"Let me observe exactly how far your potential goes, brat."
Madara Uchiha watched the battlefield intently through the White Zetsu network.
Down in the muddy valley, the fight between Kiyohara and Kugetsu Hozuki had already entered a white-hot phase of absolute speed.
A heavy chakra-blade clashed against high-tensile water threads; supersonic iron sand countered liquid evasion. The two assassins moved at blinding velocity within a hundred-meter radius, every single physical collision erupting with astonishing, concussive waves of air pressure.
"Water Release: Water Dragon Whip!"
Kugetsu stopped weaving the complex Sealing Jutsu that had anchored Rin. He formed a rapid sequence of seals with his left hand, drew the fallen Kiba blade with his right, and released a massive, high-pressure whip made of boiling water, lashing it violently toward Kiyohara's throat.
The Hozuki Clan is biologically and genetically specialized in manipulating localized fluid dynamics. They are not merely skilled in ordinary Water Release ninjutsu, but are masters of horrific, anatomical secret techniques!
The Water Dragon Whip that Kugetsu deployed at this exact moment was a massively upgraded, lethal version of the standard Water Flow Whip.
The Water Release whip, physically resembling a massive water dragon violently wagging its tail, whistled toward Kiyohara with the force to shatter stone.
Kiyohara's single-tomoe Sharingan flawlessly captured the chaotic, aerodynamic traces of the water flow.
Absolutely everything in his tactical field of vision became a slowed, frame-by-frame existence.
In less than a microsecond, he casually reached out his left hand.
The absolute, dual biological hardening brought by Steel Release seamlessly stacked with Earth Release: Earth Spear made the skin of Kiyohara's hand turn incredibly, unnaturally dark, looking exactly like a heavy piece of forged black iron.
He opened his five fingers and, to Kugetsu's absolute, wide-eyed horror, directly physically grabbed the supersonic, razor-sharp water whip out of the air.
Then, with a sudden, violent jerk of his arm, Kugetsu, caught entirely off guard by the impossible physical strength, was violently yanked forward through the mud.
Kiyohara smoothly swung his black sword with his right hand, slashing cleanly, brutally across Kugetsu's neck.
Squelch!
Water flowed heavily.
In the exact microsecond the blade touched his skin, Kugetsu utilized the Hozuki Clan's ultimate secret technique, the Hydrification Technique, to rapidly liquefy the cells in his head and neck to avoid decapitation.
"Hehehe... I was almost killed by you, you little monster."
Kugetsu rapidly condensed his head and body-flickered backward, desperately putting some physical distance between them.
If he hadn't reacted instinctively and used his clan's secret technique just now, his skull would have been sliced in two by the sheer kinetic force of Kiyohara's blade.
"My Hydrification Technique grants me absolute immunity against all physical, blunt-force, and slashing attacks. And you've heard of Mangetsu Hozuki, right? He is my cousin," Kugetsu smiled arrogantly, catching his breath.
Mangetsu Hozuki was the most famous, terrifying prodigy in the current Hidden Mist Village. He was politically destined to be the next leader of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, having mastered all seven legendary blades. And as his older cousin, Kugetsu was naturally an extraordinary assassin as well.
"You've got a decent genetic trick," Kiyohara stated coldly, lowering his sword.
It was indeed difficult to harm a Hozuki with pure "cutting" or "slashing" kinetic damage. To slaughter a Hozuki, one had to exploit their elemental weakness.
Either use massive, apocalyptic Fire Release to rapidly boil and evaporate all the water in their cells, or... use Lightning Release.
Lightning Release ninjutsu conducts violently through water, completely "paralyzing" the Hozuki's cellular hydration process and physically sealing their ability to turn into liquid. Thus, Lightning is the absolute greatest weakness of the Hozuki Clan.
"Want to use Lightning Release? But do you honestly think I will let a single spark of your jutsu physically hit me?!" Kugetsu sneered confidently.
Now that he had recovered a Kiba blade from Raiga's corpse, Kugetsu could temporarily be considered a Lightning Release expert; if Kiyohara tried to cast any standard Lightning ninjutsu, Kugetsu could effortlessly parry and ground the electricity from a distance using the legendary sword.
