"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
Uchiha Kirito took a deep breath and spat out a fireball, the crimson flames streaking across the sky, shooting towards a certain rooftop.
A figure flashed, and a woman with a cold and beautiful temperament flew down to the ground. She opened her blood-red eyes, and with a wave of her hands, countless tiny blood blades scattered across the sky.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
A gust of wind swept through, forming a blurry wind wall in front of Kirito. The blood blades swayed incessantly in the surging airflow, crooked like falling leaves. As the wind force increased, they were quickly torn into tiny blood droplets and blown away.
Orochimaru appeared from behind Kirito, flicking his sleeve, and three spinning shuriken shot through the air!
"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!"
"Fire Release—" Uchiha Nen, who had been waiting for an opportunity for a long time, opened his mouth and spat out a tongue of fire, licking over the shuriken group, causing each shuriken to burn with fierce flames, "Phoenix Sage Fire Technique!"
The woman only felt a blur before her eyes, and her entire body was immediately enveloped by densely packed shuriken. The firelight illuminated her panicked face, and she was about to be shot into a bloody mess in the next second.
She curled up her body, raised her hands to protect her vital points as much as possible, and allowed the shuriken to fall on her like raindrops.
"Chih!"
"Chichichi!"
Wounds immediately appeared on her body, on her arms, thighs, and sides of her chest, bloodstains crisscrossing, splattering warm blood.
"You brats, you forced me to do this!"
She gritted her teeth and activated her Eye Technique. The blood all over her body gathered in front of her. As her eyes bloomed with a terrifying blood light, a sharp blood spear pierced through all the shuriken and stabbed straight out, so fast that there was no time to react!
Orochimaru's vertical pupils suddenly constricted. At the critical moment, Kirito suddenly knocked him down, thus avoiding the fatal blow, but Kirito's back was cut open by the tip of the spear, revealing a foot-long bloodstain under the torn clothes.
Nen and Orochimaru noticed this abnormality almost at the same time. Having fought against the Blood Pond Clan for a long time, they naturally knew what this meant.
Orochimaru directly hugged Kirito's head to block his vision, but it was too late. Kirito's eyes had already reflected a pair of blood-red horizontal pupils, and his whole person became sluggish.
"Go to hell!"
The woman revealed a sinister smile, manipulating Kirito to grab Orochimaru's body tightly. At the same time, dark blood foam began to emerge from Kirito's back, and his body also showed a tendency to swell.
"Stop!!!"
In desperation, a light spirit body shot out from between Nen's eyebrows, like invisible lightning, instantly submerging into the woman's body.
Nen's body lost all control and fell directly to the ground. The woman's expression also froze on her face, and all movements suddenly stopped. Only her eyes, filled with shock and anger, showed that she still retained consciousness.
At this moment, in her Inner World, Nen's spirit body was frantically destroying everything, engaging in a fierce chase with the woman's soul avatar.
Because she had opened the Blood Dragon Eye, this woman's mental strength was not lower than Nen's, and Nen's mental energy was far stronger than his peers due to his cultivation of the Spiritualization Technique, but he still couldn't instantly kill the other party's soul.
What's more, this was someone else's territory, an away game. Without mental strength surpassing the opponent, he could only fall into a bitter battle.
The woman stopped chasing, and a pair of huge eyes suddenly opened in the sky. The Inner World stirred up rolling sandstorms, and golden lightning struck down angrily. Nen's spirit body revealed a panicked look, unable to counterattack in any way, and could only dodge repeatedly.
The woman snorted coldly, and the ground suddenly cracked open, with scorching magma gushing out from the cracks. This move was quite dangerous, almost obliterating Nen's spirit body.
As a Genjutsu Ninja, she was no stranger to fighting in the Inner World.
This was her world, which could also be called her "Inner World." As long as she underwent spiritual training, she could create and change things out of thin air. There was nothing she couldn't do, truly making her able to "manifest anything she imagined."
She waved her hand, and endless vines burst from the ground, turning into a giant cage to trap Nen.
Lightning brewed, and with a snap of her fingers, dazzling golden lightning hung high in the sky. A huge, branching lightning bolt struck towards Nen's head, barely dodged by him.
