"Wind Release: Passing Typhoon!"
Almost the instant Shinichi made his move in the sky, Yagura struck as well.
He swung the staff-like weapon adorned with a green flower at its tip, unleashing a colossal invisible gale out of nowhere. It swept up the endless winds and torrential rain surrounding it, transforming into a violent, visible vortex that howled upward to collide head-on with the descending storm of golden lightning swords.
Although Yagura hailed from Kirigakure, he was not skilled in the Hiding in Mist Technique. More accurately, he had barely bothered to learn it at all.
Yet not a single Kirigakure shinobi who had built their reputation on the Hiding in Mist Technique could do anything against him.
The reason was simple.
His Wind Release: Passing Typhoon was the natural bane of the Hiding in Mist Technique. Possessing overwhelming dispersive and impact force, it could sweep away even the densest mist with a single tyrannical gust.
And now, with a typhoon raging across the battlefield and the heavens filled with shrieking winds, the power of that Wind Release technique was amplified severalfold.
The moment Yagura attacked, the surrounding Kirigakure shinobi reacted as well.
Water Release, Wind Release, secret techniques—countless jutsu poured from their hands. Following close behind Yagura's raging vortex, they formed layer upon layer of barrages that surged toward the golden rain of lightning swords descending from the heavens.
Shinichi's attack was undeniably terrifying.
To summon thunder itself and rain swords from the sky...
It was a fighting style unlike anything anyone in the current shinobi world had ever seen.
But the Kirigakure shinobi weren't fools.
They had all witnessed Shinichi slowly rising from the ruins and ascending into the clouds.
None of them knew exactly what he intended to do next, but every one of them had kept their eyes locked on his every movement. Their muscles were taut, chakra already gathered in their hands, each prepared to unleash their techniques at a moment's notice.
After all, this was the man who had just unleashed that earth-shattering strike upon them.
A single attack had leveled a city and shattered mountains, while nearly two thousand of their comrades remained unaccounted for, their fates still unknown.
No one dared underestimate even the slightest movement he made.
Shinichi's golden lightning swords were indeed incredibly fast—far faster than ordinary Lightning Release techniques. Guided layer after layer by Wind Release currents that continuously accelerated them, they possessed tremendous momentum.
Even so, they had not reached the speed of Sasuke's future technique, Kirin, from the original timeline.
Kirin directly summoned natural lightning itself. The bolts descended from the heavens at nearly the speed of light, making them virtually impossible to dodge. The only way to survive was to anticipate where they would strike beforehand.
These golden lightning swords, on the other hand, were fundamentally physical weapons.
Each one was created from a Shadow Clone of the Thunder God's Sword, then charged and amplified with natural lightning drawn from the storm clouds before being hurled downward.
Though their speed far surpassed conventional ninjutsu, they were still chakra constructs.
As such, they remained within the realm of attacks that could be intercepted.
There was, however, one thing especially worth mentioning.
This technique looked unbelievably cool.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!
The golden rain of swords collided violently with the countless incoming jutsu.
For an instant, dazzling flashes ripped the entire sky into countless fragments of blinding light.
The first to meet the attack was Yagura's violent vortex, empowered by the lingering force of the typhoon.
The raging winds and golden lightning tore into one another high above the battlefield.
Dozens of golden lightning swords were caught by the immense rotating airflow, flung wildly off course, and traced uncontrolled arcs through the sky before crashing into the distant ruins, blasting open scorched craters wherever they landed.
But after swallowing dozens of golden swords, the typhoon vortex itself was ripped apart.
Immediately afterward came wave after wave of jutsu.
Water Dragon Bullets, Earth Dragon Bullets, Wind Cutters, and countless other techniques formed an unending barrage.
Golden lightning crashed into pale-white Water Dragon Bullets, erupting into billowing clouds of steam.
Emerald wind blades clashed with lightning swords, releasing expanding rings of shockwaves and crackling arcs of electricity.
The instant an Earth Dragon surged upward, a lightning sword pierced straight through it, sending shattered rock and golden light flying in every direction.
Explosions.
The clash of steel.
The shriek of electricity.
The hiss of vaporized water.
All of it merged into a deafening symphony that shook the battlefield.
Wave after wave of sword rain continued to fall.
Layer after layer of Kirigakure's interception network rose to meet it.
Some golden swords were knocked off course, plunging crookedly into the ruins and blasting out blackened craters.
Others were intercepted repeatedly until their energy was exhausted, dissolving into clouds of golden light in midair.
But even more golden lightning swords continued pouring from the clouds without end, as though the storm itself would never run dry.
For a time...