"You guessed my elemental vector correctly. But unfortunately, this is a non-prize quiz," Kiyohara smiled darkly.
The hyper-dense iron sand in the gourd at his waist surged out violently, covering both of his fists entirely like boiling black water. Kiyohara utilized the magnetic field to compress the iron sand, effectively forging a set of jagged, indestructible black gauntlets directly onto his hands.
Wanting to physically coat one's own skin in raw Lightning Release is a terrifyingly high-level application of chakra flow. For example, the Lightning Release Chakra Mode is considered a highly classified, S-Rank secret ninjutsu of the Hidden Cloud Village, and basically no one outside the Raikage's bloodline possesses the physical durability to survive casting it.
Kiyohara, of course, couldn't perform that Kage-level technique without frying his own nervous system.
But he could pragmatically settle for the next best thing and heavily enchant his iron sand gauntlets instead.
For his tactical purposes, the kinetic result was exactly the same. As long as he physically punched Kugetsu, that was enough.
"Lightning Release: Lightning Flow Technique!"
The high-voltage current generated by the C-Rank Lightning jutsu coiled violently around Kiyohara's black gauntlets, forming blinding, pale blue lightning fists, with heavy electrical arcs crackling and popping in the rain.
"WHAT?!"
Kugetsu clearly hadn't anticipated this kind of brutal, close-quarters elemental trick.
Kiyohara's legs vibrated slightly, and the muddy ground nearby suddenly collapsed under the massive, localized kinetic pressure, revealing a spiderweb of deep cracks.
BANG!
A streak of absolute lightning dashed forward.
Kugetsu vaguely felt as if he saw the legendary, terrifying velocity of Minato Namikaze. Only this time, the lightning was pitch black!
Kugetsu desperately raised Kiba to block Kiyohara's incoming left fist, while Kiyohara's right fist struck fiercely, brutally toward his head.
With that single punch, the surrounding magnetic field was violently leveraged by Kiyohara to accelerate the mass. This localized rotational buff seemed to add a layer of apocalyptic frenzy to the strike. It allowed Kiyohara's casual punch to erupt with a "critical hit" kinetic yield far, far exceeding the usual physical limits of a human.
Before Kugetsu could even visually process the shadow of the incoming black fist, he physically felt his eardrums rupturing. His inner ears bled from the sheer, supersonic wind pressure stirred up by the strike!
Kugetsu had to instinctively, desperately force his head to turn back into a liquid state.
He could only gamble his life that his cellular hydration was slightly faster than Kiyohara's supersonic punch. Even with the lethal arcs of electricity coating the gauntlet, as long as his brain wasn't completely, physically shattered into pieces and he could still operate the Hydration Technique, he wouldn't die.
'Did I succeed...' Kugetsu's frantic thoughts, under a massive burst of adrenaline, accelerated briefly as the fist made contact.
Then, he felt himself flying violently into the night sky.
Kiyohara got further and further away from his field of vision, and the dark trees under his feet became smaller and smaller.
Then came a deafening, wet BOOM. His head—currently composed of half liquid water and half biological brain matter—exploded exactly like a dropped watermelon, scattering violently everywhere in a mist of red and blue sparks.
At this exact microsecond, Kugetsu's severed, flying optic nerves could even clearly see his own headless corpse collapsing into the mud below.
He... was already dead.
When Kugetsu's brain fragments realized this biological fact, his consciousness went permanently black, and he plunged into the abyss.
Kiyohara stood perfectly still, maintaining his punching posture. From the initial kinetic outburst to the final, bloody kill, the entire sequence took exactly less than 0.5 seconds.
To the terrified onlookers, it simply looked as if Kiyohara had coated his hand in black sand and electricity, and then Kugetsu Hozuki's head had spontaneously, violently exploded.
"Interesting... such impossible physical speed..."
Madara Uchiha watched everything unfold in his subterranean field of view.
He couldn't see Kiyohara's exact movements clearly.