The battle was completely one-sided. The woman controlled the power of wind, forest, fire, and mountain, with various methods emerging in endless variations. Nen had no way to cope, and could only dodge around in a sorry state, in constant danger, nearly taken out in one wave several times.
This was his spirit body, in a way, the embodiment of his soul. Once it was erased, he would truly be finished.
Escaping the danger was simple; he only needed to exit the woman's mental world, and all threats would disappear.
But, he couldn't!
The clash in the mental world seemed intense, but in reality, only a brief second had passed.
In that second, Orochimaru pushed Tong Ren out of his arms, and at the same time, pulled out a Kunai, and flung it fiercely at the woman's forehead!
The Kunai cut through the air, carrying a sharp, cold light, and pierced into the woman's brow, scattering a few drops of blood on the ground!
In an instant, the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning in the mental world all disappeared. The woman, with a look of disbelief, faded away inch by inch, her soul devoured by the abyss-like darkness.
Nen immediately retreated, his spirit body once again bathed in sunlight, and merged into his own brow.
He quickly opened his eyes, and what he saw was a tired Orochimaru, and... an unharmed, back-to-normal Tong Ren.
"That was too dangerous..."
"Yeah... but we won." Orochimaru squeezed out a smile at him.
A slightly dazed Tong Ren also remembered what had just happened, and cold sweat "whooshed" out of his forehead. The three looked at each other, each with a silly grin of relief on their faces.
"Hahahaha..."
...
South District, in a forest, Hiruko protected the villagers behind him, facing two puppets with a solemn expression.
"Run!" he shouted, and immediately threw out a smoke bomb towards the front.
The villagers didn't dare delay. The moment the white smoke rose, they turned and ran wildly, dashing out dozens of meters in one breath.
The two puppets were blinded, and rushed up haphazardly, but were directly tackled by someone.
Hiruko hugged the puppet's body tightly, and at the same time tripped the other enemy with his feet, rolling to embrace them both.
The Blood Pond Clan's method of controlling human bombs was the same. Because ordinary villagers had no combat ability, they would control the puppets' bodies to engage in entanglement, creating wounds and then injecting Chakra to create new puppets. But if they encountered a Ninja, they would self-destruct at close range, for an extreme one-for-one exchange.
The two puppets swelled at the same time, pressing down on Hiruko, and as a dazzling beam of light burst out, a huge explosion echoed through the forest!
The storm flattened the grass and dispersed the smoke, leaving only a deep pit in place, emitting black smoke filled with a burnt smell.
Far away, the ground moved slightly. Hiruko overturned a stone slab and climbed out in a sorry state, his white hair dyed black.
He came to the edge of the pit, looked at the tragic scene, and gasped for breath with some lingering fear.
For a Ninja like him with little talent, making good use of Ninjutsu was the key to survival. If he hadn't used the Shadow Clone in time to trick the puppets into self-destructing, he wouldn't even have been sure of escaping.
Suddenly, his eyes narrowed slightly. There seemed to be something at the bottom of the pit, reflecting a dark blue, sharp light through the mottled sunlight.
Suspicion arose in his heart, and he immediately went forward to investigate. When he jumped into the pit, he brushed away the dust with deep doubt, but his eyes widened instantly.
It was a piece of heavy-colored metal, no, to be precise, it was more like a building, a part of some behemoth, deeply buried in the soil. If he continued to dig along the pit to the side, he might see more!
He lay down on it, tentatively tapping it with the handle of a Kunai, then listened closely, a dull sound echoing in his ears, followed by an empty... echo!
"It's hollow!"
He suddenly sat up, his face filled with deep shock.
"Could it be..."
Suddenly, he remembered a sentence, as if a bolt from the blue exploded in his mind, making him a little dazed with excitement.
'Standing on the shoulders of giants, one can see further. Someone has already crossed the threshold of this path in advance, and his research results are now in the Hidden Leaf Village...'
Suddenly, a burst of urgent cries for help came from afar, and Hiruko woke up from his excitement, immediately jumping out of the pit.
It was a father and daughter, being chased by three puppets, and they were running towards this side.
Hiruko was shocked, hastily tearing off sod and broken branches to bury the pit. Then, he gritted his teeth and rushed to meet them.
"I'll hold them off, you run that way!"
"Ah! Thank you, Ninja-sama!"
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