The battle seemed deadlocked.
Yet if anyone in the current shinobi world had witnessed this scene, they would have been left utterly speechless.
Because Shinichi...
...was facing hundreds of shinobi head-on by himself.
Leading them was none other than Yagura, one of Kirigakure's foremost experts.
There were certainly many powerful figures in today's shinobi world capable of fighting hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of enemies.
The Third Raikage, whose spear and shield were both said to be unmatched, could charge straight through entire armies.
Minato could use the Flying Thunder God Technique to reap enemy lives in the blink of an eye as he flashed across the battlefield.
But every one of them relied on mobility and precision strikes, picking enemies apart one by one.
None confronted a massive army in a direct exchange of ninjutsu.
Yet Shinichi simply hovered in the sky, meeting hundreds of enemy shinobi head-on.
No tricks.
No evasive maneuvers.
No retreat.
He answered their overwhelming firepower with his own.
In that instant—
It wasn't only the Kirigakure forces who were shaken by the sight.
Deep within the distant forest, the Konohagakure army racing toward the battlefield at full speed never slowed their advance.
Yet every one of them felt their pupils contract sharply the moment they witnessed the scene unfolding in the sky.
Leading the charge at the very front...
...was Utatane Koharu.
In the eyes of most people in Konoha, the elder advisor had always been known as stern, inflexible, and unsmiling.
Few still remembered that in her youth...
...she had actually been the most hot-tempered and sharp-edged of the Second Hokage's six disciples.
When Shinichi had proposed that nearly insane plan during the strategy meeting, Koharu had not only approved it on the spot—she was now personally leading the charge at the head of the army.
That single action spoke volumes about the way she conducted herself.
It also revealed just how much faith she had placed in that young man.
Because if Shinichi's operation failed to achieve its intended results, then as Konoha's elder advisor and commander of the Southeastern Army, leading thousands of shinobi straight into the enemy's headquarters, she would very likely be surrounded and annihilated by Kirigakure's rapidly returning forces.
And with that, Konoha's entire front against Kirigakure would be overturned in an instant.
"So he really pulled it off..."
Roughly ten paces behind Koharu, a white-haired middle-aged man raced forward at full speed.
It was Tsuchigumo En no Gyōja, the head of the Tsuchigumo Clan.
His eyes remained fixed on the young man in the sky, who was single-handedly battling hundreds of Kirigakure shinobi head-on, before sweeping across the ruins that Rinkai City had become.
His eyes were filled with utter disbelief.
The Tsuchigumo Clan was an ancient shinobi clan that had long inhabited the southeastern coast of the Land of Fire.
When Kirigakure invaded, they had answered Konoha's call to arms and joined the Southeastern Army in resisting the invasion.
En no Gyōja himself had only been informed of the actual operation immediately before the mission began.
And the very first thought that had crossed his mind upon hearing the plan was—
Konoha has completely lost its mind.
Just because of Higashino Shinichi's prediction and guarantee...
They were willing to stake the lives of thousands of shinobi, their commanding general, and the fate of the entire front?
Even if it was Higashino Shinichi...
That was still absolute madness.
Yet the scene before him—
The city reduced to ruins.
The lone figure suspended beneath the thunderclouds, exchanging devastating attacks with hundreds of enemy shinobi amid flashes of golden lightning—
Was telling him, in the most direct and violent way possible...
The young man Konoha had entrusted everything to...
...had succeeded.
'...Can the Fury Technique really reach this level?'
That thought quietly surfaced in En no Gyōja's mind as he sped across the battlefield.
The Fury Technique was the Tsuchigumo Clan's secret forbidden art, passed down through generations.
Many years ago, their ancestors had accidentally discovered an extraordinarily powerful—and equally dangerous—mysterious form of energy that permeated heaven and earth.
It was everywhere.
Yet impossible to grasp.
When used to enhance ninjutsu, however, it increased its destructive power explosively.
At first, the Tsuchigumo ancestors had attempted to draw that energy directly into the human body and make it their own.
But perhaps because they lacked the proper method...
Or perhaps because that energy simply could not coexist with the human body...
No matter how they tried over the years, every clansman who attempted to channel it into themselves met horrifying and gruesome deaths.
Even generations later, merely reading the clan records documenting those attempts was enough to send chills down one's spine.
Eventually, the Tsuchigumo Clan abandoned that path entirely.
Instead, they devoted themselves to learning how to use that mysterious energy solely to amplify the power of their ninjutsu.
That was how the Fury Technique came to be.
It forcefully compressed and fused that mysterious external energy with one's own chakra through a method that was both extraordinarily crude and astonishingly precise.