Because the source of the optical image at this moment came directly from White Zetsu's inferior, clone eyes. This meant that White Zetsu's biology couldn't process the speed clearly, so the telepathic image transmitted back to Madara's brain was heavily blurred.
"Then, how will the boy deal with the Tailed Beast?" Madara stroked his scarred chin, intrigued.
Kiyohara's brutal, flawless performance in systematically slaughtering Raiga and Kugetsu just now could be considered an absolute, crushing victory.
Even so, the boy's chakra reserves still seemed to be incredibly, unnaturally sufficient.
Chakra reserves are the absolute, biological foundation for a shinobi. Ninjas possessing vastly more chakra usually possess exponentially higher genetic aptitude and survivability. At the very least, Kiyohara's baseline chakra reserves seemed to far, far exceed Kakashi's—or even Obito's.
"Madara. It seems this civilian kid's genetic aptitude is actually quite terrifying," White Zetsu sighed telepathically.
"It is indeed terrifying," Madara nodded slightly.
After logically deducing that Kiyohara possessed a dormant Uchiha bloodline, his entire tactical perception of the boy had fundamentally changed.
Would his carefully orchestrated stage actually produce two fully awakened Uchiha pawns tonight?
And while Kiyohara was brutally finishing off Kugetsu Hozuki, Obito clutched his painful ribs and forced himself to stand up from the bushes once again.
"Rin... stop... please, look at me..."
Obito shouted desperately, trying to use the profound psychological "bond" between himself and Rin to magically awaken her humanity.
"If I still have a place in your heart... then please stop, Rin!"
Obito's croaky, cracking voice, currently deep in his awkward voice-breaking period, made the tone of this desperate, romantic plea sound extremely, pathetically strange.
He didn't dodge or attempt to evade. He just continued to slowly, foolishly approach the Kaiju.
BANG!
Responding directly to Obito's plea was another massive, heavy punch completely wrapped in bubbling scarlet chakra, smashing fiercely and mercilessly into his chest.
A subtle, terrifying cracking sound of structural failure came from the reinforced surface of the Spiral Zetsu exoskeleton. The excruciating, bone-deep physical pain made Obito almost unable to breathe as he flew backward again, violently plowing a deep trench in the muddy ground.
"Obito, what absolute madness are you up to?!" Spiral Zetsu could be said to be grimacing in physical pain.
Did this idiot Obito have some kind of suicidal, masochistic fetish, trying so hard to push forward without defending himself?! Attempting to use the power of love and friendship to psychologically influence a Jinchuriki deep in a radioactive, berserk state? Was the kid brain-damaged from the cave-in?!
"Give me complete control of the body, I'll handle the evasion," Spiral Zetsu demanded.
"No. I can't," Obito stubbornly, foolishly rejected this logical proposal.
The second and third massive scarlet chakra tails completely, physically solidified behind Rin's small body. The sheer kinetic force of them striking the ground made the entire valley tremble like a localized earthquake.
The heavy Water Prison Formation wrapping around her fluctuated violently, water splashing constantly on the surface as the pressure boiled. Two of the four glowing "Water Image Chains" had completely, structurally snapped under the strain, turning into useless spots of chakra light and dissipating into the rain.
"WE CAN'T SUPPRESS THE CHAKRA PRESSURE ANYMORE!"
"RETREAT! FALL BACK TO A SAFE DISTANCE!"
The surviving Kirigakure ANBU turned pale with absolute terror.
They originally had only about twenty operatives left, and had already suffered massive, catastrophic losses from the previous slaughter at the hands of Kakashi and Kiyohara.
At this exact moment, facing a completely berserk, radioactive, friend-or-foe-indiscriminate Tailed Beast Jinchuriki, staying in the immediate grid was tactically equivalent to suicide.
"Water Style: Water Wall!"
"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
Several Kirigakure Jonin desperately tried to use high-level ninjutsu to block the shockwave, but their massive water dragons collided violently with the dense scarlet chakra cloak, only stirring up a massive cloud of boiling steam before being effortlessly torn apart by the violent radiation.
And the completely berserk Rin had already shattered through the final Water Prison restraint.
Wherever she violently passed, ancient trees snapped like twigs, solid boulders shattered into dust, and the bedrock was plowed into deep, smoking ravines.
