instantly subdue any graduate.
But he not only missed, he didn't even see how the opponent dodged.
How is this possible?!
No.
It must be a coincidence.
A thought flashed through Ebisu's mind, and he quickly convinced himself.
This kid must just be lucky. He might have instinctively activated Substitution Jutsu out of fear at the moment of the attack, but because of a Chakra control error, the log and smoke didn't appear.
Yes, it must be so.
How could a dead-last student whose grades were all "average" possess such miraculous technique? It didn't make sense.
Thinking of this, Ebisu took a deep breath, stood up straight again, pushed up the sunglasses on his nose, and said in an even harsher tone: "Good luck. But as a Ninja, luck won't be with you forever."
"To verify if you have truly mastered the Substitution Jutsu, I need to test you once more."
As soon as he finished speaking, without waiting for Uesugi Toru's answer, he moved again.
This time, his speed was faster than before! His power was even greater!
His body suddenly changed direction during the high-speed charge, the angle even more tricky and unpredictable. A knife-hand strike cut toward Uesugi Toru's neck.
This embodied the essence of his Taijutsu as an elite Chunin, a combination of speed and direction changes. He was confident that under such an attack, no coincidence would exist anymore!
The hearts of the entire audience rose to their throats again.
"Here it comes again!"
"This time it's an attack from the side, let's see how he dodges!"
On the watchtower, Kurenai Yuhi's eyes narrowed. Her mental energy was highly concentrated, firmly locking onto every trace of Chakra flow around Uesugi Toru's body.
She wanted to see clearly whether it was a coincidence or... an inevitability she couldn't understand!
Uesugi Toru's expression remained calm.
[Warning: Second threat determination.]
[Attack coming from the left at a 47-degree angle, speed increased by 15%, power increased by 10%.]
[Recalculating optimal substitution coordinates... Coordinates locked: Original position.]
[Enabling 'Relative Displacement' algorithm...]
[Executing...]
To everyone, this time, Uesugi Toru had completely given up. He still stood in his original spot, motionless.
A hint of triumph flashed in Ebisu's eyes.
As expected, it was a coincidence!
His knife-hand had already touched the skin of Uesugi Toru's neck, and he could even feel the warmth coming from the skin.
It's over.
However, at that very moment.
The eerie scene occurred once more.
Uesugi Toru's figure flickered again, like a slide getting stuck.
This time was even more bizarre than the last.
He didn't move backward; he didn't even leave his original spot.
He just stood there.
Ebisu's knife-hand, in a way that violated the laws of physics, passed right through the phantom of his neck.
It hit no physical entity.
Time seemed to freeze at this moment.
Ebisu maintained his posture of charging and swinging his knife-hand, frozen in place. His hand stayed a few centimeters behind Uesugi Toru's neck, trembling slightly.
And Uesugi Toru slowly turned his head, his calm gaze meeting Ebisu's eyes, which were filled with horror.
Like someone taking a stroll in a courtyard, he had dodged the full-force strike of a Chunin with a casual sidestep.
But everyone knew that wasn't a speed that could be dodged by a mere sidestep!
This time, even Uzumaki Naruto saw that something was wrong.
"He... he didn't seem to move..." he muttered to himself.
This time, Kurenai Yuhi saw it clearly.
Uesugi Toru's Chakra fluctuation was even weaker than last time, almost to the point of being negligible. If she hadn't been deliberately perceiving it, she wouldn't have noticed it at all.
That faint fluctuation, at the very moment Ebisu's knife-hand was about to touch his skin, caused his body to undergo an inconceivable spatial translation of less than half a centimeter.
This half-centimeter was enough to decide life and death.
This was no longer Ninjutsu.
This was a form of art.
A terrifying art that refined Chakra control to the atomic level!
Silence.
An unprecedented silence.
In the entire examination ground, the gazes of thousands were all focused on the two figures in the center.
One was an elite Chunin holding an attacking posture, frozen like a statue.
One was a young man with an indifferent expression, as if he had just brushed a speck of dust off his shoulder.
Ebisu's lips trembled; he wanted to say something but found his throat dry, unable to utter a single word. His mind was blank, his common sense and pride as a Ninja shattered to pieces in this moment.
This was not a coincidence.
Not at all.
"Uesugi Toru... examination..." He spoke with difficulty, wanting to announce the result, but found even the word "pass" hard to say.
"Excellent."
A cool female voice suddenly came from the nearby examiners' seats, breaking the dead silence.
It was the other female examiner next to Gekkō Hayate. She hadn't spoken until now, but at this moment, she gave the final evaluation.
Her voice wasn't loud, but it clearly reached everyone's ears.
On the watchtower, Kurenai Yuhi slowly sat down, her chest heaving slightly. She took out a small notebook she carried with her and, with a trembling hand, wrote a line:
"Uesugi Toru. Chakra control suspected to surpass any known system. Recommendation... immediately upgrade to the highest observation level."
She knew very well that this boy named Uesugi Toru could no longer be described by the word "genius."
He was a phenomenon.
A phenomenon sufficient to subvert Konoha, and even the existing power system of the entire Ninja World.
Would this discovery bring Konoha a guardian deity who surpassed all Hokage, or... a monster even more uncontrollable than a Tailed Beast?