The longer the energy was compressed...
The denser it became...
The greater its destructive power upon release.
Like a spring—
The farther it was compressed, the higher it rebounded.
Draw in energy.
Store it.
Release it.
The longer the energy was stored...
The greater the area of destruction.
En no Gyōja was the greatest master of the Fury Technique in the Tsuchigumo Clan's history.
He had privately calculated that if he ignored all consequences and charged the technique to its absolute limit, he could destroy, at most, a medium-sized town.
As for a massive coastal city like Rinkai City...
He had never even dared imagine it.
(In the anime, this technique can supposedly devastate several hundred kilometers, but that's far too exaggerated, so this novel doesn't adopt that interpretation.)
"Move faster! We have to reinforce Shinichi immediately!"
Up ahead, Koharu's voice rang out sharply, yanking En no Gyōja out of his thoughts.
...
"Stop them!"
Sensing something was wrong, the first Kirigakure reinforcements—led by Yuki Hiro—had already begun rushing back.
He glanced toward Yagura's position, then toward the rapidly approaching Konoha forces in the distance.
After a brief moment of thought, he made his decision.
Intercept Konoha first.
BOOM!
The distance between the two forces rapidly vanished as they charged toward one another.
The next instant, every variety of ninjutsu erupted from both armies at once.
Towering water tornadoes slammed head-on into razor-sharp wind blades.
Great Fireballs filled the rain-soaked battlefield with billowing clouds of white steam.
The cold flashes of shuriken and kunai wove together beneath the darkened sky into a deadly web.
In an instant, the thunderous roar of ninjutsu, the clash of blades, and the explosions of explosive tags merged together, dragging the already ruined city back into another frenzy of bloodshed.
High above the battlefield, Shinichi remained suspended in the air.
The fingers of his right hand never stopped forming his sword seal, while the fingers of his left hand spread slightly apart, manipulating invisible air currents to propel wave after wave of golden lightning swords toward the battlefield below.
Sweat had already formed across his forehead.
His complexion grew steadily paler.
Maintaining an offensive on this scale was no easy feat, even for him.
Especially after borrowing the power of the typhoon itself, which had already placed an enormous burden on his body.
But at this moment...
Shinichi was overwhelmingly powerful.
With the perfect convergence of timing, terrain, and circumstance all on his side, calling him the strongest shinobi in the world today would hardly be an exaggeration.
After all, there wasn't a single person in the current shinobi world capable of destroying a city and leveling mountains with one attack while leaving nearly two thousand shinobi dead or missing.
The Third Raikage couldn't do it.
The Third Hokage couldn't do it.
Even Ōnoki couldn't accomplish such a feat.
An attack of this scale...
In the past, only Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara had been capable of it.
In the future, perhaps only techniques like Shinra Tensei at its greatest output could compare.
But in the current era...
No one possessed such power.
Even a Tailed Beast Bomb fired by a jinchūriki might not be capable of devastation on this scale.
It didn't matter whether Shinichi had borrowed the wrath of nature...
Or relied upon the power of an elemental divine weapon.
His accomplishments were undeniable.
After this battle...
His name would once again shake the entire shinobi world.
Both his Wind Release Entry and Lightning Release Entry advancing to Purple quality was already all but guaranteed.
It would even provide a substantial leap toward reaching Level 2 in the future.
Even though his chakra reserves were already being drained at an alarming rate, Shinichi gritted his teeth and continued directing the golden rain of swords down upon the battlefield.
The Wind Release Entry was already secured.
Now, he only needed to make sure the Lightning Release Entry advanced as well.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The exchange of overwhelming firepower continued unabated.
As the clash raged on, the corner of Shinichi's eye caught sight of the Kirigakure shinobi fiercely battling the Konoha forces below. His heart stirred, and he was just about to make his next move...
When suddenly—
An overwhelming sense of danger, as real as death itself, enveloped him completely.
Shinichi didn't even have time to think.
His body reacted before his mind could.
The endless gale surrounding him violently shoved him sideways, sending him hurtling across the edge of the storm clouds.
The very next instant—
BOOM!!!
A deafening roar tore through the heavens.
An enormous jet-black sphere of chakra, carrying apocalyptic destructive power, erupted from the distant mountains and came barreling toward the spot where Shinichi had been moments earlier.
A Tailed Beast Bomb!
The Three-Tails' jinchūriki had made his move!
On this battlefield, virtually no one on Kirigakure's side could threaten Shinichi at such an altitude.
At best, they could only defend against him.
But the Three-Tails' jinchūriki was different.
His Tailed Beast Bomb could still reach that height.