The absolute, terrifying power of a Tailed Beast was revealed without a doubt at this moment.
"AHHH!"
A fleeing Kirigakure ANBU could not body-flicker in time and was struck directly in the chest by a sweeping chakra tail. He flew away like a tattered, bloody sack, slamming into the distant cliff face, and fell silent forever.
"SCATTER! DON'T BUNCH UP!"
"PREPARE A HIGH-LEVEL BINDING NINJUTSU OR A SEALING BARRIER!"
Dense scarlet chakra raged through the dark forest, accompanied by the desperate, dying screams of the Kirigakure operatives being slaughtered.
"Rin... stop... please, you have to stop..." Obito muttered to himself pathetically from the mud. The Two Tomoe in his Sharingan spun to their absolute biological limit, suffused with thick, agonizing bloodshot veins.
"Hey, Obito, your optic nerves..." the worried voice of Spiral Zetsu echoed within his body.
But Obito could no longer process auditory information.
In his narrow, hyper-focused field of vision, there was only that terrifying silhouette, wrapped entirely in bubbling scarlet, crazily destroying everything in her path.
Kiyohara's glowing red gaze swept coldly across the chaotic battlefield.
More than half of the elite Kirigakure ANBU were dead or severely injured; fewer than ten operatives remained standing, and all of them were bleeding and falling back.
'Obito's psychological emotions have reached a breaking point... the physical mutation in his Sharingan is obvious,' Kiyohara calculated rapidly.
'But it's not enough to trigger the Mangekyō. One last, catastrophic psychological spark is needed to shatter his mind... Madara must be waiting in the dark for it too.'
Kiyohara touched the heavy tactical pouch at his waist, where he had meticulously prepared sterile medical supplies.
A surgical scalpel, heavy hemostatic bandages, simple surgical sutures, and a few high-grade doses of potent coagulants and cellular activity stimulants. These were classified items he had specifically, deliberately restocked from the Konoha Central Hospital after realizing he might be violently dragged into the canon incident involving Rin's death.
'The macro-plan remains unchanged... but the surgical timing must be seized perfectly.'
Kiyohara took a deep, steadying breath, focused his chakra entirely into his optic nerves, and watched the microscopic, radioactive flow of chakra around Rin's heart through the Sharingan.
There, buried deep within her cardiac tissue, he could clearly see a massive, unnatural, pulsing "knot" of dark chakra. That was the absolute core of Madara's Forbidden Individual Curse Tag.
Kiyohara understood the mechanics instantly; Madara must have remotely activated the tag to force the Three-Tails out, which was exactly why the dark chakra was so obvious now. Usually, it would be flawlessly hidden within the heart muscle, undetectable to normal sensors.
"Kakashi. Help me buy exactly ten seconds of time," Kiyohara ordered coldly.
After he surgically destroyed the Imprisonment Curse Tag with a blade, he would immediately have to perform extreme emergency hemostasis and medical triage to save her life.
"Alright," Kakashi nodded, his face pale and determined.
Kakashi looked at Obito—the bizarre white freak who desperately, foolishly wanted to approach Rin—and then at the Kirigakure operatives who were actively retreating to keep their distance. Kakashi flawlessly moved to block Obito's physical path.
When Obito desperately tried to push past him to reach Rin, blinding electric arcs flashed violently in Kakashi's hand.
"Chidori!"
The pale blue, screaming lightning tore through the air, striking directly, brutally at Obito with supersonic speed to force him back.
From Kakashi's purely tactical perspective, this mysterious, hostile weirdo with pale skin and a spiral face had appeared abruptly from the shadows, violently attempted to approach Rin during a delicate extraction, and then, after she went completely berserk, he still persistently, insanely tried to entangle himself with her.
No matter how one calculated the variables, this seemed exactly like a further, complex conspiracy of the enemy—perhaps a desperate attempt to physically capture the berserk Jinchuriki!
Kakashi ruthlessly chose to strike first to eliminate the unknown variable.
And Obito... Obito just stared blankly, emptily at Kakashi's Chidori.
