By the time Hoshiyomi finished speaking, he was already standing in front of the wounded jōnin. The man, despite his injury, was still fast—as expected of a jōnin. The moment he saw Hoshiyomi approaching, he instinctively pulled out a kunai to defend himself.
But Hoshiyomi's blade was too fast. Before the man could even raise the kunai to block, Hoshiyomi's sword had already come down.
In the blink of an eye, the once-feared Earth-Release Burrowing Unit, notorious for terrorizing enemy supply lines, had lost more than half its members.
Hoshiyomi circled the battlefield, his gaze locking onto the squad's captain. If memory served, this was the one who'd cast the Earth Mountain Jutsu earlier. The way the team had positioned themselves around him also suggested he was the core.
Take out the leader, and the rest would crumble.
The moment the Iwa captain felt Hoshiyomi's eyes on him, a chill ran down his spine.
That ghost-like speed, that overwhelming sword energy—he suddenly realized exactly who he was facing. There could be no mistake.
This man was the infamous "Silver Moon of Konoha," Gekkō Hoshiyomi—the one said to have gone head-to-head with Hanzo of the Salamander.
Seeing Hoshiyomi move, the captain felt an overwhelming sense of dread. Without hesitation, he launched into a sequence of hand seals—activating an Earth Release jutsu to escape underground.
He had zero intention of engaging Hoshiyomi directly. With a single seal, the earth beneath him softened like sludge and swallowed him whole.
He had absolute faith in his Earth esscape techniques. Years of rigorous training had honed his skills to perfection. He'd once even used this technique to evade a fully charged Dust Release: Detachment of the Primitive World Technique from Ōnoki during a spar.
No way this guy can match that speed underground.
Once buried deep enough, this battlefield would be his domain. If Hoshiyomi dared to follow, he'd make sure the man never returned.
With that thought, the captain looked up, intending to taunt him before vanishing completely.
But he froze.
Hoshiyomi was gone.
Where—?
"Don't bother looking. I'm behind you."
Hoshiyomi's voice came from directly behind him. At the same moment, the faint click of Mikazuki Munechika sheathing rang in the air.
No...
A horrible realization flashed through the captain's mind—just as the world spun around him. As his head twisted mid-fall, he saw it—his own body, headless, still sinking into the dirt.
Impossible… is that kind of speed even human?
That was his final thought. But no one would ever answer him.
Hoshiyomi's regular speed, of course, wasn't that fast. Even with Body Flicker, Shunpo and his technique Crescent Moon Slash, he couldn't move like that. What allowed him to appear behind the captain instantaneously was his new skill—Dance of the Startled Swan.
It allowed him to tear through space itself—essentially a teleportation. In one clean step, he had appeared directly behind the squad captain and taken his life.
His head hit the ground while the rest of his body continued to sink—just like the first poor soul who died, confused and helpless.
With the captain down, Hoshiyomi instinctively glanced around—only to twitch his mouth in disbelief.
The battlefield was full of freshly dug holes.
The surviving members of the Burrowing Unit hadn't even looked back to check on their captain. Every last one of them had already fled underground.
So this is the legendary "Iwagakure speed," huh?
He shook his head and muttered in disdain.
Not hesitating, Hoshiyomi activated the second stage of Dance of the Startled Swan, instantly flashing back to the spot where his earlier sword energy had landed.
He'd returned to the Burrowing Unit's core zone. Even if they had fled, they couldn't have gotten far underground yet.
Drawing Mikazuki Munechika once more, Hoshiyomi narrowed his eyes.
If Earth-nature chakra can be shaped into threads for reconnaissance… could I use it directly for offense too?
A smile crept across his face. He stabbed the blade into the ground again and began flooding it with chakra.
"This move… I'll name it: Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū: Earth Dragon Tremor."
As soon as he spoke, the ground beneath him began to shift.
The move's concept was actually simple. It was based on Earth Dragon Flash from the Hiten Mitsurugi style—but fused with Super Strength Jutsu and Earth-nature chakra.
The original Earth Dragon Flash sent a destructive sword energy into the ground, causing a shockwave of broken earth to batter opponents from below. But with Super Strength added to the equation, the technique evolved.
Instead of a vertical shock, the infused sword enegy generated a horizontal seismic wave, radiating outward from Hoshiyomi like the tremor of a real earthquake.
The Burrowing Unit hadn't dug very deep yet. Most were still in the process of burrowing when the shock hit.
They'd assumed Hoshiyomi couldn't follow them underground.
Big mistake.
They were familiar with this kind of chakra fluctuation—but that didn't mean they could stop it.
Had they grouped together, they might have had a chance at resisting.
But Hoshiyomi had been too terrifying. Their first instinct had been to scatter—to escape and preserve whatever numbers they could. And that sealed their fate.
"Earth Release: Hardening Technique!"
"Earth Release: Rising Rock Formation!"
"Earth Release: Rock Solidification Jutsu!"
They threw every defensive jutsu they had against the incoming quake.
But one person's jutsu was no match against the force of Hoshiyomi's relentless chakra output.
Within seconds, their defenses were shattered.
The shockwave compressed layers of rock and soil together, grinding their bodies to pulp—flattened by the very earth they trusted.
After ten seconds, Hoshiyomi finally withdrew Mikazuki Munechika.
Don't underestimate those ten seconds.
In that brief time, the terrain within a 500-meter radius had been utterly destroyed.
The land around him looked like a spiderweb of shattered cracks—fractured by the brute force of a localized quake.
Of course, the cost of such devastation wasn't small.
Controlling the terrain over such a wide radius for that long had drained nearly a quarter of his total chakra.
Combined with the chakra he'd already spent tracking the enemy, firing sword aura, using Shunshin, and activating Dance of the Startled Swan, Hoshiyomi had burned through over a third of his chakra reserves.
Thankfully, unlike Kakashi—whose Sharingan drained him constantly—Hoshiyomi had a naturally large chakra pool. It was even larger than Jiraiya's.
But still, this technique was no joke. Its consumption was insane.
As he reflected on how absurdly costly the jutsu was—and reminded himself never to use it casually again—he heard voices in the distance.
Shinku and the reinforcement squad had arrived.
Thanks to the markers Hoshiyomi had left behind, they were able to locate him quickly.
When they arrived, they were greeted with a battlefield in ruins—and Hoshiyomi standing in the middle of the fractured ground, smiling at them.
"You made it. Good. Do a sweep—check if any of them slipped through."
(Author's Note: Hopefully this chapter didn't feel too over-the-top. I thought I might've gone too far, but then I remembered Hashirama's Deep Forest Emergence and realized… I was being conservative.)