Against an attack of this caliber...
Even Shinichi, in his current state, would die instantly if struck head-on.
Even being grazed would leave him gravely wounded.
Fortunately, his reaction speed had reached its absolute limit.
He had already begun evading before the Three-Tails' jinchūriki launched the attack.
The sphere of annihilating chakra streaked past several hundred meters to his side before slamming deep into the churning thunderclouds behind him.
A world-shaking explosion followed.
It was as if a ferocious beast had violently charged into the heavens themselves, tearing them apart with savage force.
A massive cavity was blasted open in the thunderclouds.
Countless bolts of lightning tangled together amidst the expanding shockwave before bursting outward in every direction, painting half the sky in a chaotic sea of violet-white light.
Shinichi's relentless bombardment from above came to an abrupt halt.
Overhead, the thunderclouds churned into chaos after the Tailed Beast Bomb detonated.
Like a vast pool of rolling ink, they swallowed Shinichi's figure completely, making it seem as though he had merged into that maelstrom of lightning and smoke.
Yagura and the others finally gained a moment to breathe.
But none of them paused to rest.
The instant Hyakume Sōsuke made his move, Yagura immediately turned his attention toward the Konoha forces.
At the moment, fewer than a thousand Kirigakure reinforcements had reached the battlefield.
Facing a Konoha army nearly twice their size, they were badly outnumbered.
He made his decision without hesitation.
Leading the nearby Kirigakure shinobi, he charged straight toward them.
Meanwhile, Sōsuke's mountain-sized body paused briefly.
He looked up toward the sky.
But the thunderclouds were still churning violently, making it impossible to locate Shinichi.
After only a brief moment's thought, he abandoned the search.
His colossal body pivoted with a thunderous rumble before crushing its way toward the Konoha army.
Although the fully transformed Three-Tails appeared ponderous and slow, every step of its mountain-like body shook the earth.
The entire battlefield trembled beneath its feet.
"Elder Koharu! The Three-Tails' jinchūriki is heading this way!"
En no Gyōja's pupils contracted as he urgently called out.
"Ignore him!"
Without even turning around, Koharu swung her blade backward, cleanly cutting down a Kirigakure shinobi blocking her path.
Blood splashed across her cold, stern face.
Her movements never faltered.
Though many years had passed since she had last fought on the front lines, her combat skills remained terrifyingly fierce.
Ignore him?!
En no Gyōja's anxiety surged.
He wanted to say more.
But Koharu had already met Yagura head-on.
Her katana crashed violently against Yagura's coral staff, sending sparks and shockwaves exploding outward simultaneously.
One old.
One young.
The two commanders leading the front lines of different villages began a brutal head-on duel amid the shattered ruins.
En no Gyōja could only swallow the words he had been about to say and rush forward to support her.
Yet the corner of his eye kept drifting toward the colossal beast relentlessly advancing upon them.
The anxiety in his heart only grew stronger.
Then—
The instant the Three-Tails' towering body crossed into a range of five hundred meters from the battlefield—
BOOM!!!
A colossal pillar descended from the heavens.
Carrying overwhelming force, it slammed down onto the Three-Tails' enormous body without the slightest restraint.
A visible shockwave erupted from the point of impact.
Sōsuke's massive body—and the earth beneath his feet—were driven violently downward.
Broken rock and clouds of dust shot skyward like an inverted waterfall.
An enormous crater was smashed into the ground.
Seeing this, En no Gyōja's heart leaped with joy.
He immediately looked upward along the colossal pillar that still echoed with thunderous force.
Standing atop its circular summit...
At its exact center...
Was a tall young man.
His arms were folded across his chest.
His robes snapped violently in the howling wind.
Higashino Shinichi!
Or rather...
Isshin, disguised as Shinichi.
Meanwhile—
Deep within the thunderclouds, now reduced to complete chaos by the Tailed Beast Bomb...
Hundreds of Thunder God's Swords floated amid the surging lightning.
Each blade was connected to the others by countless fine arcs of electricity, forming a pulsating golden web.
They hung in dense formation around Shinichi's true body.
Brilliant golden lightning danced across every blade, growing ever brighter.
Standing at the center of the sword formation, Shinichi kept his eyes closed.
His fingertips traced continuous patterns through the air.
Pure lightning was drawn in from every direction, flowing precisely into each sword.
As the blades blazed with increasingly dazzling golden light...
A deep, resonant hum began to emerge between them.
It sounded like hundreds of bronze bells tolling together.
The humming grew denser.
More unified.
They were resonating.
They were vibrating in harmony.
They were...
Dancing.
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