Looking at this precious companion to whom he had entrusted his most valuable eye. The man he entrusted his dying vow to protect Rin. The man whom he regarded as his lifelong best friend, brother, and rival.
He didn't recognize me.
He really... didn't recognize my soul.
Even though my face has become a grotesque monster... even though my voice has broken and changed... even though I screamed in such agonizing, desperate pain...
Kakashi. Rin.
Have you both... completely, utterly forgotten I ever existed?
Or is it that, deep in your hearts, that pathetic, useless loser named Obito Uchiha should have rightfully died under those rocks long ago? That I should never have returned to burden you... and certainly should not have appeared before you in this monstrous, pathetic form to disturb your current, perfect lives?
Obito physically felt that the absolute foundation supporting his sanity had completely, catastrophically collapsed.
The physical world lost its sound. It lost all its color.
There was only Kakashi's cold, murderous face, so physically close yet seemingly as far away as if separated by an entire dimension. And the transplanted Sharingan in Kakashi's eye was spinning crazily, exactly as if it were about to drip tears of blood.
The tomoe in Obito's eyes violently, agonizingly mutated from Two Tomoe to a perfect, complete Three Tomoe!
While Kakashi and Obito were in a violent, emotional standoff, Kiyohara poured absolutely all of his remaining Lightning Release chakra directly into his black ninja sword.
The resulting, apocalyptic high voltage instantly heated the heavy steel blade until it was glowing a blinding, incandescent red. This brief, intense burst of extreme thermal heat was enough to instantly incinerate the vast majority of bacteria and biological viruses on the surface of the blade.
Sterilization was flawlessly completed in an instant.
Immediately after, Kiyohara's pair of scarlet One-Tomoe Sharingan flawlessly captured a microscopic, split-second lapse in Rin's frantic defense.
In her current, radioactive berserk state, everything she did was based entirely on animalistic instinct. But for now, her Tailed Beast Shroud was just a thin, bubbling layer of corrosive chakra; it hadn't yet reached the impenetrable, dark red, skeletal stage that would manifest later.
After catching the lapse, Kiyohara dashed forward with absolute, supersonic speed.
With a flawless, microscopic flick of his wrist, the red-hot, glowing ninja sword acted exactly like a massive surgeon's scalpel. It perfectly avoided the structural gaps in her ribs, sliced cleanly through the Tailed Beast Shroud and her pale skin, and stabbed brutally, deeply into Rin Nohara's left chest!
The glowing tip of the blade pointed directly, flawlessly at the dark chakra node of the Curse Tag!
PUCHI!
The boiling, scarlet chakra on Rin's body surface immediately began to violently dissipate into steam.
Her demonic slit pupils also began to slowly, sluggishly turn back into normal, human black pupils.
"Kiyohara... kun..."
With the Imprisonment Curse Tag violently, physically destroyed by the burning steel, Rin's human consciousness instantly regained clarity.
She lowered her head and looked down blankly at the massive, glowing sword stabbed deeply through her chest. Strangely, she felt a profound sense of absolute relief and peace instead of pain.
"Do not panic, Rin," Kiyohara stated coldly, his voice steady and clinical.
He quickly, smoothly pulled the heavy blade out of her chest.
Being able to successfully perform this insane surgical maneuver wasn't just Kiyohara acting on a psychotic whim.
Tailed Beast chakra exponentially enhances the biological cellular recovery ability of a Jinchuriki. Right now, on Rin's body, the Tailed Beast cloak was rapidly dissipating bit by bit. The massive, residual healing ability remaining during this specific biological process was enough to protect Rin's internal organs from failure, allowing the pierced tissue to naturally recover at a speed far, far exceeding a normal human rate.
This biological phenomenon is also the exact, primary reason why Naruto Uzumaki could survive having his lungs punctured and be jumping around completely fine the next day during his early missions.
"?"
Rin was somewhat profoundly puzzled; her fading consciousness only just barely registered that Kiyohara seemed to have surgically avoided piercing her actual heart muscle by a millimeter.
But her body instantly went completely limp, and she collapsed directly, heavily into Kiyohara's waiting arms.
Because of the massive, apocalyptic physical exertion and having just survived the radioactive trauma of a berserk state, Rin was now in a state of extreme, critical physical exhaustion.
"Wait exactly one moment. There is a foreign object inside your cavity," Kiyohara extended his sterile fingers and reached directly into the gaping, smoking wound in Rin's chest.
With a precise pinch of his two fingers, a thin, charred curse tag was physically ripped out of the tissue.
It seemed that since Madara had absolutely never, ever considered the possibility of Rin surviving this encounter, this specific Imprisonment Cursed Seal was structurally made far less durable and refined than the one buried in Obito's heart.
"Mm..." Rin frowned deeply, her eyes fluttering shut as she felt the agonizing pain of the extraction.
Only then did her traumatized brain realize that those Kirigakure ANBU had surgically tampered with her biology. Her suppressed memories finally came flooding back in a rush.
In a dark, freezing cave, a female Kirigakure medic had violently forced her to swallow a curse tag. That tag squirmed continuously, parasitically inside her body, finally reaching her heart and anchoring itself tightly to the muscle.
And only now had it been violently, physically removed by Kiyohara.
"I will stop the arterial bleeding for you immediately, Rin," Kiyohara's hand brushed gently over the massive wound on her chest, activating the advanced Hemostasis Technique he had rigorously studied from Tsunade's textbooks.
Once the catastrophic bleeding was stabilized, he could smoothly proceed to the next critical medical step, the Regeneration Technique.
Rin would absolutely no longer be in mortal danger. She would only be severely, critically weak, weak to the point of a coma.
Obito, standing paralyzed behind them, could only see Kiyohara's broad back and the horrific, bloody scene of him having just violently stabbed a glowing red sword completely through Rin's chest.
Here...
What on earth is...
What just happened...!?
'I WILL NEVER, EVER ACCEPT... SUCH A REALITY!'
In Obito's fracturing field of vision, the entire physical world disappeared.
The collapsing, burning forest, the dead Kirigakure ANBU, Kakashi desperately blocking his path with lightning, the coldly swinging, bloody blade of Kiyohara... all of it turned into a blurred, meaningless gray background.
The absolute, only thing that remained terrifyingly clear was that bloody scene of Rin collapsing with a sword through her chest.
Agonizing, beautiful memories also flashed through Obito's shattering mind in an instant.
From the very first time he met and got to know Rin at the Academy, to Rin taking the initiative to speak to the clan loser.
"Hello! I am Rin Nohara. Can we play together?"
"What a coincidence, our desks are so close!"
"I believe you will definitely be an amazing Uchiha in the future, Obito."
"I will always be watching you, Obito. Promise."
Rin's gentle voice and warm smile were deeply, permanently etched into the very foundation of Obito's soul.
At the exact second he saw Rin seemingly murdered by his own comrade.
Something deep, deep within Obito's heart... permanently collapsed.
He clutched his chest, gasping for air.
Pain.
SO AGONIZINGLY PAINFUL!
I HAVE LOST MY LIGHT FOREVER!
He only physically felt the massive, dormant chakra in his Uchiha bloodline suddenly boil like acid, rushing violently, apocalyptically toward his optic nerves.
And then, the entire world before his eyes was permanently stained with a thick, suffocating layer of blood-red.
"Ugh..."
Kakashi turned his head and also saw that shocking, bloody scene of Kiyohara's sword in Rin's chest.
Kakashi suddenly screamed, covering his left eye as if in violent biological resonance with Obito, feeling an intense, blinding agony spike in his brain.
It felt exactly as if a massive, gaping hole had been violently torn directly through Obito's heart.
There was absolutely nothing left inside him.
The void was torn open by this hellish, meaningless world.
This is... wrong.
Why did Rin go berserk? It was because the people from the Hidden Mist had violently tampered with her body.
Why were they even fighting here? Because of the war engineered by the villages.
All of this system is wrong.
AHHH... !
Such a wrong, agonizing, bloody world is entirely fake.
'I will... I will obliterate this reality... and create a dream world where ONLY Rin exists!'
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Give me powerstones.
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